The Twelve Apostles

139:12.1Ju­das Is­car­iot, the twelfth apos­tle, was cho­sen by Na­than­iel. He was born in Ke­rioth, a small town in south­ern Judea. When he was a lad, his par­ents moved to Jeri­cho, where he lived and had been em­ployed in his fa­ther’s var­i­ous busi­ness en­ter­prises un­til he be­came in­ter­ested in the preach­ing and work of John the Bap­tist. Ju­das’s par­ents were Sad­ducees, and when their son joined John’s dis­ci­ples, they dis­owned him.

139:12.2When Na­than­iel met Ju­das at Ta­ri­chea, he was seek­ing em­ploy­ment with a fish-dry­ing en­ter­prise at the lower end of the Sea of Gal­i­lee. He was thirty years of age and un­mar­ried when he joined the apos­tles. He was prob­a­bly the best-ed­u­cated man among the twelve and the only Judean in the Mas­ter’s apos­tolic fam­ily. Ju­das had no out­stand­ing trait of per­sonal strength, though he had many out­wardly ap­pear­ing traits of cul­ture and habits of train­ing. He was a good thinker but not al­ways a truly hon­est thinker. Ju­das did not re­ally un­der­stand him­self; he was not re­ally sin­cere in deal­ing with him­self.

139:12.3An­drew ap­pointed Ju­das trea­surer of the twelve, a po­si­tion which he was em­i­nently fit­ted to hold, and up to the time of the be­trayal of his Mas­ter he dis­charged the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of his of­fice hon­estly, faith­fully, and most ef­fi­ciently.

139:12.4There was no spe­cial trait about Je­sus which Ju­das ad­mired above the gen­er­ally at­trac­tive and ex­qui­sitely charm­ing per­son­al­ity of the Mas­ter. Ju­das was never able to rise above his Judean prej­u­dices against his Galilean as­so­ciates; he would even crit­i­cize in his mind many things about Je­sus. Him whom eleven of the apos­tles looked upon as the per­fect man, as the “one al­to­gether lovely and the chiefest among ten thou­sand,” this self-sat­is­fied Judean of­ten dared to crit­i­cize in his own heart. He re­ally en­ter­tained the no­tion that Je­sus was timid and some­what afraid to as­sert his own power and au­thor­ity.

139:12.5Ju­das was a good busi­ness man. It re­quired tact, abil­ity, and pa­tience, as well as painstak­ing de­vo­tion, to man­age the fi­nan­cial af­fairs of such an ide­al­ist as Je­sus, to say noth­ing of wrestling with the hel­ter-skel­ter busi­ness meth­ods of some of his apos­tles. Ju­das re­ally was a great ex­ec­u­tive, a farsee­ing and able fi­nancier. And he was a stick­ler for or­ga­ni­za­tion. None of the twelve ever crit­i­cized Ju­das. As far as they could see, Ju­das Is­car­iot was a match­less trea­surer, a learned man, a loyal (though some­times crit­i­cal) apos­tle, and in ev­ery sense of the word a great suc­cess. The apos­tles loved Ju­das; he was re­ally one of them. He must have be­lieved in Je­sus, but we doubt whether he re­ally loved the Mas­ter with a whole heart. The case of Ju­das il­lus­trates the truth­ful­ness of that say­ing: “There is a way that seems right to a man, but the end thereof is death.” It is al­to­gether pos­si­ble to fall vic­tim to the peace­ful de­cep­tion of pleas­ant ad­just­ment to the paths of sin and death. Be as­sured that Ju­das was al­ways fi­nan­cially loyal to his Mas­ter and his fel­low apos­tles. Money could never have been the mo­tive for his be­trayal of the Mas­ter.

139:12.6Ju­das was an only son of un­wise par­ents. When very young, he was pam­pered and pet­ted; he was a spoiled child. As he grew up, he had ex­ag­ger­ated ideas about his self-im­por­tance. He was a poor loser. He had loose and dis­torted ideas about fair­ness; he was given to the in­dul­gence of hate and sus­pi­cion. He was an ex­pert at mis­in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the words and acts of his friends. All through his life Ju­das had cul­ti­vated the habit of get­ting even with those whom he fan­cied had mis­treated him. His sense of val­ues and loy­al­ties was de­fec­tive.

