Was It His Choice To Die For Us?

Q. I was recently watching Passion of the Christ and in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus was praying for God to “save him, deliver him” and almost begging.  Yet in one of your articles I recently read (sorry, not sure which one) you mentioned that Jesus had scores of angels at his “beck and call” and all he had to do was call on them and the whole thing would come to an end.  In other words, he didn’t have to do this, but he chose to.  Yet, in the Passion it seems like God forced him to and he was begging to be delivered.  Was that prayer something Mel Gibson made up? Or do we know specifically what Jesus was praying at the Garden?

A. From the gospel accounts (Matt. 26:36-47, Mark 14:32-42, Luke 22:40-46)  you can tell that Jesus was pleading to be released from His promise to die for us if any other way to redeem us could be found, so this was not something made up for the movie.  He made this plea twice, sweating blood as He did so.  But each time He ended by confirming His submission to His Father’s will, since there was no other way to save us from our sins.

In Matt. 26:53 Jesus rebuked Peter for drawing his sword when the soldiers came to arrest Him, saying that if He asked for them, His Father would put 12 legions of angels at His disposal.

So the over view of the crucifixion is that Jesus knew it was going to be incredibly painful and wanted to be absolutely certain it was necessary.  But at the end of the day, it was His choice to go through with it.  He could have stopped it at any time and left us without a Redeemer.