The Lessons from Judas Iscariot

Preparing this message was not an easy task, and not because of the facts and figures involved. As I went through this particular character, I was saddened by the way he turned out. For days I kept wondering: how is it even possible for someone who walked with Jesus, who enjoyed the very presence of Jesus, to end up the way he did? My thoughts began with what is happening around us these days — the threats circulating against churches and against the people of God — and I asked myself what the real threat to the church actually is. Let me tell you, dear people of God, the real threat to the church is not from outside; it is from within. The threat to true worship is not the absence of worship; it is worship that never goes deeper than the lips. The threat to true repentance is not the absence of repentance; it is repentance that is only skin deep. And the threat to true discipleship is not the absence of discipleship; it is fake discipleship. When I look at the church and at the people of God at large, I see many who are not really disciples at all.

Consider the man who once volunteered. When Jesus saw the crowd around him, he gave orders to cross to the other side of the lake, and a teacher of the law came to him and said, “Teacher, I will follow you wherever you go.” Jesus replied, “Foxes have dens and birds have nests, but the Son of Man has no place to lay his head.” That response to someone who volunteered to be his disciple is shocking. When somebody comes to us and says, “I want to be part of your church,” our welcome is usually warm: “Please come; the next meeting is on such a date, at such a venue.” But Jesus answered as though to say, “Do not come after me with wrong motives,” perhaps because he had seen through the man. Down the centuries, scholars and serious students of Scripture have spent countless hours wrestling with why Jesus responded that way.

Judas Iscariot has been described in many ways: a representative defector, a figure of the night, the black sheep of the family. In John’s Gospel his name appears in three different forms. In chapter 13, verse 29, he is simply Judas. In chapter 12, verse 4, he is Judas Iscariot. In chapter 6, verse 71, he is Judas, son of Simon Iscariot. This is the character I want to speak about — a man who was very close to Jesus, yet ended very far away; who desperately wanted to follow Jesus, yet became a tool of the devil. The name Judas is the Greek form of the Hebrew name Judah, which means praise. He had the right name. Perhaps his parents dreamed great dreams for him when he was born. We are limited in understanding him because the Gospels tell us so little. Preaching on Peter is comparatively easy, for he appears on almost every page; preparing a sermon on Judas is difficult, because so little is known. It is the fourth Gospel, John’s Gospel, that tells us a little more than the rest.

Let me make three preliminary observations before drawing principles for our lives. First, Judas was one of the Twelve. Before Jesus chose the twelve disciples he prayed the whole night — Luke’s Gospel, chapter 6, verse 12 tells us so. This was no mistake; he waited upon the Lord, and Judas was among those he chose. It was a deliberate choice. We sometimes say the primary purpose of calling the Twelve was to extend the kingdom of God or to carry on the ministry of Jesus, but Mark’s Gospel, chapter 3, verse 14, shows that the first reason Jesus chose them was that they might be with him. Jesus desired that Judas would be with him. It is the heart of the “come and see” invitation in John’s Gospel — come, live with me, eat with me, travel with me, learn my values from me. Judas was hand-picked for exactly that.

And Judas did not merely stand near Jesus; Acts 1, verse 17, is a shocking verse, for it says he shared in this ministry. He prayed for the sick and the sick were healed; he cast out demons; he shared in the work alongside Jesus and the apostles. Look, too, at his commitment in John’s Gospel, chapter 11, verse 16. When all the disciples were afraid to go to the other side, it was Thomas who said, “Let us also go, that we may die with him.” That was the commitment of the Twelve — willing to die for Jesus — and Judas was part of that very batch. He was hand-picked, he shared in the ministry, he was willing to pay the ultimate cost, and he followed Jesus closely. How do I know he followed closely? In John’s Gospel, chapter 18, verse 2, he knew exactly where Jesus would be. He was not guessing here and there; he knew the place, because he had followed Jesus so closely.

The second observation is that Judas was the one on the left. In John’s Gospel, chapter 13, verses 24 and 25, Simon Peter motioned to the disciple leaning back against Jesus and said, “Ask him which one he means.” This was the Last Supper. On the right of Jesus reclined the beloved disciple, John; on the left reclined Judas Iscariot. Jesus answered, “It is the one to whom I will give this piece of bread when I have dipped it in the dish.” Then, dipping the piece of bread, he gave it to Judas. He was not reaching past anyone; Judas was seated right next to him. Not only was Judas hand-picked, but at that most important Last Supper he was placed right beside Jesus.

