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Commentary Index | Return to PrayerRequest.com | DownloadGreater Men and Women of the Bible by James Hastings: 542. What Were His Motives?
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What Were His Motives?
1. The leading motive was probably avarice. This is, at any rate, the most obvious motive. “There is no vice,” says Farrar, “at once so absorbing, so unreasonable, and so degrading as the vice of avarice, and avarice was the besetting sin in the dark soul of the traitor Judas.”
Avarice is one of the most powerful of motives. In the teaching of the pulpit it may seldom be noticed, but both in Scripture and in history it occupies a prominent place. It is questionable if anything else is the cause of so many ill deeds Avarice breaks all the commandments. Often has it put the weapon into the hand of the murderer; in most countries of the world it has in every age made the ordinary business of the market-place a warfare of falsehood; the bodies of men and the hearts of women have been sold for gold. Why is it that gigantic wrongs flourish from age to age, and practices utterly indefensible are continued with the overwhelming sanction of society? It is because there is money in them. Avarice is a passion of demonic strength; but it may help us to keep it out of our hearts if we remember that it was the sin of Judas.
We do great injustice to Iscariot in thinking him wicked above all common wickedness. He was only a common money-lover, and, like all money-lovers, did not understand Christ-could not make out the worth of Him, or meaning of Him. He never thought He would be killed. He was horror-struck when he found that Christ would be killed; threw his money away instantly, and hanged himself. How many of our present moneyseekers, think you, would have the grace to hang themselves, whoever was killed? But Judas was a common, selfish, muddle-headed, pilfering fellow; his hand always in the bag of the poor, not caring for them. Helpless to understand Christ, he yet believed in Him, much more than most of us do; had seen Him do miracles, thought He was quite strong enough to shift for Himself, and he, Judas, might as well make his own little byeperquisites out of the affair. Christ would come out of it well enough, and he have his thirty pieces. Now, that is the moneyseeker's idea, all over the world. He doesn't hate Christ, but can't understand Him-doesn't care for Him-sees no good in that benevolent business; makes his own little job out of it at all events, come what will. And thus, out of every mass of men, you have a certain number of bagmen-your “fee-first” men, whose main object is to make money. And they do make it-make it in all sorts of unfair ways, chiefly by the weight and force of money itself, or what is called the power of capital; that is to say, the power which money, once obtained, has over the labour of the poor, so that the capitalist can take all its produce to himself, except the labourer's food. That is the modern Judas's way of “carrying the bag” and “bearing what is put therein.”1 [Note: Ruskin, The Crown of Wild Olive, § 33 (Works, xviii. 414).]
2. Judas was probably also ambitious and “loved the preeminence.” Why did he care for money? Because he wished to be someone, to shine, to be noticed, to have power. Perhaps it was with this object that he joined the band at first; and, fearing he was going to miss it, he struck out for himself. It is the old mistake, constantly repeated, of supposing that power lies in something without, rather than in something within.
Contrast St. John! A fisherman's son, without the shrewdness, the ability, possibly the prestige, that belonged to the man of the South! Who could predict that his name would one day be known throughout the world and that his writings would absorb the attention of the greatest minds that civilization has known? He has not the mark of a Socrates or a Demosthenes, nor does he seem to be like one of the old prophets-only a plain fisherman's son. Earnest; and though religious, yet stormy and perhaps passionate; a Son of Thunder, with much that is earthly and poor. And yet he it is who not only impresses his own countrymen, but sits like a seer in Asia with crowds of disciples trying to catch every word.
Writing to his mother on his forty-ninth birthday, Professor Charteris says:
“My life has been one of amazing mercy. I hope my ambitions are now understood and put away. I don't know; but I wish they were. Ambition is an unholy thing, because it prevents a man from waiting upon God. That is how it comes to be sin. From it may the Lord deliver us all.”1 [Note: K. D. McLaren, Memoir of Professor Charleris, 120.]
3. But deeper than either greed or ambition, as indeed the root of these vices, there possessed the soul of Judas an intense selfishness. “The essence of every evil,” says Maclaren, “is selfishness, and when you have that, it is exactly as with cooks when they have what they call ‘stock' by the fireside. They can make any kind of soup out of it with the right flavouring. We have got the mother-tincture of all wickedness in each of our hearts, and therefore do not let us be so sure that it cannot be manipulated and flavoured into any form of sin.”
And what is selfishness but the visible result of a nature that is absorbed with the things of the world? Judas was impervious to spiritual influences, else he had not lived so closely with Christ to betray Him at the last. Judas could boast of being a clear-sighted man, who saw things as they really were, and was not misled by the illusive dreams of which the heads of his brethren were full. How was it that they could see what he could not see, and had faculties capable of recognizing the greatness of a Master whom he only despised as a mistaken enthusiast? It is this absolute deadness of spiritual perception that was the radical flaw in the character of Judas, and that makes the study of his history really profitable for our example and warning. It is a very exceptional thing that one of us should be under a temptation to anything that may be called treachery; but we may all do well to bear in mind that what made the fall of Judas possible was that he was clear-sighted with respect to material objects, and to all the things of this life, but that the spiritual world was quite invisible to him.
