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Judas and Divine Grace
Judas and Divine Grace
Judas and Divine Grace
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Judas and Divine Grace

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The Bible seems to be more than adequately clear that Judas was a saved individual whose ministry was superlative in the cause of Christ Jesus the Lord. It is only tradition based upon doctrines that are becoming more and more suspect to more and more people that has clouded Judas' spiritual state and ministry. This book presents Judas as he stands out in the pages of Scripture. It explains the reason that Jesus called "a devil" early in His ministry and "the son of perdition" on the eve of His arrest and trial. He was not only chosen by Jesus as an apostle, he was sent out to preach a message that reflected the heart of Jesus' mission in His first advent. When Jesus spoke to the apostles, he was never left out or considered any differently than the other eleven. When Jesus evaluates them in His Sermon on the Mount, he receives the same commendations as well as the same commission as the other eleven. The Scriptures are so clear about Judas's spiritual state that Peter twice affirms Judas' belief in Jesus. And Matthew asserts that Judas fulfilled John's purpose statement in John 20:31: to believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God and to have eternal life upon that belief. The evidence for Judas' salvation is in fact overwhelming. Only errant theology has kept us from seeing it.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateOct 1, 2016
ISBN9781370640645
Judas and Divine Grace
Author

Dale Taliaferro

Dale Taliaferro has been teaching the Bible in churches, on university campuses, in business conference rooms, and in homes - both in the U.S. and overseas - since 1970. In addition he served as senior pastor in a Bible Church in Dallas for seven years. He is the founder of Equipped for Life Ministries, an organization dedicated to teaching Christians how to live in light of the resources they have in Jesus. He studied at Western Seminary in Portland, Oregon and at Dallas Theological Seminary in Dallas, Texas. He holds a doctorate of ministry as well as two master degrees in theology and ministry. He and his wife, Waunee, live in Dallas, Texas, and have two grown children who love the Lord.

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    Judas and Divine Grace - Dale Taliaferro

    FIRMLY PLANTED PUBLICATIONS

    An imprint of Equipped for Life Ministries, Dallas Texas

    JUDAS

    and Divine Grace

    B. Dale Taliaferro

    JUDAS and Divine Grace

    Published by Firmly Planted Publications

    An imprint of Equipped for Life Ministries

    Copyright © 2013 by B. Dale Taliaferro

    International Standard Book Number: 978-0-9764305-2-0

    Printed by:

    Morris Publishing®

    3212 East Highway 30

    Kearney, NE. 68847

    1-800-650-7888

    Distributed by Smashwords

    Ebook formatting by www.ebooklaunch.com

    Scripture quotations taken from the New American Standard Bible®, Copyright © 1960, 1962, 1963, 1968, 1971, 1972, 1975, 1977, 1995 by The Lockman Foundation (www.Lockman.org). Used by permission.

    ALL RIGHT RESERVED

    No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrival system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without prior written permission.

    For information:

    Equipped for Life Ministries

    P.O. Box 12013

    Dallas, Texas 75225

    U.S.A.

    www.e-l-m.org

    Library of Congress Number: 2013902322

    First Edition/First Printing/February 2013

    Second Edition/First Printing

    Acknowledgements

    With special thanks to Maritza Ortiz for formatting this manuscript. Without her, it may not have seen the light of day. To Carol Trebes goes my unending gratitude for her labors in editing the present manuscript. Her diligence and ability to catch mistakes and to smooth out ideas made a vast difference in the finished product. To my wife, Waunee, my son, Ryan, and my daughter, Shannon, all my love for their encouragement and support throughout the seemingly endless process involved in publishing each book. Thanks must also be extended to all my Bible Study Groups who have endured the task of being my sounding board for many of the ideas that I have developed over the last five to ten years. Without your objectivity and, at times, opposition, this work would not have been as complete as it has become. And finally I want to thank Dr. Radmacher for his encouragement throughout the project. Without his responsiveness to the direction that this thesis took, I might have abandoned the labor long ago. His erudition and scholarship, once he became convinced of the truthfulness of the results of this research, gave me the confidence to persevere in the work.

    Thank you all.

    Dedication

    I would like to dedicate this book to Dr. Earl Radmacher to whom I owe more than I could ever repay for the training, the mentorship, and the friendship he has provided. He has been my north star for my entire ministry. May this book on the grace of God continue his clear, constant, and consistent teaching on the subject.

