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The Cups Jesus Drank

New, published 31 October 2026. What else is new

Two drinks were lifted to Jesus at Golgotha. He tasted the first and would not drink it. He took the second and, with it still on His lips, said "It is finished." Between them run three hours of darkness and the only words from the cross that Mark records. Read in order, His cups tell the story of His death from Cana to the cross, and they end at a table that is still being set.

In one sentence: Jesus refused the cup that would have dulled His suffering and drank to the end the cup His Father gave Him, the cup of wrath you deserved, so that the cup He hands you is salvation and the wine of a wedding still to come.

Key Takeaways

(This section follows the Key Takeaways format — see that page for what each part is for.)

Types & Prophecy

Prophecy. Psalm 69:21 is a righteous sufferer's lament: "They gave me poison for food, and for my thirst they gave me sour wine to drink" (ESV). Its Greek translation has χολή (cholē, G5521, "gall") and ὄξος (oxos, G3690, "sour wine") in that one verse. Matthew uses the first word for the drink Jesus refused (Matthew 27:34) and the second for the drink at the end (Matthew 27:48). John says Jesus spoke "I thirst" "to fulfill the Scripture" (John 19:28). Most of the commentaries consulted take Psalm 69:21 as that Scripture; the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible suggests Psalm 22:15.

The prophets' cup. In Isaiah, Jeremiah and the Psalms the cup in the LORD's hand is His wrath, drunk "to the dregs" (Isaiah 51:17; Jeremiah 25:15; Psalm 75:8). When Jesus calls His death "the cup that I drink" (Mark 10:38), He takes that image as His own.

Lessons about Jesus

  • He chose His cup. He refused the drugged wine after tasting it, and He received the sour wine "knowing that all was now finished" (John 19:28). No one took His life from Him (John 10:18).
  • He drank the Father's cup with His mind clear. The Son bore the wrath against sin awake.
  • He thirsted. The One who asked a Samaritan woman for water and offered living water to all who thirst (John 4:7; John 7:37) died with a dry mouth, as truly human as you are.

Memory verses

✝️ John 18:11 (ESV)

11 So Jesus said to Peter, "Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?"

✝️ John 19:30 (ESV)

30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, "It is finished," and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

Be Transformed

  • Think. The wrath your sin deserved was a cup, and Jesus drained it (Mark 14:36; Isaiah 51:22). Nothing is left in it for you to drink.
  • Attitude. Jesus met His suffering awake and gave His will to the Father's in it (Mark 15:23; Mark 14:36). Bring your own hard thing to the Father the same way: say what you want, then say "yet not what I will, but what you will."
  • Do. The next time you take the cup at the Lord's table, hold it a moment before you drink and thank Jesus by name for the cup He drank so that this one could be blessing (1 Corinthians 10:16).

Prayer

Father, You set the cup of Your wrath against sin in Your Son's hands, and He drank it. Your Son Jesus refused every comfort that would have made the cross easier, and He finished the work You gave Him. I deserved that cup, and He took it from my hand.

Thank You that what He hands me now is the cup of salvation. Keep me at His table until the day He drinks it new with us in Your kingdom.

In Jesus' name. Amen.

Study outline

Cana: the good wine kept until now

John's account of Jesus' signs opens at a wedding where the wine has run out. "When the wine ran out, the mother of Jesus said to him, 'They have no wine'" (John 2:3, ESV). His answer sets a clock running for the whole Gospel:

✝️ John 2:4 (ESV)

4 And Jesus said to her, "Woman, what does this have to do with me? My hour has not yet come."

In John, Jesus' "hour" is His death and glorification. It is "not yet" at Cana and through the feasts (John 7:30; John 8:20), and it arrives in the week of the cross: "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified" (John 12:23, ESV); "'Father, save me from this hour'? But for this purpose I have come to this hour" (John 12:27, ESV).

Then He makes wine from six stone jars, "each holding twenty or thirty gallons" (John 2:6, ESV), and the master of the feast tells the bridegroom, "You have kept the good wine until now" (John 2:10, ESV). John calls it "the first of his signs," by which Jesus "manifested his glory" (John 2:11, ESV).

