Jesus' Trouble

“When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit” (John 13:21).

It's no small thing to read these words. Our eyes have passed over them many times. Sometimes, we pause a little and wonder at them. At others, we relegate this to a doctrinal point on “Jesus’ Humanity" and pass on to the next verse, not pausing to think of its profundity. But it really is a remarkable statement by John, who, no doubt, was keenly watching these events unfold, while taking part in them personally, experientially, in the purest sense.

That Jesus "was troubled in spirit…" should trouble us all.

Some have suggested that this thought was only now dawning upon Jesus, that He is now coming to the full realization, for the very first time, the cross He must now face. That can't be it. Since his baptism, He has set His face like a flint toward Jerusalem. It seems everywhere He went and everything He did, His toes pointed east toward Jerusalem. His heart was always bent toward the cross.

Then why was he troubled? And what was that trouble? And should Jesus' trouble…trouble us?

How was He Troubled?

The very first question has to be, "Was he really troubled?"

In the early church, there were men, heretics (Docetists), who went about teaching the ignorant that Jesus, being God, never really suffered at all. And that heresy has raised its ugly head over the centuries ever since in different forms and under different circumstances. It has seeped into once faithful pulpits over time, where they now reject what the text is actually saying, plugging in another doctrine in its place. Usually, God’s sovereignty.

"How can it possibly be that Jesus would weep over Jerusalem, knowing full well that God had predestined it to rebel?" "How could He genuinely, in Mark 7:34, look to heaven and sigh before He said, 'Ephphatha' (meaning, 'be opened'), knowing full well the miracle He was about to perform?" “How could it possibly say about the Rich Young Ruler, ‘that beholding Him, He loved him,’ knowing full well that young man would entirely reject His message that day?” “Or that he truly wept at Lazarus’ tomb knowing full well he was about to awaken him from death?”

In these questions lies a subtle way of removing uncomfortable phrases, words, and responsibilities, right?

“It’s not ‘real’ love. Not ‘real’ sighs. Not ‘real’ tears.”

The Docetic error was that none of it was actually real. To them, Divinity couldn't enter the fallen human state. Today, this way of reading the text emphasizes Christ’s divinity so much that it practically denies Jesus's humanity. Beware of the Docetic heresy.

A Docetic can't let the text speak. In his mind, it contradicts a far more important truth: God’s sovereignty. But we won’t fall into that trap. If we do, another far more sinister thought lies dormant beneath it. An unspoken thought, not fit for human ears, "God is actually a pretender, even a deceiver." That’s blasphemy. So, we cannot permit that thought. We must let the text speak.

“When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit” (John 13:21).

But how could the Eternal Son, the Maker of Heaven and Earth, the Rock of Ages, the Father of Time, the Giver of all life; by Whom all things consist… be troubled? I don’t know. That's a question for eternity…too deep for my feeble mind to answer. But unless we are willing to call Jesus an actor (on some level), He did genuinely weep, He did greatly sigh, He did really cry, and His blessed pure spirit was, actually, troubled here. He will say it a different way in Mt.26:38, stronger, as He gets closer to the cross… "My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death." (Mt. 26:38) This was all real, true, deep human suffering. And isn't that the point, human suffering?

Is He, or is He not, “acquainted with our griefs,” as Isaiah says? Does He, or does He not “carry our sorrows?” Our Form for the Lord’s Supper tells us something extraordinary…and unless pointed out, we might just miss it...

"[T]hat He assumed our flesh and blood; that He bore for us the wrath of God (under which we should have perished everlastingly ) from the beginning of His incarnation, to the end of His life upon earth."

From the beginning of His life. He did not have the first 12 years off. He was growing up in His mediatorial Self… all the while in favor with God and man. From His circumcision, to inaugural baptism, to the calling of His disciples, to preaching the kingdom, feeding the hungry, healing all manner of sick, raising the dead, having no place to lay His blessed head; to His own hunger, His own thirst, His own weariness, to this, His very betrayal; these were all distant throbbings, pulsating love-pangs for His Bride. Becoming stronger in Him, for Her, as the cross approached. And becoming more magnificent in the eyes of His Church as the enemy drew near.