    Contents

    Preface to the Second Edition

    Preface to the First Edition

    Introduction

    Chapter 1 - Jesus Chose Twelve, not Eleven

    Chapter 2 - Jesus Described Judas as Devilish

    Chapter 3 - Jesus Revealed His Opinion of the Twelve

    Chapter 4 - The Apostles weren’t the Sharpest Knives in the Drawer

    Chapter 5 - They were all Specifically Called to Preach

    Chapter 6 - A House Divided against Itself?

    Chapter 7 - The Apostles were Taught Kingdom Mysteries

    Chapter 8 - Who Had a Hardened Heart?

    Chapter 9 - Judas Fulfilled John’s Condition for Salvation

    Chapter 10 - The Apostles were Challenged to Follow Jesus

    Chapter 11 - The Apostles Assumed they all were Entering the Kingdom

    Chapter 12 - Jesus Promised the Apostles Reigns in His Kingdom

    Chapter 13 - Jesus Used Some to Create Desire in Others

    Chapter 14 - Judas, Satan, and the 30 Pieces of Silver

    Chapter 15 - Judas did not Address Jesus as Lord

    Chapter 16 - Judas Partook of the First Lord’s Supper

    Chapter 17 - Jesus Commended Judas for Standing by Him

    Chapter 18 - Judas and Jesus’ Foot Washing

    Chapter 19 - Was Judas Given to Jesus by the Father?

    Chapter 20 - Judas, the Son of Perdition

    Chapter 21 - Judas’ Betrayal and Suicide

    Epilogue

    Appendix A - Judas and the Issue of the Money

    Appendix B - Good Not to Have Been Born!

    Afterword

    Preface to the Second Edition

    This book has been revised in light of my recent discoveries relative to the Biblical usages and meanings of crucial, salvific terms. These include the words believer, unbeliever, justification, righteousness, salvation, redemption, eternal life, reconciliation, glorification, hell, heaven, and forgiveness. Disappointingly, I have had to conclude that none of these terms have been correctly defined by my own accepted Christian orthodoxy. Rather, their definitions have been constructed to fit and support a very specific view of the message of the Bible. In other words, an assumption was made about how the message of the Bible could be understood. Then words were defined, as consistently as possible with their known meanings from non-biblical contexts, and concepts were developed to support the preconceived idea attempting to summarize all the parts of the Bible into one big picture: a courtroom scene in which God was condemning to hell or justifying (and thereby granting heaven to) each person born into this world. But that forensic paradigm doesn’t actually describe what is happening in the Bible if one takes the time to restudy each term that is supposed to support this interpretative approach to the message of the Bible. For example:

    Salvation never describes a deliverance from hell.

    Justification is never a one time declaration of a permanent status or standing before God.

    A believer is not someone who is automatically going to heaven because of a belief in Jesus.

    An unbeliever is not someone who is automatically going to hell for eternity because he has not believed in Jesus.

    Forgiveness is not obtained by believing in Jesus.

    Eternal life is about man’s earthly existence rather than his afterlife; and so on.

    I had assumed that what I had been taught relative to those terms was true. But as I investigated them one by one, I discovered that there was more conjecture and assumption involved in their theologically accepted meanings than there was Biblical usage and proof. As a result I have written four books of a five book series attempting to explain the message of the Bible as simply and clearly as possible. The fifth book will be coming out shortly, I hope.

    Having said all that, none of these new discoveries diminish the arguments for Judas being a believer, who was a saved man and one who most assuredly possessed eternal life. But none of those terms mean what we were taught that they mean by our Christian orthodoxy. As it turns out, our orthodox traditions are not as helpful as we might have hoped.

    But Judas not only believed in Jesus, he was promised a throne of rulership in the coming Messianic Kingdom and, having that, is assured to be with Jesus even now as he waits for his new role to begin. When all the salvific terms are correctly interpreted, the arguments for Judas’ salvation are stronger than ever.

    Preface to the First Edition

    I accompanied Dr. Charles Bing on a trip to India in January of 2008 for the purpose of training pastors. He taught through the Book of Romans, emphasizing God’s grace, and I taught through the Book of John, emphasizing faith. As I was working my way through John’s narrative, a gospel that I had taught many times before, I began to come across the well-known, classic passages describing the apostle Judas. Since I had been informed that the untrained pastors would readily believe almost everything that an American might teach them, I began to be concerned about teaching a concept or doctrine that, while fitting into the mainline orthodoxy of America, may still be incorrect. So I played the devil’s advocate with myself on every passage, making sure that I could defend what I was about to teach from the text of Scripture alone. And my problems with Judas began.