Three threads tie this scene to the cross, and each is in John's own text:

  • His mother. She is at Cana (John 2:1, 12) and at the cross (John 19:25), and both times Jesus calls her "Woman" (John 2:4; John 19:26).
  • The hour. Deferred at Cana, fulfilled at the cross.
  • Psalm 69. In the same chapter, after He clears the temple, His disciples remember "Zeal for your house will consume me" (John 2:17, ESV), Psalm 69:9. At the cross He says "I thirst" to fulfil Psalm 69:21. Origen noticed the pairing in the third century: the psalm containing both lines is "spoken in the person of the Christ," and "both texts" are "recorded in the Gospels" (Commentary on John 10.19, ANF).

A fourth link is a reading of the pattern, and John never states it. At the start of His signs Jesus gives the best wine at a wedding. At the end of His life He receives the cheapest drink in Jerusalem from soldiers. The exchange fits everything else John says of the cross, and it is offered here as a reading, held loosely.

This shows that God keeps the best for last. The Son who could fill six jars at a word chose, when His hour came, to go thirsty, so that the wedding He was pointing to would have wine for you.

The cup that I drink

The Old Testament gives the cup two meanings. A cup can be a person's portion from God, good or bad. And in the prophets one cup recurs above all others, the one in the LORD's own hand:

✝️ Isaiah 51:17 (ESV)

17 Wake yourself, wake yourself, stand up, O Jerusalem, you who have drunk from the hand of the LORD the cup of his wrath, who have drunk to the dregs the bowl, the cup of staggering.

The Hebrew is כּוֹס חֲמָתוֹ (kos chamato, H3563, H2534), "the cup of His fury." Jeremiah is handed "this cup of the wine of wrath" to make the nations drink (Jeremiah 25:15, ESV), and in Psalm 75:8 "all the wicked of the earth shall drain it down to the dregs" (ESV). Five verses after Isaiah 51:17 the same cup changes hands: "Behold, I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering; the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more" (Isaiah 51:22, ESV). Isaiah does not say there who drinks it instead. Two chapters later he says of the Servant, "the LORD has laid on him the iniquity of us all" (Isaiah 53:6, ESV).

When James and John asked for the seats at His right and left, Jesus answered with this image:

✝️ Mark 10:38-39 (ESV)

38 Jesus said to them, "You do not know what you are asking. Are you able to drink the cup that I drink, or to be baptized with the baptism with which I am baptized?" 39 And they said to him, "We are able." And Jesus said to them, "The cup that I drink you will drink, and with the baptism with which I am baptized, you will be baptized,

The Greek word is ποτήριον (potērion, G4221), the ordinary word for a drinking cup. Jesus speaks of His suffering as a cup He is already drinking, and He tells the two brothers they will drink it too; James died by the sword (Acts 12:2). So the one image carries two things. His followers share its suffering with Him. Its wrath He bears alone: Isaiah 51:22 takes that cup out of the people's hand, and Isaiah 53:6 lays their iniquity on the Servant. Mark keeps both in one word, and reading them apart rests on Isaiah 51-53; that is how this study reads Gethsemane.

This shows that God's wrath against sin is real, measured and finished. The prophets saw it poured into a cup. Jesus named His death by that cup, so the death is a propitiation: God "put [Him] forward as a propitiation by his blood" (Romans 3:25, ESV).

The Supper's vow

On the night He was betrayed, after the cup of the covenant, Jesus made a vow: "I will not drink again of the fruit of the vine until that day when I drink it new in the kingdom of God" (Mark 14:25, ESV). Which Passover cup that was, and why the promise it carried is still waiting, is traced in "I Will Not Drink Again". That study weighs the popular idea that the sour wine on the cross completed the vow and finds that the text sets the vow's condition as the kingdom's coming, which the cross does not meet. This study agrees. The vow stands open, and the last section below comes back to it.

