ALREADY the Psalmist of old had complained: “Yea, mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, which did eat of my bread, hath lifted up his heel against me.” And this is what moved Christ so deeply in the base betrayal by Judas. Not merely to be delivered, but to be betrayed, and that, not by a distant acquaintance, not by one who had walked along and had merely followed Him from afar, but by one of His most intimate friends, by a chosen disciple, by a man who daily ate bread with Jesus from the same dish, and after the custom of those days, dipped the bread in the self-same dish of fruit-juice.
We do not deny, that this dipping into the dish by Jesus and Judas must have taken place at the same moment, but it must have been unobserved, so that Jesus and Judas understood, but not the others who sat at table with them; even as in the general conversation, to Judas’ question, “Lord, is it I?”, Jesus’ answer, “Thou hast said”, must have been lost to the rest. How else are we to account for the fact that Peter and the ten other disciples should have allowed Judas freely to go out, and to have made no attempt to frustrate his plan? In the main, therefore, we accept the marginal reading (in the Dutch Bible). This saying of the dipping into the dish harks back to David’s bitter complaint in Psalm 41:9, and in this striking word Jesus expressed the bitterness of what on account of this also His heart suffered.
Sitting together at table was at that time more truly than now the expression of solidarity: open acknowledgement of fellowship, a tie that united those sitting down as members of one family, as pupils of one master, as friends of the same social class.
They who in direct succession belong together as members of one family eat daily at one table, of one bread, from the selfsame dish. And as often as friends or acquaintances imitate this sitting down at one family-board, they enter into a closer fellowship, which finds its presage in the blood-relationship.
This unity is furthermore represented even in the oneness of food. As Paul speaks at the Lord’s Supper of one bread, so from the nature of the case in the constant renewal of the life-blood of many by one selfsame food lies a solidarity, which shows itself even in the feeding of the body.
There is always treachery, though the tie be less intimate, when for the sake of working some one’s ruin, you abuse the knowledge which you have acquired, by having been admitted into the narrower circle.
But this treachery becomes the more heinous as the character is the more intimate, that marked the fellowship of traitor and victim.
The weaker this tie, the less wickedness it takes to commit treachery.
But if this tie was close and personal, and fellowship has been of a very tender nature, then treachery acquires a degree of such dreadful wickedness of heart, that heaven calls for vengeance, and earth is horrified.
In the case of Judas, the fellowship with Jesus could not have been more intimate. He was always with Jesus. Daily he sat at table with Him. In the Master’s narrowest circle, he was not merely admitted, but adopted. Christ’s own disciple. One of the small number: twelve. The confidant of Jesus’ fellowship and conversation. The man from whom Jesus held nothing back.
And therefore, there was not merely treachery here, but treachery of the most heinous sort. Treachery that was bound to affect Jesus most bitterly. A revelation of human degeneracy, which brought all fidelity and friendship into doubt. A poisoned dagger thrust into the purest heart.
JESUS’ judgment of Judas therefore exceeds in intensity everything He ever said of His enemies.
For the ruffians who nail Him to the cross He still prays: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.”
To the man who was so inconceivably to deny Him with oaths, three times, Jesus says: “I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not.”
But with Judas all compassion dissolves itself in the terrible woe upon the man, for whom not to have been born would have been preferable. And yet, upon Judas also there is no call for vengeance from Jesus’ lips. Even in Gethsemane it still is: “Friend, wherefore art thou come?”
Even with regard to Judas, Jesus shudders inwardly as He thinks of his doom. But grace is here cut off. Here the waters of unrighteousness have risen too high. Before Jesus’ eye nothing hangs over Judas save dark, black night. In spirit Jesus already sees him going out to hang himself, and …?
That He might save us children of men from sin, Jesus was bound to let human sin assail from its deepest depth His person, His life, in the most violent manner.
And the foaming of the poisonous waters of sin from their deepest caverns has not been witnessed at Golgotha, not at Gabbatha, not in the Sanhedrin, not even in the persons who taunted Jesus on the cross, but in Gethsemane, when Judas betrayed the Son of man with a kiss.
And therefore the moment when Jesus measured the abyss, which gaped between Him and sin, most anxiously, and in His holy heart felt the terrible assault of consummated sin most cruelly, was, when it stood between Him and Judas.
