Judas Iscariot

• disowned by parents over John the Baptist
• only son of wealthy Sadducees, unmarried, living in Jericho, only Judean, selected by Nathaniel; 30 in A.D. 26

138:2.96. Ju­das Is­car­iot was an only son of wealthy Jew­ish par­ents liv­ing in Jeri­cho. He had be­come at­tached to John the Bap­tist, and his Sad­ducee par­ents had dis­owned him. He was look­ing for em­ploy­ment in these re­gions when Je­sus’ apos­tles found him, and chiefly be­cause of his ex­pe­ri­ence with fi­nances, Na­than­iel in­vited him to join their ranks. Ju­das Is­car­iot was the only Judean among the twelve apos­tles.

138:5.1Thomas the fish­er­man and Ju­das the wan­derer met Je­sus and the apos­tles at the fisher-boat land­ing at Ta­ri­chea, and Thomas led the party to his near-by home. Philip now pre­sented Thomas as his nom­i­nee for apos­tle­ship and Na­than­iel pre­sented Ju­das Is­car­iot, the Judean, for sim­i­lar hon­ors. Je­sus looked upon Thomas and said: “Thomas, you lack faith; nev­er­the­less, I re­ceive you. Fol­low me.” To Ju­das Is­car­iot the Mas­ter said: “Ju­das, we are all of one flesh, and as I re­ceive you into our midst, I pray that you will al­ways be loyal to your Galilean breth­ren. Fol­low me.”

138:5.2When they had re­freshed them­selves, Je­sus took the twelve apart for a sea­son to pray with them and to in­struct them in the na­ture and work of the Holy Spirit, but again did they largely fail to com­pre­hend the mean­ing of those won­der­ful truths which he en­deav­ored to teach them. One would grasp one point and one would com­pre­hend an­other, but none of them could en­com­pass the whole of his teach­ing. Al­ways would they make the mis­take of try­ing to fit Je­sus’ new gospel into their old forms of re­li­gious be­lief. They could not grasp the idea that Je­sus had come to pro­claim a new gospel of sal­va­tion and to es­tab­lish a new way of find­ing God; they did not per­ceive that he was a new rev­e­la­tion of the Fa­ther in heaven.

138:5.3The next day Je­sus left his twelve apos­tles quite alone; he wanted them to be­come ac­quainted and de­sired that they be alone to talk over what he had taught them. The Mas­ter re­turned for the evening meal, and dur­ing the af­ter-sup­per hours he talked to them about the min­istry of ser­a­phim, and some of the apos­tles com­pre­hended his teach­ing. They rested for a night and the next day de­parted by boat for Ca­per­naum.

• resented Jesus not saving John the Baptist

138:5.4Zeb­e­dee and Sa­lome had gone to live with their son David so that their large home could be turned over to Je­sus and his twelve apos­tles. Here Je­sus spent a quiet Sab­bath with his cho­sen mes­sen­gers; he care­fully out­lined the plans for pro­claim­ing the king­dom and fully ex­plained the im­por­tance of avoid­ing any clash with the civil au­thor­i­ties, say­ing: “If the civil rulers are to be re­buked, leave that task to me. See that you make no de­nun­ci­a­tions of Cae­sar or his ser­vants.” It was this same evening that Ju­das Is­car­iot took Je­sus aside to in­quire why noth­ing was done to get John out of prison. And Ju­das was not wholly sat­is­fied with Je­sus’ at­ti­tude.

• discharged office of treasurer faithfully and efficiently

138:8.1Af­ter dis­pos­ing of the fish catches of two weeks, Ju­das Is­car­iot, the one cho­sen to act as trea­surer of the twelve, di­vided the apos­tolic funds into six equal por­tions, funds for the care of de­pen­dent fam­i­lies hav­ing been al­ready pro­vided. And then near the mid­dle of Au­gust, in the year A.D. 26, they went forth two and two to the fields of work as­signed by An­drew. The first two weeks Je­sus went out with An­drew and Pe­ter, the sec­ond two weeks with James and John, and so on with the other cou­ples in the or­der of their choos­ing. In this way he was able to go out at least once with each cou­ple be­fore he called them to­gether for the be­gin­ning of their pub­lic min­istry.

• discharged office of treasurer faithfully and efficiently

138:10.109. Ju­das Is­car­iot was ap­pointed trea­surer. He car­ried the bag. He paid all ex­penses and kept the books. He made bud­get es­ti­mates for Mat­thew from week to week and also made weekly re­ports to An­drew. Ju­das paid out funds on An­drew’s au­tho­riza­tion.

• born in Kerioth; best-educated apostle

139:6.2When Na­than­iel joined the apos­tles, he was twenty-five years old and was the next to the young­est of the group. He was the young­est of a fam­ily of seven, was un­mar­ried, and the only sup­port of aged and in­firm par­ents, with whom he lived at Cana; his broth­ers and sis­ter were ei­ther mar­ried or de­ceased, and none lived there. Na­than­iel and Ju­das Is­car­iot were the two best ed­u­cated men among the twelve. Na­than­iel had thought to be­come a mer­chant.

• causes of downfall › nursed grudges; sought revenge for hurt feelings
• criticized Nathaniel; rebuked by Jesus

139:6.5The apos­tles all loved and re­spected Na­than­iel, and he got along with them splen­didly, ex­cept­ing Ju­das Is­car­iot. Ju­das did not think Na­than­iel took his apos­tle­ship suf­fi­ciently se­ri­ously and once had the temer­ity to go se­cretly to Je­sus and lodge com­plaint against him. Said Je­sus: “Ju­das, watch care­fully your steps; do not over­mag­nify your of­fice. Who of us is com­pe­tent to judge his brother? It is not the Fa­ther’s will that his chil­dren should par­take only of the se­ri­ous things of life. Let me re­peat: I have come that my breth­ren in the flesh may have joy, glad­ness, and life more abun­dantly. Go then, Ju­das, and do well that which has been in­trusted to you but leave Na­than­iel, your brother, to give ac­count of him­self to God.” And the mem­ory of this, with that of many sim­i­lar ex­pe­ri­ences, long lived in the self-de­ceiv­ing heart of Ju­das Is­car­iot.

• born in Kerioth; best-educated apostle
• disowned by parents over John the Baptist
• only son of wealthy Sadducees, unmarried, living in Jericho, only Judean, selected by Nathaniel; 30 in A.D. 26

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.

• discharged office of treasurer faithfully and efficiently

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.

• causes of downfall › was self-satisfied

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.

• betrayal › did not betray Jesus for money
• great executive, stickler for organization

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.

• causes of downfall › pampered and spoiled only son of unwise parents

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.

• Jesus › J. was faith adventure to

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.

• betrayal › emotions precipitating betrayal
• Mary’s waste of ointment mobilized J.’s hatred

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.

• suicide by hanging in valley of Hinnom

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.

• name eschewed

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.

• prejudiced against Samaritans

143:0.2The peo­ple of south­ern Samaria heard Je­sus gladly, and the apos­tles, with the ex­cep­tion of Ju­das Is­car­iot, suc­ceeded in over­com­ing much of their prej­u­dice against the Samar­i­tans. It was very dif­fi­cult for Ju­das to love these Samar­i­tans. The last week of July Je­sus and his as­so­ciates made ready to de­part for the new Greek cities of Phasaelis and Archelais near the Jor­dan.

• Judas Iscariot

143:3.5When they went up the moun­tain, An­drew’s head was full of prob­lems. John was in­or­di­nately per­plexed in his heart. James was griev­ously trou­bled in his soul. Mat­thew was hard pressed for funds inas­much as they had been so­journ­ing among the gen­tiles. Pe­ter was over­wrought and had re­cently been more tem­per­a­men­tal than usual. Ju­das was suf­fer­ing from a pe­ri­odic at­tack of sen­si­tive­ness and self­ish­ness. Si­mon was un­usu­ally up­set in his ef­forts to rec­on­cile his pa­tri­o­tism with the love of the broth­er­hood of man. Philip was more and more non­plused by the way things were go­ing. Na­than­iel had been less hu­mor­ous since they had come in con­tact with the gen­tile pop­u­la­tions, and Thomas was in the midst of a se­vere sea­son of de­pres­sion. Only the twins were nor­mal and un­per­turbed. All of them were ex­ceed­ingly per­plexed about how to get along peace­ably with John’s dis­ci­ples.

• Judas Iscariot

144:1.7Dur­ing these Sep­tem­ber weeks they rested, vis­ited, re­counted their ex­pe­ri­ences since Je­sus first called them to ser­vice, and en­gaged in an earnest ef­fort to co-or­di­nate what the Mas­ter had so far taught them. In a mea­sure they all sensed that this would be their last op­por­tu­nity for pro­longed rest. They re­al­ized that their next pub­lic ef­fort in ei­ther Judea or Gal­i­lee would mark the be­gin­ning of the fi­nal procla­ma­tion of the com­ing king­dom, but they had lit­tle or no set­tled idea as to what the king­dom would be when it came. John and An­drew thought the king­dom had al­ready come; Pe­ter and James be­lieved that it was yet to come; Na­than­iel and Thomas frankly con­fessed they were puz­zled; Mat­thew, Philip, and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were un­cer­tain and con­fused; the twins were bliss­fully ig­no­rant of the con­tro­versy; and Ju­das Is­car­iot was silent, non­com­mit­tal.

