The Cup

 The Cup

The LORD holds a cup in his hand that is full of foaming wine mixed with spices. He pours out the wine in judgment, and all the wicked must drink it, draining it to the dregs.

PSALM 75.8

He went on a little farther and bowed with his face to the ground, praying, “My Father! If it is possible, let this cup of suffering be taken away from me. Yet I want your will to be done, not mine.”

MATTHEW 26.39

I will lift up the cup of salvation and praise the LORD’s name for saving me.

PSALM 116.13

Have you ever poured yourself a glass of milk and started to drink it only to discover that it is sour? It tastes so awful you have to spit it out. No one wants to drink a cup of sour milk. Now imagine a cup that is filled not with sour milk but with the white-hot, punishing anger of God against sin. Imagine the fury of God against everything evil put into liquid form and poured in a cup. Then imagine being asked to drink it.

That is what Jesus faced when he was in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before he was crucified. He didn’t want to drink it. So he cried out to God three times, asking God to take the cup away, if possible. It wasn’t primarily the physical pain of crucifixion that Jesus wanted to avoid. It was a much more significant suffering — the agony of drinking the cup of God’s judgment and experiencing the break in relationship with his Father that would come from drinking that cup.

But drink it he did — every last drop — so that we won’t have to drink it. In fact, because he drank the cup of wrath, we are handed another cup to drink from, filled not with judgment but with salvation. This cup can never be emptied. It is always full and overflowing.

Which cup will you drink from — the cup of God’s judgment or the cup of salvation?