Mahaney opens conference, contemplates Christ’s sin-bearing

by Lauren Crane

There is no comparison between how Christ felt as he bore humanity’s sin and any human situation, C.J. Mahaney said at Southeastern Smeinary’s annual “20/20 Collegaite Conference” February 1.

Mahaney, a longtime pastor and leader of Sovereign Grace Ministries, said he had sought divine assistance to understand what it meant for Christ to take away and bear the sins of humanity. The conference, which is an annual event geared toward college students and young adults, had the theme of Missio Dei this year, which means “the mission of God.” Mahaney opened the two-day conference as the first speaker on Friday evening.

In an effort to lay the appropriate groundwork for the forthcoming plenary speakers and break-out session leaders, Mahaney said he had been addressed “personally and passionately by God himself” to exegete the passages which describe Jesus’ experience in the Garden of Gethsemane, found in Mark 14.

Speaking from the passage, Mahaney examined exactly “What it meant to Thee, the Holy One, to bear away my sin,” borrowing from the old hymn, Oh, Make Me Understand It. He said he sought to understand what it meant in this garden for the Holy One to bear away our sin.

“It meant resolving to endure Gods wrath - God’s righteous, holy furious wrath – against our sin through the experience of human weakness,” Mahaney said. He said it was in the Garden of Gethsemane that the Savior’s humanity was uniquely on display, a depiction that is “foreign” to other portrayals of Jesus. He said that in the rest of the Gospels, Jesus had been “confident, fearless and bold. In the Garden of Gethsemane, everything is different. Here, we discover what it meant to him, the Holy One, the bear away our sin.”

The implications were two-fold. In the garden, Mahaney said Christ experienced relational abandonment as well as deep distress of the soul.

“The Savior was abandoned and alone. Mark wants us to be aware of this,” Mahaney said. “In verse 27, the Savior informs the disciples, ‘You will all fall away.’ This is what it meant to him: Relational abandonment.”

Mahaney said he had never really been alone, like Christ was during his struggle in the Garden of Gethsemane.

“I’ve felt alone, but I’ve never really been alone,” Mahaney said. “The Savior was really alone…He would face and experience this hour alone. The disciples all fell away, all fell asleep. He would walk this road alone.”

In Mark 14:33-34, Jesus was so close to the experience of sorrow he draws near to the point of death, before the actual crucifixion, Mahaney said.

“Why was there this extreme distress of soul? There was no mention prior to this of his distress,” Mahaney said. “Once he enters the garden, he became deeply distressed and deeply troubled, even to death. Why now?”

“Here’s why now: In this garden, in a unique way, the Savior begins to get a foretaste of what it meant to be a sin-bearer. He contemplates the cup – the cup of sin and God’s wrath. This dominates the mind of the Savior,” Mahaney said. In the Garden of Gethsemane, he is not contemplating the physical pain, but was instead staggered by the weight of God’s fury.

He added that as Christ contemplated the cup, he came face to face with the reality of becoming the object of God’s righteous wrath.

“This reality was so horrific to the righteous savior that he prays, ‘Take this cup from me.’ The Savior prays for an alternative,” Mahaney said. “If there was any alternative, the father would have intervened…The Son of God was used to hearing God speak to him. In this moment, in this garden, as he appeals to God for an alternative, this is what he hears - silence.”

“He heard silence because there was no alternative…Therefore, God so loved sinners like you and like me that he remained silent while his son asked if there was another way,” he said.

Mahaney said he struggled for a number of hours to find a suitable illustration to help the conference attendees understand what it meant to Jesus in the garden that night. However, he concluded there was no illustration, because that would lead people to believe there is a way to identify with and understand what it meant to Jesus to bear our sin.

“There is nothing I can say. Only he has been there. Only he understands this. Only one has experienced this distress of soul,” Mahaney said. “This is what my sin required. My sin necessitated the garden. Here, in this garden, we should be amazed by grace.”

Mahaney said through this action, Jesus was saying, “This is the cup you should drink: The cup of God’s righteous wrath. I will drink it for you. I will suffer as your substitute. I will drink this cup, because I love sinners like you, so I will drink it dry. There won’t be a drop left. Here’s the other cup, the cup I want you to have. It’s the cup of my salvation. Here, you drink the one you don’t deserve.”