Judas's Suicide; Guilt and Remorse, Matthew 27:3

Have you ever heard anybody tell you that in order to be saved you have to feel sorry for your sins, or you have to repent? That is often a common error in the way in which the gospel is presented. For many people just understanding that the good news of the gospel is faith alone, simply believing the good news that Jesus Christ died for our sin doesn't seem to be quite enough, that somehow we have to add something to that. We have to be sorry for our sins; we have to have some sort of repentance of sin. Fortunately Scripture never has that as a focal point at all, it doesn't ever say that.

And then when we get into the Christian life and we commit sins that sometimes shock other people, sometimes they shock us that we have done such a thing, somehow we think that in order to get God's forgiveness we have to do something in addition to just confessing sin, just admitting to God that we did it. But that doesn't seem to be enough. Somehow we have to impress God with our remorse, and in fact sometimes the word confess in some languages is translated with a word that means to regret or to have remorse. That's true when I go over to Ukraine using the Russian Bible, and even the Ukrainian Bible, that comes across in the translation. It always has to be addressed and always has to be corrected.

In this passage were going to see that there is in the Bible a significant difference between the idea of sorrow or remorse or regret, and what the Bible calls repentance; also a term often misunderstood. And as we go through this we are also going to look at three alleged contradictions that are in the Bible and understand why they are not contradictions. This passage focuses on the death of Judas Iscariot.

I want to point out a few things by way of review as we look at Judas's suicide, as well as the topics of guilt and remorse and that he had no forgiveness.

First of all, in Matthew 27, we continue to be in the midst of these six trials of Jesus. Remember there are really two groups of trials and each trial has three stages, or three trials or three hearings. There is a lot of debate as to exactly what word to use. I still like the idea that there were six distinct trials. There are two six distinct hearings that are taking place and at first Jesus is, we are told in the Gospel of John, taken to Annas who is no longer high priest, but he is the power behind the high priesthood. Caiaphas is the current high priest. Caiaphas is his son-in-law and five of his sons will be high priest over the coming, and so he is the real power behind the priesthood ministry. And it's as corrupt a ministry as it can possibly be.

The second trial is when Jesus is taken from Annas to Caiaphas, who is the high priest, and the chief priests and elders in the Sanhedrin are gathered together at that point and for that hearing they bring in a lot of false witnesses. The false witnesses cannot agree with each other, until finally they get two that seem to agree with each other and Caiaphas up, tears his robe when he gets Jesus to admit that he is the Messiah, the son of God. This is the trumped up charge they have of blasphemy against Jesus, and it doesn't fit a number of things. There are number of illegalities that have taken place in these first two trials.

The first illegality was that the verdict could not be announced at night. These two first two trials are at night, before dawn, so by meeting and having a trial they have violated their rules.

A second violation is that in the case of a capital trial the trial and the guilty verdict could not occur at the same time. They would hold the trial and they had to wait at least 24 hours before they could announce the verdict. They had to be able to sit, think, and weigh the evidence.

A third rule that they violated was that the sentence could only be pronounced three days after the guilty verdict. Now they are going to do everything all in one night.

A fourth violation of the law was that no trials were allowed on the eve of the Sabbath or on a feast day, and they are on the eve of Passover, at this point and so they were not to convene a trial at that point. But they've been forced to do so because Jesus is blown Judas's cover. Jesus knew the Judas had already betrayed Him and He points him out during the Seder meal to the other disciples, and basically orders Judas to go and do what he's going to do. Judas goes to the Sanhedrin because he believes that if Jesus isn't arrested that night He may get away.

They have brought Jesus to this trial and in those first two trials they have basically come to an agreement as to what the charge will be. And then we are told in the first two verses of Matthew 27 that they held a third trial. Trying to have a semblance of legality they waited until the sun came up, and then in daylight, they took Him, they found Him guilty, and they bound Him and led him away to Pontius Pilate, the governor. That ends the first three trials, the religious phase, and shifts to the secular phase. That is important because Judas is there waiting. He was with the crowd that went to Garden of Gethsemane. He is the one who betrayed Jesus; that's how he is introduced in verse three, as Judas, His betrayer.

