Wednesday, the Rest Day

177:4.1Shortly af­ter Je­sus and John Mark left the camp, Ju­das Is­car­iot dis­ap­peared from among his breth­ren, not re­turn­ing un­til late in the af­ter­noon. This con­fused and dis­con­tented apos­tle, not­with­stand­ing his Mas­ter’s spe­cific re­quest to re­frain from en­ter­ing Je­ru­sa­lem, went in haste to keep his ap­point­ment with Je­sus’ en­e­mies at the home of Cai­a­phas the high priest. This was an in­for­mal meet­ing of the San­hedrin and had been ap­pointed for shortly af­ter ten o’clock that morn­ing. This meet­ing was called to dis­cuss the na­ture of the charges which should be lodged against Je­sus and to de­cide upon the pro­ce­dure to be em­ployed in bring­ing him be­fore the Ro­man au­thor­i­ties for the pur­pose of se­cur­ing the nec­es­sary civil con­fir­ma­tion of the death sen­tence which they had al­ready passed upon him.

177:4.2On the pre­ced­ing day Ju­das had dis­closed to some of his rel­a­tives and to cer­tain Sad­ducean friends of his fa­ther’s fam­ily that he had reached the con­clu­sion that, while Je­sus was a well-mean­ing dreamer and ide­al­ist, he was not the ex­pected de­liv­erer of Is­rael. Ju­das stated that he would very much like to find some way of with­draw­ing grace­fully from the whole move­ment. His friends flat­ter­ingly as­sured him that his with­drawal would be hailed by the Jew­ish rulers as a great event, and that noth­ing would be too good for him. They led him to be­lieve that he would forth­with re­ceive high hon­ors from the San­hedrin, and that he would at last be in a po­si­tion to erase the stigma of his well-meant but “un­for­tu­nate as­so­ci­a­tion with un­taught Galileans.”

177:4.3Ju­das could not quite be­lieve that the mighty works of the Mas­ter had been wrought by the power of the prince of dev­ils, but he was now fully con­vinced that Je­sus would not ex­ert his power in self-ag­gran­dize­ment; he was at last con­vinced that Je­sus would al­low him­self to be de­stroyed by the Jew­ish rulers, and he could not en­dure the hu­mil­i­at­ing thought of be­ing iden­ti­fied with a move­ment of de­feat. He re­fused to en­ter­tain the idea of ap­par­ent fail­ure. He thor­oughly un­der­stood the sturdy char­ac­ter of his Mas­ter and the keen­ness of that ma­jes­tic and mer­ci­ful mind, yet he de­rived plea­sure from even the par­tial en­ter­tain­ment of the sug­ges­tion of one of his rel­a­tives that Je­sus, while he was a well-mean­ing fa­natic, was prob­a­bly not re­ally sound of mind; that he had al­ways ap­peared to be a strange and mis­un­der­stood per­son.

177:4.4And now, as never be­fore, Ju­das found him­self be­com­ing strangely re­sent­ful that Je­sus had never as­signed him a po­si­tion of greater honor. All along he had ap­pre­ci­ated the honor of be­ing the apos­tolic trea­surer, but now he be­gan to feel that he was not ap­pre­ci­ated; that his abil­i­ties were un­rec­og­nized. He was sud­denly over­come with in­dig­na­tion that Pe­ter, James, and John should have been hon­ored with close as­so­ci­a­tion with Je­sus, and at this time, when he was on the way to the high priest’s home, he was bent on get­ting even with Pe­ter, James, and John more than he was con­cerned with any thought of be­tray­ing Je­sus. But over and above all, just then, a new and dom­i­nat­ing thought be­gan to oc­cupy the fore­front of his con­scious mind: He had set out to get honor for him­self, and if this could be se­cured si­mul­ta­ne­ously with get­ting even with those who had con­tributed to the great­est dis­ap­point­ment of his life, all the bet­ter. He was seized with a ter­ri­ble con­spir­acy of con­fu­sion, pride, des­per­a­tion, and de­ter­mi­na­tion. And so it must be plain that it was not for money that Ju­das was then on his way to the home of Cai­a­phas to ar­range for the be­trayal of Je­sus.