139:12.7To Je­sus, Ju­das was a faith ad­ven­ture. From the be­gin­ning the Mas­ter fully un­der­stood the weak­ness of this apos­tle and well knew the dan­gers of ad­mit­ting him to fel­low­ship. But it is the na­ture of the Sons of God to give ev­ery cre­ated be­ing a full and equal chance for sal­va­tion and sur­vival. Je­sus wanted not only the mor­tals of this world but the on­look­ers of in­nu­mer­able other worlds to know that, when doubts ex­ist as to the sin­cer­ity and whole­heart­ed­ness of a crea­ture’s de­vo­tion to the king­dom, it is the in­vari­able prac­tice of the Judges of men fully to re­ceive the doubt­ful can­di­date. The door of eter­nal life is wide open to all; “whoso­ever will may come”; there are no re­stric­tions or qual­i­fi­ca­tions save the faith of the one who comes.

139:12.8This is just the rea­son why Je­sus per­mit­ted Ju­das to go on to the very end, al­ways do­ing ev­ery­thing pos­si­ble to trans­form and save this weak and con­fused apos­tle. But when light is not hon­estly re­ceived and lived up to, it tends to be­come dark­ness within the soul. Ju­das grew in­tel­lec­tu­ally re­gard­ing Je­sus’ teach­ings about the king­dom, but he did not make prog­ress in the ac­quire­ment of spir­i­tual char­ac­ter as did the other apos­tles. He failed to make sat­is­fac­tory per­sonal prog­ress in spir­i­tual ex­pe­ri­ence.

139:12.9Ju­das be­came in­creas­ingly a brooder over per­sonal dis­ap­point­ment, and fi­nally he be­came a vic­tim of re­sent­ment. His feel­ings had been many times hurt, and he grew ab­nor­mally sus­pi­cious of his best friends, even of the Mas­ter. Pres­ently he be­came ob­sessed with the idea of get­ting even, any­thing to avenge him­self, yes, even be­trayal of his as­so­ciates and his Mas­ter.

139:12.10But these wicked and dan­ger­ous ideas did not take def­i­nite shape un­til the day when a grate­ful woman broke an ex­pen­sive box of in­cense at Je­sus’ feet. This seemed waste­ful to Ju­das, and when his pub­lic protest was so sweep­ingly dis­al­lowed by Je­sus right there in the hear­ing of all, it was too much. That event de­ter­mined the mo­bi­liza­tion of all the ac­cu­mu­lated hate, hurt, mal­ice, prej­u­dice, jeal­ousy, and re­venge of a life­time, and he made up his mind to get even with he knew not whom; but he crys­tal­lized all the evil of his na­ture upon the one in­no­cent per­son in all the sor­did drama of his un­for­tu­nate life just be­cause Je­sus hap­pened to be the chief ac­tor in the episode which marked his pass­ing from the pro­gres­sive king­dom of light into that self-cho­sen do­main of dark­ness.

139:12.11The Mas­ter many times, both pri­vately and pub­licly, had warned Ju­das that he was slip­ping, but di­vine warn­ings are usu­ally use­less in deal­ing with em­bit­tered hu­man na­ture. Je­sus did ev­ery­thing pos­si­ble, con­sis­tent with man’s moral free­dom, to pre­vent Ju­das’s choos­ing to go the wrong way. The great test fi­nally came. The son of re­sent­ment failed; he yielded to the sour and sor­did dic­tates of a proud and venge­ful mind of ex­ag­ger­ated self-im­por­tance and swiftly plunged on down into con­fu­sion, de­spair, and de­prav­ity.

139:12.12Ju­das then en­tered into the base and shame­ful in­trigue to be­tray his Lord and Mas­ter and quickly car­ried the ne­far­i­ous scheme into ef­fect. Dur­ing the out­work­ing of his anger-con­ceived plans of traitorous be­trayal, he ex­pe­ri­enced mo­ments of re­gret and shame, and in these lu­cid in­ter­vals he faint­heart­edly con­ceived, as a de­fense in his own mind, the idea that Je­sus might pos­si­bly ex­ert his power and de­liver him­self at the last mo­ment.

139:12.13When the sor­did and sin­ful busi­ness was all over, this rene­gade mor­tal, who thought lightly of sell­ing his friend for thirty pieces of sil­ver to sat­isfy his long-nursed crav­ing for re­venge, rushed out and com­mit­ted the fi­nal act in the drama of flee­ing from the re­al­i­ties of mor­tal ex­is­tence—sui­cide.

139:12.14The eleven apos­tles were hor­ri­fied, stunned. Je­sus re­garded the be­trayer only with pity. The worlds have found it dif­fi­cult to for­give Ju­das, and his name has be­come es­chewed through­out a far-flung uni­verse.