John MacArthur: The Judas Syndrome – When Believers stop believing

yesam tv anta-gatam papam
jananam punya-karmanam
te dvanda-moha-nirmukta
bhajante mam drdha-vratah

“Persons who have acted piously in previous lives and in this life, whose sinful actions are completely eradicated and who are freed from the duality of illusion, engage themselves in My service with determination.” (Bhagavad-gita, 7.28)

Mary Magdalene giving Judas the sacrament at the Last Supper

John MacArthur: The Judas Syndrome – When Believers stop believing, Portrait of an Apostate

JOHN: […] Well, in every case the personal dynamics may be different, but Judas is the perfect illustration because Judas was three years in the ministry.

He was a ministry partner with the eleven Apostles. He was a ministry partner with the Lord Jesus Himself. He was exposed to the perfections of Christ on a 24/7 basis. He actually was a preacher and from all that we can tell, he was there participating in the miracles that the Apostles were part of and that they actually did. So he was fully engaged in the ministry, fully engaged in fellowship with the Lord Jesus Christ. […]

PHIL: […] We keep coming back to Judas as sort of the prototype of this, and I know when you were in seminary you did a major study on Judas and a lot of that has sort of been woven through your ministry over the years.

I have a question about Judas. Do you think, and we know that the human heart is deceitful above all things, desperately wicked, do you think it’s possible that he was self-deceived? Or did he know all along that he wasn’t a true believer?

JOHN: No, I think he knew all along that he wasn’t a true believer. I think he was motivated by greed. You remember the incident that really brought that to light was when he saw a lady wasting a very, very valuable amount of perfume on Jesus and he said, “Oh, why are you doing that? We could take that and give it to the poor.”

And the commentary of the New Testament is he didn’t want to give it to the poor, he said that because he held the bag. He was the treasurer. He wanted his hands on that money.

PHIL: So he was just very good at being a phony.

JOHN: He was very good at being a fake. He was trying to ride Jesus into power, prominence and money. He was motivated by avarice. He was motivated by greed. I don’t think he was ever self-deceived in the sense that he thought he was a true disciple of Jesus and he thought he was…he was a part of the Kingdom…no way, the very opposite. He knew from the get-go that this was a way to power and prominence and money if this Jesus who could do miracles and he knew that.

And that’s kind of…that’s the amazing part of it because all the evidences of Jesus’ messiahship were there for him, too. But instead of concluding that Jesus was, in fact, the Son of God, the Messiah, the Savior, and embracing the salvation He provided, all he could see in Jesus was the path to his own power and his own riches.
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