Luke 22:42
What does Luke 22:42 mean?
saying, “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done.”
The short answer
Luke 22:42 records the prayer Jesus prayed in the garden of Gethsemane on the night before his death: "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done." The "cup" is an old biblical image for a portion assigned to someone—here, the suffering and death Jesus knows is coming. And his first request is startlingly honest: he asks God to take it away.
That honesty matters. Jesus does not pretend to be calm, and he does not treat dread as something a faithful person should hide. He names exactly what he does not want. Barbara Brown Taylor draws out this point: even Jesus, on one of the worst nights of his life, asked to be spared. If fear were the opposite of faith, this prayer could not exist. Instead, the verse suggests that fear and faith can occupy the same sentence.
But the prayer does not end with the request. It pivots on a single word—"nevertheless"—and hands the outcome back to God. Jesus asks for what he wants, then yields to what God wills. The two halves belong together. Without the first, the surrender would be hollow, a performance of serenity he did not feel. Without the second, the request would be a demand.
This is why the verse has been treasured for centuries as a model prayer for hard circumstances. It gives believers a shape for praying in crisis: say plainly what you dread, ask plainly for relief, and then entrust the result to God. Martin Luther, as Donald McKim recounts, made this verse a piece of practical counsel for people in spiritual affliction—teaching them to speak the same words back to God when facing their own cup. The prayer is both a confession of human weakness and an act of deep trust.
What scholars say
These two excerpts answer complementary questions about Luke 22:42: Barbara Brown Taylor asks what Jesus' own request to be spared says about fear and faith, while Donald McKim shows how Luther turned the verse into practical counsel for people facing trials and afflictions.
“How did Jesus speak to their anxiety? Most importantly, I think, he did not tell them to cut it out. “People will faint from fear and foreboding of what is coming upon the world,” he said. Who could have known that better than him ? Terrible things happen, and you would have to be made out of metal instead of flesh to be fearless in the face of what might happen next. Jesus knew that. On one of the lowest nights of his life, he asked to be spared from what was coming next. “Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me.” At the same time, he knew that wasn’t his call. “Yet, not my will but yours be done” (Luke 22:42).”
“Luther’s 1521 treatise, Comfort When Facing Grave Temptations , lists some ways to deal with “temptations” ( Anfechtung is in the German text). His most basic advice was that in these trials and afflictions, one must yield to the divine will. Alluding to Jesus’ prayer in the Garden of Gethsemane on the eve of his death, when Jesus prayed, “Not my will but yours be done,” Luther said one should “address God cheerfully and firmly and say, ‘If I am to drink this cup, dear Father, may your will, not mine, be done’” (Luke 22:42).”
What it means for you
This verse gives you permission to pray the prayer you actually have, not the one you think you should have. If you are facing a diagnosis, a loss, or a fear you cannot shake, you can tell God directly that you want it taken away. That is not weak faith—it is exactly how Jesus prayed.
Then comes the harder half: releasing the outcome. Luther's advice, as McKim describes it, was to say this surrender out loud, cheerfully and firmly, making the verse your own words. Naming the dread and yielding it are not two prayers but one, and you can pray it as often as the fear returns.
Luke 22 in context
Luke 22 covers the final night before the crucifixion. It opens with Judas agreeing to betray Jesus, then moves to the Last Supper, where Jesus shares bread and wine with his disciples and predicts both Judas's betrayal and Peter's denial. Afterward Jesus goes to the Mount of Olives to pray, urging his disciples to pray as well so they will not fall into temptation. Verse 42 is the center of that prayer scene. Immediately afterward, Judas arrives with a crowd, Jesus is arrested, and Peter denies him three times—so this prayer is the hinge between the supper and the suffering.