What Was in The Cup? (Part I)

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Matthew 26:36-44
Then Jesus came with them to a place called Gethsemane, and said to His disciples, “Sit here while I go over there and pray.” And He took with Him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be grieved and distressed. Then He said to them, “My soul is deeply grieved, to the point of death; remain here and keep watch with Me.” And He went a little beyond them, and fell on His face and prayed, saying, “My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me; yet not as I will, but as You will.” And He came to the disciples and found them sleeping, and said to Peter, “So, you men could not keep watch with Me for one hour? Keep watching and praying that you may not enter into temptation; the spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.” He went away again a second time and prayed, saying, “My Father, if this cannot pass away unless I drink it, Your will be done.” Again He came and found them sleeping, for their eyes were heavy. And He left them again, and went away and prayed a third time, saying the same thing once more.

Luke 22:44
And being in agony He was praying very fervently; and His sweat became like drops of blood, falling down upon the ground.

This will be the first of a short series of blogs relating to the question, “What was in the cup?” This passage in Scripture is the last event recorded in Scripture prior to Christ’s passion. In this passage, Christ is shown as being deeply grieved and distressed to the point that He began to sweat blood. But why? What caused Him to pray to God to remove the cup that He was about to drink if it was God’s will to do so?

Some may quickly answer, “Christ was deeply distressed because of the intense physical suffering that He was about to undergo by the hands of the Romans. He was going to soon be beaten, mocked, scourged with a whip containing bits of glass and bone that tear through flesh like paper, have thorns pierce through His skull, and have nails driven into His hands and His feet.” Now, all of those things would soon happen, and He would undergo intense physical suffering, but was this what was really in the cup? Was it the physical suffering by the hands of the Romans that grieved and distressed Him in such great agony to the point of death?

In the first part of this series, I want to do a word study on the word “cup”.

Psalm 11:6
Upon the wicked He will rain snares; Fire and brimstone and burning wind will be the portion of their cup.

Psalm 75:8
For a cup is in the hand of the LORD, and the wine foams; It is well mixed, and He pours out of this; Surely all the wicked of the earth must drain and drink down its dregs.

Isaiah 51:17
Rouse yourself! Rouse yourself! Arise, O Jerusalem, You who have drunk from the LORD’S hand the cup of His anger; The chalice of reeling you have drained to the dregs.

Jeremiah 25:15
For thus the LORD, the God of Israel, says to me, “Take this cup of the wine of wrath from My hand and cause all the nations to whom I send you to drink it.

Jeremiah 25:28
“And it will be, if they refuse to take the cup from your hand to drink, then you will say to them, ‘Thus says the LORD of hosts: ” You shall surely drink!

John 18:11
So Jesus said to Peter, “Put the sword into the sheath; the cup which the Father has given Me, shall I not drink it?”

Revelation 14:10
he also will drink of the wine of the wrath of God, which is mixed in full strength in the cup of His anger; and he will be tormented with fire and brimstone in the presence of the holy angels and in the presence of the Lamb.

Revelation 16:19
The great city was split into three parts, and the cities of the nations fell Babylon the great was remembered before God, to give her the cup of the wine of His fierce wrath.

So what was in the cup?

It was the fierce anger and wrath of Almighty God.

But wait a second, who ever said God was angry to begin with? Isn’t the popular message today that God isn’t angry, He is only love and His love trumps everything else? If God were angry, what is He angry about?

Wrath and judgment are the response of a Holy God. To say that God is Holy is to say that He is completely and entirely separate from everything else. He is pure, spotless, and perfect. His holiness is unchanging. If God is Holy and more importantly, is passionate about His holiness, then He must abhor anything and everything that is not holy. If God were to accept sinners into His presence by a wink of the eye, it would show that holiness is not a requirement to be in His presence and that He doesn’t care about upholding His own holiness, but would rather compromise. If God were to do that, then He would no longer (and could not) be God. However, we know that that could never be the case because there is one thing that God cannot stop doing and that is He cannot stop being God.

The word study on the word “cup” shows that the contents of the cup are the fierce anger and wrath of a Holy God.

But why else wouldn’t the cup mentioned by Jesus be a cup of physical suffering? To answer that question, all you need to do is do a quick survey on church history in respect to martyrdom. Why is it that so many Christians underwent horrendous forms of torture and execution and yet, leading up to their execution, were singing and rejoicing? Why were they singing as the flames went up as they were burned at the stake, while Christ, the Son of God, is in the garden grieved, trembling, and distressed? You see, there had to be something far greater and far terrible in the cup that He was about to drink than just physical suffering to cause Him to be in such tremendous agony.

We will continue to dig into this question in the next post.

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Tags: anger, cup, holiness, holy, propitiation, wrath