    After awhile, I began to believe that I had accepted a position on Judas that I really couldn’t defend Biblically. I wasn’t forced by the text of Scripture to the conclusion that I had accepted. Equally valid interpretations began to present themselves. The more I wrestled with the problem the more I was taken in a very different, yes, even opposite, direction than what I had been taught. Keep in mind that I really don’t care whether Judas had believed in Jesus (excepting, of course, that I don’t want anyone, Judas included, to miss the privileges of walking with God now by the resources Jesus came to give for that purpose). My issue is that I didn’t want to knowingly teach anything that I couldn’t defend from the Scriptures, especially to those who are at a disadvantage, lacking the training that would have made them aware of the alternatives to what I was teaching. I didn’t want to pass on error. If what I’ve been taught is true, the Scriptures would verify it without the necessity of retreating to church creeds or some recently discovered manuscript (or secular Greek usage of a term) that is now, supposedly, able to change everything.

    In seminary I took a class called Hermeneutics, the science and art of interpretation. To this day the key verse for that class still haunts me. James 3:1 says,

    Let not many [of you] become teachers, my brethren, knowing that as such we shall incur a stricter judgment.

    Judging by the kind of material that is being published today, I have to conclude that many Christians either don’t believe that verse, or they don’t take it seriously if they do believe it. I have always tried to be careful about what I teach, but, knowing that the pastors in India were untrained, I wanted to take my care to another level. (Remember that thought at the end of our study!)

    While I was in India in 2008, I basically ignored the passages that described Judas. After all, I thought, I’m supposed to be focusing on faith. Why don’t I do that and sidestep the problem passages on Judas? While I could do that on my first trip to India, I could not do that on my second trip since I was going for the purpose of teaching the Gospel of John in its entirety.

    Since Judas’ spiritual state is such a controversial topic, I’ve found few American friends who could even entertain the idea that Judas might have been saved by believing in Jesus and he might have possessed eternal life as a result of his faith in Jesus. Most quickly throw those classic verses back at me that describe Judas as a devil and the son of perdition as though there were only one way to understand those terms. Having this response from friends that know me well, I considered the possibility that my India students might be even more unable to discuss the matter with an even hand.

    My goal was not to convince my students that Judas was saved and, indeed, possessed eternal life; my goal was primarily to teach on grace and faith from the Gospel of John. As I let the students make up their own minds, one student asked me, Why does it even matter whether Judas was a believer or not? Finally, I thought, they are looking for the foundational truths undergirding their perspective on the people and events in the Scripture. I smiled and replied, Whether Judas is a believer or not, he makes a wonderful template for understanding grace. If salvation is truly free, being by grace, and, according to the Scriptures, it is,[1] and if that salvation is incapable of obligating the now-saved believer to a life-time of good works, and, according to the Scriptures, it is,[2] then the theological attempts that transform grace into a guarantor of good works can finally be seen as man’s misunderstanding and manipulation of a Biblical doctrine. We have fallen once again into the trap of teaching as doctrines the precepts of men.[3]

    I have the same goal for this book: whether you, the reader, find the discussion on Judas’ spiritual state convincing or not, could you see a believer acting just like he did, or maybe even worse, and still be a genuine believer? Salvation, being a free gift of God’s grace, can be abused. And if we believers would get down off our high horses, we would each admit that we abuse it every single day without exception! Every sin we commit is an abuse of grace.

    While I will present arguments that Judas was saved, this book is really about testing the readers’ understanding of grace. If you understand the Biblical concept of grace (not necessarily the theological concept that has been suggested to us in various systematic theologies), you will have to conclude, regardless of how poorly the evidence may be presented here, that Judas COULD have been saved. Because God’s salvation is free — an undeserved, absolutely unconditional gift from God — and because the grace, that provides it can not, by its very nature, obligate the believer to live obediently, the possession of eternal life is completely unrelated to a person’s perseverance per se. To say otherwise is to reject the Biblical concept of grace. Believers ought to live obediently, and they will be held accountable for living obediently, but those are separate matters, having no affect on or necessary connection to God’s free gift of salvation.

    Introduction

    There are so many wonderful experiences enjoyed by a person privileged to work in Christian ministry. He sees people trust Jesus for eternal life; he watches people grow in their faith as he disciples them; he gets to marry a man and a woman in love with the Lord; he dedicates children whose parents are committed to raising them in the nurture and admonition of the Lord. That doesn’t include his own walk with the Lord, the answers to prayer, the sweet fellowship with both the Lord and other believers, and his Bible study that seems to be, for the most part, a dialogue with the Lord Himself.

