Was Judas Iscariot Unique?
When introducing ourselves in Moldova, people often had difficulty with our foreign-sounding names. To alleviate this difficulty, we would give the Romanian equivalents of our names: Joshua is Iosua, Stacy is a version of Anastasia, and Jude is Iuda. We were surprised, however, when a friend said to us one day, “Don’t tell people that Jude’s name is Iuda.” In English, we have two names, Jude and Judas, that translate the one Greek name Ioudas. Our English-speaking forefathers decided to utilize two different names to avoid confusion between the author of the Letter of Jude and Judas Iscariot who betrayed our Lord. However, in Romanian, there is only one name, Iuda, and this name is most closely associated with Judas Iscariot. We were causing great confusion because people assumed that we had named Jude after Judas Iscariot. I suppose they were asking each other, “What sort of missionaries name their son after the betrayer of the Lord Jesus?”
Even though I did not name my son after him, I think it is important to understand Judas and his actions. If you watch the History Channel specials about Jesus that are always aired around Easter time, you will see liberal theologians trying to analyze Judas and understand his actions. I’ve heard these theologians say things like, “Judas wasn’t really a bad guy. He just became disillusioned with Jesus because Jesus was not taking the action he thought was necessary to establish his kingdom over against the Romans. Judas thought that by getting the Jewish leaders involved Jesus would be forced to act. Judas thought that one day he would be seen as a hero.” Unfortunately, these men treat the gospels like biased news accounts rather than the inspired Word of God.
The Bible affirms that Judas‘ actions were evil. Judas was evil. We should not and cannot justify him and his actions. We do not question the accounts of Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. However, we must question the uniqueness of Judas‘ evil. Were Judas‘ actions unique? Was Judas Iscariot unique? The answer to this question is both yes and no. Yes, Judas‘ actions were unique because no one in all of history will be the tool Satan—and God, also, in an inexplicable way—uses to bring about the death of Jesus. However, the answer to the question is also no—Judas is not unique.
Judas received incredible blessing. He witnessed Jesus‘ teaching, miracles, and friendship firsthand. He beheld the glory of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth. Yet, Judas spurned the blessing of God and sought to achieve his own, personal, monetary blessing by delivering the Son of God to be killed. Following these actions, Judas felt the weight of God’s judgment and sought his own way of atonement by returning the money and committing suicide.
These decisions were a particularly Adamic series of decisions. Where else do we see the same series of events? Genesis 1-3. Adam received incredible blessing from God. He beheld God firsthand. He experienced God’s grace and truth. Yet, Adam spurned the blessing of God and sought to achieve his own, personal blessing by rebelling against God in order to become “like God” himself. But immediately following this, he felt guilt and sought his own way of atonement by making clothes from fig leaves. Just like his son Judas, Adam’s decisions were suicidal in nature. He knew that eating the fruit meant certain death!
Yes, Judas‘ actions are evil, but they are not unique. As equal inheritors of Adam’s nature, apart from God’s grace, we all make this same series of decisions. We all act in this suicidal manner. We have all received incredible benefits from God by the very fact that we are alive. We all, at the very least, see God’s invisible attributes revealed in Creation, but we spurn God’s blessings. In our unrighteousness, we suppress the truth. We seek our own blessing by becoming our own God. We are enemies of God. Our sinful motives, thoughts, words, and deeds are attempts to destroy him. When we do feel guilt over our sin, we seek self-atonement through various methods of religion, psychology, and self-help. But no matter what we do these actions will finally lead to our death. Sin is self-destructive.
Jesus said, “It would have been better for that man if he had not been born” (Mark 14:21), and if we do not escape our suicide by God’s grace, we likewise will one day say, “It would have been better for me if I had not been born.” O, But may we not forget that Judas was a disciple! If it was possible for him to fall to such depths, how can I be so prideful to think that I am beyond such self-destructive decisions? “Prone to wonder, Lord, I feel it; Prone to leave the God I love.” Is this not the song of my heart? We must make this our prayer: “Take my heart, Lord; Take and seal it; Seal it for Thy courts above!” One day I will see him, and when I am overcome by his unshielded glory all that I will be able to say is “Grace alone. Grace alone brought me here!”
