“Shall I Not Drink the Cup?”

I invite you to turn with me to the Gospel of John, as we did this morning, but this time to chapter 18. In the preaching schedule that unfolds before us, I think the parts that I have in it will allow me the opportunity to tackle what I want to refer to as five Easter questions. Five Easter questions. The first of these comes this evening, and the last of these will come, actually, God willing, on Easter Sunday, and that question is the question posed by the angel to the women and then by Jesus in turn, “Why are you weeping?”[1] “Why are you weeping?” But this evening’s question comes right at the end of our Scripture reading. I’m going to read from verse 1 to verse 11:

“When Jesus had spoken these words, he went out with his disciples across the brook Kidron, where there was a garden, [where] he and his disciples entered. Now Judas, who betrayed him, also knew the place, for Jesus often met there with his disciples. So Judas, having procured a band of soldiers and some officers from the chief priests and the Pharisees, went there with lanterns and torches and weapons. Then Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward and said to them, ‘Whom do you seek?’ They answered him, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus said to them, ‘I am he.’ Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them. When Jesus said to them, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground. So he asked them again, ‘Whom do you seek?’ And they said, ‘Jesus of Nazareth.’ Jesus answered, ‘I told you that I am he. So, if you seek me, let these men go.’ This was to fulfill the word that he had spoken: ‘Of those whom you gave me I have lost not one.’ Then Simon Peter, having a sword, drew it and struck the high priest’s servant and cut off his right ear. (The servant’s name was Malchus.) So Jesus said to Peter, ‘Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?’”

Father, we pray with gratitude this evening for the privilege of being able to gather in this way. And we pray that as we turn to the Bible, that the Spirit of God will be our teacher—that as we meditate on this passage in anticipation of gathering around this Table, that the work of God will be manifest in our individual hearts and be shed abroad among us as a company. We ask this so that you might be glorified, so that we might be strengthened and encouraged and equipped for every good deed.[2] And we pray in Jesus’ name. Amen.

This scene which I’ve just read is probably one of the most dramatic scenes in the Gospels. I’m sure if we were to go through the Gospels together, some of us would choose a different one. If we were choosing a top five, I would imagine that this scene would be in all of our top fives.

When we read the Gospel accounts—and we’re reading in John primarily at the moment—we recognize that not all the Gospel writers cover the same material in the same way. And in particular, John tells us, actually, towards the end of his [Gospel] that he hasn’t chosen to give us, if you like, a complete account of everything. In fact, he says, “You know, if we were to record everything, then surely there wouldn’t be enough books in the world to contain all the things that Jesus said and did”[3]—which is really a sort of dramatic way of saying Jesus is absolutely amazing and wonderful, and we could never encapsulate it all.

But in this particular incident, as you read this, if you know your Bible at all, you will find yourself saying, “Well, it is interesting that John does not record the agony of Gethsemane.” He is not providing for us what the Synoptics do, and instead, he is choosing to, if you like, summarize that or contain all of that, gather it up. All of the spiritual struggle that is represented in the Gethsemane encounter where Jesus cries out to the Father, he gathers up that spiritual struggle in just this single phrase, “Shall I not drink the cup?” “Shall I not drink the cup?”

Now, John, of course, has been preparing the readers for this all the way along. In the twenty-seventh verse of chapter 12, Jesus says to his listeners, “Now is my soul troubled. And what shall I say? ‘Father, save me from this hour’? But for this purpose I have come to this hour. Father, glorify your name.” And “then a voice came from heaven [saying]: ‘I have glorified it.’” In chapter 14 and towards the end of it, he says to his followers, “I will no longer talk much with you, for the ruler of this world is coming. He has no claim on me, but I do as the Father has commanded me, so that the world may know that I love the Father. [Let us] rise, … [and] go from here.”[4]

And here, they have come out of the context in which they were, and they have gathered in what is a familiar setting. If you have had the privilege of going to Jerusalem, you’ll have been taken by guides who try and tell you they have found the exact spot. And I’m not sure that any of them can really claim that with any authority at all. You find it in just about every circumstance. And we don’t need to know the exact spot, but we do know that the Kidron River is a small stream that dried up in the summer; it trickled a bit in the winter. And that stream flowed in between the Mount of Olives and the eastern wall of Jerusalem. So we can be as specific as that. And all that John is telling us is that this was a special place. It was a favorite retreat for Jesus and his disciples. It was the kind of place that you wouldn’t want to spoil. It was the kind of place that, as you brought it back to mind, it would have the happiest of memories for you.