Judas stayed with the crowd, went back to the residence of the high priest and is present for these hearings. He probably was not in the room but he heard what was going on and he heard news that was relayed back to him, and he would have been there, because as the one who betrayed Jesus, he might be needed as a witness in the civil trial. So Judas is very definitely present.

The other thing that we have seen is the way Matthew presents this whole episode. It's very dramatic and he shifts from scene to scene. He begins at Gethsemane and then at the introduction of the trial section he talks about the fact that the that Jesus was led away to Caiaphas the high priest where the scribes and the elders were assembled in verse 57, and then in verse 58, "but Peter followed him at a distance to the high priest's courtyard". We have these two scenes summarized. We are going to see Jesus before the high priest and the religious trials, and then were going to watch Peter. So we went from Annas to Caiaphas and then the focus shifted to Peter and his denials. There are the two verses dealing with the third trial and then the scene shifts to Judas.

The last time was on the grace and forgiveness of God. There we learned from studying Peter's denials of Jesus that he is still going to be forgiven, that there's no sin that's too great for the grace of God, there is no sin that was not covered or paid for by the death of Christ on the cross, that He died for all sin, that there is no such thing as an unforgivable sin.

Some, but people say, well, isn't unbelief an unforgivable sin? But we are born condemned because of Adam's original sin. There are three things that are the basis of our condemnation. First and foremost and the foundation is Adam's original sin. So were born spiritually dead. This is why John 3:18 says that if we haven't believed in Jesus we are condemned already because were spiritually dead. Then there is a second level of condemnation due to personal sin.

But we are born a sinner, we are born spiritually dead, and so Jesus paid for all sin, and if we don't believe in Jesus so that that is applied to us—that cleansing and forgiveness is made real at the cross, which is when the certificate of debt was wiped away—it is not directly applied to us until we believe in Him and our personal spiritual death is resolved and we are born again and regenerate. All sins are paid for, even the sin of suicide, which we will look at in this chapter because Judas is one of two people who have suicided in the Bible. The other is a hit the fellow who was one of David's counselors who had betrayed David, and he is an Old Testament type of Judas and his betrayal of the Lord.

So there's no such thing as an unforgivable sin, there is only failure to accept God's free gift of salvation and forgiveness and remission of sin. Jesus died to pay the penalty for all sin and to provide forgiveness and cleansing for anyone in the human race who would believe on Him. God's grace is extended to all without exception and without distinction.

We have Matthew's contrast between Peter's sin and denial of Christ and his forgiveness, in contrast to Judas's between betrayal of Jesus and his not experiencing any forgiveness. We learn from the Scripture that from the very beginning it was understood that Jesus was born to bring remission of sin. Luke 1:77 is the voice of Zecharias, the father of John the Baptist, whose ministry would be to point out Jesus, and therefore part of his ministry was to give the knowledge of salvation to his people by the forgiveness of their sins. That would come through Jesus.

Luke says that repentance and remission of sins should be preached in His name to all nations, beginning at Jerusalem; again, the emphasis that the cross provides forgiveness of sin. Remission of sin is the translation; it means forgiveness. It's the same verb APHIEMI that we find in passages like John 3:16 and other places related to forgiveness. The God in the Old Testament is a God of forgiveness. Exodus 34:6, 7 "The Lord God is merciful and gracious, long-suffering, and abounding in goodness and truth. He keeps mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity and transgression and sin." This is the God whom we worship. In Micah 7:18, "Who is a God like you, pardoning iniquity and passing over the transgression of the remnant of his heritage. He does not retain his anger forever, but he delights in mercy." In the New Testament this is echoed by Peter in Acts 10:43 when he is witnessing to Cornelius, the Gentile and his household. “Of Him all the prophets bear witness that through His name everyone who believes in Him receives forgiveness of sins.” That is what we have in Christ; that is a focal point of the gospel. Ephesians 1:7 "in him we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sin". Also Colossians 1:17, "in whom we have redemption through his blood, the forgiveness of sin".

So we see this contrast that is going to take place here between Peter and Judas Iscariot. Peter denies the Lord and then he will seek forgiveness from the Lord. Judas betrays the Lord, but he doesn't seek forgiveness from the Lord. Peter is forgiven; Judas is not. Peter has guilt and remorse. When Jesus looks at him (Luke 22:61). After his third denial the Lord turned and looked at Peter. Then Peter remembered the word of the Lord, how He had said to him before the rooster crows, you will deny me three times. So Peter went out and wept bitterly.