The third observation is that Judas was the one with the money bag. That is a significant role. When you come into a fellowship and are entrusted with handling money, that is no small thing — it is a mark of great trust. What surprises me is that among the Twelve there were others experienced with money. Matthew had been a tax collector and knew accounts well, yet perhaps that very background worked against him: people would have said, “Yes, he has repented and joined us, but because of his past we cannot fully trust him.” Judas, however, was trusted. Consider, too, that eleven of the Twelve were from Galilee, and Galileans were regarded as second-class Jews, recognizable by their accent — when Peter spoke, people knew at once he was a Galilean, and when Nicodemus sided with Jesus they sneered, “Are you also a Galilean? We thought you were a Judean.” Only one of the Twelve was from Judea, and that was Judas. People from Judea carried the self-assurance of first-class citizens, and that may well be why the bag was given to him: “You can trust this man; he is not like us.”

With all this in mind, people have worked hard to paint Judas in a good light. If you search for books about Judas Iscariot, some carry titles like Deemed or Redeemed, or Hero or Zero. Some argue he was a noble man with good motives, merely trying to force the kingdom of God to come in power. People reach for such readings because they do not want to believe he was deceived by Satan, that he was a crook. Some of you know of the pseudepigraphal Gospel of Judas, where again he is painted as a positive figure. But is it really so? What does Judas teach us today? With that backdrop, let us look at him closely in the Gospel of John, where he appears in four places, and learn the lessons each one holds.

The first place is chapter 6, and the first verse about him is verse 70: “Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.” Verse 71 is an aside, a narrator’s comment: “He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.” The context matters enormously. Chapter 6 is the feeding of the five thousand. The miracle drew people to Jesus; they were awestruck. In verse 24, once the crowd realized that neither Jesus nor his disciples were there, they got into boats and went to Capernaum looking for him. They were excited by what they had seen. It was then that Jesus spoke of his true vocation: he had not come merely to give bread, he had come to become the bread. “Eat my flesh, drink my cup,” he said — speaking of communion with him, a heart of obedience, the cost of real discipleship. People struggled with that. They had wanted a Jesus who would supply bread daily while they carried on with their professions.

Look at how the crowd responded. In chapter 6, verse 60, on hearing it many of his disciples said, “This is a hard teaching.” While Jesus gave bread there was no problem; everyone sought him. But when he spoke of true discipleship, they called it hard. And in verse 66 — a verse I tell my students to remember, John 6:66 — from this time many of his disciples turned back and no longer followed him, because they had come after him with wrong motives. This is the context of division: belief and disbelief, those who leave Jesus and those who remain. It is here that Peter said, “We will not leave you, for you have the words of eternal life.” And Jesus replied, in effect, “Peter, you have said it of yourself, but not everyone is like that. Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil.”

The principle I draw from this is that Judas participated, but he was not part of God’s family. He took part eagerly and enthusiastically in the ministry of Jesus. When the crowd was seated in rows, Judas too had a basket; when the leftovers were gathered into twelve baskets, Judas carried one of them. He participated actively — but he was not part of God’s dream for his life. It is one thing to attend a Sunday morning service, one thing to be a member; it is another thing entirely to be a disciple. To be part of the crowd, to be moved by what we see, to eat the bread and enjoy it — the crowd can do all that. Discipleship is far more: it is being part of the dream of Jesus for your life. Have you ever realized that Jesus has a dream for your life? In these last days he is not looking for people who come on a Sunday, enjoy the worship and the singing, say “today’s word was good, see you next Sunday,” and leave. He is looking for active disciples who will witness for him wherever they are placed — if you are in the corporate world, be a witness there. Do not be like Judas, who participated in all the flashy things around him but was not part of what God was doing in and through him.

