All for His Glory

I’m sorry in advance for whatever complaint you may have about the length of my response sir. This is the best I can do if I am going to give your objection the careful, satisfying response it deserves. I believe it will be worth your time, and the time of everyone else who reads it. John 17:12 is not an elephant I need to avoid and doesn't trouble my argument in whatsoever way. Judas indeed fulfilled Scripture. What I don't agree with is everything you have placed between those words and the conclusion you want them to prove: that God therefore had to irresistibly determine Judas to unbelief, secure his betrayal, prevent his repentance, and ensure his final destruction because otherwise Calvary could not happen. John 17:12 says none of that. Jesus Himself gives us a remarkably precise statement about what was determined: “And truly the Son of man goeth, as it was determined: but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed” (Luke 22:22). Before laughing at my warning not to smuggle determinism into the word “determined,” maybe we should allow Jesus to finish His sentence. What does He explicitly say was determined? “The Son of man goeth.” Christ’s going to suffering and death is what the sentence places under God’s settled determination. Jesus does not say, “Judas goes to perdition, as it was determined.” He says that the Son of Man goes as determined, “but woe unto that man by whom he is betrayed.” That distinction is not insignificant. Calvary belonged to God’s determinate redemptive purpose. Judas committed one of the wicked acts through which that purpose came to pass and bore responsibility for what he did. But Judas’s final destruction should not simply be folded into the determination of Calvary as though God needed not only a betrayal, but a permanently unbelieving and finally damned Judas, in order to save the world. His hanging did not put Christ on the cross. His remaining in unbelief did not atone for sin. His perdition purchased nobody’s redemption. Christ’s death did. And this is precisely why John 17:12 has to be read in the light of what John has already told us about Judas. Long before Gethsemane, John tells us that “Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him” (John 6:64). That is important because John does not first introduce Judas’s spiritual problem as predestination to perdition. He introduces him in a discussion of unbelief. When many disciples leave, Jesus asks the Twelve whether they will also go away. Peter answers, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life. And we believe and are sure that thou art that Christ, the Son of the living God” (John 6:68–69). Jesus then immediately speaks about Judas. That contrast becomes even more important when Peter and Judas later fail Christ. Satan wanted Peter too. Jesus tells him, “Satan hath desired to have you, that he may sift you as wheat: But I have prayed for thee, that thy faith fail not” (Luke 22:31–32). And please notice what Christ says He is preserving: Peter’s faith. He did not preserve Peter from committing the predicted sin. Peter denied Him three times exactly as Christ said he would. The infallibility of Christ’s prediction did not make Christ the cause of Peter’s denial. Peter committed it, Peter bore the guilt of it, Peter wept bitterly over it, and yet his faith did not finally fail. Christ had prayed for precisely that, and Peter turned again and was restored. Judas’s history is different. John has already told us about his unbelief. Then we learn that he was stealing from the common purse (John 12:6). The devil put the betrayal into his heart (John 13:2), and finally Satan entered him (John 13:27). Judas’s betrayal did not suddenly appear out of nowhere. It came at the end of a dreadful moral and spiritual progression. James describes that progression in ordinary human sin: “God cannot be tempted with evil, neither tempteth he any man,” but a man is drawn away by his own lust and enticed; lust conceives and brings forth sin, and sin, “when it is finished, bringeth forth death” (James 1:13–15). That is a remarkably fitting biblical framework for what we actually watch happening to Judas. Unbelief, greed, theft, satanic enticement, betrayal and finally death. Scripture never needs to insert “God irresistibly produced the wicked desire” into that sequence. So when Jesus calls Judas “the son of perdition,” we should not reverse the biblical order. John 17 tells us where Judas ended. It does not tell us that God first decreed Judas to damnation and therefore caused the unbelief, greed and treachery necessary to get him there. Nor does “none of them is lost, but the son of perdition” mean Christ was preserving Judas in saving faith and then deliberately stopped preserving him so prophecy could work. John has already prevented that reading. The people Jesus describes in John 17 have “received” His words and “have believed that thou didst send me” (John 17:8). Judas, by contrast, has already been identified in John 6 in connection with those who “believed not.” Judas’s tragedy is therefore not that Christ lost a believing man whom He was unsuccessfully trying to preserve. His tragedy is that a man could possess extraordinary privilege, walk beside Christ, hear His words, share apostolic ministry and yet remain in unbelief. This also explains why Judas’s apostleship was not the irrelevant diversion you dismissed it as. Acts 1 itself places fulfilled Scripture and Judas’s genuine apostleship side by side. Peter says, “this scripture must needs have been fulfilled… concerning