John 12:27 “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. 28 Father, glorify thy name. Then came there a voice from heaven, saying, I have both glorified it, and will glorify it again.”
There is no doubt that Jesus Christ was both, an absolutely perfect Man, and that He is God, and the Man indescribably suffered to pay the sin-debt of all His “Elect” (I Peter 1:2) Children; for, “he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities: the chastisement of our peace was upon him; and with his stripes we are healed” (Isaiah 53:5). But, He tells us that “Now is my soul troubled” which points to something far deeper and more troubling than the physical suffering He endured. Paul explained it this way, “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” (II Corinthians 5:21). Our Blessed Lord could see that moment coming and it “troubled” His Righteous “soul”. Again, on the night before He was crucified, He came to “a place called Gethsemane, and saith unto the disciples, Sit ye here, while I go and pray yonder. 37 And he took with him Peter and the two sons of Zebedee, and began to be sorrowful and very heavy. 38 Then saith he unto them, My soul is exceeding sorrowful, even unto death: tarry ye here, and watch with me. 39 And he went a little further, and fell on his face, and prayed, saying, O my Father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me: nevertheless not as I will, but as thou wilt.” (Matthew 26:36-39). Our Lord could see that moment coming when He would be “made … to be sin for us” and it “troubled” His “soul” and He “began to be sorrowful and very heavy”. This dreadful moment was prophetically typified by the scapegoat when “Aaron” the High Priest “lay both his hands upon the head of the live goat, and confess over him all the iniquities of the children of Israel, and all their transgressions in all their sins, putting them upon the head of the goat, and shall send him away by the hand of a fit man into the wilderness” (Leviticus 16:21); symbolically conveying “all their transgressions in all their sins” upon the “goat”, and then removing the “goat” with their “sins” so far away that their “sins” could never be returned to them. Well, the scapegoat was a prophetic symbol, Jesus Christ came to fulfill the prophecy, it was He “Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree” (I Peter 2:24)! When I think of the shame and the pain of just my own sin, I mourn and shutter; but He took away “in his own body” the “sin” of “a great multitude, which no man could number” (Revelation 7:9); it is no wonder that His “soul” was “troubled”, and at that moment, He cried “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?” (Matthew 27:46)! He alone took the judgment of God against sin on our behalf and suffered grotesquely, and forever “bare our sins” away from us; thus, He declared, “their sins and iniquities will I remember no more” (Hebrews 10:17)!