Thank you for your sermon this Sunday. I was blessed through it!
I did have a question though about how you made Judas out to be a villain, which he rightly is, but at the same time, wasn't his sinful actions all part of God's plan?
I will be going over Luke 22 this Sunday with my ______ cell group and I was planning to have a discussion with them about Peter's denial not completely being his doing, but that he was part of God's bigger plan. Am I completely wrong on this?
I guess the big difference is that Peter learns from the sin and later does good, while Judas ends it there, not being about to redeem himself from what he did.
Any new light you can shed on this would be helpful.
Thank you,
Hello xxxxxxx,
Good to hear from you, and I am certainly blessed to hear that you were blessed from hearing yesterday's sermon.
Your question contains far too many issues to address via email. (Once again, I cannot stress the importance of Friday night discipleship classes.) In order to satisfactorily answer your question, I would have to deal with:
- Issue of God's sovereignty
- Issue of man's free will
- The inter-play between the two (is human free will just an illusion?)
- The horrible consequence of allowing man's free will to supersede God's sovereignty
- The culpability of sin (who gets ultimately blamed for sin: God or man?)
- The question of evil
- Issue of eternal security (can a man ever lose his salvation if he doesn't (as you said) "redeem himself from what he did?")
We have discussed most of these issues in Bible study class. I would love to sit down and discuss these issues with you further if needs be, but I can not answer them over email. (Just too long, and it won't do the issues proper justice.)
Real simple, superficial, quick answer to your question:
Luke 22:22 (words of Jesus)-
"For the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom he is betrayed!”
Here, we see two things:
- Jesus (the Son of Man) will die as it has been determined. Determined by whom? God.
- Condemnation and "woe" is pronounced upon Judas for betraying Jesus. Why? Because Judas is FULLY responsible for this sin.
God has determined for Jesus to die by being betrayed by Judas, but this in no wise takes responsibility off of Judas, nor does it put any blame on God for this sin.
How this works, is forever a mystery to the human mind. Only God is infinitely wise, and only He knows. Yet, the Bible teaches us that both God's full control over everything and the human's full responsibility for all their sins are BOTH very real. We would never say that Peter's denial or Judas' betrayal were partially their own doing and partially God's fault. The blame for sin rests fully on the human agent: which is why God would have been fully justified in condemning the entire human race to Hell. He is merciful in that He saves all who believe in Jesus. That's amazing grace!
Blessings and I hope this helps,
Pastor Stephen
