THE CASE OF JUDAS
These passages relate to the sin of Judas, and its consequences.
Acts 1:16-18. “Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of David, spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus. For he was numbered with us, and hath obtained part of this ministry. Now this man purchased a field with the reward of iniquity; and, falling headlong, he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.” Matt. 26:24. “Woe unto that man by whom the son of man is betrayed; it had been good for that man if he had not been born.” Mark 14:21. “Woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed; good were it for that man if he had never been born.” John 17:12. “Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost but the son of perdition; that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” Acts 1:25. “That he may take part of this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.” John 6:70. “Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?” Matt. 27:3-5. “Then Judas, which had betrayed him, when he saw that he was condemned, repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, saying, I have sinned, in that I have betrayed innocent blood. And they said, What is that to us? See thou to that; and he cast down the pieces of silver in the temple, and departed, and went and hanged himself.”
Surely if any person’s final punishment should be taught in the Bible, that of Judas should be explicitly stated. Is it?
None of the terms employed of him teach any such doctrine. As we come to understand their meaning, we see that while they characterize his wickedness, and describe his punishment, they confine it to this world. Besides, the Bible declares, “the Scripture must needs be fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of David, spake concerning Judas,” that it was “by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” that Jesus was delivered up, and “by wicked hands crucified and slain.” Acts 2:23.
To believe that Judas was consigned to endless torment for doing what must be done in consequence of God’s determinate counsel and foreknowledge, is to accuse the Almighty of an act that would blast his name with infamy. Now do the terms used of Judas allow us to regard him as outside the pale of mercy, or beyond God’s power to restore and save? For instance, he is said to be lost, and to be…
THE SON OF PERDITION, ETC.
“Those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition.”—John 17:12.
“Kept” and “lost” are here employed antithetically. The eleven were “kept,” by remaining true, and Judas was “lost” out of the apostleship. He was lost as all men were, for Christ came to “save that which was lost.” The language has no reference to his final condition, but to his then present state.
Judas is called “the son of perdition,” John 17:12; the apostle speaks of those “who draw back unto perdition,” Heb. 10:39; and of “the perdition of ungodly men,” 2 Pet. 3:7; and the Revelator, 17:8-11 declares that certain ones are destined to perdition. What is the meaning of this word, (apoleia)?It is the same word found in the following passages: Matt. 7:13, “broad is the way that leadeth to ‘destruction‘;” Acts 8:20, “Thy money perish with thee;” 2 Pet. 2:1, “shall bring in damnable heresies; 2, “follow their pernicious ways;” 3, “their damnation slumbereth not;” Matt. 26:8, “to what purpose this waste of the ointment? Acts 25:16, “it is not the manner of the Romans to deliver any man to die.” It is found twenty times in the New Testament, and is translated destruction, waste, perdition, die, damnable and pernicious. Its meaning is never endless torment; but it denotes loss, waste, etc.
In Heb. 10:39: “But we are not of them who draw back unto perdition; but of them that believe to the saving of the soul;” the meaning is that the disciples would not experience the destruction about to overtake the wicked people of those times. This is the view given by orthodox commentators. Wakefield:
“But we are not they who withdraw unto destruction, but who faithfully persevere, to the deliverance of our lives.” Clarke.—”We are not cowards who slink away, and notwithstanding, meet destruction; but we are faithful, and have our souls saved alive. The words peripoiesis psuche signify the preservation of life. See the note Ephesians 1:11. He intimates that, notwithstanding the persecution was hot, yet they managed to escape with their lives.” Lightfoot.—”As Christ’s pouring down his vengeance. in the destruction of that city and people, is called his ‘coming in his glory,’ and his ‘coming in judgment;’ and as the destruction of that city and nation is characterized, in Scripture, as the destruction of the whole world, so there are several passages that speak of the nearness of that destruction, that are suited according to such characters. Such as that in 1 Cor. 10:11, ‘Upon whom the ends of the world are come;’ 1 Pet. 4:7, ‘The end of all things is at hand’; Heb. 10:37, ‘Yet a little while, and he that shall come, will come, and will not tarry.—Sermon on James, 5:9.
