We have taught what Judas did.
We have taught that Jesus knew. We have taught that He loved him anyway, washed his feet, called him friend.
But there is something underneath all of that, and I believe it is the reason God put this man in the story at all. It is not about Judas' character. It is about what Jesus refused to do.
Let me take you through four things almost nobody preaches, and then the thing underneath them.
One: He Washed the Heel
In John 13, Jesus takes a basin and a towel and washes twelve pairs of feet. Judas is in that room, and his feet are in those hands.
Then, a few verses later, Jesus explains what is coming by quoting a psalm — and I want you to look carefully at what the older translations render literally.
Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.
Psalm 41:9 (NKJV)
Heel.
He said that within minutes of holding Judas' heel in His hands.
And that word has a history in your Bible that goes back further than the psalm.
And I will cause hostility between you and the woman, and between your offspring and her offspring. He will strike your head, and you will strike his heel.
Genesis 3:15 (NLT)
That is the first promise of a Redeemer ever spoken, made in a garden on the worst day in human history. And it comes with an anatomy. The Seed of the woman will crush the serpent's head — and the serpent will get one strike, at the heel.
The heel is the only place the enemy was ever promised he could touch Him.
So on the night it happened, Jesus knelt down, took the heel that would deliver that strike, washed it clean — and then stood up and named it out loud from a psalm written a thousand years before.
I want to be honest with you: John does not stop and connect these dots for us. He records the washing, and he records the psalm, and he leaves them side by side. But John does not put things side by side by accident.
Two: "Friend" Is Not a Casual Word in Matthew
In the garden, with an armed mob behind him and the kiss still on His face, Jesus says: Friend, do what you came for.
That word is hetairos. And here is what almost nobody notices.
It appears exactly three times in Matthew's Gospel. Three. And all three times it is spoken to somebody who is in the wrong and is being confronted — gently.
The vineyard worker who grumbled about his wages: Friend, I am doing you no wrong.
The man who came to the wedding without a garment: Friend, how did you get in here?
And Judas.
Matthew is doing something on purpose. Every single time that word appears in his Gospel, it is a door being held open for somebody who has no right to expect one.
Jesus did not curse him. He did not even accuse him. He held the door.
Three: He Was Warned Out Loud, a Year in Advance
We think of the upper room as the moment Judas was exposed. It was not the first time.
Then Jesus said, "I chose the twelve of you, but one is a devil."
John 6:70 (NLT)
That was said publicly, in front of the whole group, roughly a year before the crucifixion.
Judas heard that.
He sat in that room and heard Jesus say it out loud, and he did not repent, and he did not leave — and remarkably, nobody turned and looked at him. Which tells us again how evenly Jesus had been treating him.
He was warned. Plainly. With time to turn around.
Four: The Blood Money Bought a Grave for Strangers
When Judas threw the silver into the temple, the priests had a problem. It was blood money, so by their own law they could not put it back in the treasury.
After some discussion they finally decided to buy the potter's field, and they made it into a cemetery for foreigners.
Matthew 27:7 (NLT)
Read that again.
The price of the betrayal purchased a burial place for foreigners — for outsiders, for people with no family plot and no place in Israel to be laid.
The money paid to betray the Savior of the world ended up buying a resting place for strangers.
Even that could not stop being redemptive.
Now the Thing Underneath
Here is what I believe your spirit has been circling.
Jesus knew.
He knew before He prayed all night on that mountain. He knew every single day for three years. He knew when He handed him the money bag. He knew when He sent him out to preach and heal. He knew when He knelt down with the towel.
And He had complete power to stop it.
Think about how easily. He could have named him in front of everyone — He nearly did. He could have simply not chosen him. He could have dismissed him quietly. He could have warned the eleven and let them handle it. He could have spoken one word in that garden and the whole mob would have gone down, and in fact when He said I am he, John tells us they fell backward to the ground.
He had total foreknowledge and total power.
And He used neither one to take away a man's choice.
That is the revelation.
Not that Jesus loved His betrayer — we teach that, and it is beautiful, and it is not the deepest thing here.
The deepest thing is that God, holding all the knowledge and all the power there is, refused to override a human will — even to save His own life.
Why That Had to Happen at That Table
Because love that cannot be refused is not love. It is control.
If Jesus had stopped Judas — if at any point He had reached in and overridden that man's will because the stakes had gotten high enough — then He would have established forever that God takes the choice away when it matters most.
And every one of us would have to wonder about our own yes.
You would never know whether you actually chose Him or whether you were simply someone whose will God decided to override. Your love for God would be indistinguishable from a mechanism.
So somebody had to be at that table who could say no all the way to the end.
And Jesus protected that man's freedom to reject Him — protected it through the foot-washing, protected it through the morsel, protected it through the word friend, protected it right up to a kiss in a garden — because the alternative was a universe where nobody's yes meant anything.
Let Me Be Honest About the Hard Part
I promised you I would always tell you where the certainty ends, and this is a place where faithful Christians disagree, so I am not going to pretend it is simple.
Jesus said of him: it would be better for that man if he had never been born. And in His prayer in John 17 He said that none of those given to Him had been lost except the son of destruction, so that Scripture would be fulfilled.
Those are hard sentences, and sincere believers have read them different ways for two thousand years. Some hold that Judas was appointed to that role. Others hold that God foreknew what Judas would freely choose and wove it into His plan without causing it.
I hold the second. I believe foreknowledge is not the same thing as force — that God seeing what you will do is not God making you do it. A mother can know exactly what her son will choose and still not be the one choosing it.
But I want you to know that is my conviction and not a verse, and I am not going to fight anyone over it.
What is not in dispute is what Jesus did. He washed the feet. He gave the honored morsel. He said friend. Whatever mystery sits behind that man's will, the conduct of Jesus toward him is on the record, and it never once turned cold.
And Now It Turns Toward You
Here is why this is not a history lesson.
He knows what you are going to do.
He knows the thing you will say next month that you will wish you had not. He knows the compromise you have been rehearsing. He knows the season coming when you will pull back from Him and blame it on being busy.
He has known the whole time.
And He has not exposed you. He has not withheld from you. He has not started treating you differently in advance, or gone cold to protect Himself, or dropped hints to the people around you.
He is still washing your feet.
He is not keeping you by force. He is holding the door open and letting you walk through it again every single day.
That is a more secure love than the other kind, not a weaker one. Because it means that when you say yes to Him tomorrow morning, it will actually be yours.
Living This Word
Living this Word means:
- I will stop reading the story of Judas as a story about somebody else's failure.
- I will remember that God's patience with me is not God's ignorance about me.
- I will take the warnings He gives me seriously the first time, because Judas got a year.
- I will hold the door open for people who have wronged me, the way Christ held it open for the man who sold Him.
- And I will make my yes an actual yes, because He went to a cross rather than take that choice away from me.
Declaration
My God had every ounce of power He needed to take my choice away, and He would not do it. He knew what Judas would do and washed his feet anyway; He knows what I will do and He is washing mine. His patience with me is not ignorance about me — He has seen all of it and He is still here. So I will not treat His kindness as permission to drift, and I will not mistake His restraint for weakness. He is holding the door open. Today, freely, with my own will, I walk through it and I choose Him.
Closing Truth
He knelt down and washed the heel that was going to strike Him.
He could have stopped it with a word.
He would rather be betrayed by a man who was free than be loved by a man who was not.