Online Resource Library
Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 538. The Apostle
Subjects in this Topic:
II
The Apostle
Literature
Blunt, J. J., Plain Sermons, ii. (1868) 256.
Burn, A. E., The Crown of Thorns (1911), 1.
Dawson, W. J., The Man Christ Jesus (1901), 358.
Edersheim, A., The Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah, ii. (1887) 471.
Fairbairn, A. M., Studies in the Life of Christ (1881), 258.
Holtzmann, O., The Life of Jesus (1904), 457.
Kemble, C., Memorials of a Closed Ministry, iii. 61.
Ker, J., Sermons, i. (1885) 282.
Lange, J. P., The Life of the Lord Jesus Christ, vi. (1864).
Liddon, H. P., Passiontide Sermons (1891), 210.
Lightfoot, J. B., Sermons Preached in St. Paul's Cathedral (1891), 58.
Maclaren, A., Leaves from the Tree of Life (1899), 153.
Moulton, J. H., Visions of Sin (1898), 93.
Neander, A., The Life of Jesus Christ (1880), 123, 419.
Page, G. A., The Diary of Judas Iscariot (1912).
Parker, J., The Ark of God (1877), 40.
Rhees, R., The Life of Jesus of Nazareth (1900), 178.
Ross, J. M. E., The Christian Standpoint (1911), 103.
Selwyn, E. C., The Oracles in the New Testament (1912), 214.
Stalker, J., The Trial and Death of Jesus Christ (1894), 110.
Trench, R. C., Shipwrecks of Faith (1867), 59.
Weiss, B., The Life of Christ, ii. (1884) 273.
Christian World Pulpit, lxxvii. (1910) 138 (G. Barratt).
Dictionary of the Bible, ii. (1899) 796 (A. Plummer).
Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels, i. (1906) 907 (J. G. Tasker).
Encyclopœdia Biblica, ii. (1901), col. 2623(T. K. Cheyne).
Expositor, 3rd Ser., x. (1889) 161 (G. A. Chadwick).
Homiletic Review, lxv. (1913) 311 (A. T. Cadoux).
Jewish Review, iv. (1913) 199 (S. Krauss).
We now come to the question which is in our minds through all the story of this man's career-Why was Judas called to be an Apostle? Jesus chose twelve that they might be with Him. He offered to them His friendship. He admitted them into the very closest intimacy. He lavished upon them all the wealth of His tender and gracious love. And from that little circle of twelve came forth the man who was to sell Him. “Did not I choose you the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” And that was the peculiar bitterness in the death of Christ. It was brought about by the instrumentality of a friend. The hate of the priests, the furious clamour of the mob, the pitiful cowardice of Pilate, the brutality of the soldiers-Jesus could contemplate the prospect of it all with a quiet heart; but the thought that one of His own beloved and cherished Twelve should sell Him to His deadly foes for a slave's ransom pierced Him to the quick. “Mine own familiar friend,” was the cry of His outraged heart, “in whom I trusted, who did eat of my braid, hath lifted up his heel against me.” “When Jesus had thus said, he was troubled in the spirit, and testified, and said, Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray me.” And the one who thus returned treachery for love and pierced his Master's soul was Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon, one of the Twelve.
The nethermost circle [of hell] is buried in the heart of the earth: it is the region of pitiless cold: every spark of warm love is banished from this spot where treachery is punished. When the false heart has sold itself to the deceit which works evil against those to whom it is bound by ties of blood or gratitude, love flies from it. In such a chill heart pity cannot dwell; and, alas! the penalty of evil is to place itself under influences which tend to perpetuate the evil. The false, cold heart dwells where the icy blast does but intensify its coldness; the breath which beats upon it freezes all it touches. This, the possession of a heart out of which love has perished, is the last doom of sin!1 [Note: W. B. Carpenter, The Spiritual Message of Dante, 88.]
1. Now, first of all, observe that there are sayings about Judas which might seem to imply that his part in life was forced on him by an inexorable destiny. St. John says that Jesus knew from the beginning who should betray Him. Our Lord asked the assembled Apostles: “Have not I chosen you the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” In His great Intercession, He thus addresses the Father: “Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition.” And at the election of Matthias, St. Peter points to the destiny of Judas as marked out in prophecy: “His bishoprick let another take”: and he speaks of Judas as going to “his own place.” This and other language of the kind has been understood to represent Judas as unable to avoid his part as the Betrayer: and the sympathy and compassion which is thus created for him is likely to blind us to a true view of his unhappy career.
