“Brothers, it was necessary that this Scripture should be fulfilled, which the Holy Spirit spoke before by the mouth of David concerning Judas, who was guide to those who took Jesus. For he was counted with us, and received his portion in this ministry. Now this man obtained a field with the reward for his wickedness, and falling headlong, his body burst open, and all his intestines gushed out. It became known to everyone who lived in Jerusalem that in their language that field was called ‘Akeldama,’ that is, ‘The field of blood.’
For it is written in the book of Psalms, ‘Let his habitation be made desolate. Let no one dwell in it;’ and, ‘Let another take his office.’
“Of the men therefore who have accompanied us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us, beginning from the baptism of John, to the day that he was received up from us, of these one must become a witness with us of his resurrection.”
They put forward two, Joseph called Barsabbas, who was also called Justus, and Matthias. They prayed and said, “You, Lord, who know the hearts of all men, show which one of these two you have chosen to take part in this ministry and apostleship from which Judas fell away, that he might go to his own place.”
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv16, 17, 18, 21, 23, 24, 25 16. It was meet that the Scripture should be…
16. It was meet that the Scripture should be fulfilled. Because Peter doth speak in this their assembly, therefore the Papists will have him to be the head of the church. As though no man might speak in any assembly of the godly but he should straightway be Pope. We do grant, that as in every assembly there must be some which must be chief, so in this assembly the apostles did ascribe this honor unto Peter. But what maketh this unto (the proving of) their Papacy? Wherefore, bidding them adieu, let us consider what the Spirit doth speak by the mouth of Peter. He saith That the Scripture must needs have been fulfilled, lest any man’s mind should be troubled with that horrible fall of Judas. For it seemed a strange thing that he which was chosen by Christ unto so excellent a function, should so filthily fall in the beginning of his course. Peter removeth this stone of stumbling, when he saith that it was foretold by the Scripture. Whence we may gather an admonition very necessary for daily practice; namely, that we ought to attribute this honor unto the prophecies of the Scriptures, that they are able to appease all such fear as we conceive of the sudden event of things. For there is nothing which doth more trouble us than when we stay still in our own sense and understanding, and procure unto ourselves lets and doubts, which the Lord would be ready to cure, if so be that we would hold fast this one thing, that nothing is absurd which he hath foreseen, appointed, and foretold, that he might make us more strong. Neither was Judas therefore excusable, because that which befell him was foretold, seeing that he fell away, not being compelled by the prophecy, but only by the malice of his own heart. The oration of Peter hath two parts. For, in the first place, he putteth away the offense which godly minds might have conceived by reason of the fall of Judas; whence also he gathereth an exhortation that the rest may learn to fear God. Secondly, he telleth them that it remaineth that they choose another into his place, both which he proveth by testimony of Scripture.
Which the Holy Ghost foretold Such manner of speeches bring greater reverence to the Scriptures, whilst we are taught by them that David and all the rest of the prophets did speak only as they were directed by the Holy Ghost; so that they themselves were not the authors of their prophecies, but the Spirit which used their tongues as an instrument. Wherefore, seeing that our dullness is so great, that we ascribe less authority unto the Scriptures than we ought, we must diligently note such manner of speeches, and acquaint ourselves with them, that we may oftentimes remember the authority of God to confirm our faith withal.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv16, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25 Peter preventeth the offense that might be taken of…
Peter preventeth the offense that might be taken of the falling away of Judas the betrayer, showing that all things which came unto him, were foretold by God.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 16 Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have…
16 Men and brethren, this scripture must needs have been fulfilled, which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake before concerning Judas, which was guide to them that took Jesus.
Ver. 16. Brethren] Not underlings, as Popish bishops, who must say Placet It is pleasing, to that which in the pope’s name is proposed to them.
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv16–25 Men and brethren, an ordinary compellation; speaker and auditors…
Men and brethren, an ordinary compellation; speaker and auditors were Hebrews of the Hebrews.
This Scripture, viz. Psa 41:9, must need, have been fulfilled; yet God’s foreknowledge and prediction excused not Judas’s sin.
