What was Judas Thinking?

There is something uniquely unsettling about Judas's betrayal. This was not a stranger in the crowd. This was a man who had walked with Jesus for three years—shared meals, witnessed miracles, and even performed them. When he finally made his move, he did it with a kiss.

"The one I will kiss is the man; seize him." (Matthew 26:48)

A kiss was a customary greeting—warm, familiar, reserved for friends. Judas did not betray Jesus with a sword or a shout. He betrayed him with an embrace. The most intimate gesture became the instrument of destruction.

The Sin of an Insider

What makes Judas so disturbing is not that he was far from Jesus—it is that he was so close. He was not a skeptic on the margins. He was one of the Twelve. He heard every sermon. He saw Lazarus walk out of the tomb. He was at the table when the bread was broken.

And yet John tells us plainly: he was a thief (John 12:6).

In John 12, Mary pours expensive perfume—worth a year's wages—over Jesus' feet in extravagant worship. Judas objects immediately: Why wasn't this sold and the money given to the poor? It sounds prophetic. But John strips away the pretense: Judas did not care about the poor. He kept the money bag and was stealing from it. He used the vocabulary of justice to mask the absence of worship.

When the religious leaders asked what he wanted to hand Jesus over, his answer was immediate: How much will you give me? They settled on thirty pieces of silver—about a month's wages, the price of a slave. The perfume he had condemned was worth twenty-five times that. Judas had been indignant over a thousand dollars of worship and sold the Son of God for forty.

Mary loved Jesus. Judas loved money. When the pressure mounted and the kingdom looked nothing like what he had signed up for, he made his calculation and changed teams.

You Have Judas in You

Here is how to understand Judas: he is a stockholder. He loves the stock, promotes the stock, feels good about the stock—as long as it is returning. The moment it costs him, he sells. He is the fair-weather fan who wears the gear and cheers loudly when the team is winning, and walks out the moment they lose.

That is Judas. And before you distance yourself too quickly, you need to see that you have Judas in you.

When obedience becomes costly, the temptation is to sell. Not always for thirty pieces of silver. It happens quietly. The church becomes too demanding, too flawed, too inconvenient—and the exit feels justified. Or faith erodes not because of honest doubt, but because God did not deliver what was expected. The suffering came. The prayer went unanswered. And rather than wrestling with it, the easier move is to walk away and blame it on someone else.

But consider what that actually reveals. If your faith rises and falls with your circumstances, you are not worshipping God—you are trying to manage him. You have not come to the Blessor; you have come for the blessing. You have built a religion around outcomes, and when the outcomes disappoint, the religion collapses.

Judas is not simply a villain in a distant story. He is a mirror. A warning about what it looks like to be near Jesus without being transformed by him—to carry the right vocabulary, hold a position of trust, and still have a heart organized around something other than Christ.

The Good News

But here is where the gospel interrupts.

God knows you. He knows the full accounting of your life—every hurt, every disappointment, every moment you quietly sold him out for something cheaper. And his response is not condemnation. Jesus said: Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened (Matthew 11:28).

That is the good news. Not that you have no Judas in you—you do. Not that you have never been a fair-weather follower—you have. The good news is that Jesus knows all of it, and still he says: Come.

You do not have to have it figured out. You do not have to arrive with clean hands. The same Jesus who looked across the table at Judas and called him friend is looking at you—and the invitation is still open.

Come.