Why Didn’t Jesus Forgive Judas?

 

FORGIVENESS –  Why Didn’t Jesus Forgive Judas?

People pay for what they do, and still more for what they have allowed themselves to become. And they pay for it very simply; by the lives they lead. – James Baldwin

  … We eventually do to ourselves what we have done unto others. – Eric Hoffer

 Men may not get all they pay for in this world; but they must certainly pay for all they get. – Frederick Douglas

Studying the Bible lately, a question hit me very hard; a question you might also have asked: “Why didn’t Jesus forgive Judas Iscariot who betrayed Him?” Judas might have been undeserving, but as a holy man and as his ‘pastor,’ Jesus could have prayed for him as He did for Peter (Luke 22:31-32), instead, what we hear from Jesus about Judas is a very sad lament:

The Son of Man will die as the Scriptures say he will; but how terrible for that man who will betray the Son of Man! It would have been better for that man if he had never been born! (Mark 14:21, Good News Translation).

Peter denied Jesus three times yet received forgiveness; David committed adultery with Bathsheba, and even killed her husband to cover up his sin. He was forgiven. Why didn’t Judas get forgiveness?

The answer seems obvious: you might have conflict with someone, but you don’t have control over their destiny; you might have conflict with someone and thereafter forgive them, but you don’t have control how they manage that forgiveness. Judas had an issue with Jesus, but the outcome for Judas hinged on how he handled his end of the rope, not on how Jesus handled him. Forgiveness is not forced upon anyone, it is asked for, it is dispensed, it is received. Judas never asked forgiveness. He was not refused forgiveness that he asked for. Even when he went so far as to the Temple, driven by his haunting conscience, it was to refund the hot silver coins that he had been paid for the betrayal deal. Of Peter, however, it is said that after his sudden self-realisation, when he “remembered the word of Jesus,” “he went out, and wept bitterly” (Matthew 26:75). Similarly, after Nathan the prophet had confronted David with a sermon pointing out his sin of murder and adultery, David cried out to God, saying,

1 Have mercy upon me, O God, according to thy lovingkindness: according unto the multitude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

2 Wash me throughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

3 For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me (Psalm 51:1-3).

We find nowhere that Judas did any of those. Well, it may be argued that Jesus was inaccessible or unavailable at the time, being then in the custody of the religious and political powers of the land. Could he still have prayed to the Omnipresent God in the ways that he had learned from Jesus during the three years of following that great Teacher? Could he have joined his tears with those of Peter who like him was also a recent backslider in the heat of the temptations of that season? Could he have shut himself in, or fled elsewhere into secluded penitence, and returned later to the merciful Saviour? Many thoughts. Judas never ‘applied’ for forgiveness, and never got any. Sadly, forgiveness could not have been forced upon him. The mightiness of Jesus’ love would not reverse the protocols of forgiveness.

There were two sides to Judas’ deed: 1) trespass against a Friend betrayed, and 2) the sin of blood against a Prophet transgressed. Even if Jesus had said, “I forgive you,” but the offender had not cleared his own end with God, his ‘file’ would still have been only partly addressed. The offender’s destiny was in his own hands; Jesus could only lament the terrible fate He foresaw.

Offences will surely come, but that does not exonerate the one who offers himself or herself as a vehicle for the offence to come to anyone. My pains might be part of my wilderness dispensation in the training school of God, yet that does not free the one who makes himself or herself the devil’s tool for those inflictions upon me in my passage through that wilderness. For some trespassers, we might be able to say, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34), for others, we might only sadly lament that it were better if they had never been born.

God warned His people of Israel that their recalcitrant sins would bring judgment upon them. Finally, He let Assyria and Babylon waste them. Did God thereafter hail those nations for causing His people pain? No, He turned around to judge them for how severely they had dealt with His people, even though it had been according to the predictions that His prophets had given. Jesus was going to die as the Scriptures had long predicted, but that did not free Judas who gave himself as part of the players in that dark game of pains against the Son of God. Mind what scriptures your life fulfils.

6 But whoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea.

7 Woe unto the world because of offences! for it must needs be that offences come; BUT WOE to that man by whom the offence cometh! (Matthew 18:6-7).