“The Festival of Unleavened Bread, which is called Passover, was drawing near. The chief priests and the scribes were looking for a way to put Him to death, because they were afraid of the people. Then SATAN ENTERED JUDAS, called Iscariot, who was numbered among the Twelve. He went away and discussed with the chief priests and temple police how he could hand Him over to them. They were glad and agreed to give him silver. So he accepted the offer and started looking for a good opportunity to betray Him to them when the crowd was not present.” (Luke 22:1-6)
HISTORY’S MOST HEINOUS SIN: THE MURDER OF JESUS
The most heinous sin that has ever been committed in the history of the world is the brutal murder of Jesus Christ, the morally perfect, infinitely worthy, divine Son of God. And probably the most despicable act in the process of this murder was the betrayal of Jesus by one of His closest friends, Judas Iscariot.
Judas was one of the twelve apostles that Jesus had personally chosen and who had been with Jesus during his entire public ministry. He had been entrusted with the moneybag for the whole group (John 13:29). He was close enough to Jesus at the Last Supper to be dipping bread with him in the same cup (Mark 14:20).
On the night of the Last Supper, Luke tells us in Luke 22:3–6 that “Satan entered into Judas. . . . He went away and conferred with the chief priests and officers how he might betray [Jesus] to them. Later he led the authorities to Jesus in the garden of Gethsemane and betrayed Jesus with a kiss (Luke 22:47–48). With that, Jesus’s fate was sealed.
When Luke tells us in verse 3 that “Satan entered into Judas,” several questions come to mind. One is whether Satan, in a moment of opportunism, mastered a good Judas or whether Judas was already walking in line with Satan and Satan simply decided that now was the time. That question is not the focus of this Post; suffice it to say Judas was a thief and a lover of money, and he covered it with a phony, external relationship with Jesus. Finally he sold him for thirty pieces of silver. A good follower of Jesus he was not.
Another question, which we will focus on, is why Satan would use Judas in this way, since the death and resurrection of Jesus would result in Satan’s final defeat, and there is good reason to think Satan knew that. The last and most important question is: Where was God when this happened? What was his role or non-role in the most spectacular sin that ever was? These two questions will now be considered in turn as the central focus of this post.
SATAN’S ROLE IN HIS OWN DESTRUCTION
The question why Satan would lead Judas to betray Jesus is intriguing. Doesn’t he know that the death and resurrection of Jesus would result in Satan’s final defeat (Colossians 2:13–15; Revelation 12:11)? There’s good reason to think Satan knew that.
We can be sure that for as long as possible Satan had wanted to first stop Jesus taking the path of self denial and suffering that would lead to the cross. He hated what he saw Jesus doing on those 40 days in the wilderness, before Jesus began His ministry on the way to the cross. Satan tried to turn him away from the path of suffering and sacrifice. In the wilderness, he tempted him to turn stones into bread and jump off the temple and get the rulership of the world by worshipping him (Matthew 4:1–11). The point of all these temptations is: Don’t walk the path of suffering and sacrifice and death. Use your power to escape suffering. If you’re the Son of God, display your right to reign.
Satan tried and failed then to get Jesus onto his worldly agenda. Having failed in that, his next challenge would be to stop the crucifixion. When Jesus predicted He would suffer many things from the elders and the chief priests and be killed and Peter rebuked him and said, “Far be it from you, Lord! This shall never happen to you” (Matthew 16:22). In other words, I will never let you be killed like that. Jesus did not commend him. He rebuked him with the words, “Get behind me, Satan! You are a hindrance to me. For you are not setting your mind on the things of God, but on the things of man” (Matthew 16:23). Hindering Jesus from going to the cross was the work of Satan. Satan did not want Jesus crucified. He knew it would be his undoing.
But fast forward, here he is in Luke 22:3 entering into Judas and leading him to betray the Lord and bring him to the cross. Why the about-face? Why try to divert him from the cross and then take the initiative to bring him to the cross? We are not told. This is an attempt at the answer: Satan saw his efforts to divert Jesus from the cross failing. Time after time, Jesus kept the course. His enemies tried to stone Him, but Jesus evaded them. That was not His destiny. Then was not the time (John 7:6, 7:30). His face was set like flint to towards the end He kept predicting in detail. Satan realised the inevitability of it and concluded that there is no stopping him. This realisation was a game-changer.
Therefore Satan resolved that if he can’t stop it, he will at least make it as shameful, ugly and painful and as heartbreaking as possible. Not just the death itself, but everything in the build up; death by betrayal; death by abandonment; death by denial (see Luke 22:31–34). If he could not stop it, he would drag others into it and do as much damage as he could. It was this spectacular sequence of evil acts that brought Jesus to the cross. And Satan was behind them. But Satan was merely the puppet and the prompter. He wasn’t the script writer.