That leaves one question: was the sour wine "the fruit of the vine"? The phrase is the blessing spoken over wine at a meal, "Who creates fruit of the vine" (Mishnah Berakhot 6:1), and Matthew's form of the vow is "this fruit of the vine… with you in my Father's kingdom" (Matthew 26:29, ESV): the cup of the table, shared with His disciples. Soldiers' vinegar on a sponge is a different thing. The text does not settle whether the vow covered every drink from the grape, and readers who think it did take John 19:30 as a moment's moistening of the mouth.

Gethsemane: the cup the Father gave

An hour later Jesus prayed alone in the garden:

✝️ Mark 14:36 (ESV)

36 And he said, "Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will."

Luke gives the same prayer with a condition: "Father, if you are willing, remove this cup from me. Nevertheless, not my will, but yours, be done" (Luke 22:42, ESV). The cup He asks to be spared is the cup of Isaiah 51, and the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible notes that the prophets used the cup "normally as divine judgment" (on Mark 14:36). The Son of God asked whether there was another way. His Father's answer was this cup.

Minutes later, when Peter drew a sword, Jesus had already settled it:

✝️ John 18:11 (ESV)

11 So Jesus said to Peter, "Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?"

The Greek is οὐ μὴ πίω αὐτό (ou mē piō auto, from πίνω, G4095), a doubled negative inside a question. Its force is "Am I not by all means to drink it?", and the expected answer is "yes, I certainly shall." The cup has a giver: "the cup that the Father has given me," ὃ δέδωκέν μοι ὁ πατήρ. John never records the Gethsemane prayer itself. He records its result.

This shows that God the Father gave His Son the cup, and the Son received it in love. Hebrews says He "offered up prayers and supplications, with loud cries and tears, to him who was able to save him from death, and he was heard because of his reverence" (Hebrews 5:7, ESV). Your salvation rests on the Son's will joined to the Father's in that garden.

Golgotha: the cup refused

The first drink came at the place of the skull, before the nails:

✝️ Mark 15:22-24 (ESV)

22 And they brought him to the place called Golgotha (which means Place of a Skull). 23 And they offered him wine mixed with myrrh, but he did not take it. 24 And they crucified him and divided his garments among them, casting lots for them, to decide what each should take.

Mark's verb is ἐσμυρνισμένον (esmyrnismenon, from σμυρνίζω, smyrnizō, G4669), "having been mixed with myrrh," and the word occurs only here in the New Testament. "They offered" is the imperfect ἐδίδουν: they were holding it out to Him. "He did not take it" is οὐκ ἔλαβεν, from λαμβάνω (lambanō, G2983), the verb to watch for when we reach John 19:30.

Matthew tells it with two differences:

✝️ Matthew 27:34 (ESV)

34 they offered him wine to drink, mixed with gall, but when he tasted it, he would not drink it.

Matthew names the additive χολή, gall, the word in the Greek of Psalm 69:21. And he adds γευσάμενος (geusamenos, from γεύομαι, G1089), "having tasted." He put it to His lips, knew what it was, and "would not" (οὐκ ἠθέλησεν).

What the drink was for

The text gives one clue and the Jewish sources give another.

  • Proverbs 31:6. "Give strong drink to the one who is perishing, and wine to those in bitter distress" (ESV). Wine as a mercy to the dying is in Scripture itself.
  • The Talmud. The Babylonian Talmud (Sanhedrin 43a) records Rav Ḥisda's teaching that the court gave a person led out to execution "a grain of frankincense in a cup of wine… in order to confuse his mind," and quotes Proverbs 31:6 for it. A baraita adds that "the prominent women of Jerusalem would donate this drink." (Translation: William Davidson Edition, Koren-Steinsaltz.)

Two cautions keep that evidence in its place. The Talmud was compiled centuries after the cross, so it is a witness to a custom Jewish teachers remembered, and it names frankincense where Mark has myrrh. And it describes a Jewish court's execution, where Golgotha was a Roman one. Whether myrrh itself dulls pain is disputed; the Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible says so outright, while noting that the wine did have that effect (on Mark 15:23).

Who offered it is contested, and the text decides less than either side claims. In Mark the subject of "they offered" is the same "they" who brought Him, crucified Him and divided His garments (Mark 15:22-24), the soldiers of Mark 15:16. That reading makes the drink part of the execution routine. The NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible reads it the Talmud's way, as "probably offered by sympathizers" (on Mark 15:23), and Luke does place mourning women of Jerusalem on the road (Luke 23:27). Neither reading changes what Jesus did with it.