This teaches me a great deal about discipleship and ministry: what we do is not the indicator; what we are is the indicator. We can arrange the chairs, make the prayer calls, help with the parking, do many things — but what we do is not the proof of the salvation we have experienced. It is who we are. Being is more important than doing; character is more important than charisma. When the disciples returned rejoicing, Jesus said, in Luke chapter 10, verse 20, “Do not rejoice that the demons submit to you; rejoice that your names are written in heaven.” What Jesus has done in you is, any day, more important than what he is doing through you. Yet people see only what we do. Judas might have scored eight out of ten — fervent, active, serving, healing. And here is something to ponder: when Jesus sent them out two by two, who went with Judas? When Judas laid hands on the sick and they were healed, there was not a grain of doubt in his partner’s heart. He participated so convincingly that the one closest to him was thoroughly persuaded. But Jesus could see through him. Discipleship is about character. “I want to know Christ,” Paul says in Philippians chapter 3, “and become like him in his death” — the character that was manifested on the cross: forgiveness, love, freedom from self-centeredness, esteeming others as greater than oneself. That is the mark of one who belongs to God’s family. Otherwise we may participate without ever becoming a part.

The second principle comes from chapter 12, the next place we meet Judas. You know what is happening there — in our English Bibles it is titled “Jesus anointed at Bethany.” Here is worship: the alabaster jar is broken, and Mary is worshiping while the fragrance fills the room. But verse 4 begins with a contrast: “But one of his disciples, Judas Iscariot, who was later to betray him, objected, ‘Why wasn’t this perfume sold and the money given to the poor?’” In other words, what a waste. The principle here is that Judas was sympathetic, but he was not sincere. In Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 26, the same incident shows the whole company of disciples saying, “What a waste” — Judas had managed to convince them all. When we are not sincere, true worship will look like a waste; when our motives are not right with God, genuine devotion will appear extravagant and pointless.

At the core, the issue is greed. Look at verse 6, where John steps in again — this is why I love John’s Gospel, for the narrator comes alongside every now and then to add a crucial detail, just as he did in chapter 6, verse 71. He writes that Judas “did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it.” That is a hard word — a thief. John could not have said this at the moment it happened; back then he too was nodding along, “This is a waste,” because Judas had convinced even him. But looking back, John records the truth: it was not love for the poor, it was theft.

I struggle with this. Jesus knew everything about the man, inside and out. From the very beginning Jesus did not call him a betrayer — Luke’s Gospel, chapter 6, says he became a betrayer; Jesus called him as a potential candidate to become a disciple. So I find myself thinking, “Jesus, you knew everything; you should have stopped them. You should have exercised your discernment and said, ‘No, we will not give the bag to Judas.’” But Jesus did not do that. He let Judas handle it. Why? I can see only one reason: Jesus wanted to teach a lesson — money is not the most important thing. The success of a ministry is not measured by how many people come or by the size of the annual turnover. If it were, look at Jesus: the one handling the funds was helping himself, and still Jesus said, “You keep it,” because for his ministry that was not the most important thing. This is a mark of true discipleship. Otherwise we grow conceited, boasting, “Come and see our parking lot; see what God is doing in our church.” You cannot measure what God is doing by the cars in the lot — it may be a mere crowd, and there are busier parking lots elsewhere. We are conceited to think a large crowd is the measure. This is the lesson Jesus wanted to teach: he knew everything about Judas, and still he said, “You handle the money.”

Pause on that word, thief. It is a strong word, and in the context of this Gospel it is a deliberate one. It is no accident that John says Judas did not care about the poor because he was a thief. Look at chapter 10, verse 1: “Very truly I tell you, anyone who does not enter the sheep pen by the gate, but climbs in by some other way, is a thief.” In chapter 10, verse 8, again: “All who have come before me are thieves.” And in chapter 10, verse 10, the thief comes to steal, kill, and destroy — the one who leads people astray. This is why the message was hard for me to prepare: here, among the Twelve, is a living representative of the very thief Jesus warned about in chapter 10 — a false disciple who leads people astray. He is the one Jesus described in Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 7: “Watch out for false prophets. They come to you in sheep’s clothing, but inwardly they are ferocious wolves.” It saddens me that Judas turned out to be exactly that — in sheep’s clothing, participating in the ministry, sympathetic toward Jesus, yet inwardly a ravenous wolf wanting to devour and to feed himself.