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Which was guide to them that took Jesus; not only leading them in the way when they took our Saviour, but being director of their counsels against him. This the apostle premises to abate the offence that the horrible fall of Judas might have occasioned.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On v21 Judas having in the forementioned manner made void his…
Judas having in the forementioned manner made void his office, and being gone to his own place, St. Peter moves the company, that another person may be chosen to fill up the place.
Where note, 1. The electors or persons choosing; namely, the hundred and twenty; these were the eleven apostles, the seventy disciples, and about thirty-eight more, all of Christ’s own kindred, country, or converse; not that these were all the believers that were found in Jerusalem, for he appeared to five hundred brethren at once, but these followed him continually, were of his family and society and of his immediate train and retinue, and appointed by him for the ministry: These therefore make the choice; and of one among themselves is the choice made.
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Note, 2. The qualification of the person which St. Peter directs the company to observe in the choice they make of this new apostle; One that had accompanied with them all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among them:
That is, one that had followed Christ from his baptism to his ascension, to the intent he might be an authentic witness, both of the doctrine and miracles, but particularly of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: For the article of the resurrection includes many other articles of faith in it: for if he arose from the grave, he was buried; if he was buried, he died; if he died, he was born. Therefore the person whom they choose, was to be one that had accompanied with them.
Note, 3. That the apostles did not presume to ordain an apostle by imposition of hands; but the other apostles being chosen of God immediately, it was necessary that he who was to act in the same office, should be chosen after the same manner. Accordingly they cast lots, and leave the determination to God, who devolving it upon Matthias, he was thereupon numbered with the eleven apostles. Lots were used among the Jews for dividing inheritances, for composing differences, for determining elections; and how casual soever it seemed, God was the undoubted determiner of it. Therefore, to cast lots upon trivial occasions, and solemnly to appeal to God’s determination in ludicrous matters, is profanely to take the name of God in vain.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv16–25 Men and brethren,.... Which is said not so much…
Men and brethren,.... Which is said not so much by Peter to express his modesty, and humility, and his brotherly love; or on account of the spiritual relation that subsisted between him and the persons he speaks to, as it was a common form used in addresses; see Act 7:2 it should seem, that the women, were not reckoned into the number of the hundred and twenty here addressed; and the Syriac version calls that number, "the number of men", unless they are supposed to be included in them:
this Scripture must needs have been fulfilled; or "must needs be fulfilled": referring either to Psa 41:9 or rather to the passages after cited out of Psa 69:25. There was a necessity of the fulfilling of it, consistent with the prescience of God, his counsel, and decree, and the veracity of the Scripture; which necessity does not at all excuse the sin of Judas, who acted freely from the wickedness of his own heart, and not from any force that this laid upon him: and the apostle might observe this also, to make the minds of the disciples easy, under this awful providence, since it was no other than what was predicted: and
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which the Holy Ghost, by the mouth of David, spake before; even many hundreds of years before the event; and which shows the omniscience, and so the deity of the Holy Ghost, and the divine authority of David's Psalms; as well as the honour that was put upon him to be the instrument by which the Holy Ghost speaks, and to be his amanuensis: the particular referred to, is, "concerning" Judas; who is sometimes called Iscariot, to distinguish him from another apostle of the same name; and what is hereafter said sufficiently does that; or
concerning that Judas, as the Syriac version renders it:
which was a guide to them that took Jesus; to the band of soldiers and officers, who came with swords and staves, as to take a thief, or a robber; before these Judas went and showed them, not only the place where he was, but gave them a sign by which they should know him, and also advice to take him and hold him fast, and lead him away safely; so that he was not only a guide as to the way, but was a director, and conductor, and manager of the whole affair. And it may be observed, that though Peter did not conceal, but declares the sin of Judas; yet not in a rough manner, aggravating it, but with much softness and tenderness; though with no design to lessen it, as appears by what follows, and which may be instructive to us in speaking of other men's sins.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 25 Psalm xli, 9.