Sin sometimes, depending on your personality, depending on other factors, may have a tremendous emotional response in your soul. It may produce sorrow, sadness and weeping, but that is not necessary to forgiveness. It is often there. There's nothing wrong with being sorrowful for sin, but you may not always feel sorry for sin, you may not always have remorse; it depends on the sin and the situation and the circumstances. Peter committed a sin he did not believe he would ever commit, and it was a personal affront to the Lord Jesus Christ, and when the Lord looked at him he knew what he had done and he went out and he wept bitterly. That is remorse. He doesn't use the word there, but that is what that demonstrates is remorse.

In contrast, we have Judas. Judas, His betrayer, seeing that He had been condemned, that is, that Jesus had been condemned, was remorseful and brought back the 30 pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders. Judas we see here is identified as the betrayer. Judas conducted this betrayal by delivering Jesus over for a price, the price of 30 pieces of silver, according to Matthew 26:15. Before he did that were also told that Satan entered into him in Luke 22:3, "Then Satan entered Judas, surnamed Iscariot, who was numbered among the twelve." Judas made the decision on his own to betray Jesus. He can't say the Devil made me do it. Although he is empowered by Satan the Devil is in the one who makes him do it. He is the one who makes that choice himself and he's sells out the Lord Jesus Christ for 30 pieces of silver.

In John 13:10, 11 Jesus identifies that are states that one of the twelve is not clean, that is, not saved, and that this is the one who would betray Him. And then again, a separate incident, separate timing than what we read about in Luke 22:3, and John 13:11, John says about Jesus, "For he knew who would betray him, therefore he said you were not all clean" and then after He announced who the betrayer would be, He identifies him by the dipping of the bread. We are told in John 13:27, after the piece of bread, Satan entered him, and then Jesus said what you do, do quickly. Then just probably an hour or two later in the evening Jesus prays to the Father on the way to Gethsemane, and in that prayer He identifies Judas as the son of perdition, another term for someone who is not a believer, someone who is lost.

This gives us a look into the soul of Judas. Here is someone who has been closer to the Lord Jesus Christ, then any except ten or eleven people—the other disciples. He has traveled with them; he has camped out with them; they have been in ministry together. He has seen Jesus in any and every kind of situation with that close intimacy, and yet he has never believed in anything that Jesus taught. He has not accepted Him as his Messiah. He has gone along with everything thinking that probably Jesus will fulfill these political hopes and dreams that were popularly assumed to be true of the Messiah. But in the end he rejected Jesus as Messiah and was willing to betray him for the price of a slave.

At this point it almost defies comprehension that this man who has persistently rejected God's grace and God's truth, turns on Jesus and betrays Him. On top of that, Satan indwells him. Now when that happens it's at the end. He has had three years where he has been negative and has rejected Jesus over and over and over again. As that happens, his soul becomes more and more hardened to truth until he is open to Satan. When that happens, Satan indwelt and there's only one other person we know in history who is indwelt by Satan, and that is the future Antichrist. And so the evil that takes place as Satan enters into Judas—and this is I think a function of Satan's angel of light motif as described in second Corinthians 11:14, that he appears as an angel of light, that he deceives people into thinking he's good—and Judas has fallen for that deception, opened himself up to the evil of Satan. We can't imagine the impact that that would have on a person's soul as they are then left when Satan leaves; what's left behind. Satan deserts Judas and Judas is left to face the reality of what he has done, and those consequences are what are described here.

He realizes after witnessing these trials what is happening. He may or may not have understood that they were going to railroad Jesus, and that they were going to frame Him. He may not have realized that they were going to kill Him; maybe he just thought they would flog Him; maybe he thought that they would punish Him in some other way. But now he is convinced that they are going to make sure that He is executed and the full reality of what he has done in terms of bringing this innocent man under the threat of capital punishment is before him and he is now remorseful.

That word translated remorseful is the Greek word METAMELOMAI, the dictionary form of that verb, and it means to be sorry, to feel sorrow, to regret something, and in some cases it almost means to change your mind, but the overtone of the whole word is that of emotion, not that of thought. It is contrasted in Scripture with the word METANOIA. The second syllable there, NOIA, second part of that word is from the Greek word which means thinking. So the prefix of that preposition META is an afterthought; it is to think about something later. But the emphasis is on the thought, whereas the emphasis in METAMELOMAI is on emotion. METAMELOMAI is often contrasted with repentance.

