This is the outcome of the friendship of Jesus for Judas; this was the fruit of those years of affection, cherishing, patient teaching. Think what Judas might have been. He was chosen and called to be an apostle. There was no reason in the heart of Jesus why Judas might not have been true and worthy. Sin is not God's plan for any life. Treachery and infamy were not in God's purpose for Judas. Jesus would not have chosen him for one of the Twelve if it had not been possible for him to be a good and true man. Judas fell because he had never altogether surrendered himself to Christ. He tried to serve God and mammon; but both could not stay in his heart, and instead of driving out mammon, mammon drove out Christ.
This suggests to us what a battlefield the human heart sometimes is—a
Waterloo where destinies are settled. God or mammon—which? That is
the question every soul must answer. How goes the battle in your soul?
Who is winning on your field—Christ or money? Christ or pleasure?
Christ or sin? Christ or self? Judas lost the battle; the Devil won.
A picture in Brussels represents Judas wandering about the night after the betrayal. By chance he comes upon the workmen who have been preparing the cross for Jesus. A fire burning close by throws its weird light on the faces of the men who are now sleeping. The face of Judas is somewhat in the shade; but one sees on it remorse and agony, as the traitor's eyes fall upon the cross and the tools which have been used in making it,—the cross to which his treason had doomed his friend. But though suffering in the torments of a guilty conscience, he still tightly clutches his money-bag as he hurries on into the night. The picture tells the story of the fruit of Judas's sin,—the money-bag, with eighteen dollars and sixty cents in it, and even that soon to be cast away in the madness of despair.
Unrequited friendship! Yes; and in shutting out that blessed friendship, Judas shut out hope. Longfellow puts into his mouth the despairing words:—
"Lost, lost, forever lost! I have betrayed
The innocent blood …
* * *
Too late! too late! I shall not see him more
Among the living. That sweet, patient face
Will nevermore rebuke me, nor those lips
Repeat the words, 'One of you shall betray me.'"
The great lesson from all this is the peril of rejecting the friendship of Jesus Christ. In his friendship is the only way to salvation, the only way of obtaining eternal life. He calls men to come to him, to follow him, to be his friends; and thus alone can they come unto God, and be received into his family.
There is something appalling in the revealing which this truth teaches,—the power each soul possesses of shutting out all the love of God, of resisting the infinite blessing of the friendship of Christ. It is possible for us to be near to Christ through all our life, with his grace flowing about us like an ocean, and yet to have a heart that remains unblessed by divine love. We may make God's love in vain, wasted, as sunshine is wasted that falls upon desert sands, so far as we are concerned. The love that we do not requite with love, that does not get into our heart to warm, soften, and enrich it, and to mellow and bless our life, is love poured out in vain. It is made in vain by our unbelief. We may make even the dying of Jesus for us in vain,—a waste of precious life, so far as we are concerned. It is in vain for us that Jesus died if we do not let his love into our heart.
Ofttimes the unrequiting of human love makes the heart bitter. When holy friendship has been despised, rejected, and cast away, when one has loved, suffered, and sacrificed in vain, receiving only ingratitude and wrong in return for love's most sacred gifts freely lavished, the danger is that the heart may lose its sweetness, and grow cold, hard, and misanthropic. But not thus was the heart of Jesus affected by the unrequiting of his love and friendship. One Judas in the life of most men would have ended the whole career of generous kindness, drying up the fountains of affection, thus robbing those who would come after of the wealth of tenderness which ought to have been theirs. But through all the unrequiting and resisting of its love, the heart of Jesus still remained gentle as a mother's, rich in its power to love, and sweet in its spirit.
This is one of the great problems of true living,—how to keep the heart warm, gentle, compassionate, kind, full of affection's best and truest helpfulness, even amid life's hardest experiences. We cannot live and not at some time suffer wrong. We will meet injustice, however justly we ourselves may live. We will find a return of ingratitude many a time when we have done our best for others. Favors rendered are too easily forgotten by many people. There are few of us who do not remember helping others in time of great need and distress, only to lose their friendship in the end, perhaps, as a consequence of our serving them in their need. Sometimes the only return for costly kindness is cruel unkindness.
It is easy to allow such unrequiting, such ill treatment of love, to embitter the fountain of the heart's affection; but this would be to miss the true end of living, which is to get good and not evil to ourselves from every experience through which we pass. No ingratitude, injustice, or unworthiness in those to whom we try to do good, should ever be allowed to turn love's sweetness into bitterness in us. Like fresh-water springs beside the sea, over which the brackish tide flows, but which when the bitter waters have receded are found sweet as ever, so should our hearts remain amid all experiences of love's unrequiting, ever sweet, thoughtful, unselfish, and generous.