Psalm xli, 9.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv16–25 Verse 16. The Holy Ghost by the mouth of…
Verse 16. The Holy Ghost by the mouth of David] Thus is a strong attestation to the Divine inspiration of the book of Psalms. They were dictated by the Holy Spirit, and spoken by the mouth of David.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv16, 18, 21, 24 Act 1:16-17. Men and brethren — Though our Lord…
Act 1:16-17. Men and brethren — Though our Lord never addressed the people thus, (perhaps because it would have implied an equality not suitable to the dignity of his character,) yet the apostles frequently did, when they spoke to Jews or Christians, but never when speaking to the Gentiles. This implies, that they recognised a two-fold relation to their own countrymen, “as men of the same nature, descended from Adam; and as brethren of the same favoured family, as descended from Abraham.” — Scott. This scripture must needs have been fulfilled — Two prophecies are afterward quoted for this purpose, Act 1:20, from Psa 69:25; Psa 109:8; (on which passages see the notes;) and it has been matter of much debate, whether they do, in their original sense, refer to Judas or to the enemies of David. It is certain the sixty-ninth Psalm is not to be confined to Judas; for Paul (Rom 11:9-10) has quoted the 22d and 23d verses of it as applicable to the unbelieving Jews in general: and “there are so many passages in both these psalms more applicable to David than to Christ, that I was very inclinable,” says Dr. Doddridge, “to render the words before us thus: The scripture which the Holy Ghost spake before, by the mouth of David, must necessarily have been fulfilled concerning Judas, &c.; and to have explained them as if the apostle had said, ‘That vengeance which David foretold, as to be executed on his enemies, must much more fall on Judas, whose perfidious and cruel attack on Christ himself rendered him so much more criminal.’ But it is certain, the order of the Greek words will not naturally admit this interpretation. I therefore conclude that, while David prophesied of the calamities which should befall his persecutors, it was revealed to him by the Holy Spirit, that the enemies and murderers of the Messiah should inherit those curses in all their terror, and be yet more miserable than the persons on whom they were more immediately to fall. This fact I take to be asserted in these words, as what was revealed by the same Spirit to the Apostle Peter:” an interpretation “which may serve as a key to many other passages of the New Testament.”
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv16–25 Men and brethren - This is a customary mode…
Men and brethren - This is a customary mode of address, implying affection and respect, Act 13:26. The Syriac renders it more appropriately than by the introduction of the conjunction “and” - “Men, our brethren.”
This scripture - This prediction contained in the writings of the Old Testament. Compare the notes on Joh 5:39. The passage to which Peter refers is commonly supposed to be that recorded in Psa 41:9, “Yea, mine own familiar friend ...hath lifted up his heel against me.” This is expressly applied to Judas by our Saviour, in Joh 13:18. But it seems clear that the reference is not to the 41st Psalm, but to the passage in the 69th Psalm which Peter proceeds to quote in Act 1:20.
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Must needs have been fulfilled - It would certainly be fulfilled. Not that there was any physical necessity or any compulsion; but it could not but occur that a prediction of God would be fulfilled. This makes no affirmation about the freedom of Judas in doing it. A man will be just as free in wickedness if it be foretold that he will be wicked, as if it had never been known to any other being but himself.
The Holy Ghost ... - This is a strong attestation to the inspiration of David, and accords with the uniform testimony of the New Testament, that the sacred writers spake as they were moved by the Holy Spirit, 2Pe 1:21.
Concerning Judas - In what respect this was concerning Judas, see Act 1:20.
Which was guide ... - Mat 26:47; Joh 18:3.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv18, 20, 21, 25 Possessed a field. Judas is here said to have…
Possessed a field. Judas is here said to have done, what was done by others, with the thirty pieces of money, the reward of his iniquity. And being hanged, that is, as St. Matthew says, (chap. xxvii. 5.) having hanged himself, he burst asunder. The Greek has it, falling headlong,[3] as perhaps he did, by his judgment of God, from the place or tree where he hanged himself. (Witham) --- Judas did not possess the potter’s field, but he furnished the price to buy it, giving back the thirty pieces of silver. (Menochius) --- We often say in common, that we have done what happens in consequence of any action of ours, though it was not in our first intention. (Calmet)
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Suspensus crepuit medius, Greek: prenes genomenos.
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George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25 falling headlong, &c.--This information supplements, but by no means…
falling headlong, &c.--This information supplements, but by no means contradicts, what is said in Mat 27:5.
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv16–25 Peter’s First Speech—that to the one hundred and twenty,…
Peter’s First Speech—that to the one hundred and twenty, Act_1:16-22.
