“Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me.” John 13:21
John 13 this AM. That Christ’s way of loving was wholly different from ours is on display in 100s of ways in Scripture but 1 is surely this: Nothing about how he’d treated Judas tipped off the 11 that he was the betrayer.
John 13 this AM. That Christ’s way of loving was wholly different from ours is on display in 100s of ways in Scripture but 1 is surely this: Nothing about how he’d treated Judas tipped off the 11 that he was the betrayer.
Jesus washed the feet of Judas just as he’d washed those of the others. John is clear Judas came to that table knowing exactly what he was going to do. Imagine your dripping feet being in Jesus’ lap, him wiping them with a towel, & you both know where those feet are about to go.
Makes you wonder if Judas’s eyes met Christ’s or not as he washed his feet. Betrayal is its own distinct crime of the heart. To be sure, other arrows pierce as deeply but the arrow of betrayal has a poisonous sting all its own. We can hardly be betrayed by one we’ve never let in.
It’s the vulnerability that makes betrayal so singular. The heart was wide open to the hit. I don’t know that any sin against us invites bitterness longer than betrayal. How long has it been? Please don’t answer that here but my guess is too long to let it keep hardening you.
Just as Jesus knows the intricacies of every other kind of pain, he knows all there is to know about betrayal. He felt the arrow & endured the repercussions all the way to the cross. The sovereign plan & foreknowledge of Christ did not suspend the pain. Fellowship with him in it.
Find him there. Your way back to some wholeness is to make yourself wholly vulnerable to the one incapable of ever betraying you. Let this be the season of your healing from betrayal. Get your heart back again. Loves requires vulnerability. We have to risk the hurt to heal.
