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Judas Iscariot |
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It is easy to overlook the fact that Jesus chose Judas to be his disciple. We may also forget that while Judas betrayed Jesus, all the disciples abandoned him. With the other disciples, Judas shared a persistent misunderstanding of Jesus’ mission. They all expected Jesus to make the right political moves. When he kept talking about dying, they all felt varying degrees of anger, fear, and disappointment. They didn’t understand why they had been chosen if Jesus’ mission was doomed to fail. We do not know the exact motivation behind Judas’s betrayal. What is clear is that Judas allowed his desires to place him in a position where Satan could manipulate him. Judas accepted payment to set Jesus up for the religious leaders. He identified Jesus for the guards in the dimly lit Garden of Gethsemane. It is possible that he was trying to force Jesus’ hand: Would Jesus now rebel against Rome and set up a new political government? Whatever his plan, though, at some point Judas realized he didn’t like the way things were turning out. He tried to undo the evil he had done by returning the money to the priests, but it was too late. The wheels of God’s sovereign plan had been set into motion. How sad that Judas ended his life in despair without ever experiencing the gift of reconciliation God could give even to him through Jesus Christ. Human feelings toward Judas have always been mixed. Some have fervently hated him for his betrayal. Others have pitied him for not realizing what he was doing. A few have tried to make him a hero for his part in ending Jesus’ earthly mission. Some have questioned God’s fairness in allowing one man to bear such guilt. While there are many feelings about Judas, there are some facts to consider as well. He, by his own choice, betrayed God’s Son into the hands of soldiers (Luke 22:48). He was a thief (John 12:6). Jesus knew that Judas’s life of evil would not change (John 6:70). Judas’s betrayal of Jesus was part of God’s sovereign plan (Psalm 41:9; Zechariah 11:12, 13; Matthew 20:18; 26:20–25; Acts 1:16, 20). In betraying Jesus, Judas made the greatest mistake in history. But the fact that Jesus knew Judas would betray him doesn’t mean that Judas was a puppet of God’s will. Judas made the choice. God knew what that choice would be and confirmed it. Judas didn’t lose his relationship with Jesus; rather, he never found Jesus in the first place. He is called "the one headed for destruction" (John 17:12) because he was never saved. Judas does us a favor if he makes us think a second time about our commitment to God and the presence of God’s Spirit within us. Are we true disciples and followers, or uncommitted pretenders? We can choose despair and death, or we can choose repentance, forgiveness, hope, and eternal life. Judas’s betrayal sent Jesus to the cross to guarantee that second choice, our only chance. Will we accept Jesus’ free gift, or, like Judas, betray him? Weaknesses and mistakes Lessons from his life Vital statistics Key verses Judas’s story is
told in the Gospels. He is also mentioned in Acts
1:18, 19.
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Judas Iscariot 1. Son of Simon and one of the twelve apostles. He was a false disciple: when the Lord said to His apostles ‘ye are clean,’ He excepted Judas in the words ‘but not all.’ He was sent out with the others to preach, and no exception is made in his case as to the working of miracles in the name of the Lord Jesus. Under the plea of the necessities of the poor he complained of money being wasted when Mary anointed the Lord. Yet he did not really care for the poor: he was treasurer, and was a thief. Satan knew the covetousness of Judas and put it into his heart to betray the Lord for money, which he did for thirty pieces of silver. Satan afterwards, as the Adversary, took possession of him to insure the success of the betrayal. Judas probably thought that the Lord would escape from those who arrested Him, as He had escaped from previous dangers, while he would gain the money. When the Lord was condemned, Judas was filled with remorse, confessed he had betrayed innocent blood, and cast the money into the temple. He was a complete dupe of Satan, who first tempted him to gain the money, and then would not let him keep it. He went and hanged himself, and probably falling from the tree, his bowels gushed out. An awful termination of a sinful course. The Lord called him the ‘son of perdition.’ In modern times men have erroneously argued that his confession under remorse shewed true repentance, and that there is hope of his salvation! but it is not so: he fell ‘that he might go to his own place.’ It was a trial of man under new circumstances: to be a ‘familiar friend’ {#Ps 41:9} of the Lord Jesus, to hear His gracious words, see His miracles, and probably be allowed to work miracles himself in His name; and yet, as in every other trial of man, he fell. Judas is a solemn instance of how far a person may be under the influence and power of Christianity, and yet become an apostate: cf. #Heb 6:1-6. He is mentioned in #Mt 10:4 26:14-47 27:3 Lu 22:3,47,48 Joh 13:2,26,29 18:2-5 Ac 1:16,25, &c. 2. Son of Simon #Joh 6:71 13:2,26 surnamed Iscariot, i.e., a man of Kerioth #Jos 15:25 His name is uniformly the last in the list of the apostles, as given in the synoptic (i.e., the first three) Gospels. The evil of his nature probably gradually unfolded itself till "Satan entered into him" #Joh 13:27 and he betrayed our Lord #Joh 18:3 Afterwards he owned his sin with "an exceeding bitter cry," and cast the money he had received as the wages of his iniquity down on the floor of the sanctuary, and "departed and went and hanged himself" #Mt 27:5 He perished in his guilt, and "went unto his own place" #Ac 1:25 The statement in #Ac 1:18 that he "fell headlong and burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out," is in no way contrary to that in #Mt 27:5 The sucide first hanged himself, perhaps over the valley of Hinnom, "and the rope giving way, or the branch to which he hung breaking, he fell down headlong on his face, and was crushed and mangled on the rocky pavement below." Why such a man was chosen to be an apostle we know not, but it is written that "Jesus knew from the beginning who should betray him" #Joh 6:64 Nor can any answer be satisfactorily given to the question as to the motives that led Judas to betray his Master. "Of the motives that have been assigned we need not care to fix on any one as that which simply led him on. Crime is, for the most part, the result of a hundred motives rushing with bewildering fury through the mind of the criminal." |