Reliving The Passion #8

Mark 14:1b, 10–11

The chief priests and the scribes were seeking how to arrest him by stealth, and kill him.

Then Judas Iscariot, who was one of the twelve, went to the chief priests in order to betray him to them. And when they heard it they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he sought an opportunity to betray him.

In order to arrest Jesus “by stealth,” the rulers need someone like Judas. Enemies must know the habits of their prey—and what better source of such privy knowledge than a friend? Enter Judas Iscariot, a friend who is willing to act like an enemy: a traitor.

The contract that Judas now makes with men of murderous intent is so horrendous that we ask, compulsively, “Why? Why did he do it?” We feel the tale is incomplete without his motive. “Greed!” we figure. Or the more sophisticated among us argue that Judas was moved by a misguided zealotry. In fact, Mark ignores the question of motive altogether. He implies that Judas went voluntarily and (seeing that he accepted the rulers’ scheme so easily) with no particular plan of his own in mind. But that is absolutely all Mark cares to say of the mind of Judas.

Perhaps there’s a lesson for us in this presentation of the sin apart from its causes, as though motives were merely incidental and ultimately beside the point.

Does the motive of a sin—its rationale, its reasons—make it any less a sin? Isn’t the betrayal of the sovereignty of the Lord in our lives always a sin, regardless of the factors that drove us to betray him? Yes! Yet we habitually defend ourselves and diminish our fault by referring to reasons why we “had to” do it. We sinners are so backward that we try to justify ourselves by some condition which preceded the sin. Motives console us. That’s why we want so badly to have and to know them.

“Not my fault! He hit me first. I was just protecting myself!”

“Don’t blame me! My society was a bad influence on me. My parents set bad examples—abused me, even; never disciplined me. Blame them.”

“Hey, man, it’s dog-eat-dog. I’m only tryin’ to survive.”

“I can’t help the way I am. Yo!—God made me. God gave me my appetites, right?”

We sinners are so backward! We invert the true source of our justification. It isn’t some preliminary cause, some motive before the sin that justifies me, but rather the forgiveness of Christ which meets my repentance after the sin. If I did it, I’m responsible, whatever the reasons might be. Motives are incidental to the sin as a sin and to its expiation. If by excuses I duck my responsibility, I’ll never truly repent, and then the forgiveness of Christ will seem incidental to me. (Oh, what a wretched state that would be!) But if I own my responsibility, own up to the sin and so repent, then that forgiveness will justify before God even the most horrendous betrayer of Jesus. Even Judas Iscariot. Even me.

Mark’s account is right: it needs no motive to be complete. For the betrayer’s motive could neither justify nor damn him one whit more. The redeeming love of Jesus alone could have written a happier ending to the tale.

My dear Jesus:

I wounded my sister today with a word that exalted me more than you because it loved me more than her. I betrayed you, Lord. I destroyed your sovereignty in my life. There is no excuse for the pain I caused for both of you. There is only this:

God, be merciful to me, a sinner!

Amen.