The Lord delivered Himself in voluntary boldness to be processed (18:1-11). This means that He went into death willingly. In John 10 He told us that He would purposely give up His life for us. He is the Lord of life, and He is life. He has authority to die, and He has the authority to be resurrected. Of His own accord, He went into death and He came out of it. He does not have the problem of death; hence, it was unnecessary for Him to die. It was His prerogative whether He would die or not. He could will to die or will not to die. To us, however, death is not a matter of choice. When death comes to visit us, we cannot say, “Death, I am not ready. Please come again another day.” We have neither the power nor the authority to reject death. When death comes, everyone must be subdued by it. But this was not so with the Lord, because He is the Lord of life and also life itself. If He did not prefer to die, He had the power and authority to reject death and not die. He had the authority to send death away. Although He was not forced or compelled to die, He was willing to die because He had come to impart Himself to us as life. He knew that it was only through death that He could release Himself into us as life. In fact, He had already said that He was the one grain of wheat that was to fall into the ground and die (12:24). If a grain of wheat is unwilling to die, how can it release its life to bring forth many grains? In John 18 and 19 we see clearly that the Lord Jesus was very willing to die.
The first proof of the Lord’s willingness to die was that He went to the garden (18:1). This means that He went to a place where He could be captured. In His long message recorded in John 14 through 16, He made the process so clear. Then, in chapter seventeen, He prayed for the process. After He prayed, He went to the garden. According to Matthew, Mark, and Luke, the Lord went to the garden to pray. These three Gospels reveal that the Lord was the sin-bearer who was under the burden of bearing our sins. Thus, He had to go to the Father and pray. But there is no such record in the Gospel of John. John’s record shows that He went to the garden not to pray but to present Himself to the process. He went there to be captured, to be arrested, to be presented to death. This means that He voluntarily delivered Himself. The Lord did not hide but willingly offered Himself to be processed, delivering Himself to the people who were to put Him to death.
The Lord knew that Judas would betray Him (13:11, 21-27). He did not avoid it. This also proves that He voluntarily delivered Himself to be processed. Satan utilized the false disciple of the Lord to put Him to death, not knowing that by doing this he afforded the Lord the opportunity to be processed. The Lord took this as an opportunity to be glorified (13:31-32), that is, to be multiplied through death and resurrection.
Another indication of the Lord’s willingness to die was that the people did not discover Him but that He came to them. Judas, the false disciple, came with two kinds of people—the political and the religious. The soldiers were the political ones, and the deputies from the chief priests and Pharisees were the religious ones. The religious circle worked with the political circle to put the Lord of life to death. However, they did not find the Lord; the Lord came to them. The soldiers did not come to the Lord and capture Him while He was praying. No, Jesus went forth to meet them and said, “Whom are you seeking?” (18:4). They answered, “Jesus the Nazarene.” Then the Lord said to them, “I am” (18:5). When they heard this word, they drew back and fell to the ground (18:6). They were frightened at this word “I am,” which is the meaning of the name “Jehovah.” This indicates that the One they came to arrest was Jehovah God. The Lord did not take this opportunity to flee but asked them a second time, “Whom are you seeking?” Thus, it was not they who arrested the Lord; it was the Lord who handed Himself over to them.
The name Jehovah means “I Am that I Am.” The Lord Jesus is the great I Am. In 8:24 the Lord had told the Jewish people, “Unless you believe that I am, you shall die in your sins.” In other words, if they did not believe that Jesus was Jehovah, the very God, they would die in their sins. The Jewish people heard this, and when they heard it again, they fell down to the ground with fright. The Lord approached them the second time, asking, “Whom are you seeking?” He was not captured; He delivered Himself to them, proving His willingness to die. If He had been unwilling to die, no one could have captured Him, for He could have frightened everyone and caused them to fall to the ground. All He had to do was speak one word and His captors would have been dead. How could they have seized Him if He were unwilling to be captured? This proves that the purpose of John’s Gospel is to show that the Lord is the Lord of life and that He was willing to die in order to release Himself as life.