The mistake has arisen from a confusion between foreknowledge and fore-ordaining. We know of many things that will happen to-morrow, but we cannot be said to bring them to pass. Further, the idea that our Lord allocated to Judas the part of the villain in the crucifixion drama is not consistent with the Master's constant attitude of rebuke. Had Judas been predestined to treachery, and had he had no choice in the matter, our blessed Lord would surely have pitied rather than blamed him. And our feelings towards Judas would necessarily be very different. For if we offer gratitude and praise to Him who by a perfect life and an atoning death wrought our salvation, what should be our attitude to one who, by the compulsory damnation of his own soul, contributed to the saving of his fellows? Further, with all reverence be it said, God Himself would have no right to condemn any child of His to so despicable a career. The fate of the traitor was the choice of Judas and not the will of God.
The truth is that the Bible looks at human lives from two very different and, indeed, opposite points of view. Sometimes it regards men merely as factors in the Divine plan for governing the world-for bringing about results determined on by the Divine Wisdom; and when this is the case, it speaks of them as though they had no personal choice or control of their destiny, and were only counters or instruments in the Hand of the Mighty Ruler of the Universe. At other times Holy Scripture regards men as free agents, endowed with a choice between truth and error, between right and wrong, between a higher and a lower line of conduct; and then it enables us to trace the connexion between the use they make of their opportunities and their final destiny. Both ways of looking at life are, of course, strictly accurate. On the one hand, it belongs to the sovereignty of the Almighty and Eternal Being, that we, His creatures, should be but tools in His Hands; on the other, it befits His justice that no moral being, on probation, should suffer eternal loss save through his own act and choice. The language of Scripture about Pharaoh illustrates the two points of view. At one time we are told that the Lord hardened Pharaoh's heart, that he would not let the children of Israel go; at another, that Pharaoh hardened his own heart. The same fact is looked at, first from the point of view of what was needed in order to bring about the deliverance of Israel, and next from the point of view of Pharaoh's personal responsibility. St. Paul stands at one point of view in the ninth chapter of his Epistle to the Romans, and at another in the twelfth. It is no doubt difficult, if not impossible, with our present limited range of knowledge, to reconcile the Divine Sovereignty in the moral world with the moral freedom of each individual man. Some of the great mistakes in Christian theology are due to an impatience of this difficulty. Calvin would sacrifice man's freedom to the Sovereignty of God; Arminius would sacrifice God's Sovereignty to the assertion of man's freedom. We cannot hope here to discover the formula that combines the two parallel lines of truth, which meet somewhere in the Infinite beyond our point of vision; but we must hold fast to each separately, in spite of the apparent contradiction. If our Lord, looking down upon our life with His Divine intelligence, speaks of Judas, once and again, as an instrument whereby the redemption of the world was to be worked out, the gospel history also supplies us with materials which go to show that Judas had his freedom of choice, his opportunities, his warnings, and that he became the Betrayer because he chose to do so.
No combination of all the natural forces in the planet can vie for one moment with the potentialities of the human volition. In its secret chamber we can force destinies. The combination of freedom and necessity that goes on there is a mystery we shall probably never explain. The nearest approach to it, perhaps, is in the formula of Hegel: “It is only as we are in ourselves that we can develop ourselves, yet is it we ourselves that develop ourselves.” Despite the dense sophistical webs that have been woven round this subject, man has always believed in his freedom.1 [Note: J. Brierley.]
2. The only reasonable account of the choice of Judas that we can form is this, that our Lord acted by Judas as He did by all the rest. He accepted him on the ground of a profession which was consistent as far as human eye could see. Christ Himself received members into His Church as He intended that we should receive them; for, had He used His Divine omniscience in His judgments, the whole structure of His life would have been out of our reach as an example. Judas accordingly entered among the Apostles, because, in all outward things, and even in some inward convictions, he was like them. He came under the same influences, listened to the same invitations and warnings, and they were meant as truly for Judas as for the rest. It would have gladdened the heart of Christ had Judas yielded to the voice of mercy. It is not any question for us how then the Saviour could have suffered for the sins of men, any more than it is a question how the history of the world would proceed without the sinful deeds which are permitted by God and gathered by Him into the final result. The plan of the universe, in its lowest or its highest part, does not rest on the doom of any man to be a sinner. God forbid! There are manifold doors in the Divine purpose which God may open or shut as He pleases, but there is one always shut-that God should tempt any man to evil,-and there is one for ever open-that He wills not the death of the sinner, but that he should turn and live. Whatever difficulties may be in these questions of freedom and decree, we can never permit the speck of one to touch the Divine purity and mercy. If Judas had come, he would have been welcomed as any other.