Why He refused

Jesus tasted a drink that would cloud His mind, and He would not drink it. The Gospels give no spoken reason. They give the frame: in Gethsemane He had accepted the Father's cup, and the Father's cup was the one He meant to drink. The study Bibles consulted agree, from different angles: "Jesus was fully resolved to drink the cup of suffering the Father had assigned him" (NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible, on Mark 15:23); "On our behalf, Jesus chose to embrace the pain fully" (Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible, on Mark 15:23).

Some readers connect the refusal to the Supper vow, since the myrrh-wine was "the fruit of the vine" and Mark tells both stories. Matthew's "when he tasted it" weighs against that, since tasting is a small drinking. The reading is possible and the text does not need it.

This shows that God's Son bore the cross fully awake. He would not let His mind be dulled during the hours when He was carrying your sin. He went into the darkness of Mark 15:33 clear-headed.

Golgotha: the cup received

At the ninth hour, six hours after the nails in Mark's timing (Mark 15:25, 34), the second drink came:

✝️ John 19:28-30 (ESV)

28 After this, Jesus, knowing that all was now finished, said (to fulfill the Scripture), "I thirst." 29 A jar full of sour wine stood there, so they put a sponge full of the sour wine on a hyssop branch and held it to his mouth. 30 When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, "It is finished," and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.

John's verb in John 19:30 is ἔλαβεν (elaben, G2983), the same verb as Mark's οὐκ ἔλαβεν at Golgotha's arrival. Read across the two Gospels, the first drink He "did not take," and the second He "took." That echo comes from setting two Gospels side by side, and no single writer composed it.

"It is finished" is τετέλεσται (tetelestai, from τελέω, G5055), a perfect passive: a thing completed and standing complete. John uses the identical form two verses earlier, "knowing that all was now finished (τετέλεσται)" (John 19:28). Between the two, Jesus speaks "to fulfill the Scripture," where John switches to a related verb, τελειωθῇ (G5048); the Legacy Standard Bible's footnote renders it literally, "Scripture would be finished." The finishing frames the drink on both sides.

The soldiers' sour wine, offered in mockery

The drink itself was ὄξος, wine gone sour or cut with water. It was what labourers and soldiers drank. Boaz's reapers dipped their bread in it (Ruth 2:14, where the Greek has ὄξος and the Hebrew חֹמֶץ, chomets, H2558). The Roman army drank it as posca: the Historia Augusta praises Hadrian for eating soldiers' fare in the open, larido caseo et posca, "bacon, cheese and posca" (Hadrian 10.2, my translation). A jar of it stood by the crosses because the guard was drinking it.

Mark and Matthew place the drink after the cry of dereliction:

✝️ Mark 15:34-37 (ESV)

34 And at the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lema sabachthani?" which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" 35 And some of the bystanders hearing it said, "Behold, he is calling Elijah." 36 And someone ran and filled a sponge with sour wine, put it on a reed and gave it to him to drink, saying, "Wait, let us see whether Elijah will come to take him down." 37 And Jesus uttered a loud cry and breathed his last.

The man with the sponge is probably still taunting. His "Wait" (ἄφετε, aphete, G863) can also mean "leave him alone," holding the others off, and the Legacy Standard Bible's footnote gives "Hold off"; the Elijah line he adds reads as mockery either way. In Matthew the man runs and the others say "Wait" (Matthew 27:48-49). In Luke, earlier in the day, "the soldiers also mocked him, coming up and offering him sour wine" (Luke 23:36, ESV), and Luke does not say He drank. Josephus describes Roman soldiers forty years later nailing Jewish captives "one after one way, and another after another, to the crosses, by way of jest" (Jewish War 5.11.1, Whiston). Mockery came with the work.

