God’s Word for You
Mark 14:37-38 The flesh is weak
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, January 27, 2024
37 He went back and found them sleeping, and he said to Peter, “Simon, are you asleep? Couldn’t you keep watch for an hour? 38 Watch and pray that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
“He went back and found them sleeping.” This is often put down to their grief. And after the day they had just had, this isn’t a surprise. During the Passover Meal, Jesus spoke for a long time. He predicted his betrayal by Judas, and his betrayal by all the rest of them. He told them about the places he was going to prepare for them and for us in heaven, and reminded them that he is the only way to heaven. He promised that after he departed, he would send them the Holy Spirit. He explained the Christian’s relationship with Christ as a vine and its branches, but he warned them that the world would hate them, put them out of the synagogues, and even kill them, thinking that they were doing God’s work by killing them. He had talked about their grief turning to joy, and he had prayed for them, a long prayer, from the heart (these things are recorded in John’s account, chapters 12-17). Then they had walked out here to the Garden together, and no wonder they were tired. What highs! What lows! They needed time to absorb it all, but there was no time.
When he was on the Mount of Transfiguration, Moses and Elijah came to comfort him and talk with him. But here on this slope outside the city, his friends were no help; they couldn’t even keep their eyes open. He doesn’t call Peter by his rocky nickname Peter, but reverts to “Simon,” since he wasn’t being very rocklike. Neither were the other two, the “Son of Thunder” as Jesus had once called them. What do you call thunder when it sleeps? Nothing at all.
“Watch and pray,” Jesus asks again. It’s a command, but their bleary eyes and tired ears couldn’t much comprehend. They don’t even offer excuses; they just let him be frustrated with them. His warning about temptation is about being too confident, over-confident, that we are beyond temptation. What a breathtaking spiritual insight that is! It’s exactly right (of course); the hardest temptation to face is the one that comes when we think we can’t be assailed. “The one who stands should be careful that he doesn’t fall!” (1 Corinthians 10:12).
So when Jesus says, “The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak,” he is describing the two parts of a believer. The spirit is my believing part, my faith. And both my body and my soul have faith and trust in Jesus. But my body and my soul are also both a human body and soul, and they are weighed down by the sinful nature, the flesh, which is weak and sinful. We pray, “Be merciful to me, O Lord, for I am in distress. My eyes grow weak with sorrow, my soul and my body with grief” (Psalm 31:9). And again, “Keep me from becoming a disgrace!” (Psalm 31:17).
God works in us to strengthen us with his word and sacraments, and God works outside us to challenge us and test us to teach us to run to him and cling to him and always to trust him. “God permits these temptations to come that by resisting them our faith may be purified and strengthened; but the devil, the world, and our flesh, plying us with them, want us to yield and submit. Hence, the same temptations which God permits to strengthen our faith, the devil uses to destroy our faith” (Koehler, A Summary of Christian Doctrine, p. 76).
We pray that God will strengthen us, and that when testing time comes, we will be carried through with the help of the Holy Spirit. “My soul is weary with sorrow. Strengthen me according to your word” (Psalm 119:28).
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.