Fresh Look at Matthew: Matthew 26

Judas agreed to take thirty pieces of silver to betray Jesus.  In Zechariah 11 this amount of money is referenced again.  The context is still negative, but it does refer to it as “the price of a prince.”  12:13 says “So I took the thirty pieces of silver and threw them into the house of the Lord for the potter.”  Judas would later throw the money back at the priests and be buried in the potter’s field.  Interesting.

Did Judas not know the brutal end of his betrayal?  What makes us make the choices we do?  We will never, I assume, betray someone for mere money in this way and with this result, but . . . . we have all done things and wondered where did that come from?  Why did I think this was a good idea?  What was I thinking?  The human heart is a mystery, complicated, enigmatic—deceitful above all things and desperately wicked, who can know it, says the Bible.  Knowing how good we are at self deception, how we can talk ourselves into things, should put us all on warning. 

Introspection has value if we do it to align ourselves and recalibrate to the plumbline of Scripture, which is an everyday process. 

I have been reading these passages with analytical eyes and not my heart.  Jesus is going to the cross, and knows full well.  His best friends are going to be weak and fall for a time.  The anguish of soul and spirit are unspeakable and like nothing else anyone has experienced.  Many people misinterpret II Corinthians 5 to say that Jesus became sin.  He did not; he became a sin offering.  I am not a mystic and don’t like the idea that things transform into other things. The wine of communion does not transform into blood (strange doctrine) or the bread to his body. 

Yet he sees the salvation of us all as he goes to the cross in a matter of hours.  Judas’ betrayal does not deter him, only disturbs, and it is part of the plan.