Dear Friends of "Dial Daily Bread":
Did Jesus love Judas Iscariot, the man who eventually betrayed Him? Did He love him a little less than He loved the Eleven disciples? How could Jesus love Judas the same if He foreknew that he would double cross Him and sell Him for the price of a slave?
And if Jesus did actually love Judas less than He loved the Eleven, wouldn’t Judas use that as an argument at last in the final judgment, “It’s Your fault I am lost! You didn’t do the same for me that You did for those people who are safe inside the City!” Many have a hard time with this question; they sympathize with Judas. They feel drawn as by an undertow to feel that God pre-programmed Judas to be lost, “predestinated” hell for him.
And they feel the same deep undertow sweeping them into the idea that they too have been predestinated to be lost. The result: despair. Can we find unmistakably clear truth in the Bible?
(1) “God our Savior ... will have all men to be saved, and to come unto the knowledge of the truth” (1 Tim. 2:3-6). Clear as sunlight: (a) God wanted Judas to be saved. (b) He would have been saved if he had “come to a knowledge of the truth” (“knowledge” = epignosis which is more than head awareness; it is to “know upon,” “full discernment,” “acknowledgment,” Strong 1922).
(2) “The man Christ Jesus gave Himself a ransom for all,” including Judas Iscariot. When the Savior looked in Judas’s eye and said, “Judas, do you betray the Son of man with a kiss?” (Luke
(3) When Jesus washed his feet in John 13:2-5, the betrayer’s heart thrilled with a thought that he must kneel down and confess his crime and “be ... reconciled to God.” But he steeled his heart and committed the unpardonable sin of rejecting the final overture of God’s much more abounding grace seen in His love. He scorned agape.
No one, no one, is predestinated to do that!
Jesus loved Judas “unto the end” (vs. 1). He loves you that far, too—up to your last breath.
Be sure to check your e-mail for "Dial Daily Bread" again tomorrow.
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