Now that brings up another problem, because what you find is some people who will go through a passage like this and say he had regret, but he didn't have true repentance. That's always a problem because you don't find the Scripture ever talking about genuine repentance, true repentance, or sincere repentance; any of those phrases that talks about repentance. Either you do or you don't, and repentance means to change your mind about something. In the Old Testament it has the idea of turning away from idols and turning to God. That's the idea. It is not an emotional term; it is a volitional term. It is a term that emphasizes your choice.

What we see with Judas is that now he is overwhelmed with the emotional consequences of his decision, and that is because he is pierced through with guilt.

Now let's talk about guilt just a little bit. We have to understand what we mean by guilt because this is a term that has some different nuances and some people are not always sure about what these differences are. First of all, we can talk about guilt in the sense of real guilt or objective guilt, like when you have violated the law you are guilty of breaking the law. You may be driving 35 in a 30 and you don't feel too badly about that. You may be on the highway and you're 10 miles an hour over the speed limit, and you don't feel badly about that at all. What you will feel badly about is when you get a $200 ticket. Then you have METAMELOMAI. But three days later we are doing the same thing again because we need to get somewhere in a hurry. That's just remorse that is not repentance.

Now there are some people who they get a $300 or $400 ticket and they may have METANOIA and they change what they're doing. They just quit speeding because and they start using their speed control little more efficiently. Real guilt or legal guilt is simply when we violate a rule or a law or a standard. Then we have guilt. And we may or may not feel guilty; we may or may not feel remorse or feel badly about it, depending on the circumstances. A lot of times people think that they need to feel guilty about a sin, but the reality is that there are some sins that we are comfortable with, and there some sins that we know it's a sin and we really work hard not to commit that sin. But when we do commit that sin we just can't get as worked up about it emotionally as we did may be the first time we committed that sin and really felt badly about it. We sort of shocked ourselves that we did that and realized that really is gossip. That's terrible. And then after you have gossiped 10,832 times, that 10,833rd time you just don't get all worked up an emotional about it like you did when you were young, and you realized that you could actually commit that sin of gossip.

That's the difference between true guilt, and then we have guilt feelings. Guilt feelings is when we know that we've done something terrible and we are overwhelmed with unpleasant feelings of regret and remorse. The intensity of that may vary according to the situation and the circumstances. Sometimes we have guilt feelings even when we haven't done anything. Some people have sensitive consciences in some areas and they just feel guilty because. Sometimes they grow up. You often hear about Catholic guilt or Jewish guilt from various when ethnic groups talk about the fact that if you grow up in an Italian family or Jewish family you just grow up being made to feel guilty about everything all the time, whether you really did anything or not, and so guilt becomes a primary motive in life, and that's just guilt feelings.

What we have here is a case where there is real guilt but there are also guilt feelings. There's only one thing to do with guilt feelings and that's to seek forgiveness, and that means, Scripture says, to confess sin or to believe in the gospel. And there's only one person who can forgive sin. Sin is not a crime. Some sins might be crimes, but sin per se is not a crime. Sin is a violation, not of secular law or civil law; sin is the violation of God's character. And so I really can't sin against you, and you can't sin against me. First and foremost we sin against God, and then there may be secondary effects in terms of our horizontal relationships.

But when David had committed adultery with Bathsheba that he conspired to cover it up and had her husband Uriah put in the front lines of combat so he would be killed and he sought to cover this up. He committed sins that impacted people in terms of horizontal relationship, and when he confessed his sin in Psalm 51 he said to God, "Against you and you alone, have I sinned". Because the definition of sin is to violate God's standard, to violate God's character, and therefore sin is only a violation against God. When we sin, we have to seek forgiveness only from God. Now if that sin affects other people then sometimes we need to go to those other people to make things right with those other people as well.

