JUDAS: Fulfilling His Mission. Pts. 1-2

"I will remain in the world no longer, but they are still in the world, and I am coming to You. Holy Father. Protect them by the power of your name, the name you gave me, so that they may be one as We are One. While I was with them, I protected them and kept them safe by that name you gave Me. None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled." (John 17:11-12)

I have often thought about what Calvinists refer to as predestination, and specifically how this biblical theory applies to Jesus’ wayward disciple, Judas Iscariot.

I mean, after all, in spite of his having led the soldiers and religious leaders to the Lord, (and not in the traditional, spiritual sense) and betrayed Him for thirty pieces of silver, and with a kiss of friendship, he did, after all, fulfill the mission for which he had been designed, and in fact predestined.

I mean, I can (at least in my mind’s eye) see Father, Son and Holy Spirit seated around a heavenly dining room table, before the worlds were breathed into place, and caught up in the eternal plan designed to save their yet unborn creation from the yet unrealized sin which was sure to envelope them, and change their lives forever.

I can almost visualize God, the Father as He turns towards His equally omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent Son, and asks the most crucial question which has ever been voiced.

“Will you go? Will you divest yourself of your supernatural attributes for a season, take on flesh, give your life a ransom for the sins of every man, woman, boy and girl who will ever inhabit planet earth?

And be sure, my Son, when you have taken your life back up again, you will have di-possessed yourself of one of your three eternal attributes forever. For you will be consigned to a body, and shall be like…them.”

Pt. 2

"That is why, when Christ came into the world, he said to God,

'You did not want animal sacrifices or sin offerings. But you have given me a body to offer.'" (Hebrews 10:5)

Of course, given the benefit of time and mortality, we are all too familiar with the remainder of that ancient heavenly parlance.

"None has been lost except the one doomed to destruction so that Scripture would be fulfilled." (John 17:12b)

(and)

“I am giving you twelve, but one is a devil. He will betray you.”

I don’t know what I believe about predestination. But, I know what I believe has a different definition than the one most commonly assigned to the word, since I’m convinced that God has lent each and every one of us the same status He bestowed on our first parents; whom He set in a garden called, Eden. Free Will.

"But who are you, a human being, to talk back to God? Shall what is formed say to the one who formed it, 'Why did you make me like this?'

When a potter makes jars out of clay, doesn't he have a right to use the same lump of clay to make one jar for decoration and another to throw garbage into?" (Hebrews 9:20-21)

I am convinced that Judas fulfilled a mission; the only mission which God, in His providence, understood the man was capable of fulfilling. And I am convinced that, as with non-compliant Pharaoh, (to whom God sent Moses) in His foreknowledge our Lord was capable of using Judas’ bad choices for our good; if not his own.

The saddest words ever spoken or written.

…What might have been.

By William McDonald, PhD.  Excerpt from "(Mc)Donald's Daily Diary," Vol. 78. Copyright pending
 

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