'… Then said Jesus unto Judas, That thou doest, do quickly.'—JOHN xiii.
27.
When our Lord gave the morsel, dipped in the dish, to Judas, only John
knew the significance of the act. But if we supplement the narrative
here with that given by Matthew, we shall find that, accompanying the
gift of the sop, was a brief dialogue in which the betrayer, with
unabashed front, hypocritically said, 'Lord! Is it I?' and heard the
solemn, sad answer, 'Thou sayest!' Two things, then, appealed to him at
the moment: one, the conviction that he was discovered; the other, the
wonderful assurance that he was still loved, for the gift of the morsel
was a token of friendliness. He shut his heart against them both; and
as he shut his heart against Christ he opened it to the devil. So
'after the sop Satan entered into him.' At that moment a soul committed
suicide; and none of those that sat by, with the exception of Christ
and the 'disciple whom He loved,' so much as dreamed of the tragedy
going on before their eyes.
I know not that there are anywhere words more weighty and wonderful
than those of our text. And I desire to try if I can at all make you
feel as I feel, their solemn signification and force. 'That thou doest,
do quickly.'
I. I hear in them, first, the voice of despairing love abandoning the
conflict.
If I have rightly construed the meaning of the incident, this is the
plain meaning of it. And you will observe that the Revised Version,
more accurately and closely rendering the words of our text, begins
with a '_Therefore_.' 'Therefore said Jesus unto him,' because the die
was cast; because the will of Judas had conclusively welcomed Satan,
and conclusively rejected Christ; therefore, knowing that remonstrance
was vain, knowing that the deed was, in effect, done, Jesus Christ,
that Incarnate Charity which 'believeth all things, and hopeth all
things,' abandoned the man to himself, and said, 'There, then, if thou
wilt thou must. I have done all I can; my last arrow is shot, and it
has missed the target. That then doest, do quickly.'
There is a world of solemn meaning in that one little word 'doest.' It
teaches us the old lesson, which sense is so apt to forget, that the
true actor in man's deeds is 'the hidden man of the heart,' and that
when it has acted, it matters comparatively little whether the mere
tool and instrument of the hands or of the other organs have carried
out the behest. The thing is done before it is done when the man has
resolved, with a fixed will, to do it. The betrayal was as good as in
process, though no step beyond the introductory ones, which could
easily have been cancelled, had yet been accomplished. Because there
was a fixed purpose which could not be altered by anything now,
therefore Jesus Christ regards the act as completed. It is what we
think in our hearts that we are; and our fixed determinations, our
inclinations of will, are far more truly our doings than the mere
consequences of these, embodied in actuality. It is but a poor estimate
of a man that judges him by the test of what he has done. What he has
wanted to do is the true man; what he has attempted to do. 'It was well
that it was in thine heart!' saith God to the king who thought of
building the Temple which he was never allowed to rear. 'It is ill that
is in thine heart,' says He by whom actions are weighed, to the sinner
in purpose, though his clean hands lie idly in his lap. These hidden
movements of desire and will that never come to the surface are our
true selves. Look after them, and the deeds will take care of
themselves. Serpent's eggs have serpents in them. And he that has
determined upon a sin has done the sin, whether his hands have been put
to it or no.
But, then, turn for a moment to the other thought that is suggested
here—that solemn picture of a soul left to do as it will, because
divine love has no other restraints which it can impose, and is
bankrupt of motives that it can adduce to prevent it from its madness.
Now I do not believe, for my part, that any man in this world is so
all-round 'sold unto sin' as that the seeking love of God gives him up
as irreclaimable. I do not believe that there are any people concerning
whom it is true that it is impossible for the grace of God to find some
chink and cranny in their souls through which it can enter and change
them. There are no hopeless cases as long as men are here. But, then,
though there may not be so, in regard to the whole sweep of the man's
nature, yet every one of us, over and over again, has known what it is
to come exactly into that position in regard to some single evil or
other, concerning which we have so set our teeth and planted our feet
at such an angle of resistance as that God gives up dealing with us and
leaves us, as He did with Balaam when He opposed his covetous
inclinations to all the remonstrances of Heaven. God said at last to
him 'Go!' because it was the best way to teach him what a fool he had
been in wanting to go. Thus, when we determine to set ourselves against
the pleadings and the beseechings of divine love, the truest kindness
is to fling the reins upon our necks, and let us gallop ourselves into
a sweat and weariness, and then we shall be more amenable to the touch
of the rein thereafter.