16. Must needs have been fulfilled—The divine foresight, anticipating what Judas would freely do, has provided for and adopted it into its plan for its own conduct. (See note on Mat_11:25.) They must, therefore, accept it as no unexpected event, and act accordingly.
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Holy Ghost… spake—The inspiring Spirit, perhaps, had a higher and broader meaning than David himself understood.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv16–25 16. Men and brethren] The original is meant for…
16. Men and brethren] The original is meant for one epithet, and would be fully enough rendered by brethren alone, here and in other places where it occurs.
this scripture, &c.] “This” is omitted by the best authorities. Read The scripture, &c. It is to be noticed that Peter can thus speak because he had now been taught to understand the Scriptures (Luk_24:45).
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must needs have been fulfilled] Christ was to die on the cross, betrayed to death by one in whom He had trusted. David had spoken in the Psalms of his own afflictions from a similar treachery and also of the destruction which he invoked upon those who were guilty of such infidelity. But while David spake of himself and of his own circumstances, the Holy Ghost through him was speaking of the betrayal of the “Son of David,” and the words which had been true of David, must have their still more complete fulfilment in the betrayal of the Saviour, by him “who was guide to them that took Jesus” (Mat_26:47, &c.).
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25 (16) Men and brethren.—Better, brethren only, the word being…
(16) Men and brethren.—Better, brethren only, the word being used as in the LXX. of Gen_13:8. The tone of St. Peter’s speech is that of one who felt that his offence had been fully forgiven, and that he was now restored by the charge given him, as in Joh_21:15-17, to his former position as guide and leader of the other disciples. To do that work faithfully was a worthier fruit of repentance than any public confession of his guilt would have been. This, of course, does not exclude—what is in itself probable—that he had previously confessed his fault, either to his special friend St. John, or to the whole company of Apostles and other disciples.
Which the Holy Ghost by the mouth of David spake . . .—We have here, obviously, the firstfruits of the new method of interpretation in which the Apostles had been instructed (Luk_24:27; Luk_24:45). They had already been taught that the Holy Spirit which their Lord had promised to them had before spoken by the prophets. The recurrence of the same mode of speech in the “holy men of God who spake as they were moved (literally, borne along) by the Holy Ghost,” in 2Pe_1:21, is, as far as it goes, evidence in favour of the genuineness of that Epistle.
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Which was guide to them that took Jesus.—The actual word “guide” is not found in the Gospel narrative, but it appears as a fact in all four, notably in that of St. John (Joh_18:2-3).
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv16–25 Brethren, it teas needful that the Scripture should be…
Brethren, it teas needful that the Scripture should be fulfilled for men and brethren, this Scripture must needs have been fulfilled, A.V.; spake before by the mouth of David for by the mouth of David spake before, A.V. It was needful, etc. So our Lord declared, "The Scriptures cannot be broken"; (Joh_10:35) and "All things must be fulfilled which were written" ere.. (Luk_24:25-27, Luk_24:44-46) It is most important to our Christian integrity that we should view the Scriptures in the same light as our Lord and his apostles did, as containing real prophecies, spoken by the Holy Ghost. (Compare the manner in which the sixty-ninth psalm is here quoted with that of Heb_3:7) So the Creed, "I believe in the Holy Ghost .... who spake by the prophets". (comp. Act_4:25 Act_28:25) Who was guide, etc. If St. Peter had only been addressing his brother apostles, who were well acquainted with the treachery of Judas, it would scarcely have been natural to introduce these words; they would have seemed rather to be explanatory words added by the historian. But the circumstances might be very imperfectly known to many of the hundred and twenty brethren assembled on this occasion; and if so, the reference to Judas"s treachery would not be out of place in St. Peter"s mouth.
Vers. 16-20, 25. Judas, his opportunity and his treatment of it.
