My soul is exceedingly sorrowful
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"My soul is exceedingly sorrowful, even to death." Mark 14:34
What heart can conceive, what tongue express what His holy soul endured when the Father laid upon Him the iniquities of us all? In the Garden of Gethsemane—what a load of guilt—what a weight of sin—what an intolerable burden of the wrath of God—did that sacred humanity endure—until the pressure of sorrow and woe forced the drops of blood to fall as sweat from His brow! The human nature in its weakness recoiled, as it were, from the cup of anguish put into His hand.
His body could scarcely bear the load that pressed Him down. His soul, under the waves and billows of God's wrath, sank in deep mire where there was no standing, and came into deep waters where the floods overflowed Him.
And how could it be otherwise when His sacred humanity was—enduring all the wrath of God—suffering the very pangs of hell—and wading in all the depths of guilt and terror? When the blessed Lord was made a sin offering for us, He endured in His holy soul all the pangs of distress, horror, alarm, misery, and guilt that the elect would have felt in hell forever!
And not only as any one of them would have felt—but as the collective whole would have experienced under the outpouring of the everlasting wrath of God—the anguish, the distress, the darkness, the condemnation, the shame, the guilt, the unutterable horror.
He as the eternal Son of God, had lain in His bosom before all worlds, had known all the blessedness and happiness of the love and favour of the Father, His own Father, shining upon Him; for He was as one brought up with Him, and was daily His delight, rejoicing always before Him.
When, then, instead of love—He felt His displeasure; instead of the beams of His favour—He experienced the frowns and terrors of His wrath; instead of the light of His countenance—He tasted the gloom and darkness of desertion—what heart can conceive—what tongue express the bitter anguish which must have wrung the soul of our suffering Substitute under this agonizing experience?
Let us ever bear in mind that the sufferings of the holy soul of Jesus were as really felt as the sufferings of His sacred body—and a thousand times more intense and intolerable! Though beyond description painful and agonizing, yet the sufferings of the body were light indeed compared with the sufferings of the soul.
Surely never was there such a pang since the foundations of the earth were laid, as that which rent and tore the soul of the Redeemer when the last drop of agony was poured into the already overflowing cup, and He cried out—"My God, My God, why have You forsaken Me?"
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