If, when Judas was chosen to his high office, his heart had been already cankered with avarice, and his character debased, then indeed the difficulty would be great; then indeed his selection would have been (we cannot think the thought without irreverence) a solemn unreality, a mere dramatic display. But we have no reason to suppose this. When he was chosen, he was worthy of the choice; he was not a bad man; he had, we must suppose, considerable capacity for good; there was in him perhaps the making of a St. Peter or a St. John. His whole history points to this view of his character. Can we suppose that he alone had made no sacrifices, suffered no privations, met with no reproaches, during those three years, in which through good and evil report he followed that Master who was despised and rejected of men, who had not where to lay His head? Can we imagine that he alone had given no pledges of his earnestness, that he alone escaped the bitter consequences of discipleship, that from him alone Christ's unpopularity glanced off without leaving a bruise or a scar behind? And does not his terrible end read the same lesson? The sudden revulsion of feeling, the bitter remorse, the crushing despair, so fatal in its result, show what he might have been, if certain vile passions had not been cherished in him till they had eaten out all his better nature. And so it was that throughout the Lord's ministry, even to the last fatal moment, he seems to have been unsuspected by his brother-Apostles, moving about with them, trusted by them, appearing outwardly as one of them. On that night when the Master announced the approaching treachery, each asked sorrowfully, “Is it I?”-not enduring to entertain the thought of himself, and yet not daring to suspect the evil in another. All this while Judas was on his trial, as we are on our trial. He was selected for the Apostleship, as we are called into Church-membership. But, like us, he was allowed the exercise of his human free will; he was not compelled by an irresistible fate to act worthily of his calling; he was free to make his election between good and evil; he rejected the good, and he chose the evil.
Do not forget that Judas was once a little child, fondled and cherished by those who loved him. His mother probably spoke of him as “dear little Judas.” He was not always the distracted man who committed suicide in despair:
I saw a Judas once,
It was an old man's face. Greatly that artist erred.
Judas had eyes of starry blue,
And lips like thine that gave the traitor's kiss.1 [Note: J. E. Rattenbury, The Twelve, 288.]
Why did Jesus choose you? Could you ever make out that mystery? Was it because of your respectability? Was it because of the desirableness of your companionship? Was it because of the utter absence of all devilishness in your nature? What if Judas did for you what you were only too timid to do for yourself? The Incarnation, with a view to human redemption, is the supreme mystery; in comparison with that, every other difficulty is as a molehill to a mountain. In your heart of hearts are you saying, “If this man were a prophet, he would know what manner of man this Judas is, for he is a sinner?” O thou self-contented Simon, presently the Lord will have somewhat to say unto thee, and His parable will smite thee like a sword.2 [Note: Joseph Parker, The Ark of God, 43.]
3. Let us recall Christ's method. He did not receive recruits without caution. Take the case of the young and wealthy man who sought eternal life. Our Lord made the young man sift his heart. He brought him to the test: “Sell all that thou hast.” It is a picture of our Lord's method. No man should join His band under any mistake if possible. Christ sought to arm with weapons against self-deception those who volunteered to follow Him. Above all things, He made it clear that riches and worldly wealth were not to be looked for by those who would come after Him. The incidents recorded in the close of Luk_9:1-62 are enough to convince us of this. “A certain man (was it Judas?) said unto him, I will follow thee whithersoever thou goest. And Jesus said unto him, The foxes have holes, and the birds of the heaven have nests; but the Son of man hath not where to lay his head.” No words can point out more clearly that earthly advantage must neither be sought nor expected by those who would follow Him. If the certain man in this case had been Judas, full of speculative hopes and dreams of possible wealth and splendour, the answer of Christ is an explicit caution, nay, a rebuke of any such anticipations; but whether this “certain man” was Judas or not, it is enough to remind ourselves that our Lord's method was to place before those who sought Him the need of complete self-surrender, and the banishing of worldly dreams and futile expectations of temporal glories. Not unwarned then (we may well conclude) did Judas attach himself to Christ's company.
