Now is my soul troubled; and what shall I say? Father, save me from this hour: but for this cause came I unto this hour.
Now is my soul troubled. He means, at the prospect of His death, just alluded to. Strange view of the Cross this, immediately after representing it as the hour of His glory! (John 12:23.) But the two views naturally meet, and blend into one. It was the Greeks, one might say, that troubled Him: 'Ah! they shall see Jesus, but to Him it shall be a costly sight.'
And what shall I say? He is in a strait between two. The death of the Cross was, and could not but be, appalling to His soul. But to shrink from absolute subjection to the Father, was worse still. In asking Himself, "What shall I say?" He seems as if thinking aloud, feeling His way between two dread alternatives, looking both of them sternly in the face, measuring, weighing them, in order that the choice actually made might be seen, and even by Himself be the more vividly felt, to be a profound, deliberate, spontaneous election.
Father, save me from this hour - To take this as a question, 'Shall I say, Father, save Me', etc.-as some eminent editors and interpreters do, is unnatural and jejune. It is a real petition, like that in Gethsemane, "Let this cup pass from Me;" only, whereas there He prefaces the prayer with an "If it be possible," here He follows it up with what is tantamount to that --
But for this cause came I unto this hour. The sentiment conveyed, then, by the prayer, in both cases, is two-fold: First, that only one thing could reconcile Him to the death of the Cross-its being His Father's will that He should endure it-and, next, that in this view of it He yielded Himself freely to it. He recoils, not from subjection to His Father's will, but to show how tremendous a self-sacrifice that obedience involved, He first asks the Father to save Him from it, and then signifies how perfectly He knows that He is there for the very purpose of enduring it. Only by letting these mysterious words speak their full meaning do they become intelligible and consistent. As for those who see no bitter elements in the death of Christ-nothing beyond mere dying-what can they make of such a scene? and when they place it over against the feelings with which thousands of His adoring followers have welcomed death for His sake, how can they hold Him up to the admiration of men?