Question for you: I’ve been pondering on Jesus’ statement on Judas. “ it would have been better had he not been born.” Have you ever dived into this deeper. Because it implies several things. That Judas had a choice? Some may speculate that it was all part of Gods plan - that Judas was picked? I can’t wrap my head around God specifically choosing someone to do something so horrible. I’ve been thinking more like God knew Judas so well, that he used it.
Now I get the cross: the sin He took, the humility, shame, all things that sin produces. I understand this now. And the purpose of it. But why did there have to be a sacrifice. Why couldn’t Jesus live a full life, healing as many people as he could, and showing us how God is even more. Then die normally taking sin with him. And then still be the resurrection.
Judas felt so terrible afterwards, that he gave the money back and took his own life. The guilt was too overwhelming . But Jesus’ statement also proposes that Judas was not forgiven. Jesus implied his ultimate demise.
At every Good Friday I struggle with this day. Why people call it Good Friday, I have no idea. It’s the most terrible day in history. The end result is good of course, this I understand, but not what happened.
Perhaps you could offer some insight.
Dear Friend,
I really enjoy wading through deep questions like the ones you pose here.
Let me begin by answering the second first and then coming back to Judas. There are literally hundreds of books that have been written to explain the meaning of the atonement and I’ve read many of them, but for the purpose of this note, I will try to summarize briefly.
The problem of sin was that it is an overt rebellion against God’s rule which brings with it a penalty. We understand this as we consider different crimes and the penalty that is attached to them. The smallest violations of the law, things like parking in a no parking zone, come with small penalties. We tend to excuse these things and feel a little annoyed when the penalty is applied in our direction, we might even feel sympathetic to a fellow ‘park-er’ who gets caught by parking enforcement (unless they’re parking in front of our driveway, and then they get what they deserve). Much greater crimes carry much greater penalties, and the general public doesn’t feel as sympathetic towards those who have committed such offences. I remember, a few years ago, a drunk driver who was responsible for killing a family, but whose wealth led many to believe he would hire a lawyer who would get him off without jail time; the whole province watched that case with deep interest because they wanted to see justice done. Of course, in the case of the death of children, is there any justice that could really satisfy? While we might root for the parking violator when they take their ticket to court, we root for justice when those who have forever marred a family with death are brought before the judge. We would feel resentment towards the judge who shrugged his shoulders at such an offender and let him off with a fine and some community service.
The problem of sin is a problem of perspective. The average human sees most sin as if it were a parking violation, we cannot understand why God takes it so seriously… after all, we’ve all parked where the sign says we shouldn’t. The true perspective on sin is that it is a creation marring crime that brings forth the just penalty, not only of death, but of eternal death. Most people will rationalize at this point and bring forth the littlest sins they can think of in an attempt to demonstrate that the verdict is in error - but even if we were to establish some standard for little sins and agree that they could be passed over (they can’t) there is no adult sitting in the church at Walsh that would willingly allow a film of their worst sins to be played for all the church to view - we know deep down that there are some particularly dastardly sins that we are guilty of, and so we are without excuse before a holy God. The penalty is just and to judgment we must go.
This is summarized in many places in the Bible, but perhaps seen most simply and concisely in Ephesians 2:1-4 which describes the nature of all humanity in their fallen state.
The solution, and I will be so bold as to call it the only possible solution, is the cross. God sends forth his only begotten Son to live the life that Adam was meant to live. To obey at every point. To bear temptation without breaking. To win righteousness with obedience and earn a place in heaven by his work. When Jesus has proven himself to be what Adam should have been there is a choice - either Jesus can receive the reward for obedience, or he can present himself as the substitute for sinful man and receive in his own flesh the penalty for sin. (The Old Testament sacrificial system was designed to point the way to this once and final sacrifice - the innocent standing in for the guilty.) When we see Jesus in the Garden of Gethsemane sweating great drops of blood in dread of what he must soon endure; when we see him under the lash, stripped, spit upon, mocked and reviled; when we see him bound and nailed to a cross and hung before hateful eyes to suffer; when we hear him crying out, ‘My God, My God, Why have you forsaken me?’; and when at last we see him die — only then do we begin to understand the magnitude of our own sin. It was not a matter of Jesus living a humiliating life as a lowly man until old age and dying in his sleep — that could not have borne the penalty of the world’s sin. Creation would have looked upon such a thing as an evasion of justice on the part of the Judge of all the Earth. Sin called for a sacrifice, a substitute, an atonement.