• Judas Iscariot
• deposited funds

147:2.1Early on the morn­ing of Tues­day, March 30, Je­sus and the apos­tolic party started on their jour­ney to Je­ru­sa­lem for the Pass­over, go­ing by the route of the Jor­dan val­ley. They ar­rived on the af­ter­noon of Fri­day, April 2, and es­tab­lished their head­quar­ters, as usual, at Beth­any. Pass­ing through Jeri­cho, they paused to rest while Ju­das made a de­posit of some of their com­mon funds in the bank of a friend of his fam­ily. This was the first time Ju­das had car­ried a sur­plus of money, and this de­posit was left undis­turbed un­til they passed through Jeri­cho again when on that last and event­ful jour­ney to Je­ru­sa­lem just be­fore the trial and death of Je­sus.

• Judas Iscariot

151:2.8Now that the ten­sion was over, Pe­ter and Na­than­iel con­grat­u­lated each other on their in­ter­pre­ta­tions, and with the ex­cep­tion of the Al­pheus twins, each of the apos­tles ven­tured to make an in­ter­pre­ta­tion of the para­ble of the sower be­fore they re­tired for the night. Even Ju­das Is­car­iot of­fered a very plau­si­ble in­ter­pre­ta­tion. The twelve would of­ten, among them­selves, at­tempt to fig­ure out the Mas­ter’s para­bles as they would an al­le­gory, but never again did they re­gard such spec­u­la­tions se­ri­ously. This was a very prof­itable ses­sion for the apos­tles and their as­so­ciates, es­pe­cially so since from this time on Je­sus more and more em­ployed para­bles in con­nec­tion with his pub­lic teach­ing.

• favored proclaiming Jesus king; imagined Jesus regretted

152:2.5Philip had pro­vided a three days’ sup­ply of food for Je­sus and the twelve, which was in the cus­tody of the Mark lad, their boy of all chores. By af­ter­noon of this, the third day for al­most half of this mul­ti­tude, the food the peo­ple had brought with them was nearly ex­hausted. David Zeb­e­dee had no tented city here to feed and ac­com­mo­date the crowds. Nei­ther had Philip made food pro­vi­sion for such a mul­ti­tude. But the peo­ple, even though they were hun­gry, would not go away. It was be­ing qui­etly whis­pered about that Je­sus, de­sir­ing to avoid trou­ble with both Herod and the Je­ru­sa­lem lead­ers, had cho­sen this quiet spot out­side the ju­ris­dic­tion of all his en­e­mies as the proper place to be crowned king. The en­thu­si­asm of the peo­ple was ris­ing ev­ery hour. Not a word was said to Je­sus, though, of course, he knew all that was go­ing on. Even the twelve apos­tles were still tainted with such no­tions, and es­pe­cially the younger evan­ge­lists. The apos­tles who fa­vored this at­tempt to pro­claim Je­sus king were Pe­ter, John, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes, and Ju­das Is­car­iot. Those op­pos­ing the plan were An­drew, James, Na­than­iel, and Thomas. Mat­thew, Philip, and the Al­pheus twins were non­com­mit­tal. The ringleader of this plot to make him king was Joab, one of the young evan­ge­lists.

• favored proclaiming Jesus king; imagined Jesus regretted

153:0.2Not in months had they seen the Mas­ter so pre­oc­cu­pied and un­com­mu­nica­tive. Even Si­mon Pe­ter was de­pressed, if not down­cast. An­drew was at a loss to know what to do for his de­jected as­so­ciates. Na­than­iel said they were in the midst of the “lull be­fore the storm.” Thomas ex­pressed the opin­ion that “some­thing out of the or­di­nary is about to hap­pen.” Philip ad­vised David Zeb­e­dee to “for­get about plans for feed­ing and lodg­ing the mul­ti­tude un­til we know what the Mas­ter is think­ing about.” Mat­thew was putting forth re­newed ef­forts to re­plen­ish the trea­sury. James and John talked over the forth­com­ing ser­mon in the syn­a­gogue and spec­u­lated much as to its prob­a­ble na­ture and scope. Si­mon Ze­lo­tes ex­pressed the be­lief, in re­al­ity a hope, that “the Fa­ther in heaven may be about to in­ter­vene in some un­ex­pected man­ner for the vin­di­ca­tion and sup­port of his Son,” while Ju­das Is­car­iot dared to in­dulge the thought that pos­si­bly Je­sus was op­pressed with re­grets that “he did not have the cour­age and dar­ing to per­mit the five thou­sand to pro­claim him king of the Jews.”

• betrayal › emotions precipitating betrayal

153:1.5As they sat there in the syn­a­gogue that af­ter­noon be­fore Je­sus be­gan to speak, there was just one great mys­tery, just one su­preme ques­tion, in the minds of all. Both his friends and his foes pon­dered just one thought, and that was: “Why did he him­self so de­lib­er­ately and ef­fec­tively turn back the tide of pop­u­lar en­thu­si­asm?” And it was im­me­di­ately be­fore and im­me­di­ately af­ter this ser­mon that the doubts and dis­ap­point­ments of his dis­grun­tled ad­her­ents grew into un­con­scious op­po­si­tion and even­tu­ally turned into ac­tual ha­tred. It was af­ter this ser­mon in the syn­a­gogue that Ju­das Is­car­iot en­ter­tained his first con­scious thought of de­sert­ing. But he did, for the time be­ing, ef­fec­tively mas­ter all such in­cli­na­tions.

• Jesus › warned apostles of impending betrayal

153:5.4“My beloved, you must re­mem­ber that it is the spirit that quick­ens; the flesh and all that per­tains thereto is of lit­tle profit. The words which I have spo­ken to you are spirit and life. Be of good cheer! I have not de­serted you. Many shall be of­fended by the plain speak­ing of these days. Al­ready you have heard that many of my dis­ci­ples have turned back; they walk no more with me. From the be­gin­ning I knew that these half­hearted be­liev­ers would fall out by the way. Did I not choose you twelve men and set you apart as am­bas­sadors of the king­dom? And now at such a time as this would you also desert? Let each of you look to his own faith, for one of you stands in grave dan­ger.” And when Je­sus had fin­ished speak­ing, Si­mon Pe­ter said: “Yes, Lord, we are sad and per­plexed, but we will never for­sake you. You have taught us the words of eter­nal life. We have be­lieved in you and fol­lowed with you all this time. We will not turn back, for we know that you are sent by God.” And as Pe­ter ceased speak­ing, they all with one ac­cord nod­ded their ap­proval of his pledge of loy­alty.

• Jesus › advised placing utmost confidence in J.

157:7.1That evening An­drew took it upon him­self to hold a per­sonal and search­ing con­fer­ence with each of his breth­ren, and he had prof­itable and heart­en­ing talks with all of his as­so­ciates ex­cept Ju­das Is­car­iot. An­drew had never en­joyed such in­ti­mate per­sonal as­so­ci­a­tion with Ju­das as with the other apos­tles and there­fore had not thought it of se­ri­ous ac­count that Ju­das never had freely and con­fi­den­tially re­lated him­self to the head of the apos­tolic corps. But An­drew was now so wor­ried by Ju­das’s at­ti­tude that, later on that night, af­ter all the apos­tles were fast asleep, he sought out Je­sus and pre­sented his cause for anx­i­ety to the Mas­ter. Said Je­sus: “It is not amiss, An­drew, that you have come to me with this mat­ter, but there is noth­ing more that we can do; only go on plac­ing the ut­most con­fi­dence in this apos­tle. And say noth­ing to his breth­ren con­cern­ing this talk with me.”

• causes of downfall

157:7.2And that was all An­drew could elicit from Je­sus. Al­ways had there been some strangeness be­tween this Judean and his Galilean breth­ren. Ju­das had been shocked by the death of John the Bap­tist, severely hurt by the Mas­ter’s re­bukes on sev­eral oc­ca­sions, dis­ap­pointed when Je­sus re­fused to be made king, hu­mil­i­ated when he fled from the Phar­isees, cha­grined when he re­fused to ac­cept the chal­lenge of the Phar­isees for a sign, be­wil­dered by the re­fusal of his Mas­ter to re­sort to man­i­fes­ta­tions of power, and now, more re­cently, de­pressed and some­times de­jected by an empty trea­sury. And Ju­das missed the stim­u­lus of the mul­ti­tudes.

157:7.3Each of the other apos­tles was, in some and vary­ing mea­sure, like­wise af­fected by these self­same tri­als and tribu­la­tions, but they loved Je­sus. At least they must have loved the Mas­ter more than did Ju­das, for they went through with him to the bit­ter end.

157:7.4Be­ing from Judea, Ju­das took per­sonal of­fense at Je­sus’ re­cent warn­ing to the apos­tles to “be­ware the leaven of the Phar­isees”; he was dis­posed to re­gard this state­ment as a veiled ref­er­ence to him­self. But the great mis­take of Ju­das was: Time and again, when Je­sus would send his apos­tles off by them­selves to pray, Ju­das, in­stead of en­gag­ing in sin­cere com­mu­nion with the spir­i­tual forces of the uni­verse, in­dulged in thoughts of hu­man fear while he per­sisted in the en­ter­tain­ment of sub­tle doubts about the mis­sion of Je­sus as well as giv­ing in to his un­for­tu­nate ten­dency to har­bor feel­ings of re­venge.

