In Gethsemane he prays “not my will but yours” — doesn’t that mean he isn’t God?
A will comes with a nature, not with a person. Christians say Jesus is one person with two natures — fully God and fully man — so he has two wills. A divine will he shares with the Father, and a human will. In the garden, his human will is recoiling from crucifixion and he chooses to obey anyway. That is not a lesser god giving in to a greater one. It is the whole point of the scene.
The garden is where this objection feels strongest, and it should be handled gently. Before it is anything else, this passage is a man in agony a few hours before he is executed.
The night before the crucifixion, Jesus goes to a garden called Gethsemane to pray. Luke says he was in such distress that his sweat fell like drops of blood. And he prays this — Luke 22:42KJVSaying, Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.: “Father, if thou be willing, remove this cup from me: nevertheless not my will, but thine, be done.”
Two wills are clearly in the room. If Jesus is God, how can there be two?
A will belongs to a nature, not to a person
This is the key, and it is worth saying slowly, because everything else follows from it.
Wanting something is a thing a kind of being does. A divine nature has a divine will. A human nature has a human will. The will comes with the nature — it is not an extra item the person carries around separately.
Now put that next to what Christians have always said about Jesus: one person, two natures. Fully God and fully man, at the same time.
If both natures are real — if he is genuinely God and genuinely a human being — then two wills is not an awkward result to be explained away. It is required. A Jesus with only one will would be a Jesus missing one of his natures.
So Gethsemane is not evidence against the belief. It is the belief, happening in front of you.
Which will is submitting to which
Read the prayer again with that in place.
It is not the Son as God submitting to the Father as a bigger God. The Father and the Son share one divine will. A divine will split in two would mean two gods, which is exactly what Christians do not believe.
It is his human will — pulling back from crucifixion, as any human will would — being placed under the divine will he holds together with the Father.
That is why the prayer sounds agonised instead of formal. Nothing here is being acted out. Isaiah 53:3KJVHe is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not. had said it centuries earlier: he would be “a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief.” Not passing through grief. Familiar with it. Gethsemane is that sentence happening.
A Jesus without this scene would be worse
It is tempting to wish this passage were not in the Gospels. Resist that.
A saviour who walked to his execution completely unmoved would be a saviour who never really faced it — and therefore never really shared the worst thing that happens to human beings. The fear in the garden is not a crack in the story. It is the proof that God becoming man went all the way down.
And notice what is not in the scene. There is no doubt about who he is. He calls God Father in the same breath. This is a son submitting to his father, not a creature bowing to its maker.
Objections answered
Two wills in one person is incoherent.
It would be if the two were competing on the same level, like a man in two minds about lunch. They are not.
One is the eternal will of God. The other is the will of a human nature that did not exist at all until Jesus was born. They are not two options being weighed against each other.
The church settled this deliberately, at a council in Constantinople in 681, and did so against real pressure. The alternative — saying he had only one will — kept ending up quietly deleting his humanity. This is not a modern patch. It is a very old and hard-won distinction.
He says the Father is greater than he is.
He does, and Christians have never claimed Jesus is the Father. The question the objection skips is: greater in what respect?
In becoming a man, the Son took on a nature that really is lesser — created, mortal, tired, frightened. Saying the Father is greater than the Son as a man on earth is not the same as saying the Son is a created being. And the same Gospel that records the sentence opens by saying the Word was God.
Praying to God means you are not God.
That only follows if God is a single person — which is precisely the thing being argued about.
If God is Father, Son and Holy Spirit, then the Son speaking to the Father is not a creature addressing its maker. It is one person of the Trinity speaking to another, which is exactly what you would expect to hear.
So the objection assumes the answer and then presents the result as proof. Point that out kindly, and it stops working.
Shared ground, and where traditions differ
All Christians hold
Catholics, Orthodox and Protestants all confess that Christ has two wills, one divine and one human, in a single person. This was defined at the Third Council of Constantinople in 681 and has been held by every historic tradition since. None of them reads Gethsemane as evidence against his being God.
Catholic
Holds the two wills as defined, with the human will freely agreeing with the divine.
Orthodox
Treats that council as decisive, and sees the obedience of Christ’s human will as the healing of the human will itself.
Protestant
Affirms the same definition, and usually treats the garden as the model of obedient submission for the believer.
Related questions
Inspired by God Logic Apologetics. The argument is theirs; the words here are ours.
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