    But with the joys of ministry also come the difficulties. I remember the first Bible study I had in the business community after leaving the college campus. After the first meeting of the Bible study one of the attendees wanted to talk to me afterwards. When she explained her problem, my heart began pounding in my throat. She revealed that she had thoughts of suicide! I sat and listened as she described her painful life and its hopelessness. She said she had been seeing a psychologist and had another appointment later that week. I told her I’d be interested to know how her appointment went. Before she left, we prayed.

    Have you ever known someone who had suicidal inclinations? Maybe not. But I’m sure that you have had either friends or family or church acquaintances who stopped walking with Jesus to their own detriment and to the dishonor of Christ. It is easy to condemn them; it is much harder to understand and empathize with them.

    Tell me what you think about my friend. He grew up in a religious home; everything in his life, it seemed, was explained and determined by his faith. Later in his life his religious beliefs became very personal and very strong because of a young, knowledgeable, and thoroughly bright teacher that not only grabbed his attention, but changed his life. He never missed one of this man’s seminars. He had not heard anything quite like him before. His command of the Scriptures set his heart ablaze with passion as it brought into perspective the God of his childhood faith.

    My friend was ecstatic when he was asked to join this man’s ministry board. Being a part of his inner circle was not only a financial responsibility, it was an opportunity to be trained for greater personal ministry as well. My friend became a pillar in the young teacher’s ministry. He faithfully followed him; he developed an outstanding ministry himself as he obeyed the instructions of his leader; he was even commended for his perseverance and the support he gave his leader whenever trials arose against his mentor. While he was not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, having some personal traits that were rough to say the least, his teacher would compare him to the prophets of God and the righteous men of the Old Testament. He was considered good soil by his mentor who knew him so well.

    Through this young teacher’s extraordinary work, his ministry and his board became known throughout his homeland, creating excitement in some and envy in others. Because of the competition of other religious leaders in other ministries, the board experienced difficulties in their personal lives and in their ministries. Some of these trials were quite severe. But they were steadfast in their loyalty to this young teacher.

    As some of these hardships arose, my friend began developing personal plans that none of the rest of the board knew about. The implementation of these plans led him to fall away from the intimacy he had experienced with the president and founder of the ministry, the young teacher. He ceased pursuing his leader’s goals and began to pursue his own instead. The worst of his decisions was not the fact that he chose to embezzle money from the ministry. Far worse was the fact that he provided the government an opportunity, one that it was already looking for, to remove this young teacher from his ministry altogether.

    The implementation of his new goals brought pain to himself, grief and heartache to his teacher, and bewilderment to the rest of the board, not to mention complete ridicule and rejection by almost all of the others involved in the young teacher’s ministry. When he realized the trouble that he had caused, troubles that he had not foreseen, he couldn’t bear the burden of the guilt and shame; he took his own life. This was a tragedy for all who knew him, and for the ministry that he had become such a part of and had represented so well for all the years that he was on the board.

    As I recall all of these things, my mind is flooded with all kinds of thoughts and questions; my emotions are set on a roller coaster ride, running wildly. If you are like me, you are asking yourself, How could this happen? Our bewilderment grows until we begin to question all the good that seemed to be present in my friend’s life and that had appeared to have been accomplished by his ministry.

    How could someone who had really been walking with Jesus and serving Him come to such an end? Maybe all the good that we thought we had observed really wasn’t good at all; maybe it was a façade or charade, masking the real person, someone who had all of the appearance of goodness, but none of its reality. And we encounter many who encourage us to follow this kind of reasoning.

    Apostasy, especially an apostasy that leads to suicide, is a very difficult situation to understand. And the answers that are typically given don’t satisfy most of us. The answers given may bring peace to us but not peace about the one who concerns us so. The typical answers are either that my friend was never really saved to begin with, or that he was saved, but he lost his salvation when he walked away from his faith and committed suicide.

    My first reaction to both of these explanations is the same: I think, You obviously don’t know my friend very well! His salvation was real; I would no more doubt his salvation than I would doubt the saved state of the Christian teacher giving me his shallow answer to my friend’s overwhelming dilemma. His faith was genuine; I was there when God answered his prayers and did amazing things through him. His service was effective; it glorified God; many personally witnessed the fruit of his walk with God.

    And, when it comes to eternal life, because of what it is essentially, namely, the life of the Lord Jesus within us, the Bible is pretty clear. Once Jesus gives that to you, you can’t lose it because it is a gift of grace. But its possession does not guarantee its use.

    I’m not the only one who is concerned over friends and family who fit the scenario that I have just given. You probably have those that you are concerned about that fit the same description and patterns as my friend. Wouldn’t it be wonderful to obtain a really solid, Biblical answer to these situations? One that really puts your heart at peace?

    The answer, that I am going to set before you, began to come to me on my first mission trip

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