• attempted to heal James of Safed’s son

158:4.6As the apos­tles lis­tened, Si­mon Ze­lo­tes and Ju­das Is­car­iot stepped into the pres­ence of the fa­ther, say­ing: “We can heal him; you need not wait for the Mas­ter’s re­turn. We are am­bas­sadors of the king­dom; no longer do we hold these things in se­cret. Je­sus is the De­liv­erer, and the keys of the king­dom have been de­liv­ered to us.” By this time An­drew and Thomas were in con­sul­ta­tion at one side. Na­than­iel and the oth­ers looked on in amaze­ment; they were all aghast at the sud­den bold­ness, if not pre­sump­tion, of Si­mon and Ju­das. Then said the fa­ther: “If it has been given you to do these works, I pray that you will speak those words which will de­liver my child from this bond­age.” Then Si­mon stepped for­ward and, plac­ing his hand on the head of the child, looked di­rectly into his eyes and com­manded: “Come out of him, you un­clean spirit; in the name of Je­sus obey me.” But the lad had only a more vi­o­lent fit, while the scribes mocked the apos­tles in de­ri­sion, and the dis­ap­pointed be­liev­ers suf­fered the taunts of these un­friendly crit­ics.

• imagined Jesus feared Jewish leaders

162:1.3Je­sus’ bold ap­pear­ance in Je­ru­sa­lem more than ever con­fused his fol­low­ers. Many of his dis­ci­ples, and even Ju­das Is­car­iot, the apos­tle, had dared to think that Je­sus had fled in haste into Phoeni­cia be­cause he feared the Jew­ish lead­ers and Herod An­tipas. They failed to com­pre­hend the sig­nif­i­cance of the Mas­ter’s move­ments. His pres­ence in Je­ru­sa­lem at the feast of taber­na­cles, even in op­po­si­tion to the ad­vice of his fol­low­ers, suf­ficed for­ever to put an end to all whis­per­ings about fear and cow­ardice.

• deposited funds

163:2.11Je­sus never taught that it was wrong to have wealth. He re­quired only the twelve and the sev­enty to ded­i­cate all of their worldly pos­ses­sions to the com­mon cause. Even then, he pro­vided for the prof­itable liq­ui­da­tion of their prop­erty, as in the case of the Apos­tle Mat­thew. Je­sus many times ad­vised his well-to-do dis­ci­ples as he taught the rich man of Rome. The Mas­ter re­garded the wise in­vest­ment of ex­cess earn­ings as a le­git­i­mate form of in­sur­ance against fu­ture and un­avoid­able ad­ver­sity. When the apos­tolic trea­sury was over­flow­ing, Ju­das put funds on de­posit to be used sub­se­quently when they might suf­fer greatly from a diminu­tion of in­come. This Ju­das did af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with An­drew. Je­sus never per­son­ally had any­thing to do with the apos­tolic fi­nances ex­cept in the dis­burse­ment of alms. But there was one eco­nomic abuse which he many times con­demned, and that was the un­fair ex­ploita­tion of the weak, un­learned, and less for­tu­nate of men by their strong, keen, and more in­tel­li­gent fel­lows. Je­sus de­clared that such in­hu­man treat­ment of men, women, and chil­dren was in­com­pat­i­ble with the ide­als of the broth­er­hood of the king­dom of heaven.

• Mary’s waste of ointment mobilized J.’s hatred

172:1.5Noth­ing out of the or­di­nary hap­pened un­til near the close of the feast­ing when Mary the sis­ter of Laz­a­rus stepped for­ward from among the group of women on­look­ers and, go­ing up to where Je­sus re­clined as the guest of honor, pro­ceeded to open a large al­abaster cruse of very rare and costly oint­ment; and af­ter anoint­ing the Mas­ter’s head, she be­gan to pour it upon his feet as she took down her hair and wiped them with it. The whole house be­came filled with the odor of the oint­ment, and ev­ery­body pres­ent was amazed at what Mary had done. Laz­a­rus said noth­ing, but when some of the peo­ple mur­mured, show­ing in­dig­na­tion that so costly an oint­ment should be thus used, Ju­das Is­car­iot stepped over to where An­drew re­clined and said: “Why was this oint­ment not sold and the money be­stowed to feed the poor? You should speak to the Mas­ter that he re­buke such waste.”

172:1.6Je­sus, know­ing what they thought and hear­ing what they said, put his hand upon Mary’s head as she knelt by his side and, with a kindly ex­pres­sion upon his face, said: “Let her alone, ev­ery one of you. Why do you trou­ble her about this, see­ing that she has done a good thing in her heart? To you who mur­mur and say that this oint­ment should have been sold and the money given to the poor, let me say that you have the poor al­ways with you so that you may min­is­ter to them at any time it seems good to you; but I shall not al­ways be with you; I go soon to my Fa­ther. This woman has long saved this oint­ment for my body at its burial, and now that it has seemed good to her to make this anoint­ing in an­tic­i­pa­tion of my death, she shall not be de­nied such sat­is­fac­tion. In the do­ing of this, Mary has re­proved all of you in that by this act she evinces faith in what I have said about my death and as­cen­sion to my Fa­ther in heaven. This woman shall not be re­proved for that which she has this night done; rather do I say to you that in the ages to come, wher­ever this gospel shall be preached through­out the whole world, what she has done will be spo­ken of in mem­ory of her.”

• causes of downfall › nursed grudges; sought revenge for hurt feelings

172:1.7It was be­cause of this re­buke, which he took as a per­sonal re­proof, that Ju­das Is­car­iot fi­nally made up his mind to seek re­venge for his hurt feel­ings. Many times had he en­ter­tained such ideas sub­con­sciously, but now he dared to think such wicked thoughts in his open and con­scious mind. And many oth­ers en­cour­aged him in this at­ti­tude since the cost of this oint­ment was a sum equal to the earn­ings of one man for one year—enough to pro­vide bread for five thou­sand per­sons. But Mary loved Je­sus; she had pro­vided this pre­cious oint­ment with which to em­balm his body in death, for she be­lieved his words when he fore­warned them that he must die, and it was not to be de­nied her if she changed her mind and chose to be­stow this of­fer­ing upon the Mas­ter while he yet lived.

• David Zebedee gave funds to
• deposited funds

172:2.3Early that morn­ing David Zeb­e­dee had turned over to Ju­das the funds re­al­ized from the sale of the equip­ment of the Pella en­camp­ment, and Ju­das, in turn, had placed the greater part of this money in the hands of Si­mon, their host, for safe­keep­ing in an­tic­i­pa­tion of the ex­i­gen­cies of their en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem.

• adversely affected by entry into Jerusalem
• betrayal › did not betray Jesus for money
• Mary’s waste of ointment mobilized J.’s hatred
• wondered how to break off from apostles

172:5.12Of all the apos­tles, Ju­das Is­car­iot was the most ad­versely af­fected by this pro­ces­sional en­try into Je­ru­sa­lem. His mind was in a dis­agree­able fer­ment be­cause of the Mas­ter’s re­buke the pre­ced­ing day in con­nec­tion with Mary’s anoint­ing at the feast in Si­mon’s house. Ju­das was dis­gusted with the whole spec­ta­cle. To him it seemed child­ish, if not in­deed ridicu­lous. As this venge­ful apos­tle looked upon the pro­ceed­ings of this Sun­day af­ter­noon, Je­sus seemed to him more to re­sem­ble a clown than a king. He heart­ily re­sented the whole per­for­mance. He shared the views of the Greeks and Ro­mans, who looked down upon any­one who would con­sent to ride upon an ass or the colt of an ass. By the time the tri­umphal pro­ces­sion had en­tered the city, Ju­das had about made up his mind to aban­don the whole idea of such a king­dom; he was al­most re­solved to for­sake all such far­ci­cal at­tempts to es­tab­lish the king­dom of heaven. And then he thought of the res­ur­rec­tion of Laz­a­rus, and many other things, and de­cided to stay on with the twelve, at least for an­other day. Be­sides, he car­ried the bag, and he would not desert with the apos­tolic funds in his pos­ses­sion. On the way back to Beth­any that night his con­duct did not seem strange since all of the apos­tles were equally down­cast and silent.

• causes of downfall › influenced by ridicule of Sadducean friends

172:5.13Ju­das was tremen­dously in­flu­enced by the ridicule of his Sad­ducean friends. No other sin­gle fac­tor ex­erted such a pow­er­ful in­flu­ence on him, in his fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion to for­sake Je­sus and his fel­low apos­tles, as a cer­tain episode which oc­curred just as Je­sus reached the gate of the city: A promi­nent Sad­ducee (a friend of Ju­das’s fam­ily) rushed up to him in a spirit of glee­ful ridicule and, slap­ping him on the back, said: “Why so trou­bled of coun­te­nance, my good friend; cheer up and join us all while we ac­claim this Je­sus of Naz­a­reth the king of the Jews as he rides through the gates of Je­ru­sa­lem seated on an ass.” Ju­das had never shrunk from per­se­cu­tion, but he could not stand this sort of ridicule. With the long-nour­ished emo­tion of re­venge there was now blended this fa­tal fear of ridicule, that ter­ri­ble and fear­ful feel­ing of be­ing ashamed of his Mas­ter and his fel­low apos­tles. At heart, this or­dained am­bas­sador of the king­dom was al­ready a de­serter; it only re­mained for him to find some plau­si­ble ex­cuse for an open break with the Mas­ter.

