Judas, Who Betrayed Him

What led Judas to betray the Lord for thirty pieces of silver? Today, Sinclair Ferguson begins to reflect on the week leading up to Jesus’ crucifixion by considering the tragic tale of Judas’ treachery.

In most of our churches this week, it’s Passion Week or Easter Week. Perhaps Palm Sunday was on your mind yesterday: Jesus coming into Jerusalem and being hailed as King. Five days later, there would be an official notice posted on His cross by command of the Roman governor: “Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews.” It would draw loud protests from religious leaders, but it was still there when He breathed His last.

It’s one of the most distinctive things about the four Gospels that they devote so much space to this one week. Matthew devotes about a quarter of his gospel; Mark, three eighths of his gospel; Luke, about a quarter; and in John, it’s almost half of the gospel that’s devoted to this one week. No week in Jesus’ life is given such detailed coverage, and there are so many different strands in the story. I want, this week, to pick up just one of them, although it’s got five threads woven into it.

To be more exact, I want to reflect on some of the people we see encountering the Lord Jesus during Passion Week, and I want to begin today on the dark side—I mean Judas Iscariot. His name probably means “the man from Kerioth,” although some have thought it might mean “the knife man.” Whatever the origin of the name, there was certainly something of the night about him. Like the Old Testament’s Jeroboam, the son of Nebat, Judas constantly drags behind him the ball and chain of the words, “who betrayed Him.”

Years ago in a sermon, I referred to Judas as an Apostle, and I was roundly corrected by a lady at the church door: “Judas was not an Apostle,” she insisted. But actually, she was wrong. He was, and therein lies both the mystery and the tragedy. As Jesus put it as early as John 6:70, “Did I not choose you, the twelve? And yet one of you is a devil.”

There is something mysterious, as well as tragic, about Judas’ sin. Paul speaks about the mystery of iniquity, and it was surely at work in Judas’ betrayal—an action, you remember, he later regretted and yet apparently never repented. But mystery though it may be, we can trace the progress of his sin. Judas was apparently the treasurer of the disciple band. John tells us he had the money bag, and it looks as though that was a permanent arrangement.

Judas’ complaints then might have seemed justified when Mary of Bethany lavished her expensive ointment on the feet of Jesus. The ointment could have been sold for a year’s wages, and the proceeds given to the poor. But it was all a coverup, because by that time he had been regularly putting his hand into the bag. But what was he doing with the money? Had it proved too much for him, to use Peter’s words, to have left everything to follow Jesus? Did he now want something tangible in return?

I remember a song that was popular in my teenage years: “I have decided to follow Jesus; no turning back, no turning back.” But some who say that do turn back, and Judas was one of them. Like Demas later on, he loved this world rather than loving Christ’s appearing. He covered it up, of course. Like the other Apostles, when Jesus said, “One of you will betray me,” he asked the question out loud when his turn came, “Is it I?” But he already knew it was. He’d already arranged to sell Jesus for thirty pieces of silver—silver pieces he later threw down into the temple before going out to take his own life. It seems he did that in despair. It is apparently possible to reach a point of no return. There was regret, but there was no turning back, no real repentance.

You see, Judas failed to deal with the first rising of sin, to use an old expression, and he didn’t realize that he wasn’t just backsliding—he was committing apostasy. At the beginning, the two things are actually indistinguishable. I’m reminded of John Bunyan’s poem that I’ve mentioned before. I think it is worth mentioning again. It’s called “A Caution to Stir Up to Watch Against Sin”:

Sin, rather than ‘twill out of action be, Will pray to stay, though but a while with thee; One night, one hour, one moment, will it cry, Embrace me in thy bosom, else I die: Time to repent (saith it) I will allow, And help, if to repent thou know’st not how. But if you give it entrance at the door, It will come in, and may go out no more.

It’s sobering to see that in Judas’ life, isn’t it? He stands as a real warning sign at the beginning of Passion Week, doesn’t he?