The story of Judas, the disciple who betrayed Jesus, poses severe and disturbing questions. That he betrayed so good a man, to whom he'd been so close, and for so long a time is puzzling enough. But there are harder questions to be answered than the mere question, "Why did he do it?"
Why did Jesus choose him? Was he aware of
the potential for betrayal in Judas when He chose him? If He was not
aware of it then, was Jesus, when he did know, wise in His handling
of Judas? Could Judas have been saved from himself?
Did Jesus make him do it? Did God make him do it? The
Scriptures carry dark hints that he was in some way destined to
betray the Lord.
Let's not start with our minds made up. You can't sum up a man's life in a sentence. Various explanations have been offered. Examples:
That Judas - just as Jesus was God incarnate - was in fact the Devil Incarnate. I don't think that warrants serious attention. The phrases that are used of him never correspond to any description in the Bible of the devil. They are:
… that man by whom the Son of man is
betrayed
… the betrayer
… the son of perdition
… one of the men who have accompanied us during all the time
that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us,
… the devil had put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's
son, to betray him. The Scriptures could not say such a silly thing
if Judas and the devil were in fact one and the same
person.
Jesus addressed him as "Friend." I don't think He'd have addressed the devil that way! And in any case the notion that Jesus could have chosen Judas, knowing he was the devil incarnate, slanders Jesus more than it does Judas!
The second is that Judas was really a misguided saint, who only wanted to force Jesus' hand. To Judas's mind, Jesus seemed curiously reluctant to build on the confrontation He had had with the authorities in the Temple after He had cleansed it; Jesus ran rings round them that day, and He failed to pursue His advantage - He was missing His moment. Judas was so sure of Jesus, it is argued, that he never imagined Jesus would suffer Himself to be taken captive. Judas believed Him to be so invincible, that He would surely rout His enemies; so when he forced the pace by taking the soldiers to Jesus in the garden, he sincerely believed that he was doing no more than accelerate a confrontation from which Jesus would emerge the victor. He had His Master's best interests at heart, really. That it just didn't work out the way Judas had reckoned it would explains the intensity of his subsequent remorse.
It's the kind of theory you could wish were true! … but it attributes, not so much a saintly intent as arrogance to Judas … as though Judas knew better than his Master. In any case, such a motive would hardly have warranted our Lord's stern condemnation: "It would be better for that man if he had never been born."
A third suggestion is that Judas was mentally ill.
It's a curiously modern idea. A defence counsel today would have had him assessed by a competent psychiatrist, and pleaded diminished responsibility for him. He wasn't normal.
But is any of us? There's a Jekyll and Hyde in us all. Judas committed his sin, as I do mine, by yielding to temptation to secure his own gain. Those are the facts.
A fourth theory is that he was chosen to be the traitor. God's plot for the redemptive work He had in mind for His Son required a betrayer, and God arbitrarily decided that Judas should be 'it.' Judas in fact had no choice in the matter; he was a helpless pawn on God's chess board.
That is possibly the worst scenario of all. It makes God a bigger monster than Judas! A God Who manipulated a man to do a hideous evil to suit His (God's) own ends is not the God to Whom the Bible bears consistent witness. None of us could worship such a God. I remind you of what James said: "Let no one say when he is tempted, 'I am tempted by God'; for God cannot be tempted with evil and he himself tempts no one …"
God doesn't run His world like that.
You will say to me, 'But what did Jesus mean when He said, "… none of them is lost but the son of perdition, that the scripture might be fulfilled." Doesn't that suggest that Judas had no choice in the matter?'
No it doesn't. An element of destiny there is indeed in the story. But we have to be careful how we understand it.
The essence of Biblical prophecy is not that it displays a Nostra Damus-like foreknowledge of the future, but rather that it sees with total clarity what the inevitable moral issue of men's deeds will be, whether they be good deeds or evil.
What the Scripture surely means is that, given the fact of sin in the heart of man, it was bound to happen, somewhere, some time, that someone would so yield to temptation as to betray the Son of Man. It didn't have to be Judas. It could have been anyone close to Jesus - as all the disciples very well knew (they all asked, "Lord, is it I?"). Indeed, as we shall see, Jesus took pains to head Judas off from the evil he was contemplating, and Judas chose to ignore the Lord's appeal.