The reed and the hyssop

Matthew and Mark say the sponge was put on a reed, κάλαμος (kalamos, G2563). It is the word Matthew uses for the mock sceptre placed in His right hand and then used to strike Him on the head (Matthew 27:29-30). Matthew does not say it was the same reed, but the word is the same: the soldiers' instrument of mockery became the means of His last drink. John says hyssop instead, the plant Israel used to mark its doors with the Passover blood (Exodus 12:22); that echo is followed in Passover.

The two-sponges claim

A popular reading holds that the first drink came on a Roman latrine sponge, and that Jesus refused it for that reason and accepted a clean sponge later. The sponge-on-a-stick was a real Roman object: Seneca describes a man who choked himself with the stick "placed, with a sponge fixed to it, for cleaning the private parts" (Epistles 70.20, my translation of lignum id quod ad emundanda obscena adhaerente spongia positum est). But the Greek word for sponge, σπόγγος (spongos, G4699), occurs three times in the New Testament (Matthew 27:48; Mark 15:36; John 19:29), all at the same moment at the end. The drink He refused was offered before He was crucified, when no sponge or pole was needed, and neither Mark nor Matthew mentions one. The text gives the refusal a reason, "when he tasted it" (Matthew 27:34), and it has to do with what was in the cup.

Why He took the second

The text supports four reasons. John states the first outright, and the other three are drawn from the narrative.

  1. To fulfil the Scripture. "I thirst" was spoken "to fulfill the Scripture" (John 19:28), and Psalm 69:21 has two halves: gall for food, sour wine for thirst. Jesus tasted and refused the first and received the second. "They gave" is what the psalm predicts in both halves, and both were given.
  2. Because the work was done. He spoke "knowing that all was now finished" (John 19:28). The refusal had kept His mind clear for the work; at the end there was no work left to keep it clear for. The sour wine also quenched thirst and dulled nothing. The ESV Study Bible distinguishes it from the "wine mixed with myrrh," and the NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible notes that it "would prolong life and therefore prolong pain" (both on John 19:28-29). Taking it reversed nothing He had chosen at nine in the morning.
  3. Because He was thirsty. He had been flogged, had carried His cross, and had hung six hours. His thirst is the plain fact under the fulfilment. Irenaeus used this drink against Valentinian teachers who made the passion a figure of a heavenly Christ, asking when "the Christ above" was ever given a drink (Against Heresies 4.35.3, ANF). The One who said "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink" (John 7:37, ESV) died thirsty.
  4. To speak His last words. In Mark and Matthew a loud cry follows the drink (Mark 15:37; Matthew 27:50), and in John "It is finished" follows it (John 19:30). Luke gives the words of the last cry, "Father, into your hands I commit my spirit!" (Luke 23:46, ESV), and places no drink just before it. This fourth reason is an inference from the order of events, though a short one: He took a drink and then had a voice to cry with.

He received it from mockers. He was finishing what was written, and He took what was held up to Him.

This shows that God finished what He promised, to the last line. Psalm 69 is a psalm of David, written a thousand years before Golgotha, and Jesus would not die until its last detail was done. That is why "It is finished" can be trusted: the One who said it checked.

The cup still to come

The cup of wrath is still in the LORD's hand for everyone who refuses His Son. "He also will drink the wine of God's wrath, poured full strength into the cup of his anger" (Revelation 14:10, ESV). There is no second way to have it emptied. Jesus asked for one in Gethsemane, and the answer was the cross.

For you who are in Christ, Isaiah 51:22 has come true: "I have taken from your hand the cup of staggering; the bowl of my wrath you shall drink no more" (ESV). The cup you are handed now is a different cup. The psalmist said "I will lift up the cup of salvation and call on the name of the LORD" (Psalm 116:13, ESV), and Paul writes of "the cup of blessing that we bless," "a participation in the blood of Christ" (1 Corinthians 10:16, ESV). Every time the church drinks it, she drinks what His cup bought. How the Lord's table looks back to the cross and forward to the kingdom is traced in The Lord's Supper.

And there is a cup Jesus has not yet drunk. The vow of Mark 14:25 is waiting for "that day," and the angel names the table where it will be kept:

✝️ Revelation 19:9 (ESV)

9 And the angel said to me, "Write this: Blessed are those who are invited to the marriage supper of the Lamb." And he said to me, "These are the true words of God."