GOD’S ROLE IN THE MURDER OF HIS SON
This brings us now to the second and most important question — where was God when all this happened? Or more precisely: What was God’s role or non-role in the most spectacular sin that ever happened — the murder of Jesus Christ, His beloved Son?
All that counts is what God Himself has shown us in His Word. Conjecture, speculation, second guessing and personal opinions count for nothing. Our opinions are worthless. All that counts is what God Himself has shown us in His Word. And the first thing He shows us is that the details surrounding the death of Jesus are prophesied in God’s Word hundreds of years before they happen.
- The Scriptures prophesy that evil men will reject Jesus when He comes.
Matthew 21:42: “Jesus said to them [quoting Psalm 118:22], ‘Have you never read in the Scriptures: “The stone that the builders rejected has become the cornerstone; this was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes”?’”
- The Scriptures prophesy that Jesus must be hated.
In John 15:25, Jesus quoted Psalm 35:19 and said, “The word that is written in their Law must be fulfilled: ‘They hated me without a cause.’”
- The Scriptures prophesy that the disciples would abandon Jesus.
In Matthew 26:31, he quotes Zechariah 13:7: “You will all fall away because of me this night. For it is written, ‘I will strike the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock will be scattered.’”
- The Scriptures prophesy that Jesus will be pierced but none of His bones will be broken.
John quotes Psalm 34:20 and Zechariah 12:10 and says, “One of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear. . . . For these things took place that the Scripture might be fulfilled: ‘Not one of his bones will be broken.’ And again another Scripture says, ‘They will look on Him whom they have pierced’” (John 19:34–37).
- The Scriptures prophecy that Jesus would be betrayed by a close friend for thirty pieces of silver.
In John 13:18, Jesus cites Psalm 41:9 and says, “I am not speaking of all of you; I know whom I have chosen. But the Scripture will be fulfilled, ‘He who ate my bread has lifted his heel against me.’”
And in Matthew 26:24, Jesus says, “The Son of Man goes as it is written of Him, but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed!”
And in Matthew 27:9–10, it says, “Then was fulfilled what had been spoken by the prophet Jeremiah, saying, ‘And they took the thirty pieces of silver, the price of him on whom a price had been set by some of the sons of Israel, and they gave them for the potter’s field, as the Lord directed me’” (Jeremiah 19:1–13; Zechariah 11:12–13).
- And not only the Scriptures, but Jesus himself prophesied, down to the details, how He will be killed.
In Mark 10:33–34, he says, “See, we are going up to Jerusalem, and the Son of Man will be delivered over to the chief priests and the scribes, and they will condemn Him to death and deliver Him over to the Gentiles. And they will mock Him and spit on Him, and flog Him and kill Him. And after three days He will rise.”
And on that last night, Jesus looked at Peter and said, “Truly, I tell you, this very night, before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times” (Matthew 26:34).
IT WAS ALL ACCORDING TO HIS SOVEREIGN WILL
From all these prophecies, we know that God foresaw, and did not prevent, and therefore included in His plan that his Son would be rejected, hated, abandoned, betrayed, denied, condemned, spat upon, flogged, mocked, pierced, and killed. All these are explicitly in God’s mind before they happen as things that He plans will happen to Jesus. These things did not just happen. This was never Satan orchestrating events or pulling the strings in an out of control rampage. All this was foretold in God’s Word. God knew they would happen and could have planned to stop them, but didn’t. So they happened according to His Sovereign Will. God was always in absolute control.
And all of them were evil. They were sin. It is sin to reject, hate, abandon, betray, deny, condemn, spit upon, flog, mock, pierce, and kill the morally perfect, infinitely worthy, divine Son of God. And yet the Bible is explicit and clear that God Himself planned and orchestrated these things. It is explicit not only in all the prophetic texts we have seen, but also in passages that say even more plainly that God brought these things to pass.
GOD BROUGHT IT TO PASS
As the Post ‘Understanding the Nature pf Prophecy’ to be found here:
demonstrates, what God foretold by His prophets wasn’t merely describing future events, He was making a decree and declaring their future fulfilment.
Messianic prophecies of which there are over 300 in the Old Testament, are advance notice of what God had already pre-ordained, hundreds of years earlier. And the very fact that the gruesomeness of it and that God was not just allowing, but causing these things to happen exactly as prophecy predicted, is the proof of God’s sovereignty and conducting of them. This was not some plan that got out of control. It all happened exactly as it was meant to happen and right on schedule. And this at a stroke explains the obsessive objections to Isaiah 52-53 as Messianic prophecy by Muslims Jews, atheists and others. Those verses effectively authorised and legitimised what they want to either deny happened at all or happened out of God’s control. And small wonder, for example, in Isaiah 53:6, 10, we find this:
“We all went astray like sheep; we all have turned to our own way; and THE LORD HAS PUNISHED HIM for the iniquity of us all.
