"and Judas Iscariot, who became a traitor." ~ Luke 6:16
"[Judas] said this not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief; he kept the common purse and used to steal what was put into it." ~ John 12:6
"Throwing down the pieces of silver in the temple, he departed, and he went and hanged himself." ~ Matthew 27:5
These three verses are a summary of the life of one of Jesus' twelve apostles: he was a traitor and a thief who killed himself. Yet I think there has to be more to the story than these verses convey.
Jesus chose Judas for the honor of being one of the twelve apostles, and Jesus would not have chosen him if He didn't have a good reason. We know from Acts 1:21-26 that there were other disciples that could have been promoted because, by the end of this passage, Matthias was. Jesus had to have a good reason why Judas was in the top twelve and Matthias wasn't. Unfortunately, that reason is something we will never know because of how Judas's life ended.
Prior to killing himself, Judas tried to return the money the chief priests had paid him for his betrayal (Matthew 27:3). I'm not sure what he expected was going to happen, but Jesus being sentenced to death wasn't it, so he tried to fix his mistake. When the chief priests wouldn't budge, he threw the money at them and ran away to end his life. He didn't trust that Christ could forgive him, so he decided that his life was over. However, that noose not only sealed the fate of his Earthly body but also his legacy.
What we know about Judas now was written by the four authors of the gospels. Two of them were his friends and fellow members of Jesus' twelve apostles. The other two, while they may not have known him personally, were probably heavily influenced by the opinions of those who did. The verse above that calls him a thief was written by someone who walked beside him for three whole years, yet had nothing better to say about him.
Had Judas allowed his grief to draw him to the foot of the cross rather than a noose in the branches of a tree, he would be the one to tell his story. As I mentioned in an earlier post, our world might be very different had Judas waited three days to see the forgiveness Christ offered him. We would also know why he was so important to Christ's mission because he would have continued on in that very mission for years to come. He would likely have been even more committed after the resurrection than he ever had been before.
This applies to our lives today because all of us have times that we mess up as well. Now, what we do may not seem to be as bad as what Judas did, but every sin is a betrayal of who God made us to be. We know nothing about Judas's good points because he let his worst act become his last act, and his story was left to be told by others. We cannot let ourselves fall into the same trap he did. Our legacy is defined not by how far we have fallen, but by how Jesus redeemed us from it, and no one is ever too far gone to be redeemed.
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