Many Evangelicals believe all humans have free will; and that salvation is freely available to all IF they will but repent and believe the gospel. Other Evangelicals believe humans don’t have free will; and that salvation is only provided to those predestined by God from before the foundation of the world to be saved. To both I ask, could Judas, the apostle who betrayed Jesus for thirty pieces of silver, have been saved?
Most Evangelicals believe salvation is but a prayer away for everyone. However, the Bible says that some people can’t be saved: apostates (1 Timothy 4:1, 2 Thessalonians 2:3, 2 Peter 2:20-22, I John 2:9), people God has given over to a reprobate mind (Romans 1:28), and people who have committed the unpardonable sin (Matthew 12:31). Various Evangelical apologists have told me over the years that I am all three of these. I am an apostate with a reprobate mind who has committed the unpardonable sin (which many people believe is blasphemy of the Holy Spirit). I am one of those who has “trampled underfoot the Son of God, and has profaned the blood of the covenant by which he was sanctified, and has outraged the Spirit of grace? (Hebrews 10:29).
Scores of people just like me are beyond the grace of God, yet Evangelical apologists continue to evangelize us, thinking that they can overrule God. Note what the Bible says in Hebrews 6:4-6:
For it is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted of the heavenly gift, and were made partakers of the Holy Ghost, And have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, If they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance; seeing they crucify to themselves the Son of God afresh, and put him to an open shame.
Hebrews 10:26,29:
For if we sin wilfully after that we have received the knowledge of the truth, there remaineth no more sacrifice for sins
….
Of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and hath counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and hath done despite unto the Spirit of grace?
When an Evangelical tells me that God wants to save everyone, the first person I mention is Judas. Could Judas have been saved? If God decreed the redemption of humans before creation, then the answer is no. Judas was part of God’s grand plan to atone for human sin through the blood of Jesus on the cross. God’s story required someone to betray Jesus, and Judas was that man. If Judas prayed the sinner’s prayer and asked Jesus to save him, that would have messed up God’s redemptive plan. Judas was every bit as necessary to the narrative as Jesus, Pilate, and Roman soldiers. All of us are bit players in God’s grand novel.
The Bible calls Judas the son of perdition. John 17 says:
I have manifested thy name unto the men which thou gavest me out of the world: thine they were, and thou gavest them me; and they have kept thy word.
Now they have known that all things whatsoever thou hast given me are of thee.
For I have given unto them the words which thou gavest me; and they have received them, and have known surely that I came out from thee, and they have believed that thou didst send me.
….
While I was with them in the world, I kept them in thy name: those that thou gavest me I have kept, and none of them is lost, but the son of perdition; that the scripture might be fulfilled.
According to Luke 22:3, Judas was influenced and controlled by Satan. There’s nothing in the Bible that suggests Judas had an opportunity to be saved. Instead, he was a pawn in God’s chess game with the Devil.
What does this say about God? Judas is burning in Hell today because God determined it to be so. Judas had no chance, no opportunity to be saved. His entire life was predetermined by God.
Bruce Gerencser, 67, lives in rural Northwest Ohio with his wife of 46 years. He and his wife have six grown children and thirteen grandchildren. Bruce pastored Evangelical churches for twenty-five years in Ohio, Texas, and Michigan. Bruce left the ministry in 2005, and in 2008 he left Christianity. Bruce is now a humanist and an atheist.
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I have the DVD of the 2012 version of Jesus Christ Superstar, done as a stage play in the UK. (Tim Minchin!) I’d watched earlier versions as a kid, but never really understood how it portrays Judas as the guy who wants Jesus to be more assertive in sharing his message, a frustrated follower who finally does something to force the issue.
The message, of course, is that people can do severely stupid things in the process of trying to make what’s right happen.
But for a deity to sentence a human to forever torture because he was needed to advance a plan…that’s just unspeakable. Marcus Aurelius was right, jerk deities don’t deserve to be worshipped.
I often feel that just because something is true, or accurate in some way, it isn’t always good. It just happens to be something that’s factual. It more like a tumor, it’s simply there.
Well, if Judas was part of the plan, then the Christian God must think that the end justifies the means.
That helps to explain why so many Evangelicals support Donald Trump—and why so many who are anti-Semitic act as though Israeli can do no wrong.
TULIP taken to its logical conclusion means there was never a point at which a non elect person could have been saved, nor was there ever a point at which an elect person could have died and gone to hell. This means threatening people with hell ultimately doesn’t work because an elect person can’t go to hell and a non-elect person will go there no matter what.
A person can appear to be an out and out reprobate, but he could be a saved person who simply hasn’t been called and regenerated yet. Another person may appear to be an ordinary, law-abiding working man, but he is actually a reprobate bound for hell.
You never know, really. It ought to discourage people from professing Christ because they do not know if they will profess and then later fall away from faith. You may initially appear to repent, but how do you know you won’t fall back into the same sin again? How do you know you still stay committed a day, a week, a month, a year, or decade later after you supposedly converted? You don’t.