Judas must once have had real faith in the Lord Jesus; for he, like the other Apostles, healed the sick and cast out devils in His Name; he preached that men should repent, and there is not a hint that he preached it less sincerely or less effectively than the rest. And more than that-he had left his home and all that he had, like the other Apostles, and it is scarcely possible that he should have done so unless he had, at the time, real love, as well as faith, toward the Lord Jesus Christ. Who would have guessed that he who had made such a sacrifice would ever fall through covetousness? Who would have thought it possible that such a saint could become a devil?
If thou hast dipped thy foot in the brink, yet venture not over Rubicon. Run not into extremities from whence there is no regression. In the vicious ways of the world, it mercifully falleth out that we become not extempore wicked, but it taketh some time and pains to undo ourselves. We fall not from virtue, like Vuloan from heaven, in a day. Bad dispositions require some time to grow into bad habits; bad habits must undermine the good; and often-repeated acts make us habitually evil; so that by gradual depravations, and while we are but staggeringly evil, we are not left without thoughtful rebukes, and merciful interventions, to recall us unto ourselves.1 [Note: Sir Thomas Browne, Christian Morals, 104.]
4. Let us conceive, then, a devout and patriotic young Jew, his hands busy all the week with honourable toil, his heart full of a fervent and honourable ambition to see Messiah in His glory, and Jerusalem once more a praise in the earth. And what should that Messiah be? Surely the hero who reigned in the visions of a thousand other patriotic hearts-a mighty warrior to sit on the throne of David, and rule with empire that should crush as dust the iron power of Rome. Human, of course, he would be, and less than David; for to the Jew it was irreverent to imagine that the glory of the canonized past could ever be matched in the present, or that God could ever do again what He bad done so often before. Antiquity alone was quite enough to invest those distant ages with grandeur altogether unapproachable in later and therefore inferior ages. Yet even within these limits there was room enough for a grand and soul-inspiring ideal; and we have at any rate no right to blame Judas and Peter and Philip if, in the fervour of patriotism, they forgot that six centuries ago a prophet had declared their ideal a “light thing” compared with the work which the Servant of Jehovah was in real fact to do. How far worldly and personal thoughts at first mingled with Judas's visions we cannot say. To fight his way to the front in the army of the conqueror of the nations, to take an honourable place in his councils, to share in the spoils he should wring from proud kings and warrior peoples-was it really such a degrading ambition? We do not use abusive names of a very similar ambition when we see it now in a young enthusiast who enters his profession with a conviction that there is glory to be won in it; and we do not always pour lofty scorn on him if he conceives the ignoble idea of making his fortune as well. The wrong of such an ambition comes only when a higher is presented and the soul chooses what, till that higher ambition came, was noble, but has now lost its lustre and become a sordid thing.
No doubt he shared with his fellow-Apostles in the great hopes of a kingdom, of that kingdom which David's Son and Israel's King should establish. But the fatal difference between him and them was this-they, in the presence and under the teaching of their Lord, suffered these expectations to be transformed and transfigured from earthly to heavenly. Translated by their Lord into a new world of righteousness and purity and truth, of fellowship with Him and through Him with the Father, that was indeed a kingdom to them, a kingdom which should one day immeasurably transcend even in outward splendour all the kingdoms of the earth, but for the outward glories of which they were content to wait. Not so he. The kingdom of One who had not where to lay his head, who was not ministered unto, but laboriously ministered to others, whom the princes of this world rejected and despised-that was no kingdom to him.
It was certain, and is so for ever, that such Righteousness as Jesus set forth must be the essential requirement for admittance into God's Eternal Kingdom. Into it no sin can enter. The very existence of the perfected Kingdom depends on the exclusion from it of all that is evil, self-seeking, or unloving. Admit sin, and not only does all security for blessedness disappear, but the Kingdom itself, as the Kingdom of God, has no longer any existence. It is not only that the Righteousness of God decrees this, but that His Love for His children requires it. The Kingdom of God as the final goal of man is a society, and in that society perfect Love must rule-not only Love for God, but for one another-Love itself-the Love that God is-such practical Love as Christ pictured in His teaching and set forth in His Person. Apart from the reign of such Love, there can be no eternal blessedness for God's children, and no real Kingdom of God their Father.1 [Note: W. L. Walker, The Cross and the Kingdom, 187.]