In fact, in the Gospels, it says at one point that Jesus and his followers, leading up to some of these events, were actually sleeping outdoors for much of the time.[5] And here they gather, as they have done on many occasions, in this garden. It’s in the context of the garden that we find the betrayer appearing—verse 2. We will remember again… And I say this so that we might understand that these scenes are all backed up, if you like, by the history that we already know. When we studied in chapter 13, we were reminded of this verse: “During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God,” he then “rose from supper”[6] and washed the feet—including washing the feet of the betrayer himself, which is quite remarkable. Later in the same chapter: “Then after he had taken the morsel…” Remember, they had said, “Who is it that’s going to betray you?” Jesus says, “The one who dips his hand in.”[7] “Then after [Judas] had taken the morsel, Satan entered into him,” and “Jesus said to him, ‘What you[’re] going to do, do quickly.’”[8]

Now, what we know from this, apart from anything else, is that, as the Gospel writer tells us here, Jesus is aware of what’s going on. Jesus is not being caught off guard by any of these events. What he must have been surprised by, I think, was the way in which this arrest unfolds. Because the scene is described for us. It’s quite remarkable that a disciple of Jesus has gone to procure a band of Roman soldiers, chief priests, in order that he might arrest the one that he has professed to have loved for all these years. And so, there they are. The company has arrived and have brought with them “lanterns and torches and weapons.”

Now, since we have gardens in our mind from last Sunday night, at least, if you remember, the scene in the garden of Eden is a scene whereby the serpent takes the initiative to bring his assault upon Adam—the first Adam. Now we find ourselves in a garden where the second Adam, Jesus, is now taking the initiative in conflict with the Prince of Evil. Now, just look at the scene. How remarkable is this? I mean, this is almost stranger than fiction, if you made this up: weapons in order to arrest the King of Kings and lanterns in order to search for he who is the Light of the World. It’s quite remarkable.

Now, it’s in that context—verse 4—that “Jesus, knowing all that would happen to him, came forward.” In some translations it says he “went out.”[9] Now, the possibility is that this garden was a walled garden that had a point of entry, had a point of exit—that they had been inside the garden in their initial time; these folks arrive, and Jesus takes the initiative to go out to them. Maybe. Maybe not. But we do know that Jesus came forward.

And you will notice, too, just for interest in passing, that John makes no mention here of Judas’s kiss. The kiss of Judas is mentioned in the Synoptics. John chooses not to put that in here. It’s not germane to his purpose. He is keeping the main things the plain things, if you like, and that’s why he doesn’t tell us everything that happened. He wants us as his readers to know that Jesus in this encounter is in complete control. He’s in complete control.

And so it is that Jesus takes the initiative, and he speaks to them. Knowing what would happen, he says to them, “Whom do you seek?” It’s interesting that he asks a question not to learn but actually to teach. He doesn’t need to learn, but he’s actually teaching by the very question that he makes. And so it is that they say that “we are actually looking for Jesus of Nazareth,” and Jesus said to them, “I am he.” That is Ego eimi. That takes us to the very declaration that we considered last time, Moses in his encounter with God—“Who will I say to [the Israelites] has sent me?”[10]—and those are the words that God uses in terms of his divinity.[11] It’s, interestingly, the same statement made by Joseph when his brothers finally come to him and he says to them, “I am Joseph!”[12] Ego eimi.

Now, we don’t need to define it in terms of divinity. We don’t need to make it more than it is. It could be that Jesus is simply saying, “Yeah, that’s me. I am Jesus of Nazareth.” But I wonder whether that would be sufficient when you realize the reaction to Jesus’ statement. Because in verse 6 it says that “when Jesus said to them, ‘I am he,’ they drew back and fell to the ground.” It’s interesting that John reminds us in this context that “Judas, who betrayed him, was standing with them.” I wonder: Did Judas fall to the ground as well? Or did he stand there while everybody else fell to the ground?