The third principle is from chapter 13, where we meet Judas a third time. If what I have said so far has disturbed you, this will disturb you even more. Chapter 13 is the Last Supper, where you see Jesus with a towel and a basin, going from one disciple to the next, washing their feet. The key to the chapter is verse 1: “It was just before the Passover Festival. Jesus knew that the hour had come for him to leave this world… Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” He loved them to the end — to the very last moment before Judas got up and went out. He loved the Twelve, he loved Judas, right up to the end. Now do you realize what the foot-washing was? You have seen the miracles; you have witnessed the raising of Lazarus. This was love’s last appeal — “I love you, Judas; come back.” But it only hardened his heart. Judas may have thought, “Jesus, I believed you were a prophet, and now you are washing my feet,” and it pushed him only deeper into darkness.

What do I learn here? Judas was washed, but he was not clean. He was washed by Jesus, yet not clean inside. In chapter 13 you see the height of hypocrisy. When Jesus said, in verse 21, “Very truly I tell you, one of you is going to betray me,” what did the disciples do? They did not all turn and stare at Judas. According to Matthew chapter 26 and Mark chapter 14, they looked at one another, each asking, “Is it I?” And Judas too looked at him and asked, “Is it I?” That is the height of hypocrisy — when no one around you knows what is really going on within you. You may come in with a good smile, an active member before everyone else, and still be far from clean. Judas teaches us this sobering lesson: that it is possible to participate and not be a part, possible to be washed — even to be baptized — possible to read the Bible and yet miss the point, miss the Person, Jesus himself.

What scares me most is verse 30: “As soon as Judas had taken the bread, he went out. And it was night.” The narrator could have stopped at “he went out,” but he adds, “And it was night.” In John’s Gospel, night does not merely mean literal darkness. In chapter 9, verse 4, it is used symbolically — “night is coming.” In chapter 11, verse 10 — “walk while it is day; if you walk at night you will stumble.” In chapter 21, verse 3, it is no accident that they caught nothing because it was night. And it is no accident that Nicodemus came to Jesus by night. In John’s Gospel, night represents evil, an insensitivity to the things of God. Judas went out — out from the light. He had sat around the light, enjoyed the light, participated in the light, and then he went out, and it was night.

My dear friends, let this not happen to anyone sitting here. May I appeal to you to take your discipleship seriously, because it is possible to run the race expecting to finish in a blaze of glory, only to discover on that day the words, “I never knew you.” That is a frightening thing. As I prepared, a few lines of a song came to mind: “He knows my name, he knows my every thought.” Most of the time those words comfort us, but studying this character made them frightening, for he knows you. A pastor may not know everything about you, but he does. He knows where you were last week; he knows what you did. In 2 Kings chapter 5, verse 25, the prophet Elisha asked Gehazi, “Where have you been?” He knew. And here Jesus says to Judas, “What you are about to do, do quickly.” He knows what you will do after this service is over. You stand not before a mere man or a prophet, but before an almighty, omniscient God who knows everything about you.

Let me close with chapter 18. In verse 4, “Jesus, knowing all that was going to happen to him, went out and asked, ‘Who is it you want?’” Matthew’s Gospel, chapter 26, verses 49 and 50, helps us here. Judas came to seize Jesus with a detachment of soldiers, and I have always wondered why he needed soldiers at all. I can see only one reason: Judas knew the devotion of the disciples very well — he had been one of the Twelve — and he knew that Peter, for one, would act, so he came with security. And notice what he calls Jesus: “Rabbi, Rabbi.” It is no coincidence that in all four Gospels Judas never once calls Jesus “Lord” — only “Rabbi,” teacher. Yet in chapter 13, verse 13, Jesus had said, “You call me Teacher and Lord.” Judas missed that. As many historians suggest, he was probably a zealot who followed Jesus expecting him to establish a physical kingdom, and at the end he comes saying only “Rabbi.” There is no lordship in it — only Rabbi. And in Matthew’s Gospel he kissed Jesus; the Greek word there is very strong, the same word used when the father embraced the returning prodigal son. It was not a mere kiss but a fervent embrace. There are only two people in the Gospels who kissed Jesus: one at his feet, Mary; one on the cheek, Judas. One was an act of worship; the other was betrayal.

My dear people of God, the character of Judas must disturb us. It is possible to participate and not be part of what God is doing. It is possible to be sympathetic and not sincere. It is possible to be washed and not clean. In one sentence: he was called, but he was not consecrated.