23
Apr
2011

Eric Alexander on the Cup of Bitterness and Cup of Blessing

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23 Apr 2011

In 1958, Rev. Eric J. Alexander delivered a lecture at the Keswick Convention in which he pointed out one of the most wonderful parallels in the Bible. Drawing attention to the fact that God the Father placed  a cup of cursing and bitterness before Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane, he noted that Jesus had another cup on that same night–a cup of blessing–that He set before His disciples in the upper room. The cup of blessing symbolized the blessings of the Gospel that are the portion of believers because the cup of cursing and bitterness symbolized the curse of sin that our Lord endured in our place. Rev. Alexander noted:

There was a cup in the upper room in Jerusalem that Paul delighted to call “the cup of blessing which we bless” (1 Cor. 10:16). This is the cup the psalmist alluded to when he wrote, “What shall I render unto the Lord for all His benefits toward me? I will take the cup of salvation” (Ps. 116:13). Jesus was offering them this cup when He said, “Take, drink from it” (Matt. 26:27).

But there is another cup in these verses—a cup in Gethsemane that Jesus calls “this cup.” He said, “Father, if this cup cannot pass away from Me unless I drink it, Your will be done” (Matt. 26:42). If the cup in the upper room was the cup of blessing—the cup of salvation that they were to drink—then the cup Jesus looked upon there in the garden, which would make the other cup possible, was the cup of bitterness and sorrow that He must drink.

Only when we come to understand something of the bitterness of the cup He drank do we discover the depths of the cup of salvation from which we need to drink day by day. The experience of our Lord in Gethsemane was a foretaste of the cross, for the appalling spectacle of the sin of man was set before Him in this cup. The contents of this cup were the ingredients of His suffering and agony on the cross.

I once asked Rev. Alexander about this observation. He said that he first read it in R.A. Finlayson’s The Cross in the Experience of the Lord. You can read all of Eric Alexander’s Keswick lecture here.

About Post Author

Nick Batzig is the senior pastor of Church Creek PCA in Charleston, SC and an associate editor for Ligonier Ministries. Prior to serving at Church Creek, Nick was a pastor at Wayside PCA on Signal Mountain, TN. Formerly, Nick served as the founding pastor of New Covenant Presbyterian Church (PCA) in Richmond Hill, GA and as the editor of Reformation21 and the Christward Collective--sites of the Alliance of Confessing Evangelicals. He frequently writes for Tabletalk Magazine, Reformation 21, He Reads Truth, and the Christward Collective. Nick was also the host of East of Eden, a podcast devoted to the Biblical and Systematic Theology of Jonathan Edwards. You can friend him on Facebook here and follow him on Twitter @nick_batzig

1 Response

  1. Dan Smythe
    Reply

    I am very much in need of obtaining the Eric Alexander transcripts from his Urbana messages of many years ago on Ephesians and Acts that you have mentioned in the past. The Urbana website is down for reconstruction and those previous downloads cannot currently be accessed. Do you have those transcriptions in files that you could email me? It would be so helpful to get them. They are:
    Eric Alexander on Acts

    Pentecost and Missions (Acts 2)
    Mission and Opposition (Acts 4-6)
    Mission and the People God Calls (Acts 6-7)
    Mission and Vision (Acts 13:1-6; and 16 )

    Eric Alexander on Ephesians

    The Basis of Christian Salvation (Ephesians 1:1-14)
    The Ministry of Christian Interceding (Ephesians 1:15-23)
    The Nature of Christian Experience (Ephesians 2)
    The Privileges of Christian Ministry (Ephesians 3)

    My email address is above and any help you can give in sending these to me would so greatly help me in my ministry of training church planters in India and Cambodia. – Dan Smythe

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