The Four Petitions He Prayed Himself

I. The prayer He did not pray

There are Greeks in the city. They have come for the feast, and they have a request that fits in five words: we wish to see Jesus.1

The request is passed along, from one disciple to another, and reaches Him in the temple court. And his answer begins with an hour that has come, and it is about dying: a grain of wheat that falls into the earth and dies, and precisely so bears much fruit.2 The men who came to arrange a meeting hear a farewell.

Then He says something no teacher says about himself with his disciples standing by:

"Now my soul is troubled."3

And He thinks aloud about what there is to pray now. A prayer lies within reach, and He speaks it aloud in order not to pray it:

"And what shall I say? Father, save Me from this hour? But for this purpose I have come to this hour."4

The prayer every human being would have prayed in that place is weighed and laid down. What He does pray is four words long:

"Father, glorify your Name."5

It is not the word He had taught his disciples on the mountain — there the first petition asked that the Name be hallowed, here He asks that the Name be glorified. But what the prayer turns on is the same in both: your Name. Two prayers in the gospel have that Name at stake, and this is one of them; the other is the petition He had placed at the front of our prayer.6

Then a voice comes from heaven: "I have glorified it, and I will glorify it again." The people around Him heard it, and they cannot agree on what it was. Some put it down to thunder. Others say: an angel has spoken to Him. And He says to all of them: "This voice has not come for My sake, but for yours."7

So He stands there, among people who have just heard heaven answer and are already arguing over whether it was anything at all.

II. Eyes lifted up

Days later, the upper room, evening. The meal is over, the words at the table have been spoken. And then He lifts up his eyes to heaven and begins to pray with all of them present:

"Father, the hour has come. Glorify your Son, that your Son also may glorify You."8

He prays for the men around Him, naming their faith in full: they have kept your word, they are Yours. And then the prayer moves on, over their heads:

"I do not pray for these alone, but also for those who will believe in Me through their word."9

At that moment no one at the table is the subject of that sentence any more. He is praying for people who do not yet exist. Whoever comes to faith through the word of these men, at any time — that person was in this prayer that evening.

In the middle of that praying He addresses his Father in a way heard nowhere else:

"Holy Father, keep them in your Name."10

And a little further on He prays what we may ask last — not in our words, but with our need. We ask: deliver us from the evil one. He asks for us: keep them from the evil one.11 It is not word for word the seventh petition; it is the seventh petition as an older brother lays it before the Father on behalf of the children: not "get us out of here", but "hold on to them".12

The prayer ends with the second form of address that stands nowhere else:

"Righteous Father, the world has not known You."13

Then the longest prayer of His that has been written down is over. The men around Him have heard Him pray for people yet to be born — and that very night they will sleep.

III. On his face

A garden, at the foot of the Mount of Olives, night. At the entrance He says to his disciples: "Sit here while I go over there and pray." Three He takes with Him, deeper into the trees, and to those three He says what He had already said aloud once in the temple court, but now without restraint: "My soul is deeply grieved, even to death. Stay here, and keep watch with Me."14

And He gives them a charge to take with them. Luke places it right at the entrance of the garden:

"Pray that you may not enter into testing."15

That is the sixth petition. He does not pray it along with them; He charges them with it. And then He goes on a stone's throw further, and falls on his face, and prays for Himself — and what He prays is exactly what that sixth petition asks for:

"My Father, if it is possible, let this cup pass from Me. Yet not as I will, but as You will."16

Mark says it more starkly still: He prayed that, if it were possible, the hour might pass from Him. The hour He did not want to be saved from in the temple court, He asks here — if it is possible — to be spared. Both prayers are real. Both are His.

He gets up, walks back, and finds the three asleep. "Could you not keep watch with Me for one hour?" And again, for the second time, the charge: "Watch and pray, that you may not enter into testing."17

Again He goes away, for the second time, and now the prayer has become one sentence:

"My Father, if this cup cannot pass from Me unless I drink it — thy will be done."18

Thy will be done. That is the third petition, and it stands there just as He had taught it on the mountain: the same word, the same form, the same order — not a letter different. What He taught them to pray with folded hands, He prays here with his face on the ground.19

Luke adds what else happened that night: an angel from heaven appeared to Him, strengthening Him, and He prayed all the more earnestly, and his sweat became like great drops of blood. And when He rose and came to the disciples, He found them sleeping — from sorrow, Luke adds, as if he wants to shield them from our judgment.20 That night an angel came, and no other cup.

A third time He goes, and prays the same words.21 Three times the same petition, from the same Son, to the same Father. And the cup stays where it is.

Said softly, because it cannot be said any louder: the petition He puts into his disciples' mouths again and again that night — that they may not enter into testing — is the only petition He does not receive for Himself.22

Then He wakes them for the last time. "Sleep on now, and take your rest. See, the hour has drawn near. Rise, let us go; see, he who betrays Me is at hand."23 And He walks out of the trees, to meet the torches.

IV. Into your hands

A hill outside the city. While they crucify Him, He prays — and the first word is the same word as always:

"Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing."24

On the mountain He had given them a petition that begins with that same command: forgive. Forgive us our debts. Here He prays it with one word exchanged: us has become them.25 The fifth petition, prayed aloud for the men who at that moment are holding the nails. Nothing else has changed — the same petition, the same Father, the same asking child stepping in for someone else.

Then darkness comes over the whole land. And out of that darkness it sounds different, once:

"My God, my God, why have You forsaken Me?"26

It is the only time on the hill that the word Father is not there. A psalm begins with these words.27 What is written, is written: He said it differently, once.

And after that, as the last:

"Father, into your hands I commit my spirit."28

Between two times "Father" stands one time "My God".

He says it, and He gives up his spirit.

V. Gone before

Whoever prays the prayer He taught us prays no untrodden words.

The first petition — your Name — was prayed ahead of us by Him in a temple court, on the day He laid down another prayer in order to pray this one. The third — thy will be done — lies word for word in a garden, under olive trees, prayed by Someone with his face on the ground.

The fifth — forgive — was prayed on a hill, for the men who were holding the nails. And the seventh — the keeping from the evil one — was not first asked by us; it was asked over us, aloud, on the evening before his death, in a prayer that expressly made room for those who were still to come.

And the sixth He charged us with and withheld from Himself. He went in where He taught us to ask that we need not go in.29

One man has prayed the prayer of the afflicted all the way to the bottom — and He was heard.30