Belief and Betrayal

"But there are some of you who do not believe." For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were who did not believe, and who it was that would betray Him.

"We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God." Jesus answered them, "Did I Myself not choose you, the twelve, and yet one of you is a devil?" (John 6:64, 69-70)

I see an underlying pattern in this passage that emerges as a warning for me, one who calls himself a disciple of Jesus. When Jesus said to His listeners that some of them did not believe, His own disciples, the twelve that followed Him most closely began to feel threatened. The biggest thing on their agenda the whole time they walked with Jesus up to the time of His death was the ongoing issue about which of them was the most loyal disciple. The record shows that repeatedly Jesus found them arguing about who was the greatest. It is easy for us to miss the real meaning of this phrase unless we grasp the context of what their perspective was and part of the reasons they followed Jesus.

It might be easy to think that when they argued about who was the greatest that they were talking about who had the most clout, who was closer to perfection than the others or who was the cleanest in terms of sin in their life. But this thinking has more to do with the filters that we have and misses the fact that these disciples primarily began following Jesus because in their minds He represented their best hope for relief from the hated Roman occupation that made their whole existence so miserable. Nothing else riveted the attention of the Jews more than the gall and bitterness and resentment that they felt everyday as the Romans exercised despotic control over every aspect of their lives. The Romans could get away with almost anything, any act of violence, cruelty, torture, injustice, even at a whim and with no seeming accountability. This enraged the Jews, as it was intended to do so, for the Romans fully subscribed to the satanic principle of dominance by intimidation and raw power.

As is always the case, the natural human response to intimidation and control through force and fear is a desire for a similar power to assert similar methods to overcome the forces of the enemy. Our natural reaction to abuse of power is a desire to abuse our abusers and get vengeance on our enemies by inflicting at least as much pain and suffering on them as they have caused us. This has always been the desire of victims and has infected the emotions and thoughts of humans all through the ages. The powerless long for power to overcome the power of those who dominate them.

Because of this natural desire for revenge (almost always termed as justice), those who suffer under abusive control of others are constantly looking for anyone who might come to their rescue, someone who will deliver them from the power of their adversaries. The Bible and much of the literature of earth is filled with such language. We chaff under oppression and injustice and we long for someone to free us from all the pain we suffer as a result. But we also usually have a deep desire to return the abuse, at least to some extent, on those who seem to have gotten away with such activity without suffering like those they have exploited for so long. The desire to get even, to get revenge on those who have hurt us is almost basic to the human existence.

Those living under intense oppression and the constant threat of pain and even death are the most keen to look for a deliverer, a savior who will come to champion their cause and save them from their predicaments and weakness. The Jews in the days of Jesus were under just such a circumstance and they were desperate to have a mighty Messiah, a superhero sent from the supernatural who would come to wreak vengeance on their enemies and restore their nation to the glory days of Solomon. They promoted this view through their interpretations of the prophecies of the coming Messiah in the Old Testament writings but they ran every passage through their filters of what they longed for this Messiah to do for them.

Of course, whenever we allow our current passions and desires and circumstances to become the primary context through which we view God's words to us, it is extremely likely that we will misunderstand and maybe miss altogether the real intent and meaning of those words. In our fixation to make everything God says fit our preconceived desires and opinions, we fail to see the much larger picture of the real war taking place of which our circumstances are only a microcosm. When we fail to take into account the challenge against God's government and the wild accusations against His character that is at the center of the real war, we then take God's statements of how He is going to overcome the false charges against Himself and twist them to mean things completely out of context and primarily for our own benefit.

This is where almost all the Jews of Jesus day were in terms of their thinking about the coming Messiah that was to show up. And it is not much different than similar misconceptions about prophecies for our day. The disciples of Jesus had decided that they were going to cast their vote with Jesus as the clear winner when it came to deciding on who was to be the true Messiah for the Jews. They were expecting one to show up around that time for the prophecies had indicated such. In addition many people had been claiming to be the Messiah already and had garnered followers to join them in rebelling against the Romans. But this man seemed to have much more promise than any other that had come along and these twelve men decided that they were going to bank everything on this being the right pick.

Given that context and mindset, it was vitally important that they be seen as fiercely loyal to their choice of who was the right Messiah. Loyalty was crucial, at least in their thinking, and they assumed that it would be the chief factor in deciding who would have the greatest positions of power and influence in the new government that was surely going to emerge from this Messiah's activities. They were confident that sooner or later Jesus would set up His kingdom on earth and exalt the Jewish nation to supreme power over all the other nations just as their religious leaders had taught them to believe. So the sooner one could attach one's self to this successful leader and establish their strategic position of loyalty in His mind, the more likely it would be that they would be selected to hold the highest offices of authority in His new government.

So when Jesus stated to His disciples that He knew there were some of them who did not believe, their minds suddenly set off intense alarm bells and they felt very threatened that maybe He was doubting their loyalty to Him. If He was saying that He doubted their loyalty, that He was thinking they didn't believe He was the right Messiah they were pinning all their hopes on, then their future positions in His kingdom would be in serious jeopardy and this is what likely frightened them the most.

All of Jesus' disciples were confused by the strange words He was speaking that day and likely all of them found these words at least somewhat offensive; Jesus even pointed that out when He asked if His words caused them to stumble. Yes, they had found themselves grumbling, if not outwardly then at least they had been thinking about it. But when many of His followers that day were so offended that they walked away and refused to trust in Him anymore because His descriptions of the kingdom too out of harmony with their established beliefs, His immediate disciples began to get nervous that their strategic relationship might be threatened when Jesus said that there were some among them who did not believe. He even asked them if they were thinking about leaving Him like so many others were doing.

In this seeming inference by Jesus implying doubt about their loyalty to Him and their fears that this would in turn threaten their hoped-for place in His coming kingdom, the twelve disciples may have begun scrambling for some way to counter the doubts they thought might be in the mind of Jesus about their loyalty. Peter, ever the one who had to speak first to defend himself, immediately responded by trying to assure Jesus that they fully intended to remain loyal to Him even though they were very puzzled by His strange words at times. But it seems that they were far more intent on convincing Jesus that they were still fiercely loyal to Him than they were on seeking to better understand the deeper meaning of the words He was saying to them. They wanted Jesus to know that He could trust them to stick with Him all the way to His glorious kingdom announcement even though they were certain there would be tough times before then.

Unfortunately, Peter inadvertently expressed to some extent the very spirit that would undermine their ability to remain fully loyal to Jesus. They were missing most of what Jesus was trying to convey to them about the much greater issues at stake in the controversy He had come to earth to win against His great accuser. All that Peter and his companions could think about was their desire to be delivered from their political problems while Jesus was intent on delivering people from their sins and vindicating the reputation of His Father. Peter was actually expressing to some extent an attitude of pride. He was stating that this select group could be counted on to believe in Jesus even if everyone else turned away from Him. Like the Israelites at Mount Sinai who quickly exclaimed, “All that You have said we will do”, Peter exclaimed, “We have believed and have come to know that You are the Holy One of God.” In essence he was protesting that Jesus didn't really understand them and that they could be trusted.

Jesus knew full well that Peter and the others had little clue as to what His words really meant or even their own assurances. But Jesus came to work with who He had and did not expose their true condition of confusion and mistaken notions about the Messiah. Instead, He chose to address the deeper problem that would cause them the most harm if left unchecked. He chose to speak words that could check the pride that filled the hearts of His disciples by sharing with them that He already knew that at least one of them would betray Him.

This knowledge would serve as a permanent caution to them to question their own hearts and lead them to self-examination of their motives. By not telling them who it was who would betray Him, He allowed the lingering question to always be present in hopes that they would each apply it to themselves and examine their own motives each time the issue arose. But unfortunately they often used this statement as a means of looking for faults and weaknesses in the others and seeking to compare themselves with each other to prove their loyalty to Jesus. Instead of examining their own motives and seeking to know Jesus and His words more clearly, they often turned to fighting with each other as to who should be perceived by the majority as to who was the most loyal and who might be the traitor.

It must have been a constant source of sadness for Jesus to so often try to share stupendous truths with humans who were so obsessed with their own agendas that they missed most of what He was trying to share with them. But I suspect that little has changed in our day. How often do I read the words of Jesus or find myself in discussions with others when my own sense of self-defense rises up to justify my loyalty to Him instead of searching my own heart to see how I might be betraying Him. The very pride that causes me to react in defensiveness is the seed of betrayal itself. Unless I allow Jesus to show me those roots of bitterness, those false beliefs about His kingdom that skew my perceptions of His Word and of prophecy, I too will be in danger of missing the most important things that Jesus wants me to grasp.

One thing that I get out of this passage as a warning for me is that to not enter into the kind of real belief in Jesus that He desires for me, to allow His words to have their intended effect in my life, this unbelief sets me up to someday be liable to betray Him. It is unbelief, or rather believing insistently things that I want to believe rather than what God seeks to reveal to me in His Word – it is this condition of choosing my ideas rather than God's agenda that will lead me to someday betray what God really is all about. Do I put my needs and desires and opinions and beliefs ahead of humbling myself to perceive His thoughts and ways and issues? They are often radically different than what I have always thought most of the time. If I do so, I am bound to be exposed during a crisis someday and find myself on the wrong side of the fence, out of harmony with God's ways of doing things. Like the disciples who all fled and forsake Jesus when the chips were down, like Peter and Judas who both betrayed Jesus though in different ways, I am just as vulnerable to missing the main point of what Jesus is trying to teach me if I allow my own preconceived opinions and my pride to block what His Spirit seeks to reveal to me.

Jesus, open my eyes and my mind and my heart to believe the way You want me to believe. Cleanse me of pride and spiritual arrogance and lead me by Your Spirit in Your ways – for Your reputation's sake.