Are there any people whom God is teaching obedience to His light touch,
by letting them run their course after some one specific sin? Perhaps
there are. At all events, let us remember that that position of being
allowed to do as we like is one to which we all tend, in the measure in
which we indulge our inclinations, and shut our hearts against God's
pleadings. There is such a thing as a conscience seared as with a hot
iron. They used to say that there were witches' marks on the body,
places where, if you stuck a pin in, there was no feeling. Men cover
themselves all over with marks of that sort, which are not sensitive
even to the prick of a divine remonstrance, rebuke, or retribution.
They 'wipe their mouths and say I have done no harm.' You can tie up
the clapper of the bell that swings on the black rock, on which, if you
drift, you go to pieces. You can silence the Voice by the simple
process of neglecting it. Judas set his teeth against two things, the
solemn conviction that Jesus Christ knew his sin, and the saving
assurance that Jesus Christ loved him still. And whosoever resists
either of these two is getting perilously near to the point where, not
in petulance but in pity, God will say, 'Very well, I have called and
ye have refused. Now go, and do what you want to do, and see how you
like it when it is done. What thou doest, do quickly.' Do you remember
the other word, 'If '_twere_ done when 'tis done, then 'twere well it
were done quickly'? But since consequences last when deeds are past,
perhaps you had better halt before you determine to do them.
II. Now, secondly, I hear in these words the voice of strangely blended
majesty and humiliation.
'What thou doest, do!' Judas thought he had got possession of Christ's
person, and was His master in a very real sense. When lo! all at once
the victim assumes the position of the Lord and commands, showing the
traitor that instead of thwarting and counterworking, he was but
carrying out the designs of his fancied victim; and that he was an
instrument in Christ's hands for the execution of His will. And these
two thoughts, how, in effect, all antagonism, all malicious hatred, all
violent opposition of every sort but work in with Christ's purpose, and
carry out His intention; and how, at the moments of deepest apparent
degradation, He towers, in manifest Majesty and Masterhood, seem to me
to be plainly taught in the word before us.
He uses his foes for the furtherance of His purpose. That has been the
history of the world ever since. 'The floods, O Lord, have lifted up
their voice.' And what have they done? Smashing against the breakwater,
they but consolidate its mighty blocks, and prove that 'the Lord on
high is mightier than the noise of many waters.' It has been so in the
past, it is so to-day; it will be so till the end. Every Judas is
unconsciously the servant of Him whom he seeks to betray; and finds out
to his bewilderment that what he meant for a death-blow is fulfilling
the very purpose and will of the Lord against whom he has turned.
Again, the combination here, in such remarkable juxtaposition, of the
two things, a willing submission to the utmost extremity of shame,
which the treasonous heart can froth out in its malice and, at the same
time, a rising up in conscious majesty and lordship, are suggested to
us by the words before us. That combination of utter lowliness and
transcendent loftiness runs through the whole life and history of our
Lord. Did you ever think how strong an argument that strange
combination, brought out so inartificially throughout the whole of the
Gospels, is for their historical veracity? Suppose the problem had been
given to poets to create and to set in a series of appropriate scenes a
character with these two opposites stamped equally upon it, neither of
them impinging upon the domain of the other—viz., utter humility and
humiliation in circumstance, and majestic sovereignty and elevation
above all circumstances—do you think that any of them could have solved
the problem, though—Aeschylus and Shakespeare had been amongst them, as
these four men that wrote these four little tracts that we call Gospels
have done? How comes it that this most difficult of literary problems
has been so triumphantly solved by these men? I think there is only one
answer, 'Because they were reporters, and imagined nothing, but
observed everything, and repeated what had happened.' He reconciled
these opposites who was the Man of Sorrows and acquainted with grief,
and yet the Eternal Son of the Father; and the Gospels have solved the
problem only because they are simple records of its solution by Him.
Wherever in His history there is some trait of lowliness there is by
the side of it a flash of majesty. Wherever in His history there is
some gleaming out from the veil of flesh of the hidden glory of
divinity, there is immediately some drawing of the veil across the
glory. And the two things do not contradict nor confuse, but we stand
before that double picture of a Christ betrayed and of a Christ
commanding His betrayer, and using his treason, and we say, 'The Word
was made flesh, and dwelt among us.'