The Sins of Judas Mirrored in Us

Get up; let’s go! See, My betrayer is near.” Matthew 26:46

With such a title I want to remind everyone that once again I’m willing to be corrected if I’m wrong in anyway biblically speaking. But that said I feel like I need to explore Judas and understand what he’s sin was and how it reflects in us as well. When we read the character of Judas we can easily point the finger at the guy and say “he’s bad, I’m glad I’m not like Judas!” But as we begin to unfold Judas’ sin, we will in fact see just how similar we are to Judas.

We know of Judas’ betrayal earlier as Christ announces to His disciples in Matthew 26:21. So we know of Judas’ betrayal, but do we know why? Yes, we do know why! The reason why Judas betrayed Christ was a motivation of greed as we see in Matthew 26:14-15 Then one of the Twelve—the man called Judas Iscariot—went to the chief priests ¹⁵ and said, “What are you willing to give me if I hand Him over to you?” So they weighed out 30 pieces of silver for him. Ironically this amount of silver was enough to purchase a slave.

Something had changed in Judas after he had betrayed Christ. In Matthew 27:3-4 Judas returns back to the chief priests and confess his sin in betraying Christ. Judas knew that he had done something incredibly wrong; something that he himself knew outweighed his need to fulfil his greedy desires. So how is Judas’ sins mirrored in us you say? Let us pause for a moment and reflect on what Judas did.

Judas didn’t only betray Christ for the price of a slave BUT he also did this with such small value of knowing Christ! What do I mean you might be asking? What I mean is that at the time Judas saw that 30 pieces of silver was of more value than Christ himself. And so when I look at my sin, I consider my greed, my lust and my selfish desires of greater value than Christ Himself. However, when I say that Judas’ sins are mirrored in us, I do NOT say that we are LIKE Judas. We can see that in Matthew 27:5 that Judas could not repent of the sin he committed.

So in knowing that we commit sins like Judas much in the same way, we should be like Peter who repents of his action at the time of when Christ was handed over. We see the actions of Peter’s repentance in Matthew 26:75 and Peter remembered the words Jesus had spoken, “Before the rooster crows, you will deny Me three times.” And he went outside and wept bitterly.

We should not dwell in knowing that we have always a heavy cloak of sin on our shoulders but that we have a Lord whom we too can go to knowing that we have sinned. He embraces the earnest sinner, and what makes Judas and Peter different is that Peter knew that the Lord was always there to forgive! Let us reflect that great truth, whilst our sin is a heavy burden we should be joyful in knowing we have a great and powerful Lord to cling to who hears the contrite and repentant heart.