He was, in fact, "troubled in spirit.” But how? How is another mystery. What does that trouble mean? ταράσσω (tarassō). Disturbed. A bubbling up, soul-disturbing inner turmoil. That’s what troubled means. And no other creature can use tarassō rightly. The animal kingdom does not feel tarassō—no matter the terrors they face in their painfully short lives, even pursued by their predators. The angelic hosts don’t feel tarassō, being the pure nature of angels. They, no doubt, had their own kind of trouble seeing their Creator thus. But it was not this trouble. I wonder, at times, if the devil doesn't feel something like this trouble... but no…after all, this trouble is exclusively human. You have felt it, perhaps. Not in this measure, obviously, but of this kind? You could never enter the oceanic depths of His trouble, no… but you have waded into the waters off its shore, haven’t you? Where sin has not only crouched at your door but overcame you, almost devouring you. And that soul of yours boils and roils within. Eating and sleeping are failed friends. Where the darkness has not only encroached but overpowered. And your soul…is troubled. The feelings of guilt, the fear of punishment, the terror of hell… Dear one, Jesus' soul was troubled here as part of entering into your own trouble. He is the one who was and indeed is… touched by the feelings of your infirmities. This word belongs to fallen humanity and fallen humanity alone. It doesn’t belong to God, angels, or demons… but to us. Adam and Eve felt this trouble when they hid themselves. Cain felt it when he killed his brother. And Judas is going to feel this trouble in just a few short hours, and ride that trouble to hell.

And here, our feeble minds smack headfirst into the mystery of mysteries. Emmanuel, God with us, yes, but even more, God, one of us. He was troubled with our deepest troubles. This single word, in this oft-passed-over phrase, speaks of Jesus' true humanity. He experienced the full range of human trouble, including the deepest distress and agitation of betrayal. Jesus' suffering was not fake nor distant; He fully entered into our human condition, experiencing the depths of human soul trouble.

What's the Trouble?

What's the trouble? It’s sin and sinners.

The immediate trouble, in this case, was sitting at the other end of that table. His name was Judas, one of the 12. Wait. Was Jesus troubled because of him? Was He afraid of the army, the court, the lash? Not exactly. He was not troubled because of Judas; He was troubled by Judas, troubled by his sin. Sin, loved, embraced, and cherished by Judas in the face of Incarnate mercy. That troubled Jesus.

Jesus was troubled, in fact, from the moment they entered that upper room. This trouble, ever percolating in the mind of our Lord… now, is coming to the spill-over point, and He could hold it in no longer... Verse 21, "When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in spirit, and testified, and said, 'Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.'" And here is where we need another check against the Docetic error. Jesus was grieving. Jesus was sorrowing. Over what Judas was about to do.

Psalm 41:9, prefigures Jesus, "Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me." Not just my friend… but my own familiar friend. My kinsman friend. Never, ever think that God takes delight in any way in the fall and destruction of the sinner. From the same cry, "Oh, why will ye die oh house of Israel," comes the cry to Jerusalem… Luke 19:42 "If thou hadst known, even thou, at least in this thy day, the things which belong unto thy peace! but now they are hid from thine eyes." And He wept over it…

If you have the boldness to say, “Oh, that's only speaking about Jerusalem's scribes and Pharisees,” you’ve missed the plot. No, not just that present leadership and population of that holy city, but everyone she represented, who throughout the ages, rejected the gospel He sent through the Prophets. He LAMENTS their loss. Calvin says,

“He desired nothing more than to execute the office the Father sent him to do, and “he wished that his coming might bring salvation to all.”

We will run into some form of Docetism when we fail to realize this truth. We fail to realize just Who is expressing this—the God-man. Let Him be Him. Let Him feel. Let Him cry, let Him sigh. For the first time in history, we have the collision of the eternal decree with temporal action, where the omniscient sorrow of knowing meets the human experience of feeling. Let Him feel it. And glory in that mystery. We don’t need to figure it all out.

It was for Judas that He was troubled. Though chosen as a disciple, this betrayer does not play the puppet here (of fatalism) but as a man ensnared by his own heart, spun by the bondage of his will to sin freely. This betrayal, while a personal act on Judas' part, passes through Judas, becoming a picture of the universal human condition — our propensity to sin against light when seen, and love when felt, and truth when heard. Within Judas, we are confronted by our own treacheries, both great and small. I see me in Jesus’ trouble for Judas… Do you?

His sorrow is not a condemnation. It’s a testament to the depth of the heart of Jesus, a sorrow that will… in some inexplicable way, rest at a betrayer. This is so profound that all four Gospel writers note this almost surreal event. The Gospel of Matthew describes Judas arriving with a large crowd armed with swords and clubs. Judas had given them a sign, saying, "The one I kiss is the man; arrest him." He approached Jesus, greeted Him with "Hail, Rabbi!" and kissed Him. And Jesus’s responce to Judas is breathtaking, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" We shudder at this thought. We shrink back from the word, friend. “Now,” you will say, "He can't mean friend here, surely!" In His humanity, that is precisely what He is saying. Matthew Henry writes,

 "Friend, for a friend he had been, and should have been, and seemed to be. Thus he upbraids him, as Abraham, when he called the rich man in hell, 'son.'

Perhaps on a much more spiritual level, Jesus called Judas a friend because Judas opened to Him a deeper way of suffering for deeper-dyed sinners… the trouble stirred by a betrayer’s heart, even in His own beloved Simon, son of Jonas. He tasted Peter’s sin in Judas.

