Matthew 26:52-56: in context

As Jesus is arrested and one of his followers draws a sword, Jesus stops him: put your sword back in its place, for all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think, he says, that I could not call on my Father, and he would at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? How then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so? He rebukes the crowd for coming against him with swords and clubs as though against a robber, and submits. Then all the disciples desert him and flee.

The astonishing thing in this moment is the power Jesus refuses to use. He was not helpless before the mob; he tells them plainly that he could summon at once more than twelve legions of angels, an overwhelming force, and be delivered in an instant. The power to escape was fully available to him. And he chose not to use it. He put it aside, restrained it, submitted to arrest and to the cross, because the Father's purpose and the Scriptures required it. How then would the Scriptures be fulfilled, he asks, that it must be so? He surrendered his rightful power for the sake of God's saving purpose. There is something to learn here about the restraint of power for the sake of a higher good. Jesus had every right and every means to save himself, and he laid them down, choosing obedience to the Father over self-rescue. His refusal to call the legions was not weakness but a strength greater than force, the strength to surrender what he could have used, for the sake of a purpose beyond his own deliverance. And this is the very heart of our salvation: that Christ, who could have saved himself, chose instead to submit to the cross to save us. Had he called the legions, he would have been spared, and we would have been lost. There is also a pattern here for us, though on a small scale. There are times when we have the power to strike back, to defend ourselves, to force the outcome we want, and God's higher purpose calls us instead to restraint, to lay down the power we could use, to submit rather than to grasp our own rescue. Put away the sword, Jesus said; those who take it perish by it. The way of Christ was not the seizing of power to save himself, but the laying of it down in obedience to the Father, for our sake.

When I have the power to strike back, to force the outcome I want, or to rescue myself, do I grasp it, or can I learn from Christ, who could have called the legions and chose not to, the strength to restrain the power I could use and submit to God's higher purpose, even at cost to myself?