The Gospel of John opened with Jesus supplying wine at a wedding. It points to a wedding where He will drink new wine with His bride. The bride and that supper are the subject of The Bride of Christ.

This shows that God turns judgment into a feast for everyone who trusts His Son. Jesus drank the cup of wrath and handed you the cup of blessing, and He is keeping the best wine for the wedding.

Discussion questions

  1. The language. Mark says Jesus "did not take" the myrrh-wine (οὐκ ἔλαβεν, Mark 15:23), and John says He "received" the sour wine (ἔλαβεν, John 19:30). What changed between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon that made one drink right to refuse and the other right to receive?
  2. The text in its context. Isaiah 51:17 pictures Jerusalem drinking the cup of the LORD's wrath to the dregs, and Isaiah 51:22 has the LORD take it from her hand. Read Mark 14:36 beside those verses. What was Jesus asking His Father to remove?
  3. Christ. John alone records "I thirst," and John's Jesus earlier said "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink" (John 7:37). What does it say about Him that the giver of living water died thirsty?
  4. The hard part. Mark's "they" who offered the myrrh-wine are the soldiers (Mark 15:22-24); the Talmud remembers women of Jerusalem giving such a drink out of mercy (Sanhedrin 43a). If it was a kindness, why refuse it? Does the answer change if it was routine?
  5. Be transformed. Jesus said "Yet not what I will, but what you will" about a cup He wanted removed (Mark 14:36). What cup are you asking God to take from you, and what would it look like to pray His sentence over it this week?
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Group study · 40 minutes

The Cups Jesus Drank

Mark 15:23; John 19:28-30

The point Jesus refused the cup that would have dulled His suffering and drank to the end the cup His Father gave Him, the cup of wrath you deserved, so that the cup He hands you is salvation and the wine of a wedding still to come.

0–5min

Ask: Why did Jesus refuse the wine mixed with myrrh? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

5–12minRead it aloud BSB

Mark 15:23 23There they offered Him wine mixed with myrrh, but He did not take it.

John 19:28-30 28After this, knowing that everything had now been accomplished, and to fulfill the Scripture, Jesus said, “I am thirsty.” 29A jar of sour wine was sitting there. So they soaked a sponge in the wine, put it on a stalk of hyssop, and lifted it to His mouth. 30When Jesus had received the sour wine, He said, “It is finished.” And bowing His head, He yielded up His spirit.

12–25minLook closer
What does it say?
What did it mean to them?
What does it mean for us?
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The Cups Jesus Drank

The study in brief
  1. Cana: the good wine kept until now. John's first sign, the "hour" not yet come, and the mother who will stand at the cross.
  2. The cup that I drink. What a cup in the LORD's hand meant to the prophets, and Jesus naming His death by it.
  3. The Supper's vow. The cup He would not drink again until the kingdom.
  4. Gethsemane: the cup the Father gave. "Remove this cup" and "shall I not drink it?"
  5. Golgotha, two drinks — the cup refused on arrival, with the Talmud's custom of drugged wine, and the cup received at the end, with the soldiers' sour wine, the two-sponges claim and why He took it.
  6. The cup still to come. The cup of wrath for those who refuse Him, the cup of blessing, and the marriage supper.
  7. Annex: how the two drinks became one. The early church's "gall and vinegar", and the scribes of Matthew 27:34.
Notes
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The Cups Jesus Drank

Step 1 · Cana: the good wine kept until now
Step 2 · The cup that I drink
12–18minStep 3 · The Supper's vow

1The language. Mark says Jesus "did not take" the myrrh-wine (οὐκ ἔλαβεν, Mark 15:23), and John says He "received" the sour wine (ἔλαβεν, John 19:30). What changed between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon that made one drink right to refuse and the other right to receive?

18–24minStep 4 · Gethsemane: the cup the Father gave

2The text in its context. Isaiah 51:17 pictures Jerusalem drinking the cup of the LORD's wrath to the dregs, and Isaiah 51:22 has the LORD take it from her hand. Read Mark 14:36 beside those verses. What was Jesus asking His Father to remove?