As “son of thunder” in the New Testament meant an eloquent man, and “son of peace,” a peaceable man, so “son of perdition” denotes one abandoned to wickedness. Judas was lost, was a son of perdition, because of his great wickedness. He was lost out of the apostleship, but nothing indicates that his loss was final. The best critics of other churches give this view. Whitby:—
“And none of them is lost; i.e., either by temporal death (chapter xviii:9) or by falling off from me, but the son of perdition, i.e., Judas, worthy of perdition. So a son of death is worthy of it, (2 Sam. 41:5) and ethnos apoleias is a nation fit to be destroyed. (Eccl. 16:9; Matt. 23:15, and the note on Eph. 2:2) Rosenmuller—”No one is ignorant that Judas is here the intended betrayer of Christ, and who had fallen off from him. Apoleia, (perdition) therefore, as the preceding words teach, in this place, seems to indicate a defection from Jesus, the teacher; as in 2 Thess. 2:3, where the phrase ho uhios amartias, (the son of transgression) and is used concerning a noted impostor, who persuaded many to a defection from the Christian religion.”
There is nothing in the use of the word perdition to intimate that it means more than loss. In fact, the more utterly he was lost the more certain he is to experience the saving power of Christ, who came to “seek and save that which was lost,: Matt. 18:11, “to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” 10:6. The prodigal son, the piece of silver, and the hundredth sheep were lost, but all these were found. their being lost was the sole reason why they were sought and saved from their perilous condition. We have “all gone astray like lost sheep,” but the lost shall be found, and “there shall be one fold and one shepherd.”
The word apollumi is the word usually rendered lost and lose, and it is also translated destroy, perish, and marred.” Lord, save us, we ‘perish‘,” Matt. 8:25; “Go, rather to the lost sheep of the house of Israel,” Matt. 10:6; “Whosoever will save his life shall lose it,” Mark 8:35; “I have found my sheep, which was lost,” Luke 15:6; “There shall not a hair of your head perish,” Luke 21:18, are instances of the use of the word. As applied to the soul it means a condition of sinfulness. Matt. 10:6, “The lost sheep of the house of Israel;” xviii:11, “The Son of Man is come to save that which was lost.” But nothing is more distinctly taught than that Jesus, who came to seek and save the lost, will continue his work until he finds them. There is no final loss in the New Testament.
The Gospel Hid.
“But if our Gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost.”—2 Cor. 4:3.
The present tense is here employed. Those who are lost in trespasses and sin, are blind to the excellences of the Gospel; it is hid from their sight, is all that can be made out of this language. It seeks those who “are lost,” not shall be finally and eternally lost. These suggestions shed light upon the following passage:
THE LOST SOUL
“For what is a man profited, if he shall gain the whole world and lose his own soul? Or what shall a man give in exchange for his soul?”—Matt. 16:26.
The word soul here should be life. It is psuche, which never denotes soul, and is the word rendered life twice in the preceding verses. Dr. Clarke says: “‘Lose his own soul, or lose his life.’ On what authority many have translated the word psuche, in the twenty-fifth verse, life, and in theis verse, soul, I know not; but am certain it means life in both places. If a man should gain the whole world, its riches, honors and pleasures, and lose his life, what would all these profit him, seeing they can only be enjoyed during life?”
But it is not the mere animal life that is referred to; it is the faculty of enjoying life. The selfish man, who chiefly seeks to save his life, loses it, and he who unselfishly is willing to sacrifice it, gains thereby. It profits one not at all to gain even the world, if he lose his life, or degrade the quality of his life by the process.
It is true, also, that one may lose his soul in the process of seeking gain, but the text does not refer to the soul, true though it is that the soul is often lost—not beyond recovery, but still lost, like the silver, the sheep, and the prodigal, to be at length found by the great Seeker, who will not cease from his divine labors “until he finds” all the lost.
The other terms referring to Judas, are susceptible of a meaning in harmony with the foregoing.
“One of You Is A Devil.”
Peter was thus addressed, “Get thee behind me, Satan!” Judas was a devil, as Peter was Satan, because of his conduct; but his final condition and character were not intimated by this language, any more than was Peter’s.
BETTER NEVER BEEN BORN.
“The son of man goeth as it is written of him; but woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed! It had been good for that man if he had not been born.” Matt. 26:24. Mark 14:21. Luke 22:22.
It is said that this language cannot be true of Judas, if he is ever to be redeemed, no matter how much he may have suffered previously. The answer to this is, that this was a proverbial expression among the Jews, and was not employed literally. Job says: “Let the day perish wherein I was born.” Job 3:3. Solomon said: “If a man live many years, and his soul be not filled with good; and also that he hath no burial; I say that an untimely birth is better than he.”—Eccl. 6:3.
