Reading… and Thinking

When Judas, who had betrayed him, saw that Jesus was condemned, he was seized with remorse and returned the thirty silver coins to the chief priests and the elders. “I have sinned,” he said, “for I have betrayed innocent blood.”

“What is that to us?” they replied. “That's your responsibility.”

So Judas threw the money into the temple and left. Then he went away and hanged himself. The chief priests picked up the coins and said, “It is against the law to put this into the treasury, since it is blood money.” So they decided to use the money to buy the potter's field as a burial place for foreigners.

– Matthew 27:3-7 (NIV)

Judas recognized that he had sinned. That is intuitively clear, but he had specifically violated the law: “You shall not pervert the justice due to your poor in his suit. Keep far from a false charge, and do not slay the innocent and righteous, for I will not acquit the wicked. And you shall take no bribe, for a bribe blinds the officials, and subverts the cause of those who are in the right.” (Exodus 23:6-8, RSV)

Judas realized he had contributed to the perversion of justice. He had been very cozy with the false charges against Jesus, his action had resulted in the slaying of the innocent and righteous, and although he wasn't an official, he had taken a bribe to subvert the cause of the one in the right.

He was among the wicked that God would not acquit. He came under a specific curse of the law: “Cursed be he who takes a bribe to slay an innocent person.” (Deuteronomy 27:25, RSV) In remorse, he tried to undo what he had done. Too late!

But let’s focus for a minute on the priests and elders. What should their reaction have been, to someone trying to make right a terrible wrong? There were specified things that should be done, including restitution and sacrifices. But they said, “What is that to us?” They cared nothing for making things right.

And yet, they were very punctilious to keep another law: “You must not bring the earnings of a female prostitute or of a male prostitute into the house of the LORD your God.” (Deuteronomy 23:18, NIV) The rabbinical interpretation of this law was that no money that had any taint of uncleanness could be put into the treasury. And so they testified against themselves – since they were the ones who had bought the blood of the innocent with that very money!

They strained out the gnat, and swallowed the camel. The legalistic mind will always do so. When all the attention is on minutiae, you don't have to pay attention to what Jesus called the “weightier matters of the law: justice, and mercy, and truth.” (Matthew 23:23-24) These men wouldn't enter the court of Pilate the next morning, because that would have made them unclean to eat the Passover. Did not condemning to death an innocent man make them unclean?

Certainly, but they reasoned that Jesus disagreed with them on the minutiae, therefore he must be guilty and they were clean.

Had they for one second stepped back to look at what they were doing, they would have seen. But for them there was nothing outside of the legal intricacies – that's all religion was to them. Two of them, however, saw more clearly. Joseph and Nicodemas made themselves unclean by handling Jesus' body. They unquestionably lost their seats on the council for honoring him. To the eye blinded by legalism, they had rejected the Law. To anyone with better vision, they had chosen something far greater than law.