Step 5 · The cup still to come
Step 6 · Annex: how the two drinks became one
24–35minTalk it over

3Christ. John alone records "I thirst," and John's Jesus earlier said "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink" (John 7:37). What does it say about Him that the giver of living water died thirsty?

4The hard part. Mark's "they" who offered the myrrh-wine are the soldiers (Mark 15:22-24); the Talmud remembers women of Jerusalem giving such a drink out of mercy (Sanhedrin 43a). If it was a kindness, why refuse it? Does the answer change if it was routine?

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The Cups Jesus Drank

35–40minBe transformed

5Be transformed. Jesus said "Yet not what I will, but what you will" about a cup He wanted removed (Mark 14:36). What cup are you asking God to take from you, and what would it look like to pray His sentence over it this week?

  • Think. The wrath your sin deserved was a cup, and Jesus drained it (Mark 14:36; Isaiah 51:22). Nothing is left in it for you to drink.
  • Attitude. Jesus met His suffering awake and gave His will to the Father's in it (Mark 15:23; Mark 14:36). Bring your own hard thing to the Father the same way: say what you want, then say "yet not what I will, but what you will."
  • Do. The next time you take the cup at the Lord's table, hold it a moment before you drink and thank Jesus by name for the cup He drank so that this one could be blessing (1 Corinthians 10:16).
Memory verse

So Jesus said to Peter, "Put your sword into its sheath; shall I not drink the cup that the Father has given me?"

John 18:11 (ESV)
Pray together

Father, You set the cup of Your wrath against sin in Your Son's hands, and He drank it. Your Son Jesus refused every comfort that would have made the cross easier, and He finished the work You gave Him. I deserved that cup, and He took it from my hand.

Thank You that what He hands me now is the cup of salvation. Keep me at His table until the day He drinks it new with us in Your kingdom.

In Jesus' name. Amen.

Notes
The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/jesus/the-cups-jesus-drank/
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Group study · step by step

The Cups Jesus Drank

Mark 15:23; John 19:28-30

Open Ask: Why did Jesus refuse the wine mixed with myrrh? Hear a few answers before anyone reads.

Read it aloud Mark 15:23; John 19:28-30

Step 1Cana: the good wine kept until now — John's first sign, the "hour" not yet come, and the mother who will stand at the cross.Key verses: John 2:4
Step 2The cup that I drink — What a cup in the LORD's hand meant to the prophets, and Jesus naming His death by it.Key verses: Isaiah 51:17; Mark 10:38-39
Step 3The Supper's vow — The cup He would not drink again until the kingdom.

1The language. Mark says Jesus "did not take" the myrrh-wine (οὐκ ἔλαβεν, Mark 15:23), and John says He "received" the sour wine (ἔλαβεν, John 19:30). What changed between nine in the morning and three in the afternoon that made one drink right to refuse and the other right to receive?

Step 4Gethsemane: the cup the Father gave — "Remove this cup" and "shall I not drink it?"Key verses: Mark 14:36; John 18:11

2The text in its context. Isaiah 51:17 pictures Jerusalem drinking the cup of the LORD's wrath to the dregs, and Isaiah 51:22 has the LORD take it from her hand. Read Mark 14:36 beside those verses. What was Jesus asking His Father to remove?

Step 5The cup still to come — The cup of wrath for those who refuse Him, the cup of blessing, and the marriage supper.Key verses: Revelation 19:9
Step 6Annex: how the two drinks became one — The early church's "gall and vinegar", and the scribes of Matthew 27:34.
Talk it over

3Christ. John alone records "I thirst," and John's Jesus earlier said "If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink" (John 7:37). What does it say about Him that the giver of living water died thirsty?

4The hard part. Mark's "they" who offered the myrrh-wine are the soldiers (Mark 15:22-24); the Talmud remembers women of Jerusalem giving such a drink out of mercy (Sanhedrin 43a). If it was a kindness, why refuse it? Does the answer change if it was routine?

Be transformed

5Be transformed. Jesus said "Yet not what I will, but what you will" about a cup He wanted removed (Mark 14:36). What cup are you asking God to take from you, and what would it look like to pray His sentence over it this week?

