Under the skin, just below the sweat glands, lie blood vessels. When exhausted or overheated, these blood vessels will dilate to help cool the body. As a result, the skin takes on a red hue – looking “flushed.” In rare cases, under extreme amounts of stress, the vessels will expand until they burst. The blood enters the sweat glands and exits through the pores. Hematohidrosis is the clinical term for the disorder in which one literally sweats blood.
Not long before His betrayal, Jesus was praying alone at night in the Garden of Gethsemane. The Word says that “His sweat was like drops of blood falling to the ground (Luke 22:44).” This means that Luke was either making a simile to describe how hard Jesus was praying, or Jesus was suffering from hematohidrosis at that very moment. Now sweat is very similar to blood; they are both liquids, they are manufactured in the body, and they both have negative connotations. A simile is usually used to describe something via a completely different element. For example: the small flame danced like a ballerina. Fire has nothing in common with a dancer, but what an apt description. You can almost see the candle flickering now. I find it redundant to describe sweat as blood. The Word is full of beautiful metaphors and similes, but I don’t think this is one of them. The apostle Luke was also believed to have been a physician (Colossians 4:14). No other gospel mentions Jesus’ sweat like drops of blood. I believe that Jesus was literally sweating blood - or a mixture of the two.
Jesus wasn’t just under stress, He was under distress. He knew His death was only hours away, and like any other man made of tissue and bone, He did not want to suffer and die. He knew exactly what lay in store for His body. Jesus asked God the Father to take the cup from Him (Luke 22:42). He asked if there were any alternate route, that it would be shown. But amazingly, as only a perfect human being could, Jesus ultimately, finally, and fully desired God’s will to be done. In His anguish, He only prayed harder. If Jesus was sweating blood while praying, could you imagine how intense His prayer was? If His body’s cardiovascular system couldn’t keep up, how strong was His passion? How taut were the veins in His neck? How fast was His heart beating? How painful was it?
We regard crying as the apex of emotion. And it is a strong, overwhelming feeling that brings us to tears. Even Jesus wept openly out of sorrow (Luke 19:41). But crying is a common, natural response. Our lacrimal apparatus was designed to manage it. Our tear ducts have practical purposes including the cleansing of our eyes. There is no physiological system to regulate hematohidrosis. The human body was not designed to handle that kind of strain.
So what’s the point of this? What can hematohidrosis possibly reveal? Jesus became flesh, lived the perfect life, absorbed our sin, and crushed death. His existence is a point of reference for all who pursue Him. He is the flawless archetype. We can never be perfect like Jesus, but that’s not the point – the point is to never stop trying. Jesus taught us what to pray (Luke 11:2-4) and how to pray (James 4:3). We should pray long and hard without any selfish ambition. Jesus prayed so strongly that blood came from His pores. How intense should we pray? Pray until your body can’t understand what’s occurring. When you are in anguish and don’t want to pray, pray even harder…. Until your sweat is like drops of blood falling to the ground – whether it be figurative or unequivocally literal.
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