Introduction

When I was growing up and going to church, my parents faithfully talked to us every year about Easter and all the events concerning it. Every year, my mother dressed my sisters up and put me in a little white shirt with a black bow tie. We really dressed up because we understood Easter was a major holiday in the life of a Christian. But every year, it seemed we heard the same story.  As I got older, I began to think, “Surely, there’s more to this story than I’ve been told.” So, I began to take a deep dive into the story of Easter, and I found out there is so much to this story that is so rarely discussed.

The Garden of Gethsemane is a staple of the Easter story, the place where Jesus spent His last moments with His disciples, but people often fail to realize the incredible things that happened in that place of our Lord’s agony.

Miracle 1: Divine Support

According to early Christian tradition, the area surrounding the Garden of Gethsemane was a regular gathering place for Jesus and His disciples when they were in Jerusalem, but that night, the Savior felt the need to pray. He left all but three of His disciples, and a short distance from them, He began to pray to His Father.

Jesus’ agonizing struggle with the cup that He would soon bear is chronicled in Luke 22:44:

“And being in an agony he prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground”

The word “agony” in Greek is agonidzo (ἀγωνίᾳ) which refers to a struggle, fight, great exertion, or effort. It conveys ideas of anguish, pain, distress, and physical conflict. The fight that Jesus was experiencing was so intense that it required His entire being—spirit, soul, and body—and while He was strained to His limit, His three closest disciples slept, unaware of the intensity of His struggle.

Jesus rarely needed the support of His friends—the incidents recorded in the Bible tend to show that they were the ones who needed Him—but on this night, facing the cross and the grave, Jesus called Peter, James, and John to pray with Him through the night, but they repeatedly fell asleep, leaving Jesus alone in His agony.

Let me ask you, have you ever felt the need for help from your friends or family and been let down? Perhaps we will never experience Jesus’ level of agony, but difficult times come into all our lives, and often the potency of our struggles is not known to our friends or family, which can lead them to be unreliable when we most need their support. If we put our faith in men, they will let us down time after time. However, Jesus, just like us, was not truly alone in the garden.

God the Father was aware of Jesus’ agony, and when the disciples were found to be unfaithful in their support again and again, God provided for His Son. Luke 22:43 says:

“And there appeared an angel unto him from heaven, strengthening him.”

God the Father, in all His wisdom, knew just what His Son, Jesus, needed. The supernatural presence of the angel strengthened Jesus, and He was able to then stand and wake His disciples to confront Judas and those who sought to arrest Him.

The Miracle We Don’t See: God’s Power against an Army

John 18:3 tells us:

“Judas then, having received a band of men and officers from the chief priests and Pharisees, cometh thither with lanterns and torches and weapons.”

The word “band” here comes from the Greek word speira (σπεῖρα) and describes a Roman cohort consisting of 300 to 600 well-trained soldiers armed with the best weaponry of the time. This was not a small group. The miracles, signs, and wonders Jesus performed were legendary even in His own time, and the religious leaders were determined not to let Him slip through their fingers as He’d done before.

With these Roman soldiers, there were also members of the temple police. These were armed men whose responsibility it was to carry out the verdicts of the religious court of law. This means that, at minimum, 300 trained Roman soldiers and a group of armed temple police were sent to arrest Jesus. Very possibly, they numbered even more than 600, and all of them with torches to keep Him from hiding or escaping into the dark and weapons in case He and His disciples put up a fight.

Of course, these vast numbers sent to arrest Jesus had no power comparable to that of the Lord. Jesus points out in Matthew 26:53:

“Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give me more than twelve legions of angels?”

However, Jesus, did not fight back or try to hide. Knowing His arrest and sacrifice were imminent, He accepted the cup given to Him, leaning on the strength brought to Him by the angel that the Father had sent Him.

It is important to understand that no one took Jesus. He voluntarily went with the troops because He was lovingly and willingly intent on offering Himself as the ultimate Sacrifice for the sin of all mankind, including you and me.

