Chapter 14 - HOPELESS REPENTANCE
The tragedy of Judas is unquestionably the
saddest story of human sin and perfidy ever
recorded. That one could be in the chosen circle
of the intimate friends and disciples of Jesus
for over three years, listening to His teaching,
beholding the works of power that He wrought,
and observing the divinely perfect holiness of
His life, and then become His betrayer, seems
almost unbelievable. And yet there the record
stands in God's Holy Word and it will stand
forever, "Judas by transgression fell, that he
might go to his own place" (Acts 1:25).
We know nothing of his early years except
that he was a man of Kerioth, for this is really
the meaning of Iscariot. Kerioth was a city of
Judea located near Hazor, so we learn from this
that he was not, like the rest of the Twelve, a
Galilean. He was a Judean, and in all
probability had a measure of culture and
refinement beyond that of the motley group of
northern fishermen and villagers who with him
made up the apostolic band. Like the others his
first public act of obedience to the call of God
was in response to the Baptist's preaching of
repentance. When the publicans and sinners
justified God, being baptized with the baptism
of John, Judas took his place among them. He too
stepped down into the mystical river of judgment
and submitted to the rite which was intended to
show that he owned himself a repentant sinner
and was now looking for redemption in Israel.
What his inmost thoughts really were at this
solemn crisis in his life we cannot tell, but we
know he began as a disciple of John, for when
Peter called for nominations for the vacated
office of Judas he reminded his fellow disciples
that, "of these men which have companied with us
all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out
among us, beginning from the baptism of John,
unto that same day that he was taken up from us,
must one be ordained to be a witness with us of
his resurrection" (Acts 1:21-22). The necessary
inference is that Judas himself had answered to
this and that they had known him from the
baptism of John until his terrible defection. We
do not have any particulars of his call to be
one of the Twelve, but there are several others
of the company of whom this is also true. In
fact, only in the cases of Andrew and Peter,
John and James, Philip and Nathaniel, and
Matthew the publican, are we given direct
information as to how they came to be numbered
with the selected group.
It is noticeable that in the lists of the
Twelve as given by each of the Synoptics
(Matthew 10:2-4; Mark 3:14-19; Luke 6:13-16) his
name comes last and in each instance attention
is directed to him by the words, "who also
betrayed him," or, as Luke puts it, "which also
was the traitor." What a terrible designation to
stand for eternity.
I As to the esteem in which he was held by
the rest, ere his wickedness became known, it is
only necessary to say that he was the treasurer
of this little group of itinerant preachers,
dependent on the bounty of those who responded
to their message for daily bread. He "had the
bag" and John tells us he "bare what was put
therein." The words imply that he
misappropriated a part of the common fund. And
yet he was trusted, and even Jesus who needed
not that any should testify of men, for He knew
what was in man, patiently bore with him through
the years of his ill doing when, Gehazi-like, he
thought he was covering up his tracks. Not only
was he the apostolic bursar, but he had the
honorable position of almoner. It was he who was
appointed to minister to the poor. On the
occasion when Jesus ate the last Passover with
His disciples and turned to Judas saying, "That
thou doest, do quickly," none suspected what he
really referred to. As the traitor passed out
into the night they thought he had gone at the
Lord's behest to give something to the needy.
To what extent he was sincere when he went
forth as one of the Twelve, to preach that men
should repent and to prepare them for the
manifestation of the King, we cannot say and
speculation would be useless. But he was with
the rest when they exultingly declared, "Lord,
even the demons are subject unto us." Did he
question or shudder when the Master bade them
not rejoice because of this, wonderful as it
was, but rather that their names were written in
heaven?
Thomas DeQuincey, Marie Corelli, and other
literati have sought to build up a defense for
Judas and have even attempted to make a
well-intentioned but disappointed hero of him.
They even go so far as to intimate that the
betrayal was, after all, not a positive act of
treachery, but simply the ill-considered but
well-meant effort of a live man of affairs to
commit Jesus to a course for which He was
destined, as Iscariot honestly believed, but
which His humility and indecision made Him slow
to take. Such reasoning is preposterous and
borders on blasphemy, for it impugns the wisdom
and obedience of Jesus Himself, who was ever the
Father's delight, doing always those things that
pleased Him.
Judas never had a true love for Christ. The
incident of the alabaster box of spikenard makes
that perfectly evident. To Mary there was
nothing too good for Jesus, so she took her
woman's treasure, the box of precious ointment,
and broke it and poured it upon His head, as He
said in deep appreciation of her devotion, for
His burial, of which she had probably learned
while sitting at His feet. But to Judas, and to
others who were more or less influenced by him,
this was utter waste. With cool calculation he
figured that the ointment if sold would have
yielded three hundred denarii, a full year's
wages for a Roman soldier or an ordinary
laboring man. Cunningly he insinuated that it
was wasted on Jesus when it might have relieved
much human misery if given to the poor. But it
was only to cover up the covetousness of his
heart that he mentioned the poor. He was really
calculating the use he could have made of so
large a sum for his own ends.
Such a man proved to be a ready tool in the
hands of a designing and corrupt priesthood. His
itching palms would make it easy for him to
agree to sell the Lord into their hands for
thirty pieces of silver. Did he recall the
prophecy of Zechariah as to that, or was he so
blinded and had he become so insensate through
covetousness that the prophet's words had gone
from his memory, if he ever knew them? He
probably fulfilled them unconsciously, as he
also fulfilled certain prophetic passages in the
Psalms, notably, "He that eateth bread with me
hath lifted up his heel against me."
Note his perfect self-command and lack of
telltale change of color when all were gathered
around the table and Jesus informed them that
one of their number should betray Him. Judas
asked coolly, "Is it I?" and gave no sign of an
accusing conscience. Even the reference to the
sop and the grace that led the Lord to give him
the choice portion left him unmoved as before.
He arose from that feast of love and went out --
and it was night. Not only was it night in the
natural sense, but it was dark, dark night in
his soul, to be unrelieved forevermore. He had
turned his back forever on the light. Satan had
definitely entered into him. He was under
control of the spirit that energetically works
in the children of disobedience. Christ's words
are pregnant with meaning, "Have not I chosen
you twelve, and one of you is a devil?"
It would seem that just as one may yield
himself unto God and thus be filled and
dominated by the Holy Spirit, so one can hand
himself over to the authority of darkness and be
controlled by Satan himself. It was thus with
Judas. Any qualms of conscience he had ever
known were ended now. Any kindly regard for
Jesus which had ever held sway in his breast was
now forever stifled. Any tenderness of heart he
had ever experienced was now changed to hardness
like that of the nether millstone. He was sold
under sin in the fullest sense. For him there
could now be no turning back until his nefarious
plot was executed in all its horrid details. The
receiving of the money from the wiley priests,
the guiding of the mob to Gethsemane's shades,
the effrontery that led him to walk boldly
forward exclaiming, "Hail, Master!" as he
planted a hypocritical kiss on His cheek -- all
these tell of a conscience seared and a heart
that had become adamant in wickedness.
But even for Judas there came an awakening at
last. When he saw how meekly the Saviour allowed
them to maltreat and condemn Him his
sensibilities were stirred, and although there
was no turning to God he regretted his fearful
error. I cannot do better than let Matthew
himself tell the story:
"Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he
saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and
brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the
chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned,
in that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And
they said, What is that to us? see thou to that.
And he cast down the pieces of silver in the
temple, and departed, and went and hanged
himself. And the chief priests took the silver
pieces, and said, It is not lawful for to put
them into the treasury, because it is the price
of blood. And they took counsel, and bought with
them the potter's field, to bury strangers in.
Wherefore that field was called, The field of
blood, unto this day."
Since Judas repented, was he not forgiven and
will he not after all find a place with the
blest even though in his despair he filled a
suicide's grave? Our Lord's own words forbid any
such conclusion. He declared, when speaking of
Judas, "Good were it for that man if he had
never been born." This negatives any possibility
of salvation for him in another world; for, in
spite of the enormity of his guilt, if he ever
attained to the joys of paradise it would have
been well for him to be born.
The fact is, the Holy Spirit, who selects His
words with divine meticulousness, used an
altogether different word here, from that which
we have been considering, for repentance. It is
not metanoia but metamellornai --
not a change of mind which involves a new
attitude toward sin and self and God, but "to
care afterwards," that is, to be regretful or
remorseful. Thousands of imprisoned convicts,
guilty of most atrocious crimes, repent in this
lower sense. They would give much if they had
not committed the offenses for which they are
now suffering the penalty of the law, but they
have never bowed the knee to God nor confessed
their guilt to Him. So with Judas. He
acknowledged his folly and wickedness to the
callous priests who contemptuously replied,
"What is that to us? see thou to that," and then
were very punctilious as to the use they should
make of the "tainted money" thrown down at their
feet. But Judas went into eternity without one
word with God regarding his sin or one evidence
of repentance unto life.
Remorse is not repentance toward God. It
brings no pardon, no remission of sins. It is
but the terrible aftermath of a course of
persistent rejection of the Word of the Lord,
which, while it leaves the soul in an agony of
bitter sorrow over opportunities forever lost
and grace despised, works no change in the
conscience but leaves it unpurged forever. It is
in this connection that the history of Judas
becomes so important for us. It is God's own
warning signal to all who tamper with His truth
and grace. To play fast and loose with divine
revelation is fatal. Its dire effects abide
forever.
There is a soft, easy-going philosophy, much
in vogue in our day, that would give men hope of
a purifying repentance after death, no matter
what state they might be in when life's day is
ended. But the case of Judas is the negative
answer to all this. Nothing he had ever heard
from the lips of the Son of God during those
years of intimate association with Him gave the
remorseful traitor one ray of hope when he at
the last began to apprehend something of the
fearful wrong he had done. In his harrowing
despair he turned not to God, but sought to get
farther away from Him, and rushed out of the
world a self-murderer.
Some have fancied they detected a discrepancy
between Matthew's account of his death and that
given by Peter in the upper room. But the two
passages are easily pieced together. Judas
hanged himself, probably in the very plot of
ground purchased by the priests for the thirty
pieces of silver. Suspended from a tree, the
bough to which the rope was tied in all
likelihood broke and he fell to the ground,
rupturing his abdomen, as he did so, so that
"all his bowels gushed out." It is easy to
visualize the horrid scene.
What an end to the life of one who had been
numbered with the Twelve, but what an
unspeakably awful introduction to an unending
eternity of woe! Judas is somewhere today. He
will exist throughout the ages. And never will
he be able to lose sight of the face of the One
whom he betrayed and of the cross upon which He
died. But memory will not cleanse his soul.
Though the victim of a remorse that must become
increasingly poignant as the eons roll on, his
must ever be a hopeless repentance because it is
based, not on a sense of the wrong done to God,
but of the wretchedness in which he involved
himself by his stupendous folly. Byron has
written:
"There are wanderers o'er the sea of
eternity,
Whose bark drives on and on,
And anchored ne'er shall be."
Judas, not Iscariot, has described such as
"wandering stars, to whom is reserved the
blackness of darkness for ever" (Jude 13). Those
who refuse to turn to God in repentance while
grace is freely offered are destined to repent
when all hope has fled and they shall be as
stars eternally out of their orbit. Created to
circle round the Sun of Righteousness, they have
gone off on a tangent of self-will, and despite
all the constraining power of the love of Christ
shall plunge deeper and deeper into the outer
darkness, driving ever on, farther and farther
from the One whom they have spurned and whose
mercy they have rejected. It is an alarming
picture, and God meant it to be such, for He
would not have any man trifle with sin, but He
desires that all should turn to Him and live.
It brings us face to face with what we saw
before, that character tends to permanence. Men
so accustom themselves to certain courses that
they lose all desire to change, even though they
may realize their behavior entails misery and
woe. Hell itself is but the condition that men
choose for themselves at last made permanent. By
their own volition they unfit themselves for the
society of the good and the blessed; moreover
they reject the opportunity for the impartation
of a new life and nature by a second birth which
would make them suited to God in order that they
would be at home in His society; and so there is
nothing before them but "everlasting destruction
from the presence of the Lord, and from the
glory of his power; when he shall come to be
glorified in his saints, and to be admired in
all them that believe (because our testimony
among you was believed) in that day" (2nd
Thessalonians 1:9-10).
It is true that God is love, and that He
wills not the death of the sinner, but that all
should turn to Him and live. It is equally true
that He is light; and sin unjudged and
unconfessed cannot abide the blaze of His glory,
but must seek its own dark level. Of the lost it
is written, "These shall go away into
everlasting punishment." It implies, in a sense,
a certain voluntariness on their part. Unfitted
to abide in the light, like bats and vampires
and other evil creatures of the night, they
seek, like the infidel Altamont, a hiding place
from God. It was he who is reported to have
cried when dying, "O, Thou blasphemed and yet
indulgent God! Hell itself were a refuge if it
hide me from Thy face." Men can sin till, as
Whittier so aptly puts it, they "lack the will
to turn." For them there may be endless remorse,
but no true repentance toward God, and therefore
no hope forevermore.
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