Teaching the Perfections of God’s Beauty
In the midst of a psalm that emphasizes God’s judgment and his desire for genuine worship, Asaph sings this beautiful line—“Out of Zion, the perfection of beauty, God shines forth” (Ps 50:2). He imagines the glory of God shining forth into the world from Zion, the holy hill where God is worshiped. I am unsure whether Asaph intended the phrase “the perfection of beauty” to describe Zion or to describe God directly, but perhaps the issue is meaningless because, whatever beauty Zion possesses, it is obviously derived from God’s shining forth from it. In The Treasury of David, Spurgeon makes this point: “She [Zion] is made perfect in beauty by his indwelling.”
So, clearly God is the source of perfect beauty. Beauty is emotional, intoxicating, and exhilarating. Beauty is not something to be coldly studied. We must experience beauty. Whether it is the beauty of a breathtaking natural wonder or the beauty of your spouse, beauty is wasted if it is not enjoyed.
When I go to Greece in a couple of months, I will be teaching a course on the attributes of God. I think our traditional term “attributes” tends to be too scientific. In the past, when learning the attributes of God, I have approached them somewhat coldly. I treated God’s attributes as specimens to be categorized, defined, and examined. Perhaps the older theological term, the perfections of God, or a term derived from this psalm, the beauties of God, would more accurately prepare us for the task. We study the perfection of God’s beauty in order to enjoy God, in order to marvel at him, in order to be speechless before him.
As I teach in January, I pray the God will shine forth from me in the perfection of his beauty. Will you pray with me? Will you pray that God will let us glimpse his glory as the Romanian-speaking leaders and I study God’s word in Athens?
Missions and Preserving the Faith
Beloved, although I was very eager to write to you about our common salvation, I found it necessary to write appealing to you to contend for the faith that was once for all delivered to the saints. For certain people have crept in unnoticed who long ago were designated for this condemnation, ungodly people, who pervert the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ (Jude 3-4).
“The faith that was once for all delivered to the saints” exists. Many people would like to think that we’ve moved beyond such exclusivity into an enlightened age of tolerance. However, if we are going to take the Bible seriously, then we cannot escape the fact that there is one, true, uncompromising faith that has been handed down from Christ through the Apostles in Scripture, and since it exists, it is vitally important that we understand, preserve, and teach it.
However, Jude (the author of the Letter of Jude and brother of Jesus, not to be confused with my son) reminds us just how easily the faith can be lost. These people who have perverted the grace of our God into sensuality and deny our only Master and Lord, Jesus Christ, have “crept in unnoticed.” Even though their theological errors and sins are egregious, this church to whom Jude writes has not immediately perceived the threat and have allowed these people to enter their fellowship and propagate their views.
Jesus instructed his sheep to “be wise as serpents and innocent as doves” because he was sending them out among wolves (Matt 10:16). Unfortunately, we have not followed his advice. All around the world, God’s people and even the leaders of God’s people are ignorant of God’s truth. In the West, we have no excuse for our ignorance because we have access to biblical resources that are unprecedented in human history, but for many Christians around the world, their ignorance is due to a lack of opportunity and resources in their location or in their language. Missions means more than just reaching people with the gospel. Missions means preserving the gospel by teaching able men who can teach others also (2 Tim 2:2), and without the ministry of teaching church leaders, the gospel is quickly lost and perverted.
God has and continues to engrave this need on my heart. I am not certain how God will use me throughout my lifetime—whether as a pastor, professor, or missionary. He will open and close doors to determine my path, but wherever I am and whatever I become, I want to continue to fight for the preservation of God’s truth, especially on behalf of our brothers and sisters who lack the opportunities and resources we have in the English-speaking world. This is why I am going to Greece in January. I pray that God will use me to preserve the faith. Will you pray with me and will you consider supporting me in this effort?