Now, we must keep in mind in all of this, again, that Jesus is alert to all that’s going on. Jesus has already said—for example, in John 10:17 and following, he says, “No one takes my life from me. I have the power to lay it down, and I have the power to raise it up again.”[13] And so he is in control here. And the drama is surely significant. I don’t know how many soldiers there were, because we’re not told, but it’s a crowd of people, led by Judas, with their weapons, with their torches, with their lanterns, and they have all now fallen to the ground.

Some commentators that don’t really want to allow this to be as dramatic as it is suggest that where it says that “they drew back and fell to the ground,” that what happened was that the front row drew back; when they drew back, they knocked the second row, which knocked the third row, until everybody had fallen on the ground. Does that make it any better for you? It makes it no better for me at all. No, they “fell to the ground.” And Jesus said to them again, “Who is it that you seek?” Surely this is an encounter with divinity. This is terror. This is awe. This is mystery. This is majesty. A contingent of Roman soldiers, armed and trained, fall to the ground before the carpenter’s son, fall to the ground before an unarmed prophet.

So Jesus speaks to them again: “I told you that I am he. So, if you seek me, let these men go.” “If you seek me, let these men go.” So here he is, the Shepherd, who stands between the wolves and the sheep. He is the Good Shepherd. He is going to give his life for the sheep.[14] In this encounter, he finds himself in this position. It’s a wonderful little picture of what is true throughout the whole Bible concerning substitution: that Jesus is the one who dies in the sinner’s place; that here he anticipates, as it were, all that is about to unfold in the events of the next few hours. “Take me, and let them go. Take my life in order that they might have life.”

It’s possible, actually, to be very defiant, very defensive, very righteous, very regulated, and so on and get it miserably wrong.

And then, no surprise, Simon Peter steps forward. Having a sword, a big sword, a dagger—we’re not told, but a sword—he drew it. Now, if we’re going to give Simon Peter any credence at all in this incident, we have to acknowledge that he has said that “even if it goes really badly, Jesus, I will always defend you. Even if everybody gives up on you, I’m going to be there in the end.”[15] And he, in one sense, makes a pretty good stab at it here—no pun intended. But the fact is that he is actually disobedient. He’s disobedient. He might be acting in defense, but it is a disobedient defense, because Jesus has already said, “Take me, and let them go.” In other words, Jesus is the protector. Jesus is the provider. Peter is not in that position. But it is a position that he arrogates to himself.

Now, it’s virtually impossible for us to read this without in our minds recognizing that actually, from the very beginning of things, Peter has managed to take one step forward and two steps back. And that’s recorded, of course, in Matthew 16, when Jesus had come into the region of Caesarea Philippi, and he was asking, “What is the word on the street? What are people saying about me?” And they said, “Well, they’re saying various things.” And then, of course, “Who do you say…?” And Peter is the one who comes up with the answer. Jesus says to them, “I tell you, you are Peter. On this rock I shall build my church. The gates of hell will not prevail against it. I’ll give you the keys of the kingdom,”[16] and so on. And then, of course, Peter says, “No, no. If you think you’re going to go up to Jerusalem and die, then I just want to let you know,” Peter says, “that’s not in the plan. That’s not going to be happening.” And Jesus says to him, “Get behind me, Satan. You do not have in mind the things of God.”[17]

So it’s possible, actually, to be very defiant, very defensive, very righteous, very regulated, and so on and get it miserably wrong, which is what he does here, again: takes out the sword, cuts off the high priest’s servant’s ear, or part of his ear—whatever. And we’re told here that the servant’s name was Malchus. We’re not told about the name of the servant anywhere else other than John. So he has little pieces that are not present even in the Synoptics.

I often wonder about Malchus. I don’t know how long he lived after this. They didn’t have Q-tips, I know, at the time. Well, I don’t know. They might have had Q-tips. But every time he put a Q-tip in his ear, he would have said, “Man! That was…” He’s the last person that Jesus healed before the cross. Malchus had a special moment there, brought on by the defiant disobedience of Peter. He would recall for the rest of his life the healing touch of Jesus’ hand.

In response to Peter’s reaction, Jesus then speaks to him straightforwardly: “Put your sword into its sheath.” “Put your sword into its sheath.” Once again, Peter, you see, was seeking to come between Jesus and the will of the Father. That’s what he was doing. That’s what he was doing in his great moment of declaring, “You are … the Son of the living God,”[18] and then going, “Yeah, but we’re not going to go on the program with you dying.” What was he doing? He was coming between the will of the Father and Jesus. And that’s exactly what he has done here again.

