Luke 22:42, “…not my will, but yours, be done.”
Here in Gethsemane, the heart of Christ–which is a heart of obedience–is put on display. And the essence of that heart is encapsulated in these words: “not my will, but yours, be done.”
Contrary to what some would say, this language does not point to a tension between Jesus’ will and the Father’s will, rather it shows that the deepest desire of Christ’s own will is for the Father’s will to be done….and it is to this deepest desire that He yields up all other desires (i.e., the desire not to suffer, not to be exiled from God in judgment, not to endure hell). At root, Christ’s life and joy is to harmoniously respond with His entire being to the will of the Father.
And this obedience of love is not only the way that our redemption is won, it is also the form that our redeemed life must take. To join Christ in the myriad daily deaths of “not my will…” so that we might live in the abundance of “…but yours be done,” is the essence of discipleship.
In this picture, I represented Christ’s prayer in Luke 22:42 as a “trust fall” into the will of his Father. he gives himself wholly into the hands of the One who sent him, knowing that his fullness and life are to be found nowhere other than in perfect alignment to the Father, even when that means the cross.
The moon in the background doubles as an image of the mouth of Christ’s tomb. As Christ falls, he is within the moon’s shadow–pointing to the death he is about to endure. However, the silver crescent of the moon’s edge anticipates the necessary outcome of His death of obedient love, namely, resurrection.
