Judas

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Throughout the awful story of the betrayal and death of Christ, there run two parallel tragedies of sorrow, Christ’s physical sufferings as a man and His sufferings as a God, reading the hearts of men and seeing all the weaknesses and trickeries of those who helped as well as those who hated Him. When Jesus turned aside from the triple failure of His three closest disciples to watch as He had bidden them, He faced the coming of the great betrayal.

‎Into the quiet, unwatched garden of Gethsemane, there thronged a tumultuous band of soldiers, sent by the chief priests, and led by Judas to the place where he had tracked the Master. These armed men, coming upon Jesus and the little band of disciples, fell back in awe and amaze. Could this noble and commanding being who faced them so calmly, be the malefactor they had been sent to arrest?

‎Then Judas, to complete the identification as he had been bidden, pushed forward, his brain filled with who knows what wild frenzy of fright and desperation, and embraced his master. The heart of the man Jesus must have been sore indeed—in the picture He presses His hand to it, to still the pain—but His reproof, His only utterance of rebuke, was the mildest that ever pierced as inner’s soul: “Judas, betrayest thou the Son of man with a kiss?”