What does Luke 22:42 mean?
Eight of the disciples are asleep a good distance from Jesus as He prays in the garden of Gethsemane. Peter, James, and John are also asleep, but closer. Judas is on his way with a squadron of temple guards and servants of the high priest (Luke 22:39–40; Mark 14:32).Jesus can't sleep. He knows that by this time the next day, He will have been interrogated, beaten, scourged, and crucified. He will have felt the crushing weight of all the sins of every person in history. He will have died and been placed in a cold tomb in the stone. He is fully God (Colossians 2:9). He knows He has come to earth for the purpose of going to the cross (John 12:27). So, is He asking God the Father to change the plan?
Jesus is fully God, but He is also fully man (Hebrews 4:15). There is no truth in the Gnostic belief that the spirit is good and the physical body is evil. Yet we also need to recognize that Jesus' humanity sometimes wanted something different than His divinity. Theologians have struggled to give sufficient explanations, but the most accurate is that Jesus is one Person with two natures: a divine nature and a human nature. This is referred to as the "hypostatic union."
The important part, which Christ-followers need to emulate, comes at the end of the verse: "Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done." We only have a human nature, but we can follow Jesus' example and submit to God in obedience even when it's unimaginably difficult (Philippians 4:12–13; Philippians 2:12–13). The author of Hebrews elaborates:
In the days of his flesh, Jesus offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence. Although he was a son, he learned obedience through what he suffered. And being made perfect, he became the source of eternal salvation to all who obey him, being designated by God a high priest after the order of Melchizedek (Hebrews 5:7–10)."Perfect," here, doesn't mean sinless or flawless. It means complete. In submitting to the Father's will in this, Jesus completely obeyed the Father in His earthly life. Thus, He experienced the fullness of obedience. That obedient submission was the last task Jesus had to complete to qualify as the perfect, singular sacrifice for our sins.
Around the Age of Enlightenment, people began to think that humans could discover every truth through science. Humanism taught that mankind could control its destiny and become greater, reaching spiritual righteousness on its own. This verse, along with Hebrews 5:7–10, is one used to support the "example theory" of atonement. The example theory claims that Jesus didn't literally carry our sins, but rather Jesus' death on the cross was merely an example to humanity of the self-sacrifice needed to fully obey God. This is completely wrong, as proved in verses like 2 Corinthians 5:21 which reads, "For our sake he made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." Hebrews 9—10 also details the necessity of Christ's sacrifice and demonstrates it was far more than exemplary. Surely, the extreme dread Jesus is under is not just for His physical death but for the spiritual task He is facing.
A "cup" was often used as a metaphor for someone's fate; to drink the cup is to do or experience what God has determined is necessary. It is especially connected to God's wrath. We see this when James and John ask for places of honor in Jesus' kingdom (Mark 10:35–38), but it is also frequently used in the Old Testament (Isaiah 51:17; Jeremiah 25:15–17; 51:7).