Judas” (Acts 1:16), and immediately adds, “For he was numbered with us, and had obtained part of this ministry” (vs 17). Later Matthias is chosen to take “this ministry and apostleship, from which Judas by transgression fell” (vs 25). So yes, Scripture was fulfilled. But the same inspired account says Judas genuinely possessed a share in the ministry and fell from it “by transgression.” I did not bring up his apostleship to evade the betrayal. I brought it up because Acts itself refuses to reduce Judas to a disposable actor planted among the Twelve merely so God could have someone available to betray Jesus. Even Acts 1:20 does not establish that. Peter cites, “Let his habitation be desolate” and “his bishoprick let another take,” drawing from Psalms 69 and 109. Go back and read those Psalms in context. They are judgment texts concerning wicked enemies. Psalm 109 describes a wicked adversary and calls for judgment upon him, including another taking his office. Peter sees Judas’s wickedness, death and vacated office as fulfilling that scriptural pattern. That establishes judgment upon Judas. It does not establish that God caused the wickedness for which Judas was judged. There is a considerable difference between God foretelling the judgment of a wicked man and God irresistibly making the man wicked so that He can judge him for being wicked. The latter proposition needs to be demonstrated; it cannot simply be smuggled into the former. And this brings us to what actually destroyed Judas. After the betrayal, Judas recognized the horror of what he had done. “I have sinned in that I have betrayed the innocent blood” (Matt. 27:4). Matthew describes remorse; he does not describe Judas returning to Christ in saving faith. Judas carried his guilt back to the priests, threw down the money and eventually took his own life. Nothing in that account says Judas came to Christ seeking mercy and Christ rejected him because prophecy required his damnation. He never came. That is what makes the contrast with Peter so painful. Peter also committed a terrible sin against Christ after being warned beforehand. Peter also broke beneath the knowledge of what he had done. But Peter had faith in Christ, and Christ had specifically prayed that this faith would not finally fail. Peter lived to meet the risen Lord and was restored. I do not need to pretend denial and betrayal are identical offenses. The relevant question is whether betrayal of Christ is ever identified as an unpardonable sin. It is not. And Calvary itself makes the suggestion extraordinarily difficult to sustain. While men are participating in His crucifixion, Jesus prays, “Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do” (Luke 23:34). Judas is obviously not the immediate referent of that prayer; he was already dead. The point is what the prayer reveals about Christ's loving nature toward wicked people involved in His death. Acts makes the point even more forcefully. Peter later tells people in Jerusalem, “Ye denied the Holy One and the Just” and “killed the Prince of life” (Acts 3:14–15). These are people Peter implicates in the rejection and death of Christ. Yet he tells these very people, “Repent ye therefore, and be converted, that your sins may be blotted out” (vs 19). That matters a lot because Acts has already told us that Jesus was “delivered by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God” (Acts 2:23), while simultaneously calling what His killers did the work of “wicked hands.” Here are human beings whose wicked actions participated in the very event God had determined, and yet after that event they can be told to repent so that those sins may be blotted out. That alone destroys the assumption that because someone’s wickedness became involved in accomplishing God’s predetermined Calvary, that person therefore had to remain unbelieving and perish for God’s plan to remain intact. God determined the death of Christ. He did not therefore need the eternal destruction of every wicked person through whom that death came about. So why should Judas be treated differently unless Scripture tells us to treat him differently? His betrayal was terrible, but it was not greater than the blood Christ shed. Had Judas carried his confession, “I have sinned,” to Christ in faith rather than carrying his despair to a rope, where does Jesus say He would have refused him? I know what Jesus says in the very chapter where Judas’s unbelief and coming betrayal are brought into view: “Him that cometh to me I will in no wise cast out” (John 6:37). There is no footnote saying, “except Judas.” This also exposes the problem with turning the original counterfactual, “if Judas had repented, God could have used someone else,” into open theism or into some caricature where God is desperately searching the world for another scapegoat to rescue His failing crucifixion plan. God did not need to manufacture a wicked man to get His Son crucified. The world into which Christ came was already fallen. Jesus was surrounded by unbelief, hostility, corrupt religious leadership, political cowardice and satanic opposition. The Gospels are hardly the story of God struggling to locate one sinner wicked enough to oppose His Son. Nor does God’s sovereign ability to accomplish His purpose through human wickedness mean He has to create that wickedness. Joseph gives us one of Scripture’s clearest examples. His brothers acted wickedly against him. Years later Joseph says, “But as for you, ye thought evil against me; but God meant it unto good” (Gen. 50:20). Notice how carefully Scripture