Judicial murder is terrible, but treachery far more cruelly stabs the heart.
Yet you need not on this account take Judas as a miscreant who, by his inhuman malice, stands apart from you and your race.
Inclination leans this way, and in the face of so base an outrage as this, it is difficult to think that here you deal with a man like yourself, as involuntarily you take him to be more devil than man. But the story of the Gospel does not countenance this popular aversion, which dismisses Judas as a demon, and scorns association with a traitor such as he.
For though in the end Satan entered Judas’ heart, he himself was no devil, but a man such as you, and he who had met Judas in close company of our Lord and the other disciples, would in no way have surmised that this man of such seeming piety would be capable of such shame.
Judas had felt himself drawn toward Jesus. He had left all to follow Jesus. He had closely united himself to Jesus. When at Capernaum many had ceased from following after Jesus, he had continued faithful. Not merely among the seventy, but among the little group of twelve he had been adopted. Three long years he had persevered in following Jesus. With the other eleven he had been sent forth to preach the gospel to the cities of Judah. To make Jesus known and to win people for Jesus he had travelled up and down the land. He had done signs and wonders in Jesus’ name. Even the money-bag of the sacred company had been confided to him. And on no gospel-page in the narrative of those long years is the record of one deed, one word of Judas, from which it can be inferred, that at sight he differed from the other disciples. Only at the end John hints at thievery, and that was in connection with Judas’ appeal for the poor.
Without doubt, therefore, had you met Judas with the rest, you would not have surmised anything wrong with him, and you would have been impressed, that in Judas you greeted a devout and faithful follower of our Lord.
And rather than that Judas’ appearance would have roused aversion in you, you would have approached him reverently, and because of his friendly attachment to Jesus you would have felt attached to him.
Such is the Judas of history, who has nothing in common with the current representation of legend.
Jesus had understood him from the first, for He knew what was in man, but in daily intercourse nothing was known of this, not even to Judas himself.
And do not say that Judas expected of Jesus the founding of an earthly kingdom, and that his spiritual inclination toward Jesus was led astray by ambition after earthly greatness. For this was the case with all the disciples till the end. The purely spiritual kingdom was not understood by one of them.
Between them and Judas the only difference was that his worldly ambition was stimulated and made more evil by the antithesis with the spiritual, while with the rest of the disciples it was tempered by the glow of Jesus’ spiritual greatness, and in the end extinguished.
When in the deepest depth of your being spiritual greatness does not interest you, unobservedly it begins to offend you, to irritate you, to quicken your dislike, and in the end to waken in your soul opposition and enmity.
This is seen with the martyrs, whose spiritual, heroic courage made their henchmen more cruel than they were.
Under this psychological reaction Judas also succumbed.
In the end he could no longer tolerate Jesus. In his heart hatred of Jesus’ spiritual greatness burst into flame. A hatred, such as finally spared nothing. And what went on in that heart and spake in that evil Judas-eye, when in Gethsemane he approached Jesus, and pressed a kiss upon the holy face, human language refuses to express.
But thus, Judas stands no longer before you, as a man, whom you disdainfully dismiss, saying: “Go out from me, I am holier than thou.” No, this wicked, this evil Judas comes to stand close by your side, to say to you, that in your own human heart there hides the germ of the same wickedness which brought him to this final act of hellish malice.
So Judas was like Peter, like John and Nathaniel. He associated with them, sat at table with them, and no one observed anything uncommon about him. And when Jesus said that one of them would betray Him, no one thought of Judas and said: “That must be he.” On the contrary, they asked: “Lord is it I?”
Do not say that this is enough to make you afraid of yourself. For when you are afraid of yourself, it shows that you have knowledge of yourself, and fear of the sin that dwells within you.
Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall (1 Cor. 10:12).
And more than one of those who were ever at ease in Sion, who readily railed at Judas, but were never afraid of themselves, have been first to come to this fall.
Psychologically not accurate, but strikingly true, it has been said: A wild beast dwells in your inmost self, and Satan incites it time and again, to rend and to destroy you.
And he alone is safe, who has an open eye to this wild beast in his own heart, and knowing that he carries it within himself, is on the watch and prays and strives against it.
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