Up until a few years ago if you asked anyone from 12 years old and up what the most notable example of betrayal was, the names of our Lord Jesus and Judas would have come up. This is what Judas is most remembered for, and indeed it is the most memorable example of betrayal in history because of the people involved. The Son of God who became Man who preached the Kingdom of God, who elevated those who were not even seen, those who were faceless, into the light and dignified them, who came to share our own life, was betrayed by one of His chosen twelve apostles, one from his inner circle, one who spent 3 ½ years with Him, saw His miracles, and shared in the preaching of His Gospel. And the type of betrayal is most memorable because he sold his Teacher for money, and not for any other reason.

Yet, there is a lot we can learn from Judas the former Apostle because no one can come into contact with the Son of God, especially in close contact, and their own lives cannot become a lesson of what it means to have come near God.

Judas by Fyodor Bronnikov, 1874

Lessons from Judas

Lesson # 1: You cannot change unless you choose to respond to God

The first lesson we learn from Judas is that a person cannot change (no matter what) unless they choose to change. In the case of changing into what God wants, we must choose to respond to God’s call.

Judas spent 3 ½ years watching God Himself Incarnate preaching and showing the Way to him, the way to deal with our neighbors, and how to live according to the purpose with which God created us. He saw countless miracles more than anyone has ever seen except for the other apostles. He had the Teacher and Shepherd who over the course of history has had billions respond to His call and who have followed Him. Our Lord Jesus is the Teacher and Shepherd who began the largest revolution in the history of humanity, but with all this, Judas still fell.

This teaches us that if there are some who fall, it is not always the fault of their teachers, shepherds, parents, or families, but in the end it can and often will be because of the person himself or herself.

To illustrate, imagine this: You have the greatest elementary school teacher on the planet. They can take children who don’t know how to read at the beginning of the year and who are coming in far behind what a student their grade level should be performing, and this teacher has been proven time and time again. Now, imagine that you have a student in that class who refuses to listen, goes on to the computer only to play games and chooses to not learn. The student himself or herself understands that the teacher is highly skilled; they have seen the work of the teacher evident in the lives of the students around them, but this one student doesn’t care at all. Their only response is a grudging acknowledgment, but their actions are totally focused on gratifying themselves.

This was Judas. His only focus was on what he could gain from our Lord Jesus, not to live according to His life, but to follow Him in order to get something to gratify himself.

Lesson # 2: Judas could have been a name we all name our children

This leads us to the second lesson we learn from Judas:

Judas could have been a name we all name our children. What?! Why?! Because Judas could have been the greatest example of repentance. It is interesting to see that in the narrative of Judas’s betrayal, the Gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke also focus on the Apostle Peter’s denial, which was a betrayal by mouth. This creates a contrast between two people who acted against our Lord Jesus Christ and thus lost hope, but one dealt with his loss of hope by taking his own life, and the other by remembering, remembering Jesus, and how He taught repentance, had hope, and eventually repented.

To make a connection with the worship of the Church, there is a haunting ritual on Holy Thursday in the Coptic Orthodox Church. It is a hymn and a procession. The name of the hymn is “Judas.” That hymn has a tone that is unlike any other hymn in the Coptic Orthodox Church. And for the only time in all of Coptic ritual, the procession around the church is done clockwise, which is opposite of the counterclockwise motion which all processions do. In addition, those playing the cymbals invert the cymbals so that they clang.

Everything is turned upside down and goes backwards.

The hymn is 4 stanzas long. Each stanza is preceded by the refrain calling “Judas” 6 times, the number that signifies imperfection, having fallen short of 7, and calls him “the breaker of the law” or “the lawless one” (in Greek ou paranomos). It tells Judas:

1. What he has done
2. What happened to our Lord Jesus Christ
3. How our Lord Jesus Christ died
4. How He rose from the dead.

Of course, there are several sad ironies in all this.

First, Judas did not consider and grasp what his actions were going to ultimately lead to. Even though he knew that the Pharisees and chief priests were plotting to kill Jesus, he was blinded by his love for money.

Then, as the chanter calls Judas to hear, we know that Judas cannot be moved by any words because his mind has been set on gratifying himself.

Third, our Lord died for everyone’s sake to forgive us our sins including this betrayal had Judas chosen to repent. The chanter calls Judas, but there is no answer, because ultimately there was no answer from Judas, no response that looked to Christ, but it was all centered on the self. He had the spark, the moment of awakening, when He saw what was happening to our Lord Jesus and when he felt remorse, but the response was self-centered having chosen to take His own life instead of facing what He had done and repent as our Lord taught.

While there was another Apostle who was named Judas, because of the intolerability that the name Judas brings to mind, in certain languages the name is slightly modified in pronunciation. For example, the other Judas is called Jude in English. When was the last time you heard someone named Judas? Now, when was the last time you heard the name Peter? The reason the name Peter is so common is because of what he did following his denial of our Lord Jesus Christ.

The Apostle Peter, on the other hand, also betrayed our Lord in a sense. He denied knowing Him after all they had been through together. He is the one who told our Lord Jesus “See, we have left all and followed you.” “To whom shall we go?” (Matthew 19:27; John 6:68). Then, when he denied our Lord Jesus Christ, He did it in sight of our Lord, and even our Lord turned to look at him (Luke 22:61). This added to the pain and suffering of our Lord Jesus Christ. He was not only under trial, but now He was alone emotionally in addition to physically.

Yet, the Apostle Peter did not lose hope. He might have been in a state where he was spiritually homeless not being able to know where to go and what to do, but with the Resurrection of our Lord, his hope increased even more that He could make things right.

At the end of the Gospel of John, our Lord asks the Apostle Peter three times about whether he loves Him (in Greek agape, which signifies the highest Christian love, one that is unconditional). The Apostle Peter is honest by replying the first two times with the words philo se , which is a lesser type of love, one that is conditional, which can be translated “You’re my friend,” meaning he is acknowledging that he has not risen to our Lord’s command for love which was agape. Our Lord had characterized agape as the love for which one is willing to die for His friends, which our Lord Jesus Christ did.

But the third time our Lord asks the Apostle Peter, in Greek he changes the question to ask the Apostle Peter if he loved Him with philia, that is, friendship. That grieves the Apostle Peter because he feels he has nowhere to go, and he answers again as truthfully as possible saying that he does love our Lord as his friend, that is the lesser type of love. Our Lord then prophesies about how the Apostle Peter will meet his end, and while it may not be clear to English readers why our Lord Jesus would bring this up after these questions, it is because the Apostle Peter’s end is exactly what agape is and does, which is to lay down one’s life for his friend. Our Lord Jesus is restoring the Apostle Peter’s hope by showing him that one day he will indeed get to that type of love. He restores him as at the beginning and tells him, “Come, follow Me.” So the Apostle Peter now knows where to go and what to do.

That could have been Judas too. While God does bestow His love and grace upon us, it is up to us to accept His love and grace. Judas didn’t, but the Apostle Peter did.

So in the end we learn something from all the Apostles by their responses to our Lord Jesus Christ who is God Incarnate. No matter what anyone does including God Himself, we have to participate in our own salvation by responding to and accepting the gift of God. We do this by first repenting, and then by following Him, putting His desire first and ours in accordance with His.

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