Judas sinned of his own free will. Jesus, and the prophets before Him, knew he would. But foreknowledge does not imply control. I may know that my child is going to fall and hurt himself while he is learning to walk, but my knowledge doesn't make him fall. If I meant him to fall, I'd push him! Neither did the knowledge Jesus had make Judas sin.
Finally, it has been suggested that Judas was a traitor from the beginning, that he was a "sleeper" - the sort of spy who is planted by the enemy years ahead of a planned war. But nothing in the story suggests that his betrayal was the climax of a long, deliberate and covert preparation.
Let's return to the simple facts the New Testament records.
He followed Him because he was attracted to Jesus and - in the beginning at least - believed in Him.
It is possible that his name, Judas Iscariot, means Judas "of the Iscarii," a word that means "assassins." If that is correct, Judas had been a Jewish Nationalist, a member of an underground terrorist movement pledged to overthrow Roman domination by violent and subversive means. In that case, Judas would have been attracted to Jesus as a political Messiah ... the sort of revolutionary leader who fitted all his dreams.
But attractive though the suggestion is, it is mere guesswork. There may have been other reasons why he responded to Jesus' call to discipleship. He may in fact have responded very simply and straightforwardly in the beginning to this marvellously gifted man, and His shining goodness … for the very simple reason that Jesus inspired him.
That is the bigger fact. Jesus chose him because he had the makings of a great apostle: the man was keen, ardent, capable, and passionate. Judas was an achiever. What he achieved - whether it turned out to be great good or great evil - would depend ultimately on his character development. People of limited capability can't ever be great; they can achieve neither great good nor great evil. But people of real talent can become great; their abilities make them capable of achieving great good, or monstrous evil.
And there are hints in the Gospels that Judas was a capable man. Mark 14:10 describes Judas as (to render the Greek literally … and it is an unusual, a curious construction) "the one of the twelve." In some way he stood out above the others. This is borne out by two facts:
… one that he was trusted with the
money - he was the treasurer in the apostolic band; and
… two, that at the Last Supper he occupied the place of honour
to the right of Jesus.
That is why the conversation between Jesus and Judas was unheard by the others. Judas was to the right, John to the left of Jesus, and as they reclined at the table, Jesus could virtually whisper to one or the other of them because their heads were close.
Remember too that when Jesus sent out Judas along with the twelve on their two missions; he preached and healed and cast out demons with the rest, and it was the Lord Who conferred those gifts on him.
He had gifts of administration which were recognised. He was appointed treasurer. Jesus and the disciples trusted him.
You must remember too that the sop Jesus passed to Judas at the Last Supper was a traditional feature of the Passover. The host, when he passed the sop to a guest at the meal, always did so as a mark of honour to him.
John, in his Gospel, comments that when Judas protested that the ointment Mary of Bethany poured out on Jesus was a shocking waste, he did this "because he had the bag, and bare what was put therein." John 12:6
There is in fact a subtle play on words at that point. The word 'bare' can certainly mean 'carried' - he carried the bag; but it can also mean 'lifted.' It was in fact a colloquial Greek word for pilfering. We use the word in the same way when we describe a thief as a 'shoplifter.' Along the way, Judas had frequently yielded to a petty temptation to pilfer from the common purse. A persistent, unconfessed sin worked its hidden mischief in him, weakening him for the moment of truth when it came.
That ought to solemnise us all. How many 'little sins' do we indulge, regarding them as of no account simply because they're little. But …
Sow a thought and reap a deed;
Sow a deed and reap a character;
Sow a character and reap a destiny.
The inexorable process worked its mischief in Judas the way it does in us all.
When it came to the crunch, the temptation to sell his Master for money was too strong for him. He couldn't say what we all say when it happens to us: "I don't know what came over me." What 'came over' him was the power of a temptation he'd yielded to too often.
The sum was not inconsiderable. A piece of silver was worth three denarii. Now a denarius was the average daily wage for a working man. Put that into perspective. What's an average day's wage today? … $80.00 ($400 a week)? … 3x30x80=7,200 dollars.
It worked on Judas the same way it works on us all. You can watch violence or pornography on film time after time for years: it does no harm - it doesn't make you rush out to bash or rape people. But the protest your conscience makes gets worn down little by little so there comes a day when you are provoked or tempted beyond its weakened strength.
Judas became a traitor the same way any of us may become a traitor to Jesus - by compromising secretly in the mind just that one time too many.
Hear … and be warned!