preserves both agencies. The brothers’ intention was evil. God’s intention through the same history was good. Joseph does not need to say God irresistibly caused their hatred in order to affirm that God sovereignly worked through what they did to save many lives. And something else happened that is very relevant here: the brothers did not have to remain the same wicked men forever for God’s purpose through their earlier wickedness to stand. They eventually recognized their guilt. “We are verily guilty concerning our brother” (Gen. 42:21). Judah, who had once proposed selling Joseph, later offers himself in Benjamin’s place (Gen. 44:33). The evil had already occurred. God had already woven it into His saving purpose. Their later recognition of their sin did not undo what God had accomplished through it. That is exactly why the assumption behind the Judas argument is unnecessary. Once Judas betrayed Christ, his subsequent repentance would not somehow travel backward through time and erase the betrayal. The wicked act had occurred. Scripture had been fulfilled in the betrayal. Christ had been handed over. Why then must Judas remain unbelieving and perish afterward for that fulfillment to remain fulfilled? He need not. The idea that Judas’s repentance after the betrayal would somehow make the prophecy false confuses the foretold act with the final spiritual destiny of the actor. And even before the betrayal, saying that God is sovereign enough to accomplish His redemptive purpose without having to irresistibly manufacture one particular man’s wickedness does not make God's plan fragile. It says the opposite. The God who could take Joseph’s brothers’ freely intended evil and mean it for good, who could use Pharaoh, Assyria, Babylon, Cyrus, pagan rulers and sinful Israel within His purposes, was hardly dependent upon creating unbelief in Judas because otherwise redemption might collapse. God’s sovereignty is not the desperate micromanagement of evil necessary to prevent history escaping His control. It is His perfect ability to accomplish what He purposes even through creatures whose intentions are contrary to His own goodness. And that is precisely where I part ways with your conclusion. I am not willing to take the words “that the Scripture might be fulfilled” and make them say what John himself never says: that God had to cause Judas’s unbelief, make his repentance impossible, and ensure his final destruction in order to get His Son to Calvary. Scripture certainly says Judas fulfilled prophecy; what it does not say is that God had to make Judas an unbeliever and keep him one until death for that prophecy to be fulfilled. That is the very determinism being brought to the verse that I objected to in the first place. Have a wonderful and blessed weekend sir.

I must say, sir, none of this really surprises me. I have followed you long enough, read your interactions with other believers, and watched some of your debates. I have seen how quickly things can become ungracious when someone persistently challenges your theological framework, and I have seen people blocked for doing so. I had actually wondered when my own turn would come. Apparently, here we are. But I owe you no confession, denomination, church membership, academic biography, or theological résumé before the biblical arguments I have presented can be examined. You may establish whatever requirements you wish for engagement on your X page, but Scripture remains perfectly capable of judging my arguments without first knowing which denominational box to put me in. If my exegesis is wrong, demonstrate it from Scripture. And since you asked again about your books, there is no mystery as to why I have not requested them. I appreciate the offer, but I simply do not need to read your books in order to discuss Scripture with you. Your books may contain valuable scholarship, but they are not inspired, and neither are mine or anyone else's. The Bible is the common authority before us. Jesus and the apostles reasoned from Scripture, and I am perfectly content for our arguments here to rise or fall by Scripture. I certainly do not need to adopt the framework of your books before I am permitted to challenge that framework from the Bible. As for your other questions, I am not answering them in this exchange. Not because I cannot, but because the increasingly personal direction of these conversations has become more concerning to me than producing yet another multi-page response for you to dissect. You are a Christian scholar whom many people respect and learn from, and that carries a greater responsibility to model patience and charity toward believers who disagree with you. Biblical knowledge and debating ability do not excuse an ungracious spirit. Christ said, “By this shall all men know that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another.” The character of Christ should remain visible even when our theology is being challenged. You are free to answer me, ignore me, or block me. Thankfully, you are not Christ, and you are not the keeper of my salvation, my Bible, my understanding of Scripture, or my right to write on my own X page. I would simply hope that defending a theological framework never becomes so important that the grace of the Christ being defended disappears in the process. And if all this is simply your way of working toward the block button, then I bid you goodbye and Godspeed, sir. It was genuinely nice interacting with you while it lasted. No hard feelings whatsoever, only love from my end. May Christ be glorified in us both.