A couple of weeks ago, Stacy attended a meeting at the seminary hosted by Chosen Families, a ministry which focuses on hidden disabilities. At the meeting, someone recommended a sermon by John Piper on John 9:1-4 entitled “Why Was This Child Born Blind?”
When God has something to teach us, he often confronts us with the same truth in a number of different ways. The truth of this passage as expounded by John Piper was right in line with what God had been teaching me already over the past few weeks (which I blogged about last week here). Piper explains that “suffering can only have ultimate meaning in relation to God.”
I understand how people would want to explain away the obvious meaning of Jesus‘ explanation of the man’s blindness—”that the works of God might be displayed in him.” How could God be so selfish as to ordain my suffering or, even worse, my child’s suffering for his own glory? Undoubtedly this is a hard pill to swallow, and it makes no sense apart from a belief that God is our greatest good. As John Piper says in the “cleaned-up” manuscript of the sermon:
[F]or our suffering to have ultimate meaning, God must be supremely valuable to us. More valuable than health and life. Many things in the Bible make no sense until God becomes your supreme value.
I hope that this sermon will be as great an encouragement to your family as it was to our family.
Holy Helplessness
I’ve never felt as helpless as I do right now. This morning I was praying through Psalm 141, and I clung to verse 8: “But my eyes are toward you, O God, my Lord; in you I seek refuge; leave me not defenseless!” Persons with a simplistic view of faith cannot account for David’s paradoxical words. On the one hand, David proclaims a confident faith in God. He looks toward God because only God can deliver him from his troubles. He proclaims that God is his refuge, but then in the next breath he cries out to God in desperation, “Leave me not defenseless!”
Why does he beg God not to leave him? Does he not believe the words he had just sang? Is he double-minded—trusting and not trusting, believing and doubting—having some sort of split personality? No. I think that David’s faith in God’s protection is real and genuine, and I also believe that David’s cries of desperation are heartfelt. David teaches us—and he is not alone in teaching us this—that a confident faith most often manifests itself in deep desperation. This meeting of faith and desperation creates a holy helplessness that causes us to forsake all other objects of trust and rely on God alone.
I’ve known good people who have been swept up into certain circles of the Charismatic and prosperity gospel movements that act as if true faith operates as perpetual optimism. They view any intrusion of sorrow and discontent into their lives as repudiation of their faith that needs to be overcome by the power of positive thinking. They, therefore, don’t have the freedom to cry out with David, “Leave me not defenseless.” Of course, they are not alone in this simplicity. Many other Christians act this way even without the influence of popular television preachers.
Like I said, I’ve never felt as helpless as I do right now. Every item of daily prayer that I have is absolutely beyond my ability to affect an answer; and these items are no small things. My mind rushes to them day and night, and I am almost constantly thinking of some way—any way—that I can get the answer. Yet, doors have closed repeatedly to the point that I feel like I am in a place with no escape. Here in this place, I finally understand what David means. I am defenseless from the tribulations in my life. I am helpless. That is who I am.
Only the presence of God in my life alters my intrinsic inability. I am helpless, but with him I am not. I am defenseless, but with him I am not. My faith is confident even while my desperation is deep, and it is only faith in God that can give meaning to times of severe sorrow. While I cannot understand fully the reasons why I am shut into these helpless situations, I at least know that becoming more acquainted with my helplessness strengthens my faith in God alone. Strong confidence in God and a realistic assessment of our helplessness motivates the child of God to cry out to God with the desperation of one who genuinely believes that only God can affect the needed change to persevere through and, if he wills, overcome the mounting sorrows of life. As David, we must cry out in holy helplessness, “You are my help. Do not leave me helpless!”