When Lazarus rose at Christ's command
And God was glorified of men,
The children cried Hosanna then,
But Judas would not understand.
When seated with Thy chosen band
Thou didst to Thy disciples say
That one, O Christ, would Thee betray,
But Judas would not understand.
The sop revealed the traitor's hand,
In answer to the question made;
They saw by whom Thou wert betrayed,
But Judas would not understand.
The Jews, O Christ, Thy life demand,
'Twas purchased for a price like this-
For silver pieces and a kiss,
But Judas would not understand.
Thou, with Thine own unstainèd hand,
Didst wash the feet, and humbly teach
That such a task becometh each,
But Judas would not understand.
“Watch thou and pray,” was Thy command,
Lest, thoughtless, the disciples fall
Beneath the tempter's bitter thrall;
But Judas would not understand.2 [Note: J. Brownlie, Hymns of the Greek Church, 41.]
5. The choice of one who subsequently fell is analogous with all the ways of God. Other ambassadors of Christ have fallen. In every age men have been endowed with mighty powers of genius and with vast resources, and yet their free will has not been cancelled. The marvellous brain of Napoleon could have permanently elevated all Europe if he had only been true to what is called one's better self, and yet he was not coerced. It remained open to Napoleon to drown the civilized world in blood, to compromise the future of history, and permanently to degrade the political aspirations of Frenchmen, by the abuse of powers which God, having given, did not paralyze. Nay, the meanest who rejects salvation has a soul for which Christ died; and that universal privilege, vastly greater than all special gifts which may be superadded, does not ensure heaven. Doubtless the treason of Judas remains unmatched in turpitude, but it is not in kind that it differs from many more; and sober commentators have believed that his guilt is yet to be overtopped by the “lawless one” of the last time.
If the further question is asked why Judas was entrusted with the purse, we may answer that when Judas was alienated and unfaithful in heart, his very gift became also his greatest temptation, and, indeed, hurried him to his ruin. And so, as ever in like circumstances, the very things which might have been most of blessing become most of curse, and the judgment of hardening fulfils itself by that which in itself is good. Nor could “the bag” have been afterwards taken from him without both exposing him to the others, and precipitating his moral destruction. And so he had to be left to the process of inward ripening, till all was ready for the sickle.
Every power that is put into action goes on to a determined limit assigned by God. His judgments are not judgments that wait like thunderbolts under His throne ready to dart forth when He shall command; but they are accumulating in the soul of every man in the relation in which every man stands to his fellow-men. Every event which is going to happen to you next week, every coming event is prepared for by your inmost thought and interest for months and years past. God's judgments are instantaneous, present, growing.1 [Note: W. H. Channing.]
The hardening effects of sin, which save from pain, are worse judgments than the sharpest suffering. Anguish is, I am more and more sure, corrective; hardness has in it no Hope. Which would you choose if you were compelled to make a choice?-the torture of a dividing limb granulating again, and by the very torture giving indications of life, or the painlessness of mortification; the worst throb from the surgeon's knife, or ossification of the heart? In the spiritual world the pangs of the most exquisite sensitiveness cut to the quick by the sense of fault and aching almost hopelessly, but leaving conscience still alive, and aspiration still uncrushed, or the death of every remnant of what is good, the ossification of the soul, the painless extinction of the moral being, its very self?1 [Note: Life and Letters of the Rev. F. W. Robertson, 239.]
Thou knowest, Lord! Thou know'st my life's deep story,
And all the mingled good and ill I do!
Thou see'st my shame; my few stray gleams of glory;
Where I am false and where my soul rings true!
Like warp and woof the good and ill are blended,
Nor do I see the pattern that I weave;
Yet in Thy love the whole is comprehended,
And in Thy hand my future lot I leave!
Only, dear Lord! make plain the path of duty;
Let not my shame and sorrow weigh me down,
Lest in despair I fail to see its beauty,
And weeping vainly miss the victor's crown!2 [Note: H. W. Hawkes.]