The Betrayal and Arrest of Jesus

183:1.1There is great dan­ger of mis­un­der­stand­ing the mean­ing of nu­mer­ous say­ings and many events as­so­ci­ated with the ter­mi­na­tion of the Mas­ter’s ca­reer in the flesh. The cruel treat­ment of Je­sus by the ig­no­rant ser­vants and the cal­loused sol­diers, the un­fair con­duct of his tri­als, and the un­feel­ing at­ti­tude of the pro­fessed re­li­gious lead­ers, must not be con­fused with the fact that Je­sus, in pa­tiently sub­mit­ting to all this suf­fer­ing and hu­mil­i­a­tion, was truly do­ing the will of the Fa­ther in Par­a­dise. It was, in­deed and in truth, the will of the Fa­ther that his Son should drink to the full the cup of mor­tal ex­pe­ri­ence, from birth to death, but the Fa­ther in heaven had noth­ing what­ever to do with in­sti­gat­ing the bar­barous be­hav­ior of those sup­pos­edly civ­i­lized hu­man be­ings who so bru­tally tor­tured the Mas­ter and so hor­ri­bly heaped suc­ces­sive in­dig­ni­ties upon his non­re­sist­ing per­son. These in­hu­man and shock­ing ex­pe­ri­ences which Je­sus was called upon to en­dure in the fi­nal hours of his mor­tal life were not in any sense a part of the di­vine will of the Fa­ther, which his hu­man na­ture had so tri­umphantly pledged to carry out at the time of the fi­nal sur­ren­der of man to God as sig­ni­fied in the three­fold prayer which he in­dited in the gar­den while his weary apos­tles slept the sleep of phys­i­cal ex­haus­tion.

183:1.2The Fa­ther in heaven de­sired the be­stowal Son to fin­ish his earth ca­reer nat­u­rally, just as all mor­tals must fin­ish up their lives on earth and in the flesh. Or­di­nary men and women can­not ex­pect to have their last hours on earth and the super­ven­ing episode of death made easy by a spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion. Ac­cord­ingly, Je­sus elected to lay down his life in the flesh in the man­ner which was in keep­ing with the out­work­ing of nat­u­ral events, and he stead­fastly re­fused to ex­tri­cate him­self from the cruel clutches of a wicked con­spir­acy of in­hu­man events which swept on with hor­ri­ble cer­tainty to­ward his un­be­liev­able hu­mil­i­a­tion and ig­no­min­ious death. And ev­ery bit of all this as­tound­ing man­i­fes­ta­tion of ha­tred and this un­prece­dented dem­on­stra­tion of cru­elty was the work of evil men and wicked mor­tals. God in heaven did not will it, nei­ther did the arch­en­e­mies of Je­sus dic­tate it, though they did much to in­sure that un­think­ing and evil mor­tals would thus re­ject the be­stowal Son. Even the fa­ther of sin turned his face away from the ex­cru­ci­at­ing hor­ror of the scene of the cru­ci­fix­ion.