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FEBRUARY: Our Great Salvation

February 20

THE GARDEN OF GETHSEMANE

This is your hour, and the power of darkness.
Luke 22:53

What does our Lord mean exactly when He says in the Garden of Gethsemane, “This is your hour, and the power of darkness”? It seems to me that the only possible explanation must be that this hour would never have come to pass were it not for the power of darkness. What makes this hour and all that it involves necessary and essential? It is again the problem of sin and of evil, the problem of Satan and of hell. It is the kind of hour that the devil has staged and brought into being, for in one sense he has manipulated it, though in a much higher sense he has not. I think this is the way to look at it—it is the work of the devil that makes the hour essential from God’s standpoint; it is because of what Satan has produced by sin and evil that God has to do this in order to overcome it.

So it is, in a sense, the hour of evil men, and it is there that we really see the essence of evil and of sin. The devil has produced such a situation that this hour alone can deal with it.

So this hour can be described as “your hour” and the hour of the glorification of the Son at the same time, and that is why He prays that His Father may glorify Him. It is in going through this hour, which has been produced by Satan and hell, that our Lord really is glorified. It is there we know for certain that He is the Son of God. No one had ever before had to meet Satan and conquer him; no one had been able to destroy the power that Satan had over death. The author to the Epistle to the Hebrews puts it like this: “That through death he might destroy him that had the power of death”(2:14). And thus He sets the children free, and Christ has done this through His glorification. Christ’s death and resurrection are proof that He is the Son of God.

A Thought to Ponder
Christ’s death and resurrection are proof that He is the Son of God.

From Saved in Eternity, pp. 114-115.





Today’s devo is taken from Walking with God Day by Day © 2003 by Good News Publishers. All rights reserved. Used by permission of Crossway Books, a publishing ministry of Good News Publishers.

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