• wondered how to break off from apostles

173:0.2As this group jour­neyed down Mount Oli­vet, Je­sus led the way, the apos­tles fol­low­ing closely be­hind in med­i­ta­tive si­lence. There was just one thought up­per­most in the minds of all save Ju­das Is­car­iot, and that was: What will the Mas­ter do to­day? The one ab­sorb­ing thought of Ju­das was: What shall I do? Shall I go on with Je­sus and my as­so­ciates, or shall I with­draw? And if I am go­ing to quit, how shall I break off?

• Jesus › personal salutation to J.

174:0.2This morn­ing he greeted each of the twelve with a per­sonal salu­ta­tion. To An­drew he said: “Be not dis­mayed by the events just ahead. Keep a firm hold on your breth­ren and see that they do not find you down­cast.” To Pe­ter he said: “Put not your trust in the arm of flesh nor in weapons of steel. Es­tab­lish your­self on the spir­i­tual foun­da­tions of the eter­nal rocks.” To James he said: “Fal­ter not be­cause of out­ward ap­pear­ances. Re­main firm in your faith, and you shall soon know of the re­al­ity of that which you be­lieve.” To John he said: “Be gen­tle; love even your en­e­mies; be tol­er­ant. And re­mem­ber that I have trusted you with many things.” To Na­than­iel he said: “Judge not by ap­pear­ances; re­main firm in your faith when all ap­pears to van­ish; be true to your com­mis­sion as an am­bas­sador of the king­dom.” To Philip he said: “Be un­moved by the events now im­pend­ing. Re­main un­shaken, even when you can­not see the way. Be loyal to your oath of con­se­cra­tion.” To Mat­thew he said: “For­get not the mercy that re­ceived you into the king­dom. Let no man cheat you of your eter­nal re­ward. As you have with­stood the in­cli­na­tions of the mor­tal na­ture, be will­ing to be stead­fast.” To Thomas he said: “No mat­ter how dif­fi­cult it may be, just now you must walk by faith and not by sight. Doubt not that I am able to fin­ish the work I have be­gun, and that I shall even­tu­ally see all of my faith­ful am­bas­sadors in the king­dom be­yond.” To the Al­pheus twins he said: “Do not al­low the things which you can­not un­der­stand to crush you. Be true to the af­fec­tions of your hearts and put not your trust in ei­ther great men or the chang­ing at­ti­tude of the peo­ple. Stand by your breth­ren.” And to Si­mon Ze­lo­tes he said: “Si­mon, you may be crushed by dis­ap­point­ment, but your spirit shall rise above all that may come upon you. What you have failed to learn from me, my spirit will teach you. Seek the true re­al­i­ties of the spirit and cease to be at­tracted by un­real and ma­te­rial shad­ows.” And to Ju­das Is­car­iot he said: “Ju­das, I have loved you and have prayed that you would love your breth­ren. Be not weary in well do­ing; and I would warn you to be­ware the slip­pery paths of flat­tery and the poi­son darts of ridicule.”

• causes of downfall › met with enemies of Jesus
• wondered how to break off from apostles

175:4.1At the con­clu­sion of Je­sus’ last dis­course in the tem­ple, the apos­tles once more were left in con­fu­sion and con­ster­na­tion. Be­fore the Mas­ter be­gan his ter­ri­ble de­nun­ci­a­tion of the Jew­ish rulers, Ju­das had re­turned to the tem­ple, so that all twelve heard this lat­ter half of Je­sus’ last dis­course in the tem­ple. It is un­for­tu­nate that Ju­das Is­car­iot could not have heard the first and mercy-prof­fer­ing half of this farewell ad­dress. He did not hear this last of­fer of mercy to the Jew­ish rulers be­cause he was still in con­fer­ence with a cer­tain group of Sad­ducean rel­a­tives and friends with whom he had lunched, and with whom he was con­fer­ring as to the most fit­ting man­ner of dis­so­ci­at­ing him­self from Je­sus and his fel­low apos­tles. It was while lis­ten­ing to the Mas­ter’s fi­nal in­dict­ment of the Jew­ish lead­ers and rulers that Ju­das fi­nally and fully made up his mind to for­sake the gospel move­ment and wash his hands of the whole en­ter­prise. Nev­er­the­less, he left the tem­ple in com­pany with the twelve, went with them to Mount Oli­vet, where, with his fel­low apos­tles, he lis­tened to that fate­ful dis­course on the de­struc­tion of Je­ru­sa­lem and the end of the Jew­ish na­tion, and re­mained with them that Tues­day night at the new camp near Geth­sem­ane.

• causes of downfall › pampered and spoiled only son of unwise parents

177:2.4“Your young friend Amos be­lieves this gospel of the king­dom just as much as you, but I can­not fully de­pend upon him; I am not cer­tain about what he will do in the years to come. His early home life was not such as would pro­duce a wholly de­pend­able per­son. Amos is too much like one of the apos­tles who failed to en­joy a nor­mal, lov­ing, and wise home train­ing. Your whole af­ter­life will be more happy and de­pend­able be­cause you spent your first eight years in a nor­mal and well-reg­u­lated home. You pos­sess a strong and well-knit char­ac­ter be­cause you grew up in a home where love pre­vailed and wis­dom reigned. Such a child­hood train­ing pro­duces a type of loy­alty which as­sures me that you will go through with the course you have be­gun.”

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.

• betrayal › J. believed he would receive high honors
• wondered how to break off from apostles

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.

• betrayal › did not betray Jesus for money
• causes of downfall › nursed grudges; sought revenge for hurt feelings

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.

• causes of downfall › well-intentioned but cowardly and self-centered

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.

• Jesus › J. was faith adventure to

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.

• causes of downfall › well-intentioned but cowardly and self-centered
• resented Jesus not saving John the Baptist

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.

• Jesus › warned apostles of impending betrayal

177:5.2This was the oc­ca­sion of Je­sus’ warn­ing his fol­low­ers to be­ware of the sup­port of the mul­ti­tude. He re­counted their ex­pe­ri­ences in Gal­i­lee when time and again great throngs of peo­ple en­thu­si­as­ti­cally fol­lowed them around and then just as ar­dently turned against them and re­turned to their for­mer ways of be­liev­ing and liv­ing. And then he said: “And so you must not al­low your­selves to be de­ceived by the great crowds who heard us in the tem­ple, and who seemed to be­lieve our teach­ings. These mul­ti­tudes lis­ten to the truth and be­lieve it su­per­fi­cially with their minds, but few of them per­mit the word of truth to strike down into the heart with liv­ing roots. Those who know the gospel only in the mind, and who have not ex­pe­ri­enced it in the heart, can­not be de­pended upon for sup­port when real trou­ble comes. When the rulers of the Jews reach an agree­ment to de­stroy the Son of Man, and when they strike with one ac­cord, you will see the mul­ti­tude ei­ther flee in dis­may or else stand by in silent amaze­ment while these mad­dened and blinded rulers lead the teach­ers of the gospel truth to their death. And then, when ad­ver­sity and per­se­cu­tion de­scend upon you, still oth­ers who you think love the truth will be scat­tered, and some will re­nounce the gospel and desert you. Some who have been very close to us have al­ready made up their minds to desert. You have rested to­day in prepa­ra­tion for those times which are now upon us. Watch, there­fore, and pray that on the mor­row you may be strength­ened for the days that are just ahead.”

• causes of downfall › met with enemies of Jesus

178:0.1Je­sus planned to spend this Thurs­day, his last free day on earth as a di­vine Son in­car­nated in the flesh, with his apos­tles and a few loyal and de­voted dis­ci­ples. Soon af­ter the break­fast hour on this beau­ti­ful morn­ing, the Mas­ter led them to a se­cluded spot a short dis­tance above their camp and there taught them many new truths. Al­though Je­sus de­liv­ered other dis­courses to the apos­tles dur­ing the early evening hours of the day, this talk of Thurs­day forenoon was his farewell ad­dress to the com­bined camp group of apos­tles and cho­sen dis­ci­ples, both Jews and gen­tiles. The twelve were all pres­ent save Ju­das. Pe­ter and sev­eral of the apos­tles re­marked about his ab­sence, and some of them thought Je­sus had sent him into the city to at­tend to some mat­ter, prob­a­bly to ar­range the de­tails of their forth­com­ing cel­e­bra­tion of the Pass­over. Ju­das did not re­turn to the camp un­til midafter­noon, a short time be­fore Je­sus led the twelve into Je­ru­sa­lem to par­take of the Last Sup­per.