…. Yet THE LORD WAS PLEASED TO CRUSH HIM SEVERELY. When You make Him a restitution offering, He will see His seed, He will prolong His days, and by His hand, the Lord ’s pleasure will be accomplished.” (Isaiah 53:6, 10)
So behind the spitting and flogging and mocking and piercing is the invisible hand and plan of God.
And I say that carefully and deliberately. This truth is too big and too weighty and too shocking to be glib, flippant or sensationalist about. The Bible unmistakably tells us that the invisible hand and plan of God are behind these most spectacular and heinous sins in all the universe — more grievous and more spectacular than the fall of Satan or any others. The reason we can use these very words is because the Bible says it in those very words.
THE HAND AND PLAN OF GOD
In Acts 4:27–28, we have the clearest, most explicit statement about God’s hand and plan behind the horrific crucifixion of his Son.
“For, in fact, in this city both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, assembled together against Your holy Servant Jesus, whom You anointed, to do whatever YOUR HAND AND YOUR PLAN HAD PREDESTINED to take place.” (Acts 4:27-28)
Note the two strands: “to do whatever your hand (cheir) and your plan (boule) had predestined to take place.”
Those are the two words that need highlighting: the hand of God and the plan of God. It is a strange way of speaking — to say that God’s hand and plan have predestined something to happen. One does not ordinarily think of God’s “hand” predestining. How does a hand predestine? Here’s what it means: the hand of God is an anthropomorphism, which ordinarily stands for God’s exerted power — not power in the abstract, but earthly, effective demonstrations of power. The point of combining it with His “plan” is to say that it is not just a theoretical exercise; it is a plan that will be executed by God’s own hand.
This explains Isaiah 53:10: “It was the will of the Lord to bruise him; He has put him to grief.” Or more literally, with the King James Version, “It pleased the Lord to bruise him; He hath put him to grief.” The Lord bruised him. Behind Herod and Pilate and the Gentiles and the people of Israel, was Jesus’s own Father who loved Him with an infinite love.
THE GOSPEL: GOD AT WORK IN DEATH
Why should this matter to us? It should matter because if God were not the main Actor in the death of Christ, then the death of Christ could not save us from our sins and we would perish in hell forever. If God was the protagonist and Satan the antagonist, make no mistake, the former always had authority over the latter. The reason the death of Christ is the heart of the gospel — the heart of the good news — is God was doing it. Romans 5:8: “God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” If you break God’s activity from the death of Jesus, you lose the gospel. This was God’s doing. It is the highest and deepest point of His love for sinners — His love for you and me. And once we grasp this profound truth, other things fall into place. The problem of evil while it doesn’t evaporate, can be understood. God not only permits evil, He employs evil to achieve His plan of greater good. If the crucifixion narrative shows us anything it is that God has the last word. Ultimately God triumphs. As the song goes “Jehovah has the final say”.
If you separate God’s activity from the death of Jesus, you lose the gospel.
And this also explains how Muslims atheists and others go into mocking denial mode and project a caricature of the events as “cosmic child abuse”.
Muslims trying to argue that no loving God would subject His Son to such a horrible death, gives Allah the pretext to whisk Him out from His ordeal. If we see the cross just the work of Satan alone, that destroys it as the supreme self sacrifice in love that it was. That God the Father directed events is actually not so shocking when you turn the coin over and realise that Jesus went willingly and knowingly and did it in the same love for us as God the Father had. Their love, their collective purpose and will are inseparable. When Jesus prays for a different outcome, none was offered, none was available. That prayer in Gethsemane, signifies Jesus struggle to overcome all His human self preservation instincts. But it is also exemplary and teaches us how to pray in adversity, as we should do, just as Jesus did subjecting His own human will to The Father’s divine sovereign will. Thus the outcome was never in doubt, as Jesus affirmed moments later when Peter drew his sword:
“Then Jesus told him, “Put your sword back in its place because all who take up a sword will perish by a sword. Or do you think that I cannot call on My Father, and He will provide Me at once with more than 12 legions of angels? How, then, would the Scriptures be fulfilled that SAY IT MUST HAPPEN THIS WAY?” (Matthew 26:52-54)
WHY GOD DID IT
God explains His will and purpose. Scripture tells us the purpose of God:
“What the law could not do since it was limited by the flesh, GOD DID. He condemned sin in the flesh by sending His own Son in flesh like ours under sin’s domain, and as a sin offering,” (Romans 8:3).
God condemned sin in Jesus’s flesh with our condemnation. He did it so that we are free.
“Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, because it is written: Everyone who is hung on a tree is cursed.” (Galatians 3:13 – see Deut. 21:23)
God cursed Jesus with the curse that belonged on us. So we are free of the curse that is the consequence for sin.
