Love For Judas

One of the remarkable aspects of the final events of the Savior’s life in my mind is the kindness that He showed to Judas.  During their Passover meal, we read that Jesus “riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.” Judas was clearly still there at that point, for it was later in the chapter that the Savior told Judas to leave.  While the account in John doesn’t explicitly say that He washed Judas’s feet, the text does imply that He washed all of the apostles there: “He had washed their feet” (John 13:4-5, 12).  Therefore we can assume that the Savior, knowing that Judas would betray Him, still washed his feet like the others.  Elder Talmage interpreted the account this way, writing, “The guilty Iscariot had received without protest the Lord’s service in the washing of his recreant feet, though after the ablution he was spiritually more filthy than before.”  That the Savior could gently wash the dirty feet of a man who was supposed to be His friend and yet who was on the verge of selling Him to be killed shows that Jesus did not just speak of love—He was full of it.  This makes the Savior’s statement at that scene all the more powerful, “For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you” (John 13:15).  The example was not just humbling Himself to washing the filthy feet of His friends, as powerful as that in and of itself is, but it was also humbly serving a man who was about to betray Him to be brutally murdered.  That is the example Christ invited us to follow. 

                We see the Savior’s continued kindness towards Judas in the rest of the story.  He said to Him at the table, “That thou doest, do quickly” (John 13:27).  There was no harshness or meanness or wrath towards Judas—He simply dismissed Him to do what He had already decided to do.  Then later that night at the garden Judas brought the chief priests and elders to take ahold of Jesus. When Judas came to the Savior he kissed Him, and Jesus responded, “Friend, wherefore art thou come?” (Matt. 26:50) I don’t believe that Jesus meant that word sarcastically, for they had indeed been friends as they had spent three years together.  And Jesus had been a true friend to Judas always.  Jesus knew exactly what was happening and yet He did not yell or lambaste his apostle; He did not rail against him or call out his guilt or rebuke Him as He could have; He only called him friend.  It must have been a word that cut Judas to the core, as he knew that he himself had was being no friend then to Jesus.  Surely that word was more of a rebuke than all the condemnatory words that Jesus could have said.  And I have to think that this word friend must have been echoing in Judas’s mind all night long along with images of the Savior scrubbing his own feet, and this tormented his soul until finally “when the morning was come” he “repented himself, and brought again the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, Saying, I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood” (Matt. 27:1-4).  The kindness and love that Jesus showed Judas that fateful night were remarkable.  The account of the Savior’s final powerful teachings on that last night in John 13-17 use a form of the word love 48 times, but in my mind what really gives those sermons on love weight is the love and kindness and gentleness He actually showed to the man who betrayed Him that same night.