• David Zebedee knew of plot to kill Jesus

178:2.3David Zeb­e­dee, through the work of his se­cret agents in Je­ru­sa­lem, was fully ad­vised con­cern­ing the prog­ress of the plan to ar­rest and kill Je­sus. He knew all about the part of Ju­das in this plot, but he never dis­closed this knowl­edge to the other apos­tles nor to any of the dis­ci­ples. Shortly af­ter lunch he did lead Je­sus aside and, mak­ing bold, asked him whether he knew—but he never got fur­ther with his ques­tion. The Mas­ter, hold­ing up his hand, stopped him, say­ing: “Yes, David, I know all about it, and I know that you know, but see to it that you tell no man. Only doubt not in your own heart that the will of God will pre­vail in the end.”

• Judas Iscariot

178:2.6When Ju­das heard the Mas­ter speak­ing with Philip about these mat­ters, he drew closer that he might over­hear their con­ver­sa­tion. But David Zeb­e­dee, who was stand­ing near, stepped up and en­gaged Ju­das in con­ver­sa­tion while Philip, Pe­ter, and John went to one side to talk with the Mas­ter.

• turned over all apostolic funds to David

178:2.10David Zeb­e­dee had much busi­ness to trans­act with Ju­das so that he was eas­ily pre­vented from fol­low­ing Pe­ter, John, and Philip, as he so much de­sired to do. When Ju­das gave David a cer­tain sum of money for pro­vi­sions, David said to him: “Ju­das, might it not be well, un­der the cir­cum­stances, to pro­vide me with a lit­tle money in ad­vance of my ac­tual needs?” And af­ter Ju­das had re­flected for a mo­ment, he an­swered: “Yes, David, I think it would be wise. In fact, in view of the dis­turbed con­di­tions in Je­ru­sa­lem, I think it would be best for me to turn over all the money to you. They plot against the Mas­ter, and in case any­thing should hap­pen to me, you would not be ham­pered.”

• seized seat of honor at Last Supper

179:1.4They ex­pected the Mas­ter to ar­rive any mo­ment, but they were in a quandary as to whether they should seat them­selves or await his com­ing and de­pend on him to as­sign them their places. While they hes­i­tated, Ju­das stepped over to the seat of honor, at the left of the host, and sig­ni­fied that he in­tended there to re­cline as the pre­ferred guest. This act of Ju­das im­me­di­ately stirred up a heated dis­pute among the other apos­tles. Ju­das had no sooner seized the seat of honor than John Zeb­e­dee laid claim to the next pre­ferred seat, the one on the right of the host. Si­mon Pe­ter was so en­raged at this as­sump­tion of choice po­si­tions by Ju­das and John that, as the other an­gry apos­tles looked on, he marched clear around the ta­ble and took his place on the low­est couch, the end of the seat­ing or­der and just op­po­site to that cho­sen by John Zeb­e­dee. Since oth­ers had seized the high seats, Pe­ter thought to choose the low­est, and he did this, not merely in protest against the un­seemly pride of his breth­ren, but with the hope that Je­sus, when he should come and see him in the place of least honor, would call him up to a higher one, thus dis­plac­ing one who had pre­sumed to honor him­self.

• foot-washing proved Jesus not Israel’s deliverer

179:3.1Af­ter drink­ing the first cup of the Pass­over, it was the Jew­ish cus­tom for the host to arise from the ta­ble and wash his hands. Later on in the meal and af­ter the sec­ond cup, all of the guests like­wise rose up and washed their hands. Since the apos­tles knew that their Mas­ter never ob­served these rites of cer­e­mo­nial hand wash­ing, they were very cu­ri­ous to know what he in­tended to do when, af­ter they had par­taken of this first cup, he arose from the ta­ble and silently made his way over to near the door, where the wa­ter pitch­ers, basins, and tow­els had been placed. And their cu­rios­ity grew into as­ton­ish­ment as they saw the Mas­ter re­move his outer gar­ment, gird him­self with a towel, and be­gin to pour wa­ter into one of the foot basins. Imag­ine the amaze­ment of these twelve men, who had so re­cently re­fused to wash one an­other’s feet, and who had en­gaged in such un­seemly dis­putes about po­si­tions of honor at the ta­ble, when they saw him make his way around the un­oc­cu­pied end of the ta­ble to the low­est seat of the feast, where Si­mon Pe­ter re­clined, and, kneel­ing down in the at­ti­tude of a ser­vant, make ready to wash Si­mon’s feet. As the Mas­ter knelt, all twelve arose as one man to their feet; even the traitorous Ju­das so far for­got his in­famy for a mo­ment as to arise with his fel­low apos­tles in this ex­pres­sion of sur­prise, re­spect, and ut­ter amaze­ment.

• foot-washing proved Jesus not Israel’s deliverer

179:3.4The dra­matic ap­peal of this un­usual scene at first touched the heart of even Ju­das Is­car­iot; but when his vain­glo­ri­ous in­tel­lect passed judg­ment upon the spec­ta­cle, he con­cluded that this ges­ture of hu­mil­ity was just one more episode which con­clu­sively proved that Je­sus would never qual­ify as Is­rael’s de­liv­erer, and that he had made no mis­take in the de­ci­sion to desert the Mas­ter’s cause.

• Jesus › warned apostles of impending betrayal

179:3.6As the Mas­ter made ready to be­gin wash­ing Pe­ter’s feet, he said: “He who is al­ready clean needs only to have his feet washed. You who sit with me tonight are clean—but not all. But the dust of your feet should have been washed away be­fore you sat down at meat with me. And be­sides, I would per­form this ser­vice for you as a para­ble to il­lus­trate the mean­ing of a new com­mand­ment which I will pres­ently give you.”

179:4.1For some min­utes the apos­tles ate in si­lence, but un­der the in­flu­ence of the Mas­ter’s cheer­ful de­meanor they were soon drawn into con­ver­sa­tion, and ere long the meal was pro­ceed­ing as if noth­ing out of the or­di­nary had oc­curred to in­ter­fere with the good cheer and so­cial ac­cord of this ex­traor­di­nary oc­ca­sion. Af­ter some time had elapsed, in about the mid­dle of this sec­ond course of the meal, Je­sus, look­ing them over, said: “I have told you how much I de­sired to have this sup­per with you, and know­ing how the evil forces of dark­ness have con­spired to bring about the death of the Son of Man, I de­ter­mined to eat this sup­per with you in this se­cret cham­ber and a day in ad­vance of the Pass­over since I will not be with you by this time to­mor­row night. I have re­peat­edly told you that I must re­turn to the Fa­ther. Now has my hour come, but it was not re­quired that one of you should be­tray me into the hands of my en­e­mies.”

• causes of downfall › failed to love truth; intellectual pride

179:4.2When the twelve heard this, hav­ing al­ready been robbed of much of their self-as­sertive­ness and self-con­fi­dence by the para­ble of the feet wash­ing and the Mas­ter’s sub­se­quent dis­course, they be­gan to look at one an­other while in dis­con­certed tones they hes­i­tat­ingly in­quired, “Is it I?” And when they had all so in­quired, Je­sus said: “While it is nec­es­sary that I go to the Fa­ther, it was not re­quired that one of you should be­come a traitor to ful­fill the Fa­ther’s will. This is the com­ing to fruit of the con­cealed evil in the heart of one who failed to love the truth with his whole soul. How de­ceit­ful is the in­tel­lec­tual pride that pre­cedes the spir­i­tual down­fall! My friend of many years, who even now eats my bread, will be will­ing to be­tray me, even as he now dips his hand with me in the dish.”

179:4.3And when Je­sus had thus spo­ken, they all be­gan again to ask, “Is it I?” And as Ju­das, sit­ting on the left of his Mas­ter, again asked, “Is it I?” Je­sus, dip­ping the bread in the dish of herbs, handed it to Ju­das, say­ing, “You have said.” But the oth­ers did not hear Je­sus speak to Ju­das. John, who re­clined on Je­sus’ right hand, leaned over and asked the Mas­ter: “Who is it? We should know who it is that has proved un­true to his trust.” Je­sus an­swered: “Al­ready have I told you, even he to whom I gave the sop.” But it was so nat­u­ral for the host to give a sop to the one who sat next to him on the left that none of them took no­tice of this, even though the Mas­ter had so plainly spo­ken. But Ju­das was painfully con­scious of the mean­ing of the Mas­ter’s words as­so­ci­ated with his act, and he be­came fear­ful lest his breth­ren were like­wise now aware that he was the be­trayer.

179:4.4Pe­ter was highly ex­cited by what had been said, and lean­ing for­ward over the ta­ble, he ad­dressed John, “Ask him who it is, or if he has told you, tell me who is the be­trayer.”

179:4.5Je­sus brought their whis­per­ings to an end by say­ing: “I sor­row that this evil should have come to pass and hoped even up to this hour that the power of truth might tri­umph over the de­cep­tions of evil, but such vic­to­ries are not won with­out the faith of the sin­cere love of truth. I would not have told you these things at this, our last sup­per, but I de­sire to warn you of these sor­rows and so pre­pare you for what is now upon us. I have told you of this be­cause I de­sire that you should re­call, af­ter I have gone, that I knew about all these evil plot­tings, and that I fore­warned you of my be­trayal. And I do all this only that you may be strength­ened for the temp­ta­tions and tri­als which are just ahead.”

