¹² One day soon afterward Jesus went up on a mountain to pray, and he prayed to God all night. ¹³ At daybreak he called together all of his disciples and chose twelve of them to be apostles. Here are their names:

¹⁴ Simon (whom he named Peter),
Andrew (Peter’s brother),
James,
John,
Philip,
Bartholomew,
¹⁵ Matthew,
Thomas,
James (son of Alphaeus),
Simon (who was called the zealot),
¹⁶ Judas (son of James),
Judas Iscariot (who later betrayed him).

Luke 6:12-16

Dear God, I want to focus on the second Judas here. “Iscariot (who later betrayed him).”

First, that’s an interesting spoiler alert there for Luke to give to Theophilus. I don’t know how much of everything Theophilus knew going into reading this letter from Luke. Did he already know about Jesus’s death and resurrection or was that a plot twist at the end? I just went and reach the beginning of the book again. This apparently was written for Theophilus to affirm everything he had already been taught. So maybe it wasn’t a spoiler after all.

In a men’s group I’m in, each of us was asked to research one of the twelve disciples last night and come back next week and teach about them to the others. I was originally given Simon the Zealot, but I switched with someone else to get Judas. Villains are always more fun.

The first thing I think of now is when I was going the Maccabees for the first time a few years ago with Fr. Mike Schmitz’s Bible in a Year podcast. When he did Maccabees, I noticed that one of the hero characters for the Jewish people was Judas Maccabeus. Were there so many people in the New Testament (six I think) names Judas as a namesake for him? It could have been a variant of Judah, going all the way back to the twelve tribes of Israel and one of Jacob’s sons, but could it also be that people were naming their children Judas like a lot of Americans named their child George for George Washington? Just a thought.

Either way, Judas had some real character flaws. I don’t have time to do all of the research now. I’ll do that later in the week. But off of the top of my head, he was said to have been stealing from the treasury. He was condemning when he saw the woman waste the perfume by pouring it on Jesus. He was disillusioned when he realized Jesus wasn’t going to be the revolutionary he had envisioned (perhaps that he’d grown up dreaming of being himself if I’m right about his name). And then he gave into a collection of his disillusionment, condemnation, and greed by getting angry with Jesus, judging him as being worthy of death, and then getting money to betray him.

Ultimately, he regretted it all, but by then it was too late. His last act was to take his own life. But as I think about him now, I think it’s that he allowed the cancer of greed, theft, and condemnation to give Satan a foothold in his heart. Where Peter had to be disillusioned about Jesus’s destiny of dying and resurrection, but he responded through sorrow and repentance, Judas fell back into the cancer that had been growing in his soul for years.

Father, help me to identify any cancers in my life that are setting me up for failure and great sin. Thankfully, I don’t have this issue in my life currently, but an example of something that could be like this is pornography. It can be that secret sin that grows like a cancer and displaces the areas of my heart reserved for my wife and you. There are all kinds of things I could list. So help me to know how to pursue you, keep my heart pure, and live the life of repentance and service that you call me to.

I pray this in Jesus and with your Holy Spirit,

Amen