177:4.5As Ju­das ap­proached the home of Cai­a­phas, he ar­rived at the fi­nal de­ci­sion to aban­don Je­sus and his fel­low apos­tles; and hav­ing thus made up his mind to desert the cause of the king­dom of heaven, he was de­ter­mined to se­cure for him­self as much as pos­si­ble of that honor and glory which he had thought would some­time be his when he first iden­ti­fied him­self with Je­sus and the new gospel of the king­dom. All of the apos­tles once shared this am­bi­tion with Ju­das, but as time passed they learned to ad­mire truth and to love Je­sus, at least more than did Ju­das.

177:4.6The traitor was pre­sented to Cai­a­phas and the Jew­ish rulers by his cousin, who ex­plained that Ju­das, hav­ing dis­cov­ered his mis­take in al­low­ing him­self to be mis­led by the sub­tle teach­ing of Je­sus, had ar­rived at the place where he wished to make pub­lic and for­mal re­nun­ci­a­tion of his as­so­ci­a­tion with the Galilean and at the same time to ask for re­in­state­ment in the con­fi­dence and fel­low­ship of his Judean breth­ren. This spokesman for Ju­das went on to ex­plain that Ju­das rec­og­nized it would be best for the peace of Is­rael if Je­sus should be taken into cus­tody, and that, as ev­i­dence of his sor­row in hav­ing par­tic­i­pated in such a move­ment of er­ror and as proof of his sin­cer­ity in now re­turn­ing to the teach­ings of Moses, he had come to of­fer him­self to the San­hedrin as one who could so ar­range with the cap­tain hold­ing the or­ders for Je­sus’ ar­rest that he could be taken into cus­tody qui­etly, thus avoid­ing any dan­ger of stir­ring up the mul­ti­tudes or the ne­ces­sity of post­pon­ing his ar­rest un­til af­ter the Pass­over.

177:4.7When his cousin had fin­ished speak­ing, he pre­sented Ju­das, who, step­ping for­ward near the high priest, said: “All that my cousin has prom­ised, I will do, but what are you will­ing to give me for this ser­vice?” Ju­das did not seem to dis­cern the look of dis­dain and even dis­gust that came over the face of the hard­hearted and vain­glo­ri­ous Cai­a­phas; his heart was too much set on self-glory and the crav­ing for the sat­is­fac­tion of self-ex­al­ta­tion.

177:4.8And then Cai­a­phas looked down upon the be­trayer while he said: “Ju­das, you go to the cap­tain of the guard and ar­range with that of­fi­cer to bring your Mas­ter to us ei­ther tonight or to­mor­row night, and when he has been de­liv­ered by you into our hands, you shall re­ceive your re­ward for this ser­vice.” When Ju­das heard this, he went forth from the pres­ence of the chief priests and rulers and took coun­sel with the cap­tain of the tem­ple guards as to the man­ner in which Je­sus was to be ap­pre­hended. Ju­das knew that Je­sus was then ab­sent from the camp and had no idea when he would re­turn that evening, and so they agreed among them­selves to ar­rest Je­sus the next evening (Thurs­day) af­ter the peo­ple of Je­ru­sa­lem and all of the vis­it­ing pil­grims had re­tired for the night.