“HE MADE the One who did not know sin to be sin for us, so that we might become the righteousness of God in Him.” (2 Corinthians 5:21)
Who did it? God did. He imputed our sin to him, and now we go free in God’s righteousness.
“Yet He Himself bore our sicknesses, and He carried our pains; but we in turn regarded Him stricken, struck down BY GOD, and afflicted.” (Isaiah 53:4)
“But He was pierced [KJV “wounded”] because of our transgressions, crushed because of our iniquities; punishment for our peace was on Him, and we are healed by His wounds.” (Isaiah 53:5)
Ultimately, and perhaps somewhat amazingly, it was God Himself who put Jesus to death. This was the greatest act of divine justice ever carried out, done “by God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge” (Acts 2:23) and for the highest purpose. Jesus’ death on the cross secured the salvation of countless millions and provided the only way God could forgive sin without compromising His holiness and perfect righteousness. Christ’s death was God’s perfect plan for the eternal redemption of His own.
Far from being a victory for Satan, or an unnecessary tragedy, as some suggest, it was the most gracious act of God’s goodness and mercy, the ultimate expression of the Father’s love for sinners. God the Father put Jesus to death for our sin so that we could live in sinless righteousness before Him, a righteousness only possible because of the cross. “God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God” (2 Corinthians 5:21).
So we who have come to Christ in faith have done so recognising that we are guilty of His blood, shed on the cross for us. He died to pay the penalty for our sins (Romans 5:8; 6:23). It was my sin as much as anyone else’s that nailed Him to that cross.
He was wounded and pierced and crushed for our transgressions. By whom? By God (verse 4) God wounded him. God crushed him. For you and me. And we go free.
Thus, the authority of the Devil and his demons has already ended. Matthew 28:18 makes it very clear that Jesus has all authority now, which means that Satan has no authority over Christians. As a result, we can now live in accordance with Colossians 1:10–14 and “walk in a manner worthy of the Lord, fully pleasing to him, bearing fruit in every good work and increasing in the knowledge of God. . . . He has delivered us from the domain of darkness and transferred us to the kingdom of his beloved Son, in whom we have redemption, the forgiveness of sins.” The Bible uses the word grace to explain the victory Jesus achieved for us on the cross because there is no logical reason that God would love us and die in our place to liberate us from captivity to Satan, sin, and death, other than by his wonderful nature.
SATAN: DEFEATED BUT STILL A DANGEROUS FOE AT LARGE IN THE WORLD.
Satan lost at Calvary big time. But a defeated enemy even without authority or legitimacy is still a dangerous opponent as long as he still has rule. He inspired persecution and replicated martyrdom of the Apostles. He inspired the cruel treatment of Christians as recorded by Roman historian Tacitus where the Christians were arrested by Roman authorities, many of them convicted, and then thrown to the wild beasts and dogs or crucified while being set alight to serve as lamps to illuminate the darkness of night. Tacitus says that Nero relished this punishment making it a spectacle for the crowds to see. However, many had pity on the Christians for their suffering and deaths were due to Nero’s own hatred.
As we discover half a millennium after the events of Holy week and the resurrection had happened and Satan’s authority and power of death destroyed, he comes up with his own counterfeit religion. This achieved what he had always aspired to (Isaiah 14:14), and as he wanted and failed to get Jesus to do, by having people bowing down to him, (Matthew 4:9-10). More importantly it was a crude attempt to defuse the power of the cross by casting doubt upon it and a denial that it ever happened (Surah 4:157). Blood Atonement, the Bible’s crimson thread, of which the Cross is the ultimate expression, is nowhere in Islam. Sins are not even serious they are rectifiable mistakes and everyone is born innocent. All antithetical to God’s Word. Not to put too fine a point on it, all exactly what you would expect to find in a Satanically inspired religion.
To this day Satan is fighting a rearguard action still causing as much mayhem as possible, still in the business of enslaving souls and taking as many people to hell as he can. And Islam is his principal tool of religion which challenges the Gospel of Christ head on.
THE CROSS OF CHRIST: THE WORK AND LOVE OF GOD.
The reason why all this matters is this. If you embrace the biblical truth (and I pray you will) that God ordains heinous and spectacular sins for the global glory of his Son, without in anyway becoming unholy, unjust, unrighteous or sinful in that act, then you will not shrink back from the cross of Christ as a work of God.
You will not be among those who mockingly deride it as “cosmic child abuse” or as Muslims try to twist it to mean “Satan inspired the Bible’s greatest story”. When you can grasp that God preordained all of it, and prophesied it in all its lurid details hundreds of years before, then and only then can you come to the cross and fall on your face. And you will say: This is no mere human conspiracy. This is the work of God and the love of God. You will it receive as His highest gift. And you will be saved. And Christ will be glorified. And I will not have posted this in vain. Amen.
The Post is drawn from and inspired by the following article by John Piper: