Mark 14:38

The sorrows of the Garden were too deep, as before the glories of the Mount were too great for poor weak human nature. On both occasions the disciples find relief in sleep… Prayer, which expresses our dependence upon God, will alone prepare us for coming temptation. Too often our natural self-confidence leaves us with little fear of temptation, and so with little sense of our need of prayer.

It is blessed to fall into temptation, but it is never blessed to enter into temptation. There is all the difference between entering into temptation and enduring temptation. And that was exactly what Peter had to learn most bitterly — to enter into temptation. Now the man that endures temptation is the man that prays before the temptation comes. He does not enter into it. When it comes he is blessed; he endures. Peter did not. Peter entered; that is to say, the entrance into temptation shows that there is a lack of any sense of danger — a lack of any sense that I need God, that I need God now.

"The spirit indeed is willing, but the flesh is weak" is not given as a sympathetic remark about them, but as a reason for watching and prayer, and to mark its necessity. Do not rely on the readiness of your spirit. The flesh in which you walk is weak. So watch and pray that you may not enter into temptation. The Lord was also referring, with grace, to Peter's hasty promise to suffer with Him. Peter had not gone through it with God in spirit. So he would soon sink when he went through it with man.

Peter was so confident of his own strength. He said, "Though I should die with you, I will not deny you." Yet he failed most strikingly. What brought him into the judgment hall? Why did he "enter into temptation" like this? — this was entering into temptation. He had not been told to do so… There he was at that moment. He had not judged the flesh but trusted it. Prayer and watchfulness were missing. A moral distance had come between him and Christ. He had entered into temptation and sought unholy companionship.

But He can warn them, and warn them about what was just then going on. To Him it was now the path of obedience; but whatever was not that was temptation. So it is with everything: all we meet with is an occasion of temptation or of obedience… But this exchange with the disciples at this moment shows a depth and calmness in His path. That is divine perfection, though seen in man and in human ways. It is grace, and it calls for adoring recognition. We struggle or faint, or hide our sorrow in pride.

In saying to Peter, "The spirit indeed is willing," the Lord acknowledged something in His disciples that He could appreciate and recognize. Yet "the flesh is weak," and Satan just then was terribly active, so that nothing but watchfulness and prayer would have met the situation. Let us take the word home to ourselves. As the end of the age approaches, Satan's activities are to become greater, not less. We need to be awake, with every spiritual faculty alert. We also need to be filled with the spirit of prayerful dependence upon God.