"Difficult Passages: Beneath the Surface "
- Dr. Todd R. Wright
- Aug 10
- 6 min read
What are we to make of a man who was called by Jesus like all the other 12; who was sent out with power over unclean spirits and the ability to heal every disease; and yet betrayed his Lord?
Matthew 10:1-4, 26:14-28, 42-50, 27:3-10
August 10, 2025
Dr. Todd R. Wright
Why are we so fascinated with Judas?
Tom Long writes of visiting a small prayer chapel that featured a life-sized rendering of Jesus.[1]
Nothing remarkable about that.
There was a sign that quoted Matthew 11:
“Come to me, all you who are weary and are carrying heavy burdens, and I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, and learn from me, for I am gentle and humble in heart, and you will find rest for your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light.”
It is one of the most comforting of scriptures. No surprise there.
Twelve chairs had been placed in a semi-circle facing the painting. How welcoming!
And each chair was labeled with the name of one of the disciples. A little unusual.
But what was remarkable was the one chair that showed the signs of most frequent use.
Can you guess? It was the one marked “Judas”!
When the Village group made their list of difficult texts, they called Judas “the problem child”!
What are we to make of a man who was called by Jesus like all the other 12; who was sent out with power over unclean spirits and the ability to heal every disease; and yet betrayed his Lord?
Down through the ages people have been just as bewildered, asking:
Why did Jesus pick him?
What drove Judas to betray Jesus?
Should we consider him a villain if this was his predestined role in God’s salvation plan?
Where is he eternally – heaven or hell?
Let’s take each in turn.
While we can’t know, we can make some educated guesses about why Jesus picked Judas.
Some have suggested that his name is a clue.
His first name, Judas, was an extremely common name for Jewish men during the first century AD, due to the national hero Judas Maccabeus, who led a successful revolt against the occupying Seleucid Empire. A bit like early colonists naming their children George Washington!
His epithet, “Iscariot”, is thought to mean “the man from Kerioth”, a village in southern Judea. But “one of the most popular alternative explanations holds that [it] may be a corruption of the Latin word sicarius, meaning ‘dagger man’. The Sicarii [were] Jewish rebels known for assassinating Romans and Jews who collaborated with them, using daggers hidden under their cloaks.”[2]
So, it is possible that Jesus picked Judas to balance out Matthew, the tax collector.
It is also possible that he picked him for his money skills tapping him as the group’s treasurer.
But some wonder if Jesus picked him because he knew that Judas would betray him.
It is an odd possibility. Wouldn’t you want to avoid such a person?
It leads to the question of motive – what turned a follower into a betrayer?
One of the gospel writers says the Devil made him do it. Calvin blames it on his greed.
Thirty pieces of silver would have been worth roughly the price of a slave[3] or about two months of wages for a common laborer. That would be enough to tempt some people.
Others suggest Judas is a disillusioned disciple “betraying Jesus not so much because he loved money, but because he loved his country and thought Jesus had failed it.”[4]
And then there are those who contend that he was acting on Jesus’ orders!
In the 1970s, a Coptic papyrus manuscript titled the Gospel of Judas, from roughly 280 AD, was discovered in Egypt. It suggested that Jesus told Judas to betray him.[5]
Like other heretical gospels, it alleges to have insider knowledge. It’s catnip for conspiracy theorists, but has been dismissed by scholars like N T Wright and Amy-Jill Levine respectively as “not a reliable source for understanding either Jesus or Judas” and “contains no new historical information”.[6]
But it does bring up the uncomfortable question of free will versus predestination.
If Jesus knew he was going to do it, can we hold Judas accountable or is God to blame?
Calvin cuts him no slack. He wrote, "Surely in Judas's betrayal, it will be no more right, because God himself willed that his son be delivered up to death, to ascribe the guilt of the crime to God than to transfer the credit for redemption to Judas.”[7]
Katherine Willis Pershey wrestled with the question during a bible study.
“I equivocated,” she said, “perhaps it was inevitable that someone would betray Jesus, not predestined. Somehow inevitability seems less constricting than predestination.”[8]
And Anna Carter Florence reminds us that …
“Judas, like all humans, faced difficult choices and the consequences of those choices.”[9]
We are, none of us, completely defined by our worst moments. There is more to us; and more to Judas. So did Judas know grace? Was he forgiven? Is he in heaven or hell?
Dante consigned Judas to the nineth circle of hell, reflecting the answer of most people.
On the other hand, Karl Barth devoted more than 50 pages of his Church Dogmatics to Judas. He wrote that Judas was undoubtedly a disciple of Jesus, no more so and no less so, than Peter and the rest. “He could not forgive himself,” Barth concluded, “because he assumed that Jesus wouldn’t have forgiven him. But we are terrible judges of ourselves, and that’s not our job.”[10]
So, I find myself wondering if Judas had written a suicide note, would it have contained not just his agony, but what he once believed and wished he still could?
Would he have reflected on his spark of hope as he began to follow Jesus; his wonder at the parables and healings; and his own slow descent from disappointment, to desperation, to despair?
Would he have spilled out his regret and repentance; and told, with a liberal splattering of tears, of his failed attempt to give back the money, to turn back the clock, to make things right?
Would he have grasped at memories of the last supper when Jesus poured the cup, caught his eye, and said it was the new covenant poured out for the forgiveness of sins?
Finally, would he have wrestled with whether that forgiveness could apply to him?
Ted Wardlaw, former president of Austin Seminary, brings us full circle. He tells of their chapel at the seminary and how the narthex displays the shields of all the disciples, twelve of them:
“There’s Peter, and Andrew, and James, and John, and Phillip, and Bartholomew, and Thomas, and Matthew, and James the son of Alphaeus, and Thaddaeus, and Simon the Canaanite ... and then there’s Matthias. He was the one who was added later, to replace you-know-who.”[11]
Wardlaw then muses, “If I had just a little bit more courage than in fact I have, I would design a shield for Judas, too, and put it up there with all the rest. It might disturb the symmetry of things, but I think he belongs up there. Conflicted and dysfunctional and wrong as he no doubt was, [Judas] was no more imperfect than anybody else on that wall.”
Maybe that’s why we are drawn to Judas, questioning his motives and his fate.
Maybe we are struggling with our own sins, our own betrayals, our own regrets.
Maybe that’s why we poke around beneath the surface and sit in his chair.
Maybe we cling to the hope that if he could find forgiveness, we can too. Amen
[3] Exodus 21:32 states that 30 pieces of silver was the price paid for a slave if an ox killed the slave
[4] From Dictionary of Jesus and the Gospels, pages 406-07
[6] From Judas and the Gospel of Jesus (?) and What Have They Done with Jesus? By Ben Witherington
[7] From A Dictionary of biblical tradition in English literature
[8] From “Apostolic Fate”, The Christian Century, 5/15/12
[9] From an AI overview of her reflections on Judas
[10] Quoted in “We were There: Judas”, see https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2015/032215.html
[11] Here and following from https://www.fourthchurch.org/sermons/2015/032215.html
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