The devil is hard at work, trying to ruin your faith with his lies. With all the mess of this world, he is trying to break your focus, wanting you to react with anger, fear, or despair. The short-term forecast seems bleak for Christians. But God takes the long view. He sees every outcome—even Christ’s final triumph. The devil has inspired many hostile movements and godless trends, but all will crumble even as the foundations of God’s kingdom remain firm.

A few people stand out during the last few days of Jesus’s life.

There is Peter, the brash disciple who denied his Lord three times. We remember Pontius Pilate, the Roman governor, the hand-washer and crowd-pleaser.

And what would Jesus’s last days be without Judas Iscariot? This disciple is infamous for his greed and disloyalty. For the price of a common slave, Judas volunteered to hand over the Lord whom he had followed for three years. And this traitor met a fitting end. After Jesus was arrested and condemned, Judas was stricken with guilt, and he went and hanged himself.

It’s hard to forget Judas. He was a faithless traitor who, in the end, got what he deserved. But is it so simple? Was the Iscariot just a wicked unbeliever who at first followed Christ, but whose heart turned against his master?

When we study Scripture, we shouldn’t just look at the persons on its pages, seeing only their individual characters and stories. But we remember the cosmic conflict always playing out, the battle between God and Satan. This deadly conflict is seen in the lives of ordinary people—people like Judas, and Peter, and you and me.

The satanic dynamic of Judas’s activity is seen in John 13:26-27, “Having dipped the bread, Jesus gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. Now after the piece of bread, Satan entered him.”

The Gospels tell often about the poor souls possessed by demons. Servants of Satan would enter and torment a person and cause grievous harm. But here the prince of demons himself gets to work, and even enters one of the followers of Christ!

This means the betrayal of Jesus isn’t just a sad story about broken friendship or the dangers of greed. Those things are part of it, but it’s vital to see that Judas doesn’t act alone. He has help from below. He has been supernaturally empowered so that he can carry out a vile work.

Satan enters him when the moment is right. For after a third year of ministry, one marked by growing opposition, Jesus has finally come to Jerusalem. The hatred of the leaders is reaching the boiling point. By now they’ll do anything to get rid of Jesus.

So Satan recruits someone to make possible his arrest. Judas was useful, because he’d be able to keep an eye on Jesus’s whereabouts during the Passover feast when there were big crowds in Jerusalem. Then at the end, Judas could point out the desired prey to the hunters.

And as planned, Judas reports to the leaders that Jesus will be in the garden at night. Then in the darkness and confusion of Gethsemane, Christ is betrayed.

Read More