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SUBJECT:
Judas
QUESTION:
What are your feelings about Judas? Did he commit a sin
worthy of the second death?
ANSWER:
No, he did not.
Clearly, God can see into
the future. The plan to have Christ come to this earth,
become human and die for our sins was thought up a long time
before it happened. In looking into that future, they saw
that Christ would be betrayed by someone. That someone was
Judas. Judas made up his own mind to do this thing. He
thought he was doing a harmless thing. When he saw what he
had done, he repented and went and hanged himself.
Matthew
27:3-5
3 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,
4 Saying, I have sinned in
that I have betrayed the innocent blood. And they said, What
is that to us? see thou to that.
5 And he cast down the
pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and
hanged himself.
The point is Judas had not
been given the Holy Spirit of God. Because of this, he will
be raised in the second resurrection and be given the whole
truth. One cannot know the truth of God without being given
first the Holy Spirit.
As to the question, if Judas
had not betrayed Jesus who would have? Clearly, knowing
human nature as we do, someone would have surely betrayed
Him.
Jeremiah
17:9
The heart is deceitful above
all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?
Here is what the Matthew
Henry Commentary says about the part of the verse where
Christ says that this man who betrays Him is cursed:
Matthew 26:17-25
(3.) that it
would prove a very dear bargain to the traitor; Woe to that
man by whom the Son of man is betrayed. This he said, not
only to awaken the conscience of Judas, and bring him to
repent, and revoke his bargain, but for warning to all
others to take heed of sinning like Judas; though God can
serve his own purposes by the sins of men, that doth not
make the sinner's condition the less woeful; It had been
good for that man, if he had not been born. Note, The ruin
that attends those who betray Christ, is so great, that it
were more eligible by far not be at all than to be thus
miserable. ~from Matthew
Henry's Commentary |