Miracle 2: The Statement of Identity

After Judas betrayed him with a kiss, Jesus stepped forward and asked the soldiers who they were looking for. When they asked for Jesus of Nazareth, Jesus identified Himself using the words, “I am He” (Egō eimi/Ἐγώ εἰμι). These were the same words God used in Exodus 3:14 to identify Himself to Moses, not “I am Jesus of Nazareth,” as the soldiers might have expected, but simply “I AM.”

When He made this announcement, that He was God in the flesh, it says in John 18:6:

“As soon then as he had said unto them, I am he, they went backward, and fell to the ground.”

The power behind this declaration of His identity literally sent a shockwave of power over all the soldiers that had come to arrest Him, so much so that, the Greek says, they hit the ground hard. But after He proved that He could overpower them with His mere words, He still willingly surrendered to the soldiers because He knew it was part of the Father’s plan.

Miracle 3: The Healing of the Servant

As we know, not all the disciples shared in our Lord’s calmness and passivity. It says in Luke 22:49-50:

When they which were about him saw what would follow, they said unto him, Lord, shall we smite with the sword? And one of them smote the servant of the high priest, and cut off his right ear.

John 18 tells us that this impetuous disciple was Peter. He saw that the soldiers and temple police were on the ground, and gripping a sword, Peter swung with all his might and lopped off the ear of the high priest’s servant. In his haste, Peter made a mistake that no one in history has ever forgotten, and it could have cost him his future ministry and perhaps even his life.

The man that Peter had attacked was Malchus, a servant and spokesman for the high priest of the time, Caiaphas. That Peter had injured a fellow citizen was enough to sentence him, and this wasn’t just any citizen. This was a servant of the high priest, an extremely well-known man in the city of Jerusalem. His injury would have raised serious legal and religious trouble for Peter because of his status.

It is also important to note that a disfigurement like that of a missing ear would have prohibited Malchus from being able to hold a position in the temple. Malchus, likely an enemy of Jesus and His ministry, who would have announced the high priest’s disparaging statements against Him, would have lost his reputation, his status, and his job, but Jesus did not say, “Finally, one of you guys got what you deserve.” Luke 22:51 tells us:

And Jesus answered and said, Suffer ye thus far.   And he touched his ear and healed him.

Despite His own tribulation, Jesus took time to miraculously heal the ear of Malchus, both sparing Peter from criminal charges and preserving Malchus’ ability to continue working in the temple.

Miracle 4: The Risen Dead

Jesus’ great power was on display that night in the garden. Mark 14:51-52 even gives us clues to an unintended effect of one of Jesus’ miracles that night. It says:

And there followed him a certain young man, having a linen cloth cast about his naked body; and the young men laid hold on him: and he left the linen cloth, and fled from them naked.

The clue as to who this young man is lies in the linen garment that the Bible tells us was his only covering.  In that time, the custom of the Jews was to bury the dead naked and wrapped in a linen cloth. The Greek text describes the linen cloth this boy was wearing with the same word for the cloth Jesus was buried in after His death, the only other use of this word. Furthermore, the Garden of Gethsemane was situated on the side of the Mount of Olives, and at the base of that mount was a heavily populated cemetery.

We already saw that the words “I AM” (Egō eimi/Ἐγώ εἰμι) were powerful enough to knock hundreds of men off their feet, but evidently that blast of power was enough to reach that young boy, draped in linen burial cloth, and he crawled out of his tomb—raised from the dead!

Conclusion

The power of Jesus was undeniable in the Garden of Gethsemane. He knocked down armies and resurrected the dead by identifying Himself. He healed the severed ear of a man in opposition of Him. Though the numbers brought to arrest Jesus would have been insufficient compared to the legions at Jesus’ disposal, Jesus freely gave Himself up. The hordes of Roman soldiers must have been aware of the discrepancy between the power in which He operated and the submission in which He surrendered to them. Even awaiting His final moments, Jesus continued to display who He was, a healer, miracle worker, and God in the Flesh, but most importantly, someone who loved us enough to willingly and quietly go to the cross.