"Now My soul has become troubled; and what shall I say, ‘Father, save Me from this hour’? But for this purpose I came to this hour.” ~ John 12:27
The verse above gives us a special insight into the mind of Christ as the day of His death drew near. Speaking to Himself before a crowd, Jesus expresses that His soul is troubled. The word expresses deep emotional distress.
His distress, we know, is that the cross is fast approaching. The moment when He would face all the accumulated wrath of His Almighty Father for every sin of every person who would ever believe in Him.
Jonathan Edwards pictures this moment, as Christ stares into this furnace of God’s wrath.
“He had then a near view of that furnace of wrath, into which he was to be cast; he was brought to the mouth of the furnace that he might look into it, and stand and view its raging flames, and see the glowings of its heat, that he might know where he was going and what he was about to suffer. This was the thing that filled his soul with sorrow and darkness, this terrible sight as it were overwhelmed him. For what was that human nature of Christ to such mighty wrath as this? It was in itself, without the supports of God, but a feeble worm of the dust, a thing that was crushed before the moth, none of God's children ever had such a cup set before them, as this first being of every creature had.”
No wonder then that, as the hour drew near for Christ to bear this weight, to drink this cup, He would be troubled in His soul.
In every other trial of His life, He had turned to His Father in heaven for relief, protection and care. The Father heard each request of the Son, and answered because of His submission to the Father’s will.
But in this most intense moment of His sufferings, Christ realized that when He turned for help to His Father, He would find the very wrath that troubled His soul. For the first time in the history of the universe, Christ would be under the wrath of His heavenly Father—this would be the great moment of His suffering.
He sees this reality, and asks a simple question—“What shall I say?” In other words, what can He do? Can He appeal to the Father to save Him from this hour? The answer, terribly and gloriously, is no. It was for this very purpose that He had come to the earth!
Christ’s entrance into the world, the Christmas that brings us such joy, was the start of a long road leading to this moment of intense pain. Each event, from His birth to this moment of suffering, had this as its single purpose—that He would drink the cup of the Father’s wrath.
No wonder that the prophet Isaiah tells us that Jesus bore our griefs and carried our sorrows, because the Lord ‘caused the iniquity of us all to fall on Him.’ From birth to death, our pain was His purpose.
