Our Blessed Lord's sufferings and death were voluntary; "He was offered because it was His own will" (Isa. liii. 7). He also said : "I lay down My life. . . . No man taketh it away from Me: but I lay it down of Myself, and I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it up again" (John x. 17, 18). Hence it may be concluded that the separation of His soul from His body was not the result of the physical violence He endured, but of His own direct volition. This view accords with Christ's supremacy as Lord of life and death, His power as God, and the fulness of deliberate choice with which He died for us. The Jews were not able to kill Him before the appointed moment arrived. During the Passion, and especially in the Agony of Gethsemani, He endured many times over, what was sufficient to have caused death, but He did not die till He had Himself pronounced the decree: "Father, into Thy hands I commend My spirit" (Luke xxiii. 46). Then He allowed His bodily and mental sufferings to take effect; He suspended the divine influx which made Him immortal; He allowed death to approach, as He had given permission to the temple-guards to seize Him in the garden. It will be a most meritorious act of virtue, if you, when dying, conform your will perfectly to the will of God, and surrender your soul in voluntary sacrifice, in union with the death of Jesus Christ.