Judas had the same chances of better things as his brother-Apostles had. There were mixed motives, no doubt, in the hearts of all. The narrative shows us that the worldly spirit sometimes broke forth in rivalry (Mar_9:33-34; Mar_10:35-37), and in covetousness (Mat_20:26); the leaven of worldliness was there. But in the other Apostles devotion and fidelity to their Lord overmastered the lower impulses of their hearts. “One man,” as Bishop Thirlwall says, “cannot be described as more selfish than another.” What is true is that one man curbs selfishness less than his neighbour does. The comrades of Judas had weaknesses and worldly desires, even as he had; but they yielded themselves to the good influence which was so near them. They did not wholly understand Christ's teaching; but that teaching, even when not fully grasped, being followed by willing hearts, lifted their conceptions to higher levels, and helped to free them from the moral tyranny of self. But in Judas the self-interest was allowed to grow; he fostered it in thought; he nourished it by habitual embezzlement of the funds entrusted to him. Character grows from habits; and he adopted bad ones.
Few things disgust his fellow-men more, or render them more unwilling to help him, than self-seeking or egotism on the part of a man who is striving to get on. A thoroughly selfish fellow may score small successes, but he will in the end find himself heavily handicapped in the effort to attain really great success. Selfishness is a vice, and a thoroughly ugly one. When he takes thought exclusively of himself, a man does not violate only the canons of religion and morality. He is untrue to the obligation, of his station in society, he is neglecting his own interests, and he will inevitably and quickly be found out. I have often watched the disastrous consequences of this sin, both in private and in public life. It is an insidious sin. It leads to the production of the hard, small-minded man, and, in its milder form, of the prig. Both are ill-equipped for the final race; they may get ahead at first; but as a rule they will be found to have fallen out when the last lap is reached. It is the man who possesses the virtue of true humility, and who thinks of his neighbours, and is neither critical nor a grumbler if they have good fortune, who has his neighbours on his side, and therefore in the end gets the best chance, even in this world, assuming always that he puts his soul into his own work.1 [Note: Lord Haldane, The Conduct of Life, 16.]
4. Did Judas become utterly evil? Did his wicked treachery put him absolutely beyond all Divine mercy? Mr. J. E. Rattenbury asks these questions, and answers No. “You remember,” he says, “that in His last prayer Jesus mentions Judas. He calls him ‘the son of perdition,' and Martin Luther translates that term as ‘a lost child.' We assume that Jesus was repudiating Judas when He called him the son of perdition. But is that true? Was He not really praying for him-speaking of him tenderly as a lost child? Listen to His prayer as He prays for all His disciples:
“ ‘While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition'-the lost child.
“No, Jesus was not tearing Judas out of His heart when He made that prayer; He was lamenting over His dear friend, telling His Father about His lost child. Put yourself in the place of Jesus, and think how He would pray. He had a number of disciples and friends whom He loved, and He came to the end of His life, and prayed His Father to continue to keep His friends in His love; He was gratified that He had been able to keep those who had been true to Him; but there was one exception, and in the midst of that prayer of thanksgiving you can hear the broken heart of Christ sobbing, ‘But there is a lost child. I have lost none save one.' Oh! the heart-break in it! ‘There is a lost child.' It is thus that He thinks of Judas.”1 [Note: J. E. Rattenbury, The Twelve, 293.]
It is indeed difficult to conceive how Judas could through eternity arrive at peace, with such a memory ever present with him. We can scarcely conceive how even the fullest forgiveness of God could enable him to forgive himself, or purge his memory of its mortal agony. It is evident that the purer we become we must increasingly abhor and loathe all sin, especially in ourselves; and thus it would appear that if memory remains in the future stages of our being, the retrospect of past transgression must become ever increasingly painful to us. Yet we cannot doubt but that there must be a sufficient antidote in the Divine love even for this form of agony-a power to give perfect peace even to a Judas when he turns to God. I believe that it is our ignorance of the nature of Divine love-of its power and sweetness and blessedness-which makes it so difficult for us to conceive of such a deliverance. And as that love, though it passes the reason to conceive it, is yet in harmony with reason, we may suppose that one of its consolations to a Judas will be, not only that God has brought a blessing to the world out of his transgression, but that, through the very horror of that fearful act, his own soul has been brought into a deeper trust in God, and thus into a deeper righteousness than, it may be, he could otherwise have attained.2 [Note: T. Erskine, The Spiritual Order, 254.]
The lesson which the sin of Judas brings with it is the rapidity of sin's growth and the enormous proportions it attains when the sinner is sinning against light, when he is in circumstances conducive to holiness and still sins. To discover the wickedest of men, to see the utmost of human guilt, we must look, not among the heathen, but among those who know God; not among the profligate, dissolute, abandoned classes of society, but among the Apostles. Had Judas not followed Christ he could never have attained the pinnacle of infamy on which he now for ever stands. In all probability he would have passed his days as a small trader with false weights in the little town of Kerioth, or, at the worst, might have developed into an extortionous publican, and have passed into oblivion with the thousands of unjust men who have died and been at last forced to let go the money that should long ago have belonged to others. Or had Judas followed Christ truly, then there lay before him the noblest of all lives, the most blessed of destinies. But he followed Christ and yet took his sin with him: and thence his ruin.1 [Note: M. Dods, The Gospel of St. John, ii. 104.]