And so Jesus says to him, “Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” Now, I say to you again, as I mentioned when we began this a moment or two ago, that John has chosen not to give us those earlier scenes in the garden of Gethsemane where Jesus is saying, “Father, if you’re willing, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless…”[19] and so on. John Murray very helpfully, in a sentence, observes—he says in leaving that out, John “has no wish to conceal or deny the reality of the deep waters [of the soul] through which … Jesus had to pass.”[20]

So, when we view this, I think we view it in the awareness that John had the awareness of those incidents. Clearly, he would have done. And in treating it in this way, he is not setting them aside. Let’s just think about the part that he leaves out.

In the agony of the garden, you remember, Jesus says, “Father, if you are willing, let this cup pass from me.” Now, the cup to which he refers is a symbol of God’s judgment. It is the cup of his wrath. You would need to just take your concordance and work on this on your own to build up a picture of this from the Old Testament. Let me cross-reference just two places—one, straightforwardly, in Psalm 75. And in the midst of that psalm, in verse 8, the psalmist says,

For in the hand of the Lord there is a cup
 with foaming wine, well mixed
and he pours out from it,
 and all the wicked of the earth
 shall drain it down to [its] dregs

—that God, in exercising his judgment on wickedness, will pour out the cup of his wrath.

You have it elsewhere, but let me just give one other, and that would be in Isaiah and in chapter 51. And the prophet says,

Wake yourself, wake yourself,
 stand up, O Jerusalem,
you who have drunk from the hand of the Lord
 the cup of his wrath,
who have drunk to the dregs
 the bowl, the cup of staggering.
There is none to guide her
 among all the sons she has borne;
there is none to take her by the hand
 among all the sons she has brought up.
These two things have happened to you—
 who will console you?—
devastation and destruction, famine and sword;
 who will comfort you?
Your sons have fainted;
 they lie at the head of every street
 like an antelope in a net;
they are full of the wrath of the Lord,
 the rebuke of your God.[21]

So the cup that is being referenced here by Jesus is that cup. It is the cup of God’s wrath. So when we think about Jesus in the garden saying, “Father, if it is possible for this cup to pass from me,” we’ve immediately gone wrong if we think what he is saying is simply “I don’t want to have to face the ignominy of this” or “I don’t like the idea of my friends and myself being separated from me” and so on—“I am afraid of the physicality of it,” if you like. All of that may be true, but that is not the issue. Because the cup that he doesn’t want to drink is the cup poured out by the Father on all the wickedness and ungodliness of humanity. Jesus didn’t want to drink that cup. If you said, “What is Jesus’ will?” Jesus’ will was “I don’t want to drink that cup.” How do we know that? Because he said it. He said it.

Our favorite theologian—or one of them—says furthermore, in our humanity, it was not simply that Jesus didn’t want to, but it was that Jesus couldn’t want to drink that cup. He couldn’t want to. It was not his desire to enter into the outer darkness, to face the reality of godforsakenness—i.e., to face the experience that was about to be his on the cross: the spiritual agony of bearing the sins of the world in divine judgment.[22] It is this cup that the Father has given him, and it is this cup that he refers to in this way.

So I take it that here, by the time John is giving us his record in the eleventh verse of 18, he no longer is praying (that is, Jesus is no longer praying) that the cup may pass from him, but rather, with that—the reality of his prior experience—he now says, “Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?” In other words, the Good Shepherd understands that he’s about to give his life for the sheep.

Just come back to that: “If it is possible for this cup to pass from me…” I think it’s really possible for us, because of the challenge that is represented in that, to go immediately and quickly to what he then goes on to say: “Nevertheless, not my will but yours be done.” In other words, we have to understand that it is not his will to do this, but he sublimates his will to the will of the Father in order that he might fulfill the purposes of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit from all eternity in order to redeem a people.

When I was small in Scotland, we used to have soloists sometimes. Some of them were good, and some of them weren’t good. And there were favorites that would come up regularly, and one of them, it goes,

There were ninety and nine that safely lay
In the shelter of the fold,
But one was out on the hills away,
Far off from the gates of gold.

