Did Judas have a choice?

Hey, thanks again for sending in questions related to our recent sermons. We’re a few weeks into our series in the upper room studying Jesus. Final evening, really final hours with his closest disciples. This last week, we covered Judas and his betrayal, who’s a towering icon, almost mythic figure in not only Christian literature, but in the world at large.

People will refer to those who have betrayed them as Judas.

We refer to 30 pieces of silver when someone sells out. He has had an influence well beyond just Christian belief and practice and theology. The question comes in this week, which is one that has been debated for probably since the beginning, is did Judas have a choice? Did Judas have a choice whether he betrayed Jesus or not?

And on the one hand, Jesus said this prophesied Scripture must be fulfilled.

Jesus certainly knows about it in advance. From that lens, you might say his path was set. He couldn’t have gone any other way. Additionally, Satan enters Judas, which we certainly believe has some effect. Judas actions.

And so there’s some biblical evidence to say he didn’t have a choice. You know, he’s some unfortunate puppet in this cosmic drama. On the other hand, Judas himself says that he has shed innocent blood. Matthew 27:4, I believe. And also Luke 22, either verse 4 or verse 7 says that Judas was looking for it before Satan entered anything.

Judas was looking for an opportunity to hand Jesus over when Jesus was away from the crowd. So Judas, by his own volition, wanted to betray Jesus. And so I think if we add these pieces of Scripture together, we might come with a conclusion of Judas on his own, which he is certainly responsible and accountable for his own actions.

He says that himself, right? I have sinned against innocent blood. Matthew 27.

He wanted to turn Jesus over on his own, and he is held accountable for that for certain. Probably like a lot of us have experienced with various kinds of temptation. We want to pursue the temptation, whatever it is. But then as we want to pursue it, it seems like other forces come in to kind of keep pushing us that direction.

Other opportunities come in, kind of motivation to push us in that direction.

And so Satan coming to Judas, I think, is something Judas was kind of looking for on his own. He’s opened himself up for that throughout Scripture, whatever topic we’re talking about, there’s two things that are always true. It’s that God is sovereign. He’s definitely in control. We saw that with Jesus could have stopped Judas 100%.

God is sovereign over every little detail. And two humans are responsible. God’s sovereignty doesn’t somehow let us out of our responsibility. We can’t say, well, they made me do it. I didn’t have any choice.

Those kind of excuses never work. Even in our own lives, we have made choices. Were there other influences? Sure. But if we’re honest with ourselves, we wanted it to happen, whatever it was, and we could have pulled back from it and we didn’t.

And Judas is the same way now. The real tragic thing about Judas is he doesn’t seem to have repented, returned to Jesus. Peter, as we’ll talk about this week coming up. I mean, Peter also denies Jesus, right? Doesn’t turn him over, but denies him.

But Peter repents. He comes back, he comes home, he’s sorry, he wants. He wants Jesus. Whereas it seems like Judas never wanted Jesus, never wanted Jesus to be his story. So the question for us is probably less whether or not Judas had a choice.

But where are we? Where are our hearts? Are we looking at Judas to say, oh, since he didn’t have a choice, I don’t either, and therefore I can do whatever I want? We kind of want to use Judas as some kind of prop like that. Let’s just evaluate our own hearts, okay?

Us and God, do we want him? Do we want to return to him when we have done wrong, when it is our fault that we have done wrong? Can we admit that, ask for forgiveness and return to him? That’s the real question when we’re looking at Judas or Peter or anyone else who’s traced in Scripture is where is our own hearts?

And are we willing to admit our own faults?

So we know that debate will continue about Judas volition versus God’s sovereignty. That debate won’t end with one of our sermon question videos.

But what should end is our own understanding of our own hearts. And we hope that’s helpful. And we’ll see you next time.