So here is where this becomes ‘Good Friday’… because at the cross God is working both sides of the fence. It is God the Father who has agreed to accept a substitute to pay the penalty for sin; and it is God the Son who has willingly agreed to serve as man’s substitute. In order for the great atonement to work it has to be real. No ‘legal fictions’, no quick fixes. The substitute must be related to man - and so God becomes man; the substitute must bear the guilt and so God places the guilt upon Christ; the guilt must be punished with the penalty prescribed (and here I would need many, many, many pages to plumb the depths of what happened during those six dark hours); the payment must be complete, the substitute must die — and so Jesus dies horribly. But since it is God on both sides of the equation (Satan is used as a tool and doesn’t gain anything from the cross — in fact he loses everything to God in this gambit), both perfect justice is satisfied (can anyone claim that God has gone soft on sin by pardoning sinners based on the cross), and perfect love is revealed (greater love has no man than that he lay down his life for his friend, but God displayed his love in this, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us). So at the cross justice and mercy meet. At the resurrection 3 days later God declares Jesus death invalid. He has died as a substitute with the sin of the church upon him, but none of it was his sin, so he is in fact innocent of sin, and so unjustly dead. God raises him in a newly glorified body, the first born from among the dead. But since he has also borne the penalty for my sin it means that my natural death will also be shown to be invalid — death is the penalty for sin and my sin has been paid for — so God will overturn the sentence in the end. If Christ is raised, we too will be raised.
(Now, as I said, hundreds of books and thousands of pages, so this is really a quick overview of the doctrine — ask questions if you want me to press deeper.)
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Now on to Judas.
Some quick facts about Judas.
Judas made every choice he made freely. God did not make a puppet out of Judas, there were no strings on his hands and his feet.
Jesus gave Judas every opportunity to turn away from his action. More than once he spoke directly to Judas and made clear that he knew what Judas was going to betray him, and in saying these things Jesus is really saying: “Don’t do it!” In fact, when he passes the ‘sop’ to Judas at the last supper, that isn’t an act of accusation, it is an act of love. The ‘sop’ was traditionally passed first to a person who was particularly loved or honoured; right up to the final moment Jesus is giving Judas an opportunity to turn aside from his settled course.
Judas shows himself to be corrupt before the betrayal. John tells us that Judas complains about Jesus allowing Mary to pour out so much precious ointment on him, but not because he really wanted to give it to the poor, but because he was already in the habit of pilfering the communal money bag of Jesus and his disciples.
God knew in advance what Judas would do; Jesus chose Judas because of what Judas would do. But Judas chose to do it freely and not under compulsion. (In fact, as I have shown above, Judas chose to do it in the face of every opportunity to turn aside from the act.)
Now I could plunge deeper and explain the nature of all humanity and how God restrains sin in some, but not in all — and I am persuaded that God did not restrain Judas but let his natural inclination carry him to his fate — but it was his own free action and free choice that brought him to his end.
Finally, Judas regret fell short of repentance. He lamented what he had done, but rather than call out to God for mercy he returned the money and hanged himself. This too was a free choice. Had Judas repented of his sin and asked for mercy, God would have forgiven him and Jesus death would have atoned for him. (Peter who denies Jesus is restored; Paul, who persecuted and even approved of the death of Christians was redeemed; a thief on the cross who was cursing Jesus at the beginning of the day of crucifixion calls for mercy and is saved before the end of the day.) But Judas does not repent. He acts with freedom in his betrayal; he acts with freedom in his suicide; he acts in exactly the way God knew he would, rightly Jesus state it would be better if he had not been born (better for Judas, though, in the end, not better for the whole of humanity).
Sadly, there are people who sit under the preaching of the gospel, who hear the good news that God stands ready to adopt them and take away their sin, but they will not hear or heed. We continue to make the gospel known, because some will heed before the end — but many will come under the hearing of the gospel, and, just like Judas, freely despise it all and bear the penalty of their own sin.
Well - that is a good hour of typing and I expect it may take a little bit to digest and ponder. I’ve tried to make the answer evident and illustrate it with clarity. The cross is at the same time the most horrible moment in human history and the most glorious moment in human history — what is clear is that it is the central moment of human history, and all people from the least to the greatest will one day know that the hinge of history rests on Golgotha.
In Christ,
Marc