  • Think. The wrath your sin deserved was a cup, and Jesus drained it (Mark 14:36; Isaiah 51:22). Nothing is left in it for you to drink.
  • Attitude. Jesus met His suffering awake and gave His will to the Father's in it (Mark 15:23; Mark 14:36). Bring your own hard thing to the Father the same way: say what you want, then say "yet not what I will, but what you will."
  • Do. The next time you take the cup at the Lord's table, hold it a moment before you drink and thank Jesus by name for the cup He drank so that this one could be blessing (1 Corinthians 10:16).
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The Cups Jesus Drank

The point Jesus refused the cup that would have dulled His suffering and drank to the end the cup His Father gave Him, the cup of wrath you deserved, so that the cup He hands you is salvation and the wine of a wedding still to come.

The whole study, with every verse a tap awayhttps://the-way.lewy.au/jesus/the-cups-jesus-drank/
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Annex: how the two drinks became one

The Gospels keep the two drinks apart. Within two centuries many Christian writers had merged them into one hostile drink, "gall and vinegar," because Psalm 69:21 names both together: the Epistle of Barnabas (7.3-5), the Gospel of Peter (5), Irenaeus (Against Heresies 3.19.2; 4.33.12) and Tertullian (On the Spectacles 30). Origen answered the pagan Celsus' mockery of the "vinegar and gall" from the same psalm (Against Celsus 2.37). Tatian's Diatessaron puts "wine and myrrh, and vinegar which had been mixed with the myrrh" at the first offer (§51, in the ANF's translation of a later Arabic text).

The manuscripts of Matthew show the same pull. At Matthew 27:34 the Majority (Byzantine) text reads "sour wine" where the critical text reads "wine"; the Majority Standard Bible's footnote records "CT offered Him wine." Most textual critics take the Majority reading as a later change toward Psalm 69:21. The two-sponges claim is a modern descendant of the same merger.

Original-language sources (queried in this project's own reference database):

  • SBL Greek New Testament (SBLGNT), ed. Michael W. Holmes, with MACULA Greek morphology — the occurrence counts for σπόγγος (3), σμυρνίζω (1), ὄξος (6) and χολή (2 in the New Testament).
  • unfoldingWord ULT and the Berean Interlinear — word alignment for Mark 15:23, John 18:11 and John 19:28-30.
  • Septuagint (Brenton's Greek) — Psalm 69:21 (Psalm 68 in its numbering), with χολή and ὄξος in one verse; Ruth 2:14.
  • Westminster Leningrad Codex with MACULA Hebrew morphology — Psalm 69:21 and Isaiah 51:17.

Translations quoted. ESV throughout. The Majority Standard Bible and Legacy Standard Bible are cited for their footnotes only (Matthew 27:34; Mark 15:36; John 19:28). See Bible Translations & Source Texts and copyright.

Jewish and classical sources.

  • Babylonian Talmud, Sanhedrin 43a, and Mishnah Berakhot 6:1, William Davidson Edition (Koren-Steinsaltz), via Sefaria. CC BY-NC; quoted briefly with attribution.
  • Flavius Josephus, The Jewish War 5.11.1, trans. William Whiston (1737).
  • Seneca, Epistulae Morales 70.20.
  • Historia Augusta, Hadrian 10.2.

Early church (Ante-Nicene Fathers, ed. Roberts and Donaldson): Epistle of Barnabas 7; Gospel of Peter 5; Irenaeus, Against Heresies 3.19.2, 4.33.12, 4.35.3; Tertullian, On the Spectacles 30; Tatian, Diatessaron §51; Origen, Against Celsus 2.37, and Commentary on John 10.19 (ANF numbering). See Patristic Sources.

Study Bibles, consulted after the exegesis to check it: ESV Study Bible (Crossway); NIV Biblical Theology Study Bible (Zondervan); NIV Cultural Backgrounds Study Bible (Keener and Walton, eds.).

Related studies on this site. "I Will Not Drink Again"; The Lord's Supper; Passover; The Bride of Christ.