What happens here with Judas is what happens with many people who don't understand or don't want to go to God for forgiveness. Instead of going to Jesus for forgiveness as Peter did, what Judas does is go to the chief priests. He tries to solve the problem of his guilt feelings by giving back the money as if he can turn back what he has done. He is going to take those 30 pieces of silver and think that if he just gives that back that somehow that will make everything right. But that is not what happens. What happens is that he goes to them and takes the money to them and then they reject it.

In Matthew 27:4 he says, "I have sinned by betraying innocent blood". He is making an accurate confession. He understands exactly what he has done. He admits to what he has done. The problem is he is not admitting it to God; he's admitting it to the chief priests and Pharisees, and it doesn't matter what they think, and they don't care. He says, "I sinned by betraying innocent blood". And they say, "What is that to us? You see to it. You take care of your own situation".

What he does at that point is to try to get rid of this money, and there are so many people who try all kinds of different gimmicks and different things to try to absolve themselves of guilt or guilt feelings when the only thing you can do is, if you need to, trust Christ as your Savior; if you're already a Christian then you just confess sin. And then if you confess sin, 1 John 1:9 says, "If we confess our sins, God is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness". That means that if you to keep feeling guilty about that sin, you're just piling on. Now you're committing another sin that's related to that first, but this sin is that you're saying by your guilt feelings that God really didn't forgive me, I have to continue to feel guilty. If you believe God forgave you and cleanse you that sin then you don't go on feeling guilty. It's been handled, it's been taken to the throne of God and you have been forgiven. Now you need to move on and go forward in your spiritual life.

Judas doesn't understand any of that because he is not a believer, so the way he's going to handle it is in a sense stick it to the chief priests. You don't really get that reading it in the English. But it says, "Then he threw down the pieces of silver in the temple," and the way you might read that is that he has gone to them, and they say it doesn't mean anything to us, go handle it yourselves, and that he just gets mad and throws the money. But that is not what happens. It says in the Greek that he threw the pieces of silver into the temple, and uses the Greek word NAOS. There are two words used for temple in the Greek. There is the word HIEROS, which refers to the broad temple—all of the temple buildings, the precincts, the courtyards; all of that would be referred to by the HIEROS. But the word NAOS refers to the temple in the middle, the centerpiece, the holy place and the holy of holies. He goes specifically to throw this money into the NAOS to force the chief priests to sully and dirty their hands by having to go in there and pick up the blood money. He's forcing them to deal it. They said, "You see to it", and he said, "No, you're going to deal with it".

He throws the money into the temple, he leaves, and he goes out and he hangs himself. Now why does he hang himself? I think this is because of the guilt feelings that he has, because he knows enough of Scripture to understand that he has committed an egregious sin, and he is under such guilt that he is under the judgment and the cursing of God, and so he remembers in the Old Testament that if somebody is hung on a tree that person is said to be cursed, and his body is not to remain on the tree overnight. Deuteronomy 21:23, "his corpse shall not hang all night on the tree, but you shall surely bury him on the same day (for he who is hanged is accursed of God), so that you do not defile your land which the LORD your God gives you as an inheritance".

He goes out and he hangs himself. Now that leads to a realization of fulfilled prophecy. We are told in Matthew 27:6, ^NASB "The chief priests took the pieces of silver and said, “It is not lawful to put them into the temple treasury, since it is the price of blood. [7] And they conferred together and with the money bought the Potter’s Field as a burial place for strangers. [8] For this reason that field has been called the Field of Blood to this day.”

This is one of those apparent contradictions that we find in Scripture. It appears that there are two different stories about who bought the land. It says here that they consulted together and bought with them, that is, with the 35th pieces of silver, the potters field to bury strangers."

And now let me tell you little bit about this potters field. They called it the potters field because it was an area near the Valley of Hinnom that had this rich clay in the soil that was used in pottery. So this was a place where the potters set up their shop, and probably refers back to a passage in Jeremiah where it was talks about the Potter, and this area was the area where they would get their pottery. It came to be called the potters field, and when they purchased this it was used to bury strangers. That's a euphemism for Gentiles. If a Gentile comes into Jerusalem and dies will and there's no family, then they to bury him somewhere, and this is the place. And because it's associated with the price of blood it was called the field of blood. Here, the alleged contradiction is that the chief priests bought the field, but in acts 1:18 when Peter is talking, he says, "Now this man (referring to Judas) purchased a field with the wages of iniquity."