The commentator, Kenrick, says: “‘It had been good for him, if he had never been born,’ is a proverbial phrase, and not to be understood literally; for it is not consistent with our ideas of the divine goodness to make the existence of any being a curse to him, or to cause him to suffer more, upon the whole, than he enjoys happiness. Rather than do this, God would not have created him at all. But as it is usual to say of men who are to endure some grievous punishment or dreadful calamity, that it would have been better for them never to have been born, Christ, foreseeing what Judas would bring upon himself, by delivering up his Master into the hands of his enemies, applies this language to him.”
Dr. Clarke quotes the common use of the saying. In Shemoth Rabba, sect. 40 fol. 135, 1,2, it is said, “Whosoever knows the law, and does not do it, it had been better for him had he never come into the world. In Vayikra Rabba, sec. 26, fol. 179, 4, and Midrash Coheleth, fol. 91, 4, it is thus expressed: ‘It were better for him had he never been created; and it would have been better for him had he been strangled in the womb, and never have seen the light of this world.’
His Own Place.
“That he might go to his own place.” Acts 1:25. “His own place” does not mean hell, for, first, it is not Judas, but Matthias who is referred to, and the “place” is the apostleship “from which Judas by transgression fell.”
Dr. Clarke says of Judas: “The utmost that can be said of the case of Judas is this: he committed a heinous act of sin and ingratitude; but he repented, and did what he could to undo his wicked act; he had committed the sin unto death, i.e., a sin that involves the death of the body; but who can say, (if mercy was offered to Christ’s murderers, and the gospel was first to be preached at Jerusalem, that these very murderers might have the first offer of salvation through him whom they had pierced), that the same mercy could not be extended to the wretched Judas? I contend, that the chief priest, etc., who instigated Judas to deliver up his Master, and who crucified him—and who crucified him, too, as a malefactor, having at the same time, the most indubitable evidence of his innocence—were worse men than Judas Iscariot himself; and that if mercy was extended to those, the wretched, penitent traitor did not die out of the reach of the yearning of its bowels. And I contend further, that there is no positive evidence of the final damnation of Judas in the sacred text.”—Clarke in loco
WAS JUDAS A SUICIDE?
The common view of the death of Judas, is, that he committed suicide after his great crime, and so went to endless woe. But it is doubtful if he did commit suicide. In one place we read that he “departed and went and hanged himself,” and in another, “falling headlong he burst asunder in the midst, and all his bowels gushed out.”—Acts 1:18. The phrase “hanged himself” can properly be read “was suffocated.” His suicide is by no means certain.
But if he took his own life, he did not commit a deed deserving endless torment, for as “no man ever hated his own flesh,” so no one ever took his own life in a sound mind.
The case of the suicide is not hopeless, for when Ammon had taken his own life, and Absalom, equally wicked, was living, the father of the boys was at rest concerning the suicide. “David longed to go forth to Absalom but he was comforted on cerning Ammon, seeing he was dead.”—2 Sam. 13:39.
It is a remarkable fact—militating very much against the idea of the final damnation of Judas—That Jesus placed him on a throne with the other apostles, judging the twelve tribes of Israel, after his betrayal.
Jesus said to Peter: “Verily I say unto you, that ye which have followed me, in the regeneration, when the Son of Man shall sit on the throne of his glory, ye also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel,” Matt. 19:28. The Universalist “Book of Reference” thus sums up his case: 1st. Judas was actually one of the twelve apostles, and chosen as such, by Christ himself. 2d. That for a long time, at least, he was as true to his trust, and acted his part in as good faith, as did any other apostle. 3d. That the part he took in the betrayal of Christ was the part for which God had raised him up, and that which was predetermined by the counsel of Heaven. 4th. That notwithstanding he was a sinner, yet that no man ever left the world manifesting greater sorrow for sin, more compunction of heart, deeper contrition, or more regret for offenses, than did Judas. 5th. That there is no shade of evidence that Judas will be eternally miserable. 6th. That, in common with all transgressors, he suffered in this world the just demerit of all his crimes. 7th. That the last account of him is, he had gone the way of all the earth—he was dead: and if any one can give a further or better account of him, we will kindly receive it.