Understand what it did to him. Judas lived with Jesus the Compassionate Man. Nobody could live with Jesus and not find compassion climbing up his scale of values. I've no doubt it did with Judas. He'd have extolled 'love' the way all good Christians do. But he honoured it with his lips while he betrayed it with his hands in the money bag. And what he did undid him. What he said couldn't stop it happening. Are you listening?
There is a further factor too that may well account for the evil Judas did - his wounded pride. It's a killer. It turns men of piety into devils.
We've said that his name may have meant 'Judas of the Iscarii.' But it may have a simpler meaning, 'Judas of Kerioth.' His father is described the same way. If that is the case then it has an interesting implication.
It means that Judas was the only non-Galilean in the company, for Kerioth was in Judah where Jerusalem was. Perhaps from the beginning he had the feeling that he was the odd man out. Clearly he stood out above the others, as we have seen. But Jesus did not include him - ever - in the inner ring of disciples, along with Peter, James and John. Did he grow slowly jealous and embittered because he wasn't 'recognised' as others were, and as he felt he should be? Wounded pride can turn to bitterness and obsess the mind until the way you see things becomes warped and turns nasty.
For whatever reason, he felt disappointed in Jesus. Jesus was not turning out to be the person Judas wanted Him to be; and Jesus didn't prefer him the way Judas believed he should be preferred. Jesus, he felt, had let him down … so it was all right to do him a mischief.
That's a mentality to which not one of us is stranger. Let a friend disappoint you, and you begin at once to lose regard for him. Let the boss - your master - fail to give you the advancement you feel you're entitled to, and your loyalty begins to shrivel. Let a pastor offend or disappoint you, and it's all right to rubbish him.
Judas, like many a strong, passionate man, grew proud and narrow. Brooding over your wounded pride leads on swiftly to hate. And when hate gets a grip on a narrow and passionate nature, it twists it. Nothing any longer remains sacred.
But I want you to see how Jesus treated Judas.
First, He washed Judas' feet, the same way He washed the feet of all the others. That was a rebuke to his pride - as it was a rebuke to all their pride. But it was such a gentle, humble rebuke. There could hardly be a less offensive way to administer such a rebuke.
Then Jesus, at the Last Supper, singled him out for special honour. The sop, as we have seen, was a mark of honour. Jesus singled Judas out to give it to. It was the Lord's way of saying to Judas, "Judas, know that I have the highest regard for you. Believe that you are honoured, as those of whom you are jealous are honoured. Believe in me, my friend."
Judas was already aware that Jesus knew what was in his mind … "one of you will betray me." He let him know He knew - the same way He let Peter know He knew that Peter would betray Him.
It was a quiet way of saying, "Careful!"
But it affected Judas quite differently to the way it affected Peter. Peter's pride, too was hurt. But not the way Judas' was. Peter protested - Judas didn't. Because Peter's outburst meant, "Lord, how can you doubt my love for you, my loyalty to you." But that was a protest Judas could no longer make. Disloyalty had eaten at his vitals like a worm for too long, and his own dignity mattered more to him now than His Master's safety. Love had become something he couldn't stand, humility a thing that was beneath him.
The disciples didn't know! … for secret sin makes accomplished actors of us all.
The one redeeming feature in Judas's character is his remorse. He couldn't undo what he'd done; but at least he had enough decency left in him at the end to regret it. Where that left him is not for you or me to know. When he "fell headlong," he fell … into the hands of God. And God, Who knows the secrets of the heart, has dealt with him - as He deals with us all - with that blend of righteousness and mercy which the Cross reveals.
But one last observation remains to be made.
Judas, when he yielded inward consent to the evil that his disloyalty and pride had brewed in him down the years, yielded himself to become a pawn in other hands than his own. He played into the devil's hands. If he thought he was just getting his own back, privately, he didn't know - as none of us ever do know until it is too late - that when we knowingly sin for purely private reasons, we sell ourselves to a power of evil higher and stronger than our own, and our sin wreaks a worse havoc than we could have imagined.
Let Paul have the last word on that - I Timothy 5:24:
"The sins of some men are obvious, and are equally obviously leading them on to judgment. The sins of other men are not apparent, but are dogging them, nonetheless, below the surface. Similarly some virtues are plain to see, while others, though not at all conspicuous, will eventually come out into the open."
At the end of the day, what will come out into the open for you, for me?
This material is copyright; it may not be published, quoted or reproduced without permission, nor may it be preached without acknowledgment!