177:4.9Ju­das re­turned to his as­so­ciates at the camp in­tox­i­cated with thoughts of grandeur and glory such as he had not had for many a day. He had en­listed with Je­sus hop­ing some day to be­come a great man in the new king­dom. He at last re­al­ized that there was to be no new king­dom such as he had an­tic­i­pated. But he re­joiced in be­ing so saga­cious as to trade off his dis­ap­point­ment in fail­ing to achieve glory in an an­tic­i­pated new king­dom for the im­me­di­ate re­al­iza­tion of honor and re­ward in the old or­der, which he now be­lieved would sur­vive, and which he was cer­tain would de­stroy Je­sus and all that he stood for. In its last mo­tive of con­scious in­ten­tion, Ju­das’s be­trayal of Je­sus was the cow­ardly act of a self­ish de­serter whose only thought was his own safety and glo­ri­fi­ca­tion, no mat­ter what might be the re­sults of his con­duct upon his Mas­ter and upon his for­mer as­so­ciates.

177:4.10But it was ever just that way. Ju­das had long been en­gaged in this de­lib­er­ate, per­sis­tent, self­ish, and venge­ful con­scious­ness of pro­gres­sively build­ing up in his mind, and en­ter­tain­ing in his heart, these hate­ful and evil de­sires of re­venge and dis­loy­alty. Je­sus loved and trusted Ju­das even as he loved and trusted the other apos­tles, but Ju­das failed to de­velop loyal trust and to ex­pe­ri­ence whole­hearted love in re­turn. And how dan­ger­ous am­bi­tion can be­come when it is once wholly wed­ded to self-seek­ing and su­premely mo­ti­vated by sullen and long-sup­pressed vengeance! What a crush­ing thing is dis­ap­point­ment in the lives of those fool­ish per­sons who, in fas­ten­ing their gaze on the shad­owy and evanes­cent al­lure­ments of time, be­come blinded to the higher and more real achieve­ments of the ev­er­last­ing at­tain­ments of the eter­nal worlds of di­vine val­ues and true spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties. Ju­das craved worldly honor in his mind and grew to love this de­sire with his whole heart; the other apos­tles like­wise craved this same worldly honor in their minds, but with their hearts they loved Je­sus and were do­ing their best to learn to love the truths which he taught them.

177:4.11Ju­das did not re­al­ize it at this time, but he had been a sub­con­scious critic of Je­sus ever since John the Bap­tist was be­headed by Herod. Deep down in his heart Ju­das al­ways re­sented the fact that Je­sus did not save John. You should not for­get that Ju­das had been a dis­ci­ple of John be­fore he be­came a fol­lower of Je­sus. And all these ac­cu­mu­la­tions of hu­man re­sent­ment and bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment which Ju­das had laid by in his soul in ha­bil­i­ments of hate were now well or­ga­nized in his sub­con­scious mind and ready to spring up to en­gulf him when he once dared to sep­a­rate him­self from the sup­port­ing in­flu­ence of his breth­ren while at the same time ex­pos­ing him­self to the clever in­sin­u­a­tions and sub­tle ridicule of the en­e­mies of Je­sus. Ev­ery time Ju­das al­lowed his hopes to soar high and Je­sus would do or say some­thing to dash them to pieces, there was al­ways left in Ju­das’s heart a scar of bit­ter re­sent­ment; and as these scars mul­ti­plied, pres­ently that heart, so of­ten wounded, lost all real af­fec­tion for the one who had in­flicted this dis­taste­ful ex­pe­ri­ence upon a well-in­ten­tioned but cow­ardly and self-cen­tered per­son­al­ity. Ju­das did not re­al­ize it, but he was a cow­ard. Ac­cord­ingly was he al­ways in­clined to as­sign to Je­sus cow­ardice as the mo­tive which led him so of­ten to refuse to grasp for power or glory when they were ap­par­ently within his easy reach. And ev­ery mor­tal man knows full well how love, even when once gen­uine, can, through dis­ap­point­ment, jeal­ousy, and long-con­tin­ued re­sent­ment, be even­tu­ally turned into ac­tual hate.

177:4.12At last the chief priests and el­ders could breathe eas­ily for a few hours. They would not have to ar­rest Je­sus in pub­lic, and the se­cur­ing of Ju­das as a traitorous ally in­sured that Je­sus would not es­cape from their ju­ris­dic­tion as he had so many times in the past.