Don’t Do It!

 

Yes, yes, it was ridiculous. No, there isn’t a rational explanation. Again, yes, I knew the already historically determined outcome. And again, no, I didn't think it would change; nor did I think my inward screaming could alter history. And yes, I found myself thinking the impossible and irrational.

 

While reading a Bible story to my children, I read about Judas' betrayal of Jesus - of a friend by a friend (John 13:18; Psalm 41:9). Despite knowing Judas was to betray Him that very night, Jesus washed the betrayer’s feet. Shock still overwhelms me thinking of such service. None, including Jesus, have escaped that same penetrating loneliness. All of us have suffered betrayal. And that loneliness and betrayal spurred my heart.

 

As Judas left the upper room to meet with his accomplices, I found myself mentally shouting, "Don't do it!" Ridiculous, I know. Such was impossible and irrational.

 

While history records massacres, catastrophes, starvations, and other horrifying events, no event matches the love and hate found on the cross. Mere words cannot reach down into the fathomless depths of either that divine love or devilish hate. No ocean is deep enough, nor no mind broad enough, to contain the full and complete explanation of God so loving the world that He gave His only begotten Son (John 3:16). God’s love, impossible and irrational from man’s perspective, is more easily accepted than explained. At the other end of the spectrum, nothing ever created can match the depths or heights of Satan’s hate which breathed and lived through the men who despised Jesus. Hatred is almost always irrational, and yet seems easily possible for us to understand…and accept.

 

Revulsion consumes my soul. This entire scene, from the betrayal to the lingering suffering, agonizes my mind. My heart is pierced by His pierced hands and torn by His spear-torn side. Shuddering and trembling overtake me when reading, yes, simply reading, the words "there they crucified Him" (Luke 23:33).

 

How can mere words, without the evocative benefit of speech or sight, cause such inward shrinking from pain? Dear friends, those are not mere words. The crucifixion’s historical reality is as assuredly real as you and I. Jesus was crucified. And yet those words are more than history; they are eternal.

 

And yet, absurdly shame and delight grip me simultaneously; almost as paradoxically as the love and hate on that darkened day. As loudly as the rebellious, ignorant, and jealous rogues clamor "crucify Him, crucify Him" (Mark 15:13,14); I, the eternally grateful sinner, cry out, "my Lord and my God" (John 20:28).

 

It sounds selfish, but I am grateful Judas did it. Even God was pleased to crush Him, putting Him to grief (Isaiah 53:10). There was no other way. Jesus pleaded for another way, but there was none (Mattthew 26:29). I need Judas' betrayal and Jesus' demise. I need God’s love for and Satan’s hate for God. My flesh, imagining the torture of nails piercing through and securing a body - my body - to splintered wood, shouts out, "Don't do it." My eternal spirit, fearing the torture of hell awaiting those not forgiven, cannot quite say, "thank you Judas”; but I can whisper, “thank you Jesus." Yes, yes….thank you.

 

Perry D. Hall