Is This The Reason Judas Betrayed Jesus?
This is where we left off:
Jesus has had to flee Jerusalem because the Jewish authorities are seeking to kill Him. However, hearing that His friend Lazarus is deathly sick, Jesus makes the decision to return to Bethany (a small village situated on the Mount of Olives, just outside the city limits of Jerusalem) to save him. This decision to come back to danger to save His friend will end up costing Jesus His own life. This is where things stand as we begin part four.
In this final volume, we will cover the week of Jesus’s life that leads up to His crucifixion, and then we will read the delightful and moving accounts of His resurrection appearances. We will conclude with what, I believe, might be the sweetest and most perfect chapter in all the Bible: John’s epilogue, chapter 21.
John’s Gospel has covered three years of Jesus’s ministry, but about half of the Gospel is concerned with just one week of Jesus’s life. So, we will see the narrative slow way down and give more space to the teachings of Jesus about the reality of life and death and love. The insights that John provides in this section are breathtaking and deep, particularly as we read what Jesus has to say about the Trinity itself, and the life that the Father, Son, and Spirit share.
So, as we conclude our six-month study through the Gospel of John, I’ll say it one final time:
If you read the Gospel of John with an open mind and an unhurried spirit, it will change your life and bring you joy. Amen.
P.S. Asbury is a Bible-reading church. To that end, I’ve divided up John’s Gospel into manageable readings for each weekday and written brief commentary to help us get the most out of our reading.
John 12:1-8
12 Six days before the Passover, Jesus therefore came to Bethany, where Lazarus was, whom Jesus had raised from the dead. 2 So they gave a dinner for him there. Martha served, and Lazarus was one of those reclining with him at table. 3 Mary therefore took a pound of expensive ointment made from pure nard, and anointed the feet of Jesus and wiped his feet with her hair. The house was filled with the fragrance of the perfume. 4 But Judas Iscariot, one of his disciples (he who was about to betray him), said, 5 “Why was this ointment not sold for three hundred denarii and given to the poor?” 6 He said this, not because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and having charge of the moneybag he used to help himself to what was put into it. 7 Jesus said, “Leave her alone, so that she may keep it for the day of my burial. 8 For the poor you always have with you, but you do not always have me.”
It is one week until the crucifixion, and everything we read from John 12:1 through 20:25 will take place in the next eight days.
Jesus has had to flee Jerusalem because the Jewish authorities are seeking to kill Him. However, hearing that His friend Lazarus is deathly sick, Jesus made the decision to return to Bethany (a small village situated on the Mount of Olives, just outside the city limits of Jerusalem) to save Him. This decision to come back to danger to save His friend will end up costing Jesus His own life.
The reference to Passover marks the third Passover that John has specifically mentioned (see 2:13 and 6:4), and this detail is why we traditionally think of Jesus as having a three-year ministry.
While Jesus is dining in Bethany with Mary, Martha, and their brother Lazarus, Mary does something recklessly extravagant: she anoints the feet of Jesus with very expensive perfume. This is the first of two anointings of the body of Jesus for burial. (The second anointing is when Joseph of Arimathea and Nicodemus anoint the body of Jesus again when they place it in the tomb on Saturday evening—see 19:38–42.)
Judas objects to what he claims is the poor stewardship in using expensive perfume in this way, but John tells us that the true reason for Judas’s objection is because Judas liked skimming money out of the group’s funds.
Jesus approvingly praises Mary’s action: there will always be time to help the poor, but Jesus’s bodily presence with His disciples will not last forever.
QUESTION OF THE DAY
There can be a utilitarian temptation for the church to focus on the concerns and needs of this world at the expense of honoring God. (There can be a temptation in the other direction, too, whereby the church only seeks to honor God and neglects the poor.) I think, though, that when the church spends money on making something beautiful that will honor God in future generations, that that is the right approach. Can you imagine how sad the world would be without the magnificent cathedrals of Europe, or the breathtaking works of art created for the glory of God?
How can you extravagantly honor Jesus today?
P.S. I wonder if this act by Mary and Jesus’s approval of it is what finally set Judas off on his decision to betray Jesus.