WHAT WOULD JESUS HAVE DONE WITHOUT JUDAS

Godfrey Gregg 14/03/2016 Leave a comment

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My beloved in the Lord I want to touch on a sticky subject this morning and I trust that you will pay close attention. We are aware of this season of Lent and the great significance to the Christian. If you are a Christian and reading this email I pray that you will receive this message. A brother Bishop once asked me, “What would Jesus have done without Judas?” My brother I hope I am answering that question this morning. I read and did some research and put that with my thoughts and I pray that the message will enlighten and encourage all that are reading.

Jesus’ choosing Judas was no accident. Long before Judas was ever born, his hatred of Jesus Christ was planned by divine design–predestined in the plan of God from eternity past. In John 17:12, Jesus, praying to the Father, says of the disciples, “While I was with them, I was keeping them in Your Name which You have given Me; and I guarded them, and not one of them perished but the son of perdition, that the Scripture would be fulfilled.”

Divine Sovereignty and Human Choice

Understand, Judas’s part was not apart from his own will. Even though God ordained that Judas would be the one of the Twelve who would betray Christ, it was not apart from the desire of Judas. Judas was no robot. Our Lord did not simply allocate to an unwilling Judas the part of the villain in the crucifixion. Such a thing would be inconsistent with the character of Jesus Christ. It is also inconsistent with the historical record. Throughout the ministry of Jesus, He endeavored to drive Judas to repentance, time and time again, with His love, His pleas, and His rebukes. So although Judas’s treachery fit into the plan of God, God did not design him as a treacherous man. He became a traitor to Christ by his own choice. God merely designed his treachery into the divine plan. He took Judas, wretched as he was, and fitted him into His plan. If God was responsible for making Judas what he was, Jesus would have pitied him rather than rebuked Him.

Judas Iscariot, then, was the chosen instrument of God, not apart from his own will, to betray Christ and bring about His death. This wretched man–evil as he was, by his own desire–was designed into God’s plan. And to show that it was not God’s will apart from Judas’s will, all the way along and at every opportunity, Jesus gave him warnings and pleas to bring him to repentance and salvation. And at every point he turned it down. We see that clearly in John 13.

Walking with Jesus and Following Satan

Judas, through his life of treachery, supplies sinners with a solemn warning. We learn from the example of Judas that a person can be very near to Jesus Christ, and yet be lost and damned forever. Nobody was ever closer to Christ than the Twelve. Judas was one of them, and he’s in hell today, because while he may have given intellectual assent to the truth, he never embraced Christ with heartfelt faith. I want you to take note here and look around you and see who are shadowing you like Judas. Not every “skin teeth” is real. My brothers and sisters I have seen it and overshadow it with the love of Christ. It is simple the call for every believer. They will sit among you and break bread but they will eventually eat the bread of sorrow. Jesus is the very thought of the believer so walk accordingly.

Unmasking the Betrayer

Your servant and brother,
+ Sir Godfrey Gregg
Archbishop and Presiding Prelate
Administrator and Apostolic Head

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