Study of Judas: follower of God’s law
We’ve come to our final article analyzing Judas’ life in our Lukewarm Church series, where we’ll turn our attention to Peter starting next week.
Our final week, we’ll discuss how we follow God’s law with a loveless heart.
It goes without saying that Judas learned and followed God throughout his ministry and perhaps before. Beyond that, he answered Jesus’ call and followed Him into His ministry. We don’t know what sort of life he left behind, but he did make a self-sacrificial life-change.
A repeated theme throughout this series uncovers how while someone may appear, talk and act like a Christian, they may not be one. They can have loads of Christian attributes but it doesn’t spring out of a love and fear of God. After all, some of the most brilliant, kind and thoughtful people I know don’t claim Christianity at all.
In today’s climate, Christians have rightly been accused of hypocrisy and legalism. Many times people avoid Christians because of their judgment and self-righteousness.
Once, I was looking up what it was like to live in a new town I was to move to. On a Reddit thread, I read someone say that ‘you’d be okay so long as you stay away from the Christians, everyone else was nice’.
My stomach sank. But I knew they were right.
Law without love in the modern church
Collectively, the church has difficulty with loving God. Most have split into three directions.
Those infatuated with God’s laws and wrapped their identity in being associated with morally good.
Those who have lost sight of God’s goodness, distracted by either their woes or joys of the world and become apathetic towards God.
The third tier of people either fall in the first or second group, but they don’t love God. Blind in their religion, their genuine motives are hidden - and many times, even to themselves.
This love anemic condition the modern church is suffering from is damaging to all parties. To the ones who are struggling in their faith, they are missing out on the glorious gifts of being a child of God. They have all the power and righteousness available at their fingertips, but still have difficulty seeing that God is more worthy of their attention.
They circle the first pathway steps of Christianity, unaware of the depths of the glorious truths to be had in a matured relationship with God down a long, rich path forward.
Every school year, my mom made me take piano lessons. Throughout the year, I’d practice every day, completing my lessons. But I really had no desire to learn and get better.
Sure, I liked the idea of it. But not enough to actually put in the work and dedication. Year after year, I did the same lessons over and over. And year after year, I kept playing at the same level.
Did I know how to play piano? Yes, but only the bare bone basics. Looking back, I wished I had put in the work to improve so that I could reap the benefits of a fine-tuned skill of a beautiful, foundational instrument. I could have grown from the simple, basic chords that I continually re-learned and progressed into playing complex, intricately composed songs.
Similarly, our relationship to God has the potential to beautifully flourish and grow. But we’ll keep hanging around the basics, the fundamentals of Christianity unless we actually pursue knowing God. Sacrificing your time to build a deeper relationship with Jesus is the best investment you’ll ever make, far greater than any instrument.
As Christians, we should feel the weighted responsibility for representing God and His church to the rest of the world. We not only fail God when we misrepresent Him, we fail ourselves in our own personal relationship with Him. And we certainly fail those around us. And yet we actively participate in the individualistic society we live in today and choose comfort instead.
Maybe we like the idea of being known as someone who is godly, or we’ve been laissez-faire in our pursuit of knowing God. Perhaps we don’t know Him at all. We’ve burdened ourselves with our own standards instead of finding freedom in letting God lift them off our shoulders and realize grace instead.
When we buy into our hypocrisy or absent-minded faith, we spend our dollars feeding into the false religion conglomerate that is not only stealing from joy in your relationship with God but from others knowing who He really is.
What we cultivate
Galatians describes what someone who has the Holy Spirit would look like:
“But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. Against such things there is no law.” - Galatians 5:22-23
Notice that none of the things on the list are actions but rather heart characteristics. Attributes we can only attain through Jesus. In fact, the fruit in this passage is singular because it is personified through Jesus Christ as the best example of what it means to live out a Christian life. Fruit is the character built through a changed heart, it doesn’t start with works it ends with them. Otherwise, everyone who does any act of kindness must be a Christian.
When you obey God without love you simply won’t grow. You may be doing good things and even making impacts on other people. But your relationship with God will remain the same, distant and maybe non-existent. Organic growth is gradual and comes through a continual, faithful trust in God. As in any other earthly relationship, growing in the depth of that relationship takes time, experiences and many times hardship.
But as in a garden, when we obediently tear out the weeds (sin) that snuff the life out of our small plants (growth in God), three things will happen:
It will be more difficult for weeds to grow back in. Not indefinitely. They will always find a way back in to rear their head and burst through the ground again. But as you rack through the ground and make way for something else to grow, you create an environment that is more difficult for weeds to burst through.
When you dedicate your time to studying God’s Word, even memorizing scriptures and daily conversational prayer, it’s far more difficult for either your flesh or the devil to provide an opportunity for temptation.
It’s easier to spot new weeds that pop up. When you’ve cleared out the weeds and toiled the soil, you’ll have a clear vision for anything that isn’t of God. When your garden is littered with weeds, it’s harder to identify things that are not of God and easy to confuse it with the other good fruits amongst the foliage.
They mix together and begin to be distinguished. If it’s clear, you’ll have full visibility into the weeds that spring up and can either take action on it or not.
It will make it easier for you to cultivate the fruits of the spirit when you’ve spent time cultivating your soil. What you choose to cultivate will produce fruit. If you are choosing the fruit of the Spirit, you will grow. As seasons change, your fruit may take longer or shorter to flourish. But when you obey God and are faithful in the small things, He will bless you in harvest time.
But why does God require us to obey Him? Isn’t that demanding or cruel of Him to force people to do what He tells us, even if it doesn’t make sense to us? It would be cruel if it weren’t that God knows that apart from Him you will continue your path to death. Your only path to fullness of life is through Him. When we are disobeying God, we cannot abide with Him. Our sin obstructs our view of God.
God doesn’t ever force His way into your top priority, you have to choose Him.
If He is the only thing in our life that will give us joy, satisfaction and true life, why wouldn’t He want that for us? To get His fullness, He asks obedience of us. Because in our obedience to Him, it’s our actions that will refine us to become more like Him.