And so it was just the picture of the shepherd, the ninety-nine safe, and one, going to look for them. And I can still vaguely recall the sort of intensity with—it was often a man singing this—when he got to the verse and sang,

But none of the ransomed ever knew
How deep [was] the [water] crossed,
Nor how dark was the night
[That] the Lord passed through
Ere he found the sheep that was lost.[23]

In other words, it’s not possible for us to enter into the reality of that which is given to us here in this simple statement.

That is essentially all that I have to say. But I want to add a PS to it. I want to recommend a book to you in relationship to it, and my PS is drawn, not entirely but loosely, from my own studies in that book over the years. The book was written by John Stott, and it’s simply called The Cross [of Christ]. The Cross [of Christ]. And if you’re looking for a read and if you’re looking for some study, then I commend it to you.

It’s in the course of that book that John helps the reader and has helped me make sure that I stay away from distorted views of what happened on the cross—distorted views of the nature of the atonement, of Christ dying for sinners. And he says, “We must not [ever] speak of God punishing Jesus or of Jesus persuading God.” Those are both immediate errors—that somehow or another, Jesus has to try and persuade the Father to do something that it wasn’t his will to do or that the Father decides to take the initiative and punish the Son in a way that he had never intended. “We must never make Christ the object of God’s punishment or God the object of Christ’s persuasion. … The Father did not lay on the Son an ordeal he was reluctant to bear, nor did the Son extract from the Father a salvation he was reluctant to bestow.”[24]

Jesus went out and drank the cup of God’s wrath in order that we, undeserving as we are, might be able to drink the cup of blessing and the cup of salvation.

When you read the Bible, you realize that the Father gave the Son, but you also realize that the Son gave himself. When you read this passage, you realize that the cup was given by the Father, but we also realize that the cup was voluntarily taken by the Son. Neither member of the Godhead is object. Both of them are subjects in the unfolding story that then proceeds from chapter 18 and goes on from there.

In the Last Supper, there are a number of cups in that supper. And the last cup that is drunk in the supper is the cup of blessing. It would seem—I’m not sure—but it would seem that Jesus went out from there having not drunk the cup of blessing, because he was going out to drink the cup of God’s wrath. And he went out and drank the cup of God’s wrath in order that we, undeserving as we are, might be able to drink the cup of blessing and the cup of salvation.

“Put your sword away, Peter. Shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?”

Our Father, we bow before these truths. We’re like children before the vastness of your unfading glory. How good that we could have the extent of this theology brought down to a table bearing bread and wine so that we might understand that the main things really are the plain things, and the plain things are the main things.

Father, thank you for sending Jesus. Jesus, thank you for coming. Holy Spirit, fill our hearts afresh with an understanding of what it cost for Christ to bear our sins in his body on the tree in order that we might die to sin and live to righteousness.[25] And we ask it in Christ’s name. Amen.

[1] John 20:13, 15 (ESV).

[2] See 2 Timothy 3:17.

[3] John 21:25 (paraphrased).

[4] John 14:30–31 (ESV).

[5] See Luke 21:37.

[6] John 13:2–4 (ESV).

[7] John 13:25–26 (paraphrased).

[8] John 13:27 (ESV).

[9] John 18:4 (NIV).

[10] Exodus 3:13 (paraphrased).

[11] See Exodus 3:14.

[12] Genesis 45:3 (ESV).

[13] John 10:18 (paraphrased).

[14] See John 10:11.

[15] Matthew 26:33, 35; Mark 14:29, 31; John 13:37 (paraphrased).

[16] Matthew 16:13–19 (paraphrased).

[17] Matthew 16:22–23 (paraphrased).

[18] Matthew 16:16 (ESV).

[19] Matthew 26:39; Mark 14:36; Luke 22:42 (paraphrased).

[20] John Murray, quoted in Leon Morris, Reflections on the Gospel of John (Grand Rapids: Baker, 1986; repr., Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 2000), 603.

[21] Isaiah 51:17–20 (ESV).

[22] Sinclair B. Ferguson, “The Cup That Could Not Pass,” Things Unseen, podcast, Ligonier Ministries, November 1, 2024, https://learn.ligonier.org/podcasts/things-unseen-with-sinclair-ferguson/the-cup-that-could-not-pass.

[23] Elizabeth Cecelia Clephane, “The Ninety and Nine” (1868).

[24] John Stott, The Cross of Christ (Downers Grove, IL: InterVarsity, 1986), 151.

[25] See 1 Peter 2:24.