“Whether I live or die, let Your will be done.”

After Jesus went away to pray again with the same words, He came back to find His disciples very tired and sleeping once more. They were so overwhelmed by seeing Jesus that they did not know what to do (Mark 14:39-40, Contemporary English Version). I would like to meditate on these words:

(1)

Luke records:
“Jesus went away a second time and prayed, ‘Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me; yet not My will, but Yours be done.’ When He came back, He found them sleeping, exhausted with sorrow” (Luke 22:42-43, CEV).

(a)

According to Mark, Jesus’ second prayer was “with the same words” (Mark 14:39), but Matthew shows that the second prayer was somewhat different from the first. Jesus’ first prayer was:
“Father, if You are willing, take this cup from Me...” (Matthew 26:39, CEV),
while His second prayer was:
“Father, if I cannot drink this cup unless I drink it, Your will be done” (verse 42, CEV).
Comparing the two prayers, Jesus’ attitude toward drinking the cup of suffering had changed somewhat.

(i)

In His first plea, Jesus in His humanity appealed desperately to God, asking that if there were any other way than His death foreordained by God, that it be fulfilled instead. By the second plea, the inner human conflict had ceased; He fully recognized that He must inevitably endure the cup of suffering (Hoekema). In the second prayer, there was only complete self-denial and perfect obedience (Hoekema).

Therefore, in the first prayer, Jesus said,
“... yet not My will, but Yours be done” (Matthew 26:39, latter half),
but in the second prayer, He simply said,
“... Your will be done” (Matthew 26:42, latter half).

Here, the phrase “Your will be done” corresponds exactly to the Lord’s Prayer (Matthew 6:10). The original Greek means, “May Your will be accomplished.” This prayer expresses the Son’s absolute submission to the Father (Philippians 2:8) and becomes the model and foundation for all prayer in the Jesus community. Truly, though the Son of God, Jesus demonstrated the lesson of obedience that He taught better than anyone else (Hoekema).

The author of Hymn No. 549 in the New Hymnal, “My Lord, Let Your Will Be Done,” Benjamin Schmolck (1672-1737), a German Lutheran pastor, wrote the hymn during a time of suffering more painful than death. In 1704, at age 32, after returning from a pastoral visit, he found his house completely burned down and his two sons tragically dead from the fire. In deep anguish, he cried out and then saw a vision of the Lord praying in Gethsemane. This inspired him to write the hymn “Mein Jesu, wie du willst” (“My Jesus, Let Your Will Be Done”). The last line of the third stanza, “Whether I live or die, let Your will be done,” expresses his confession of faith (Internet source).