Am I the same as Judas Iscariot?
I’ve been reading again. Well, actually I am still on the same book; Twelve Ordinary Men by John MacArthur. I read like my mom did. Three pages a day – first I read the last page I read the night before, then I read a new page, and then I fall asleep on the third page. If I repeat this cycle enough times, I’ll finish a book every now and then.
I am getting near the end, and I was reading a passage (John 6:60-70) about how the twelve disciples totally committed themselves to Christ. They gave up everything to follow him. All of them except one.
Judas Iscariot.
The passage reads as follows: …”They had given up everything to follow Jesus. That is the single most heroic fact about them revealed in the Gospels. And Judas’s failure to make that commitment, while pretending that he had, was what made him so despicable.”
There it is. That last sentence.
It just struck me, and I’ve read it twenty or thirty times now, and it has continued to remain in my thoughts. Who can make that kind of commitment now? We all sit in the pews on Sunday and call ourselves Christians, but have we truly committed ourselves to Christ? Do we live the life of Christ away from the Church.
If not, are we not like Judas Iscariot?