179:4.6When Je­sus had thus spo­ken, lean­ing over to­ward Ju­das, he said: “What you have de­cided to do, do quickly.” And when Ju­das heard these words, he arose from the ta­ble and hastily left the room, go­ing out into the night to do what he had set his mind to ac­com­plish. When the other apos­tles saw Ju­das has­ten off af­ter Je­sus had spo­ken to him, they thought he had gone to pro­cure some­thing ad­di­tional for the sup­per or to do some other er­rand for the Mas­ter since they sup­posed he still car­ried the bag.

• Jesus › did everything possible to save J.

179:4.7Je­sus now knew that noth­ing could be done to keep Ju­das from turn­ing traitor. He started with twelve—now he had eleven. He chose six of these apos­tles, and though Ju­das was among those nom­i­nated by his first-cho­sen apos­tles, still the Mas­ter ac­cepted him and had, up to this very hour, done ev­ery­thing pos­si­ble to sanc­tify and save him, even as he had wrought for the peace and sal­va­tion of the oth­ers.

179:4.8This sup­per, with its ten­der episodes and soft­en­ing touches, was Je­sus’ last ap­peal to the de­sert­ing Ju­das, but it was of no avail. Warn­ing, even when ad­min­is­tered in the most tact­ful man­ner and con­veyed in the most kindly spirit, as a rule, only in­ten­si­fies ha­tred and fires the evil de­ter­mi­na­tion to carry out to the full one’s own self­ish projects, when love is once re­ally dead.

• Jesus › warned apostles of impending betrayal

180:6.1Af­ter Pe­ter, James, John, and Mat­thew had asked the Mas­ter nu­mer­ous ques­tions, he con­tin­ued his farewell dis­course by say­ing: “And I am telling you about all this be­fore I leave you in or­der that you may be so pre­pared for what is com­ing upon you that you will not stum­ble into se­ri­ous er­ror. The au­thor­i­ties will not be con­tent with merely putting you out of the syn­a­gogues; I warn you the hour draws near when they who kill you will think they are do­ing a ser­vice to God. And all of these things they will do to you and to those whom you lead into the king­dom of heaven be­cause they do not know the Fa­ther. They have re­fused to know the Fa­ther by re­fus­ing to re­ceive me; and they refuse to re­ceive me when they re­ject you, pro­vided you have kept my new com­mand­ment that you love one an­other even as I have loved you. I am telling you in ad­vance about these things so that, when your hour comes, as mine now has, you may be strength­ened in the knowl­edge that all was known to me, and that my spirit shall be with you in all your suf­fer­ings for my sake and the gospel’s. It was for this pur­pose that I have been talk­ing so plainly to you from the very be­gin­ning. I have even warned you that a man’s foes may be those of his own house­hold. Al­though this gospel of the king­dom never fails to bring great peace to the soul of the in­di­vid­ual be­liever, it will not bring peace on earth un­til man is will­ing to be­lieve my teach­ing whole­heart­edly and to es­tab­lish the prac­tice of do­ing the Fa­ther’s will as the chief pur­pose in liv­ing the mor­tal life.

• betrayal › apostles’ suspicions

181:2.6And then the Mas­ter, pass­ing around his own seat, paused a mo­ment by the side of the place of Ju­das Is­car­iot. The apos­tles were rather sur­prised that Ju­das had not re­turned be­fore this, and they were very cu­ri­ous to know the sig­nif­i­cance of Je­sus’ sad coun­te­nance as he stood by the be­trayer’s va­cant seat. But none of them, ex­cept pos­si­bly An­drew, en­ter­tained even the slight­est thought that their trea­surer had gone out to be­tray his Mas­ter, as Je­sus had in­ti­mated to them ear­lier in the evening and dur­ing the sup­per. So much had been go­ing on that, for the time be­ing, they had quite for­got­ten about the Mas­ter’s an­nounce­ment that one of them would be­tray him.

• betrayal › apostles’ suspicions

182:0.2As Je­sus and the eleven made their way back to camp, the apos­tles be­gan to won­der about the mean­ing of Ju­das’s pro­longed ab­sence, and they spoke to one an­other con­cern­ing the Mas­ter’s pre­dic­tion that one of them would be­tray him, and for the first time they sus­pected that all was not well with Ju­das Is­car­iot. But they did not en­gage in open com­ment about Ju­das un­til they reached the camp and ob­served that he was not there, wait­ing to re­ceive them. When they all be­sieged An­drew to know what had be­come of Ju­das, their chief re­marked only, “I do not know where Ju­das is, but I fear he has de­serted us.”

• causes of downfall › nursed grudges; sought revenge for hurt feelings

182:1.5“You gave me twelve men, and I have kept them all save one, the son of re­venge, who would not have fur­ther fel­low­ship with us. These men are weak and frail, but I know we can trust them; I have proved them; they love me, even as they rev­er­ence you. While they must suf­fer much for my sake, I de­sire that they should also be filled with the joy of the as­sur­ance of son­ship in the heav­enly king­dom. I have given these men your word and have taught them the truth. The world may hate them, even as it has hated me, but I do not ask that you take them out of the world, only that you keep them from the evil in the world. Sanc­tify them in the truth; your word is truth. And as you sent me into this world, even so am I about to send these men into the world. For their sakes I have lived among men and have con­se­crated my life to your ser­vice that I might in­spire them to be pu­ri­fied through the truth I have taught them and the love I have re­vealed to them. I well know, my Fa­ther, that there is no need for me to ask you to watch over these breth­ren af­ter I have gone; I know you love them even as I, but I do this that they may the bet­ter re­al­ize the Fa­ther loves mor­tal men even as does the Son.

• causes of downfall › met with enemies of Jesus

182:2.13While all this was in prog­ress at the Mas­ter’s camp, Ju­das Is­car­iot was in con­fer­ence with the cap­tain of the tem­ple guards, who had as­sem­bled his men prepara­tory to set­ting out, un­der the lead­er­ship of the be­trayer, to ar­rest Je­sus.

• causes of downfall › met with enemies of Jesus

183:2.1Af­ter Ju­das so abruptly left the ta­ble while eat­ing the Last Sup­per, he went di­rectly to the home of his cousin, and then did the two go straight to the cap­tain of the tem­ple guards. Ju­das re­quested the cap­tain to as­sem­ble the guards and in­formed him that he was ready to lead them to Je­sus. Ju­das hav­ing ap­peared on the scene a lit­tle be­fore he was ex­pected, there was some de­lay in get­ting started for the Mark home, where Ju­das ex­pected to find Je­sus still vis­it­ing with the apos­tles. The Mas­ter and the eleven left the home of Eli­jah Mark fully fif­teen min­utes be­fore the be­trayer and the guards ar­rived. By the time the ap­pre­hend­ers reached the Mark home, Je­sus and the eleven were well out­side the walls of the city and on their way to the Oli­vet camp.

• causes of downfall › well-intentioned but cowardly and self-centered

183:2.2Ju­das was much per­turbed by this fail­ure to find Je­sus at the Mark res­i­dence and in the com­pany of eleven men, only two of whom were armed for re­sis­tance. He hap­pened to know that, in the af­ter­noon when they had left camp, only Si­mon Pe­ter and Si­mon Ze­lo­tes were girded with swords; Ju­das had hoped to take Je­sus when the city was quiet, and when there was lit­tle chance of re­sis­tance. The be­trayer feared that, if he waited for them to re­turn to their camp, more than three­score of de­voted dis­ci­ples would be en­coun­tered, and he also knew that Si­mon Ze­lo­tes had an am­ple store of arms in his pos­ses­sion. Ju­das was be­com­ing in­creas­ingly ner­vous as he med­i­tated how the eleven loyal apos­tles would de­test him, and he feared they would all seek to de­stroy him. He was not only dis­loyal, but he was a real cow­ard at heart.

• betrayal › feared for himself; asked for 40 soldiers

183:2.3When they failed to find Je­sus in the up­per cham­ber, Ju­das asked the cap­tain of the guard to re­turn to the tem­ple. By this time the rulers had be­gun to as­sem­ble at the high priest’s home prepara­tory to re­ceiv­ing Je­sus, see­ing that their bar­gain with the traitor called for Je­sus’ ar­rest by mid­night of that day. Ju­das ex­plained to his as­so­ciates that they had missed Je­sus at the Mark home, and that it would be nec­es­sary to go to Geth­sem­ane to ar­rest him. The be­trayer then went on to state that more than three­score de­voted fol­low­ers were en­camped with him, and that they were all well armed. The rulers of the Jews re­minded Ju­das that Je­sus had al­ways preached non­re­sis­tance, but Ju­das replied that they could not de­pend upon all Je­sus’ fol­low­ers obey­ing such teach­ing. He re­ally feared for him­self and there­fore made bold to ask for a com­pany of forty armed sol­diers. Since the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties had no such force of armed men un­der their ju­ris­dic­tion, they went at once to the fortress of An­to­nia and re­quested the Ro­man com­man­der to give them this guard; but when he learned that they in­tended to ar­rest Je­sus, he promptly re­fused to ac­cede to their re­quest and re­ferred them to his su­pe­rior of­fi­cer. In this way more than an hour was con­sumed in go­ing from one au­thor­ity to an­other un­til they fi­nally were com­pelled to go to Pi­late him­self in or­der to ob­tain per­mis­sion to em­ploy the armed Ro­man guards. It was late when they ar­rived at Pi­late’s house, and he had re­tired to his pri­vate cham­bers with his wife. He hes­i­tated to have any­thing to do with the en­ter­prise, all the more so since his wife had asked him not to grant the re­quest. But inas­much as the pre­sid­ing of­fi­cer of the Jew­ish San­hedrin was pres­ent and mak­ing per­sonal re­quest for this as­sis­tance, the gov­er­nor thought it wise to grant the pe­ti­tion, think­ing he could later on right any wrong they might be dis­posed to com­mit.

