Study of Judas: conviction of sin
In the modern church, we tend to demonize Judas to the point where he’s completely unrelatable. And yet, if we don’t do anything with our convictions, we are just like him.
Continuing our Lukewarm Church series, starting with the breakdown of Judas’ character as an unbeliever, we’ll cover how he felt the conviction of his sin.
Both Judas and Peter betrayed Jesus, but their response to the guilt of their sin revealed how they truly viewed God.
And their distinct views of God informed how they viewed themselves and what they did next. While both felt the weight of their sin, Judas let it crush him while Peter let Jesus lift it off through the freedom of God’s saving grace.
What we do with our conviction
After Judas betrayed Jesus, he certainly felt convicted. He knew what he had done was deplorable. His response was to throw away the meaningless coins he reserved for his betrayal and end his life. He was driven so mad with remorse for what he had done that he couldn’t stand to live any longer.
When you feel convicted, ask yourself why you feel bad. Did you grieve God or did you grieve yourself? Whom have you offended more?
If we’ve downgraded God in our lives to the point that we feel moral superiority, our sin only slaps our ego we’ve built up. And grieving God will be secondary at best.
When our egos are offended, we may turn to self-pity. The longer we wallow, the easier it is to convince ourselves that we’re bearing the cross of humility.
This can lead to self-loathing and a completely isolated, self-absorbed life. Judas’ life demonstrates exactly where that lie can take us.
Or maybe, we’ve deadened our spiritual convictions to the point where we feel no remorse at all. Conviction of our sin comes from the Holy Spirit, which leads to repentance and not guilt and shame. But if we’ve built our convictions based on our own moral compass and in comparison to those around us, it’s not convictions at all. Rather our own moral standards we’ve set for ourselves.
When this happens, it affects our view of God.
How sin affects our view of God
Whether we down-play our sin, excuse it, or shrink in horror of it, if our response is not repentance then our view of God is skewed. We may feel remorse for sin’s consequences but we don’t feel the primary consequence: the barrier it creates between us and God.
That's why He hates it so much, He longs for a flourishing relationship with you.
When we do nothing with our convictions, we’re essentially saying that we know more than God and we’re okay with the level of sin in our life, despite what He has to say about it. We put ourselves ahead of God.
As long as you put yourself ahead of God, it’s impossible to repent. You can’t repent of a sin you don’t think you’re committing. You’ll either be stuck paying penance until your ego is satisfied or you’ll become more and more comfortable with the sin you’ve left unattended to.
If sin is left all to itself, it will grow and spread. And it obstructs our view of God. We may start to feel that God is distant. Blinded by the sin blocking our view of God, we’ll be unable to recognize that God never moved at all. We just chose something over Him.
It’s important to note that God feeling distant isn’t always the result of unrepentant sin. While it can lead to that, sometimes God is teaching us to rest in His goodness in His quiet shadows.
Sin inhibits our worship of God. But as humans, we all worship something. So, what are we worshipping?
Our sin-response reveals who we worship
Judas’ foundation was set on something other than God and when he was faced with his inadequacies, his guilt crippled him.
When the waves come crashing down on our houses built of man-made straw, we’ll be swept underneath the water. When things go wrong in our life, whether sin or a difficult time, what we’ve been holding onto all this time will become apparent. The idols you’ve been worshipping will always fail you.
And like Judas, we’ll cast away our coins we used to treasure because they’ll do us no good anymore.
All the time he invested in Jesus’ ministry and years of toiling alongside Jesus, all for nothing. While serving Jesus, he loved other things greater than Him.
Judas' response revealed that he didn’t really trust in Jesus or really love Him. Coming to utter despair, he chose death for himself, making the state of his soul blatantly apparent. Although less apparent, many in the modern church today do exactly as Judas.
They feel safe and protected under the umbrella of Christianity. And the longer they stay, the more difficult to distinguish within themselves and for others around them. Even the disciples didn’t recognize Judas wasn’t a Christian after doing ministry with him for years.
When we choose repentance
Timothy Keller speaks on conviction, “Remorse brings you to hate yourself and repentance brings you to hate your sin”.
When we remain in our remorse or conviction we remain in our sin. Convicted, we continue our lives, unchanged. But if we let repentance lead us to the cross of Christ, His love will draw you in as your shame melts away. You see sin for what it is, something which pulls you away from a relationship with God.
I have been blameless before him and have kept myself from sin. - Psalm 18:23
As a Christian, the best news is that we don’t have to remain in the shame of our sin. Christ’s blood shed on the cross to pay for our debt. And we can live in the freedom of Christ in the righteousness He gives us, not from ourselves.
And like the psalmist, it should bring your heart overwhelming joy and gratitude to the Lord for His forgiveness and pure humility that He actually had in humanity that overcomes our own sinfulness.
My friend, are you still sitting in shame of your sin? Let the beauty of salvation transform your heart and live in freedom of His grace.