Isn't that a contradiction? Not if you understand what's going on. That money is his money, it was given to him by the chief priests. When he threw it into the temple, they're not accepting that money. That's not their money; that is still his money. They can't use it for anything that's related to the temple or anything related to the priesthood, so they have to figure out what they're going to do with this money, and so they're going to use his money to buy a burial place for him. So he purchases it in acts 1:18. It's his money so it's viewed as his purchase but they're the agents, as it were, and they're identified in Matthew 27. This is just an idiom where the person is who is involved is mentioned as the one who carries out the purchase.

There is a second alleged contradiction, and that is in Matthew 27:5. "And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself." In the acts account it says that he fell headlong and burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out. That's a fairly vivid picture, but if you're used to watching some of the shows on TV related to homicide, CSI and all those stories, it's not too graphic, not much of a surprise. So critics would come along and say the Bible's got two different accounts here. But they're not mutually contradictory, there are two rather satisfying explanations for this and I'm not sure which of them is true.

Remember this is the early in the morning of the day that they're going to sacrifice Jesus and the day they're going to sacrifice the lambs for Passover. So it's a holy day. Judas could have gone down to the area of the Valley Hinnom and could have hung himself and his body is not discovered. They can't do anything with it, even if they do discover it, until Shabbat is over. And if that bodies hanging there in the sun for more than 24 hours it is going to start to decompose, blood gases will build up and things like that. Then the branch breaks and he falls down and bursts open. That's one explanation that I think it's logical; it seems to fit.

The other explanation is that he hung himself with in the precincts of Jerusalem, and because it is a holy day anyone who dies or his bodies left in the precincts of Jerusalem, that would make the whole city unclean. You can't have that happen. So his body is discovered and they threw him over the wall and as a result of that, he burst open. Those are the two explanations that are offered, and since the Bible doesn't go into any more detail they both satisfy the data showing that both can be true. Judas hangs himself, and then what happens to his body after he dies, is what is explained in Acts 1:18.

Then we have another statement related to the fulfillment of prophecy. In Matthew 27:9 we are told, "Then that which was spoken through Jeremiah the prophet was fulfilled: “AND THEY TOOK THE THIRTY PIECES OF SILVER, THE PRICE OF THE ONE WHOSE PRICE HAD BEEN SET by the sons of Israel; [10] AND THEY GAVE THEM FOR THE POTTER’S FIELD, AS THE LORD DIRECTED ME.” That's a prophecy of Zechariah 11:12 that is fulfilled in Jesus, one of many prophesies fulfilled during this time frame.

I've read a number of different explanations, most of which say there's just a contradiction here and there is an error, either copyist error, something like that, because this quote actually comes from Zechariah 11:12 and Matthew writes it was spoken by Jeremiah the prophet. Now again, there are, I think, two acceptable satisfactory explanations. I'm more satisfied with the first one I will give you and not satisfied with the second.

The first one is that as the Old Testament was divided up into three sections: the Torah, the Prophets, and the Kehtubim, the Writings. At this particular time there is evidence that in the rabbinical collection that the first book in the Prophets was Jeremiah, and so Jeremiah was used as a designation for all of the books in the Prophets. Just as Moses is said to be as the writer of the Torah, sometimes it's "and Moses said", and it may be in Genesis and may be in one of the other books, Moses is the author there. That to me is the most logical explanation.

Another explanation I think this is a little more convoluted is that since Judas hung himself in the Valley Hinnom, in Gehenna, and Gehenna was cursed by Jeremiah and chapters 15, 18 and 19 because this is where the Israelites sacrifice the children to the false gods, and Jeremiah announces that they will be judged, the residents of Jerusalem will be judged because of this. And it is there in the Valley of Hinnom that they will be killed, and they will be buried. He is speaking of Gehenna, and this curse of Gehenna. So what is being alluded to here is this curse. I find that a little more convoluted but I think it is satisfactory for some people.

The point from this is that Judas's guilt is not resolved because he has denied his Savior. He has not gone to God for forgiveness. It's not that he has committed an unforgivable sin, but that he has not believed in Christ, which is the only way to have forgiveness of sin and to have our condemnation removed by the grace of God. That's the gospel. It is that we can have for our sins forgiven. We become born again simply by faith alone in Christ alone.

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