• betrayal › betrayed Jesus with a kiss

183:3.5As the guards ral­lied from their first fal­ter­ing at the sight of Je­sus and at the sound of his un­usual voice, and as the apos­tles and dis­ci­ples drew nearer, Ju­das stepped up to Je­sus and, plac­ing a kiss upon his brow, said, “Hail, Mas­ter and Teacher.” And as Ju­das thus em­braced his Mas­ter, Je­sus said, “Friend, is it not enough to do this! Would you even be­tray the Son of Man with a kiss?”

• temple guards, centurion held in contempt

183:5.2Ju­das marched along near the cap­tains, over­hear­ing all that was said, but took no part in the dis­pute, for nei­ther the Jew­ish cap­tain nor the Ro­man of­fi­cer would so much as speak to the be­trayer—they held him in such con­tempt.

183:5.3About this time John Zeb­e­dee, re­mem­ber­ing his Mas­ter’s in­struc­tions to re­main al­ways near at hand, hur­ried up near Je­sus as he marched along be­tween the two cap­tains. The com­man­der of the tem­ple guards, see­ing John come up along­side, said to his as­sis­tant: “Take this man and bind him. He is one of this fel­low’s fol­low­ers.” But when the Ro­man cap­tain heard this and, look­ing around, saw John, he gave or­ders that the apos­tle should come over by him, and that no man should mo­lest him. Then the Ro­man cap­tain said to the Jew­ish cap­tain: “This man is nei­ther a traitor nor a cow­ard. I saw him in the gar­den, and he did not draw a sword to re­sist us. He has the cour­age to come for­ward to be with his Mas­ter, and no man shall lay hands on him. The Ro­man law al­lows that any pris­oner may have at least one friend to stand with him be­fore the judg­ment bar, and this man shall not be pre­vented from stand­ing by the side of his Mas­ter, the pris­oner.” And when Ju­das heard this, he was so ashamed and hu­mil­i­ated that he dropped back be­hind the marchers, com­ing up to the palace of An­nas alone.

• present at Jesus’ trial before Pilate and Sanhedrin

184:2.1As the band of guards and sol­diers ap­proached the en­trance to the palace of An­nas, John Zeb­e­dee was march­ing by the side of the cap­tain of the Ro­man sol­diers. Ju­das had dropped some dis­tance be­hind, and Si­mon Pe­ter fol­lowed afar off. Af­ter John had en­tered the palace court­yard with Je­sus and the guards, Ju­das came up to the gate but, see­ing Je­sus and John, went on over to the home of Cai­a­phas, where he knew the real trial of the Mas­ter would later take place. Soon af­ter Ju­das had left, Si­mon Pe­ter ar­rived, and as he stood be­fore the gate, John saw him just as they were about to take Je­sus into the palace. The portress who kept the gate knew John, and when he spoke to her, re­quest­ing that she let Pe­ter in, she gladly as­sented.

• present at Jesus’ trial before Pilate and Sanhedrin

184:5.1At five-thirty o’clock the court re­assem­bled, and Je­sus was led into the ad­join­ing room, where John was wait­ing. Here the Ro­man sol­dier and the tem­ple guards watched over Je­sus while the court be­gan the for­mu­la­tion of the charges which were to be pre­sented to Pi­late. An­nas made it clear to his as­so­ciates that the charge of blas­phemy would carry no weight with Pi­late. Ju­das was pres­ent dur­ing this sec­ond meet­ing of the court, but he gave no tes­ti­mony.

• present at Jesus’ trial before Pilate and Sanhedrin

185:0.1Shortly af­ter six o’clock on this Fri­day morn­ing, April 7, A.D. 30, Je­sus was brought be­fore Pi­late, the Ro­man procu­ra­tor who gov­erned Judea, Samaria, and Idumea un­der the im­me­di­ate super­vi­sion of the lega­tus of Syria. The Mas­ter was taken into the pres­ence of the Ro­man gov­er­nor by the tem­ple guards, bound, and was ac­com­pa­nied by about fifty of his ac­cusers, in­clud­ing the San­hedrist court (prin­ci­pally Sad­duceans), Ju­das Is­car­iot, and the high priest, Cai­a­phas, and by the Apos­tle John. An­nas did not ap­pear be­fore Pi­late.

186:1.1It was about half past eight o’clock this Fri­day morn­ing when the hear­ing of Je­sus be­fore Pi­late was ended and the Mas­ter was placed in the cus­tody of the Ro­man sol­diers who were to cru­cify him. As soon as the Ro­mans took pos­ses­sion of Je­sus, the cap­tain of the Jew­ish guards marched with his men back to their tem­ple head­quar­ters. The chief priest and his San­hedrist as­so­ciates fol­lowed close be­hind the guards, go­ing di­rectly to their usual meet­ing place in the hall of hewn stone in the tem­ple. Here they found many other mem­bers of the San­hedrin wait­ing to learn what had been done with Je­sus. As Cai­a­phas was en­gaged in mak­ing his re­port to the San­hedrin re­gard­ing the trial and con­dem­na­tion of Je­sus, Ju­das ap­peared be­fore them to claim his re­ward for the part he had played in his Mas­ter’s ar­rest and sen­tence of death.

• handed bag containing 30 pieces of silver
• pricked about his traitorous conduct
• temple guards, centurion held in contempt

186:1.2All of these Jews loathed Ju­das; they looked upon the be­trayer with only feel­ings of ut­ter con­tempt. Through­out the trial of Je­sus be­fore Cai­a­phas and dur­ing his ap­pear­ance be­fore Pi­late, Ju­das was pricked in his con­science about his traitorous con­duct. And he was also be­gin­ning to be­come some­what dis­il­lu­sioned re­gard­ing the re­ward he was to re­ceive as pay­ment for his ser­vices as Je­sus’ be­trayer. He did not like the cool­ness and aloof­ness of the Jew­ish au­thor­i­ties; nev­er­the­less, he ex­pected to be lib­er­ally re­warded for his cow­ardly con­duct. He an­tic­i­pated be­ing called be­fore the full meet­ing of the San­hedrin and there hear­ing him­self eu­lo­gized while they con­ferred upon him suit­able hon­ors in to­ken of the great ser­vice which he flat­tered him­self he had ren­dered his na­tion. Imag­ine, there­fore, the great sur­prise of this ego­tis­tic traitor when a ser­vant of the high priest, tap­ping him on the shoul­der, called him just out­side the hall and said: “Ju­das, I have been ap­pointed to pay you for the be­trayal of Je­sus. Here is your re­ward.” And thus speak­ing, the ser­vant of Cai­a­phas handed Ju­das a bag con­tain­ing thirty pieces of sil­ver—the cur­rent price of a good, healthy slave.

• carried bag in deep pocket

186:1.3Ju­das was stunned, dum­founded. He rushed back to en­ter the hall but was de­barred by the door­keeper. He wanted to ap­peal to the San­hedrin, but they would not ad­mit him. Ju­das could not be­lieve that these rulers of the Jews would al­low him to be­tray his friends and his Mas­ter and then of­fer him as a re­ward thirty pieces of sil­ver. He was hu­mil­i­ated, dis­il­lu­sioned, and ut­terly crushed. He walked away from the tem­ple, as it were, in a trance. He au­to­mat­i­cally dropped the money bag in his deep pocket, that same pocket wherein he had so long car­ried the bag con­tain­ing the apos­tolic funds. And he wan­dered out through the city af­ter the crowds who were on their way to wit­ness the cru­ci­fix­ions.

• repented
• saw Jesus nailed on cross

186:1.4From a dis­tance Ju­das saw them raise the cross piece with Je­sus nailed thereon, and upon sight of this he rushed back to the tem­ple and, forc­ing his way past the door­keeper, found him­self stand­ing in the pres­ence of the San­hedrin, which was still in ses­sion. The be­trayer was well-nigh breath­less and highly dis­traught, but he man­aged to stam­mer out these words: “I have sinned in that I have be­trayed in­no­cent blood. You have in­sulted me. You have of­fered me as a re­ward for my ser­vice, money—the price of a slave. I re­pent that I have done this; here is your money. I want to es­cape the guilt of this deed.”

186:1.5When the rulers of the Jews heard Ju­das, they scoffed at him. One of them sit­ting near where Ju­das stood, mo­tioned that he should leave the hall and said: “Your Mas­ter has al­ready been put to death by the Ro­mans, and as for your guilt, what is that to us? See you to that—and be­gone!”