Yes, dear one, the soul that sins must die. But God takes no pleasure in that death.

“As I live, saith the Lord GOD, I have no pleasure in the death of the wicked; but that the wicked turn from his way and live: turn ye, turn ye from your evil ways; for why will ye die, O house of Israel?”

Does Jesus' Trouble, Trouble You?

I hope Jesus' trouble troubles everyone reading this. To the timid and shy, to those who stand afar off, being afar off never saved a soul. We must draw nigh by the blood of Christ. The man who stood afar off beat His breast and cried, "God be merciful to me, a sinner." Have you cried out for God’s mercy in Christ? You must, you know. There is no secret way to heaven. There is only one way, through the person on the cross, confessing with your mouth of His salvation.

“But how shall I cry out?” you say. Besides crying, "I’m a sinner,” and “He’s a Savior,” that’s not for me to tell you. It is for you to do and experience—you and you alone.

But know this, He will not be delighted in your soul's consignment to hell. He will take no pleasure in your eternal destruction. He will be glorified in it, but it will bring Him no joy. Your place among those lonely souls throughout that bottomless pit is only a reminder of two things: your just condemnation for never having believed in Christ and the mercy He has afforded to you. Just as He did for countless other sinners just like you, and worse than you, now glorified in heaven. You run a genuine risk of aging out in your hearing. What I mean by that is you, like Judas, have been so close to the gospel; you have seen so much for so long that it no longer moves your heart of stone. Dullness is creeping over your senses. Sleepiness is being given to your eyes. There is nothing that I could ever say that you have not heard or read before. But I’ll gladly say it as long as He’ll let me.

Yet you remain untroubled? And if you are not troubled, oh, that you would be troubled by Christ's trouble for sin. Are you only troubled about your death? Is that all? Then you will remain troubled. By the way, there is no stinger in death for the child of God, secured in Christ. Christ has removed it. But there will be a stinger for many.

Are you troubled at all by the cross? Troubled by the end of the matter, and what will it mean to your own soul? …uncovered…unjustified. Time is short and getting shorter for many of you.

And you, too, have been His friend of sorts. That is to say, you have received His mark of baptism upon your forehead. That’s an act of friendship, isn’t it? You have entered, outwardly speaking, according to the eye, with the companions of Christ. You are a member of His church. Is this not a friend’s gathering? And you would never say a word against Him. You could never do that. You have even, in some way, walked with us through the fields of God's gospel pleasure. You have witnessed gospel honey drip from the honeycomb and watched others taste and see it. You have even sampled, to use the words of Hebrews, of that heavenly gift. All your life, you have been a friend of the friends of God. But you have not entered that friendship. You have never turned from your sin to Him. You have never confessed Him. So Jesus' trouble here should trouble you. Today is at least one more day of grace for you. To not only a sample but a swallow, to taste and see that the Lord is, indeed, good. To not only listen but hear...mixing faith with hearing. To say, before grace's day closes on you, "My Lord, and My God.”

And dear believer, don’t let this season pass without Jesus' trouble troubling us. Let it trouble us but in a completely different way…

Augustine once wrote,

"Let the believer's spirit be troubled, not by misery, but by mercy."

How might our souls be troubled by mercy? Can't the magnitude of His mercy trouble us? When we meditate on the boundless sea of His grace, wherein He chose to be troubled for us, that we might find peace. That He took upon Himself the full measure of the wrath of God, on top of the full weight of His Bride’s sin. The very thought of such vast, undeserved mercy should stir a gospel tempest within our hearts, a holy disturbance at the thought that He, in His perfection, should endure such depths of trouble for our sake.

Then, let your soul be troubled by His mercy. Let it be troubled by His active and passive obedience to the law for your sake. Let it trouble you, dear believer, that the Lord of life should suffer death, that the Bread of heaven should hunger, that the Fountain of living waters should thirst – let these thoughts trouble your soul with wonder and awe. The emblem of your salvation, the cross, stands a tribute to the troubling depth of His mercy, a mercy that chose suffering as its instrument, that through His wounds, we might be healed. And don’t forget to let that trouble become desperately personal and particular. It was not generic mercy that Jesus showed you any more than it was generic salvation that He purchased. But a mercy that knows each of our persons, a mercy that seeks out every lost sheep, a mercy that counts every hair on our heads, and keeps every tear in a bottle. With your name on it. The personal nature of His mercy troubles me. That with intimate knowledge of my sins, yet He loves still. This troubles my spirit to the point of no words, because, it reveals to me a love so particular, so attentive, that it defies human thought.

Let us enter this day with hearts troubled, everyone, by our sin and His mercy. Let this divine disquiet draw us nearer to Him, who was troubled for us all.