186:1.6As Ju­das left the San­hedrin cham­ber, he re­moved the thirty pieces of sil­ver from the bag and threw them broad­cast over the tem­ple floor. When the be­trayer left the tem­ple, he was al­most be­side him­self. Ju­das was now pass­ing through the ex­pe­ri­ence of the re­al­iza­tion of the true na­ture of sin. All the glamor, fas­ci­na­tion, and in­tox­i­ca­tion of wrong­do­ing had van­ished. Now the evil­doer stood alone and face to face with the judg­ment ver­dict of his dis­il­lu­sioned and dis­ap­pointed soul. Sin was be­witch­ing and ad­ven­tur­ous in the com­mit­ting, but now must the har­vest of the naked and un­ro­man­tic facts be faced.

186:1.7This one­time am­bas­sador of the king­dom of heaven on earth now walked through the streets of Je­ru­sa­lem, for­saken and alone. His de­spair was des­per­ate and well-nigh ab­so­lute. On he jour­neyed through the city and out­side the walls, on down into the ter­ri­ble soli­tude of the val­ley of Hin­nom, where he climbed up the steep rocks and, tak­ing the gir­dle of his cloak, fas­tened one end to a small tree, tied the other about his neck, and cast him­self over the precipice. Ere he was dead, the knot which his ner­vous hands had tied gave way, and the be­trayer’s body was dashed to pieces as it fell on the jagged rocks be­low.

• causes of downfall › isolation, over-individualism
• causes of downfall › love grew cold; refused to trust

193:3.2“Peace be upon you. I have asked you to tarry here in Je­ru­sa­lem un­til I as­cend to the Fa­ther, even un­til I send you the Spirit of Truth, who shall soon be poured out upon all flesh, and who shall en­dow you with power from on high.” Si­mon Ze­lo­tes in­ter­rupted Je­sus, ask­ing, “Then, Mas­ter, will you re­store the king­dom, and will we see the glory of God man­i­fested on earth?” When Je­sus had lis­tened to Si­mon’s ques­tion, he an­swered: “Si­mon, you still cling to your old ideas about the Jew­ish Mes­siah and the ma­te­rial king­dom. But you will re­ceive spir­i­tual power af­ter the spirit has de­scended upon you, and you will pres­ently go into all the world preach­ing this gospel of the king­dom. As the Fa­ther sent me into the world, so do I send you. And I wish that you would love and trust one an­other. Ju­das is no more with you be­cause his love grew cold, and be­cause he re­fused to trust you, his loyal breth­ren. Have you not read in the Scrip­ture where it is writ­ten: ‘It is not good for man to be alone. No man lives to him­self’? And also where it says: ‘He who would have friends must show him­self friendly’? And did I not even send you out to teach, two and two, that you might not be­come lonely and fall into the mis­chief and mis­eries of iso­la­tion? You also well know that, when I was in the flesh, I did not per­mit my­self to be alone for long pe­ri­ods. From the very be­gin­ning of our as­so­ci­a­tions I al­ways had two or three of you con­stantly by my side or else very near at hand even when I com­muned with the Fa­ther. Trust, there­fore, and con­fide in one an­other. And this is all the more need­ful since I am this day go­ing to leave you alone in the world. The hour has come; I am about to go to the Fa­ther.”

193:4.1It was in the first part of the Mas­ter’s farewell mes­sage to his apos­tles that he al­luded to the loss of Ju­das and held up the tragic fate of their traitorous fel­low worker as a solemn warn­ing against the dan­gers of so­cial and fra­ter­nal iso­la­tion. It may be help­ful to be­liev­ers, in this and in fu­ture ages, briefly to re­view the causes of Ju­das’s down­fall in the light of the Mas­ter’s re­marks and in view of the ac­cu­mu­lated en­light­en­ment of suc­ceed­ing cen­turies.

• causes of downfall › nursed grudges; sought revenge for hurt feelings
• causes of downfall › refused to confide in fellow apostles

193:4.2As we look back upon this tragedy, we con­ceive that Ju­das went wrong, pri­mar­ily, be­cause he was very markedly an iso­lated per­son­al­ity, a per­son­al­ity shut in and away from or­di­nary so­cial con­tacts. He per­sis­tently re­fused to con­fide in, or freely frat­er­nize with, his fel­low apos­tles. But his be­ing an iso­lated type of per­son­al­ity would not, in and of it­self, have wrought such mis­chief for Ju­das had it not been that he also failed to in­crease in love and grow in spir­i­tual grace. And then, as if to make a bad mat­ter worse, he per­sis­tently har­bored grudges and fos­tered such psy­cho­logic en­e­mies as re­venge and the gen­er­al­ized crav­ing to “get even” with some­body for all his dis­ap­point­ments.

• causes of downfall › sought advice and consolation of those indifferent or hostile to the kingdom

193:4.3This un­for­tu­nate com­bi­na­tion of in­di­vid­ual pe­cu­liar­i­ties and men­tal ten­den­cies con­spired to de­stroy a well-in­ten­tioned man who failed to sub­due these evils by love, faith, and trust. That Ju­das need not have gone wrong is well proved by the cases of Thomas and Na­than­iel, both of whom were cursed with this same sort of sus­pi­cion and overde­vel­op­ment of the in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic ten­dency. Even An­drew and Mat­thew had many lean­ings in this di­rec­tion; but all these men grew to love Je­sus and their fel­low apos­tles more, and not less, as time passed. They grew in grace and in a knowl­edge of the truth. They be­came in­creas­ingly more trust­ful of their breth­ren and slowly de­vel­oped the abil­ity to con­fide in their fel­lows. Ju­das per­sis­tently re­fused to con­fide in his breth­ren. When he was im­pelled, by the ac­cu­mu­la­tion of his emo­tional con­flicts, to seek re­lief in self-ex­pres­sion, he in­vari­ably sought the ad­vice and re­ceived the un­wise con­so­la­tion of his un­spir­i­tual rel­a­tives or those chance ac­quain­tances who were ei­ther in­dif­fer­ent, or ac­tu­ally hos­tile, to the wel­fare and prog­ress of the spir­i­tual re­al­i­ties of the heav­enly king­dom, of which he was one of the twelve con­se­crated am­bas­sadors on earth.

193:4.4Ju­das met de­feat in his bat­tles of the earth strug­gle be­cause of the fol­low­ing fac­tors of per­sonal ten­den­cies and char­ac­ter weak­ness:

193:4.51. He was an iso­lated type of hu­man be­ing. He was highly in­di­vid­u­al­is­tic and chose to grow into a con­firmed “shut-in” and unso­cia­ble sort of per­son.

193:4.62. As a child, life had been made too easy for him. He bit­terly re­sented thwart­ing. He al­ways ex­pected to win; he was a very poor loser.

193:4.73. He never ac­quired a philo­sophic tech­nique for meet­ing dis­ap­point­ment. In­stead of ac­cept­ing dis­ap­point­ments as a reg­u­lar and com­mon­place fea­ture of hu­man ex­is­tence, he un­fail­ingly re­sorted to the prac­tice of blam­ing some­one in par­tic­u­lar, or his as­so­ciates as a group, for all his per­sonal dif­fi­cul­ties and dis­ap­point­ments.

193:4.84. He was given to hold­ing grudges; he was al­ways en­ter­tain­ing the idea of re­venge.

193:4.95. He did not like to face facts frankly; he was dis­hon­est in his at­ti­tude to­ward life sit­u­a­tions.

193:4.106. He dis­liked to dis­cuss his per­sonal prob­lems with his im­me­di­ate as­so­ciates; he re­fused to talk over his dif­fi­cul­ties with his real friends and those who truly loved him. In all the years of their as­so­ci­a­tion he never once went to the Mas­ter with a purely per­sonal prob­lem.

193:4.117. He never learned that the real re­wards for no­ble liv­ing are, af­ter all, spir­i­tual prizes, which are not al­ways dis­tributed dur­ing this one short life in the flesh.

193:4.12As a re­sult of his per­sis­tent iso­la­tion of per­son­al­ity, his griefs mul­ti­plied, his sor­rows in­creased, his anx­i­eties aug­mented, and his de­spair deep­ened al­most be­yond en­durance.

193:4.13While this self-cen­tered and ul­train­di­vid­u­al­is­tic apos­tle had many psy­chic, emo­tional, and spir­i­tual trou­bles, his main dif­fi­cul­ties were: In per­son­al­ity, he was iso­lated. In mind, he was sus­pi­cious and venge­ful. In tem­per­a­ment, he was surly and vin­dic­tive. Emo­tion­ally, he was love­less and un­for­giv­ing. So­cially, he was un­con­fid­ing and al­most wholly self-con­tained. In spirit, he be­came ar­ro­gant and self­ishly am­bi­tious. In life, he ig­nored those who loved him, and in death, he was friend­less.

• causes of downfall › well-intentioned but cowardly and self-centered

193:4.14These, then, are the fac­tors of mind and in­flu­ences of evil which, taken al­to­gether, ex­plain why a well-mean­ing and oth­er­wise one­time sin­cere be­liever in Je­sus, even af­ter sev­eral years of in­ti­mate as­so­ci­a­tion with his trans­form­ing per­son­al­ity, for­sook his fel­lows, re­pu­di­ated a sa­cred cause, re­nounced his holy call­ing, and be­trayed his di­vine Mas­ter.