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Judas, which was guide might go to his own place." The treason of Judas is related by every one of the evangelists; but his subsequent history no one of them as such even alludes to, except St. Matthew. The Evangelist St. Luke, however, here gives it, in his capacity of historian of the" Acts of the Apostles. " What he reports St. Peter as saying is not in verbal harmony with what St. Matthew says. But there is not the slightest difficulty in seeing the way to a real and perfect harmony. The only difficulty is in declaring absolutely that one way and not another is the authoritative harmony. That Judas fell headlong and burst asunder" is a very easy sequel to his hanging himself." And that the chief priests took counsel, and determined to buy with the abandoned thirty pieces of silver the potter"s field, and to devote it to the burial of strangers, is also a very conceivable sequel. It may be it was but the carrying into effect of a bargain which the covetousness of Judas had contemplated and had arranged for all but the transfer of the money and the thereby "completion of purchase." The chief priests hear of this, and in their perplexity and desire to get rid of the accursed thirty pieces of silver, they close at once with the proposing vendor, whoever he was; but while they devote their purchase to an object the same, the purpose was very different from that which Judas had grown in a covetous mind. We may be tolerably sure he bought for some sort of further gain. They adapt (adsit omen) to a burial-ground. Once, such an end to such a career, of a professed disciple of the Lord, was unique, and then, for that reason, it would fascinate study. It not long remained so, alas! and for that reason, that practical, alarming reason, it has been suggesting for centuries, and still to this day it suggests ay, it demands solemn, heart-searching study. Let us get beneath our eye
I WHAT INFORMATION WE HAVE TO REST UPON IN FORMING A JUDGMENT RESPECTING JUDAS AND HIS CHARACTER.
1. He was called in the same way as, at all events, a majority of the whole number of the twelve disciples were called. So far as we know, there was nothing special or emphatic in the circumstances that accompanied his call (Mat_10:2-4; Mar_3:13-19; Luk_6:12-19) St. John says nothing whatever of the call of Judas; but that he knew something about it is evident from his allusion to Christ"s foreknowledge. (Joh_6:64, Joh_6:70, Joh_6:71) Why Christ, with his admitted perfect foreknowledge, did call Judas to be an immediate attendant upon him, is a question that cannot be answered, perhaps. But three things may be remarked upon it:
(1) That Christ certainly did not do Judas harm, hut gave him the grandest possible opportunity of help towards subduing whatever may have been his master-sin, by permitting his special and constant association with him and his other disciples.
(2) That at all events Christ did not, in calling Judas to the circle of his disciples, call one who would betray another, and have favorable opportunity of betraying another thereby, but only himself. Jesus bore all the pain and suffered all the loss of what he did himself; he did not scatter harm in the path of others.
(3) That after all, in deep principle, Jesus did nothing different from what has ever since been transpiring under his Name, wherever his Name is known. His Church now and his Church is his representative admits within its most really hallowed enclosure many a traitor. It is true, not with foreknowledge; it is true, pleading ever, as its apology when discovered, its own confessed fallibility; and, let it be true also, that it is this which strikes us as constituting the difference. But is it to be so regarded? Without leaving out of sight for one moment Christ"s foreknowledge and infallibility of foreknowledge, we must bring into sight the fact that this is traversed by another most evident principle and practice on the part of Jesus, which reveal him ever beforehand sharing the lot of his Church, and intending to share it in disappointment, in deception on the part of others, in woe as in weal. On much the same principle that Jesus did not take advantage of his ability to command stones into bread, so he does not take certain kinds of advantage from his foreknowledge. And what we have under consideration is exactly one of these kind. There are ample and significant indications that the one expression, Jesus called unto him whom he would", (Mar_3:13) and our own willing estimate of his superlative knowledge, are to be balanced with other considerations, both such as arise from disciples choice and disciples" volunteering, (Joh_1:37-42) and from the essential facts of human nature. At all events, we do not know that Judas was not a volunteer. He may have been an ardent, enthusiastic volunteer; he may have been a financial expert of his rank and day, who seems to sacrifice bright business prospects in following Jesus, who takes credit, too, for it, and who by general consent becomes designated treasurer so soon as a treasurer was wanted. (Luk_8:3, and elsewhere) Do we not know something today of the busy and clever and ready-tongued volunteer, and of his entrance within the pale of the Church visible? It may, in passing, just be noted that in the three parallel Gospels the name of Judas always stands last, and is attended by the evangelistic remark, merely posthumous, that he was the traitor of his Master.
2. From the announcement of the call of the twelve disciples up to now, the closing days of Christ"s life, not a syllable is to be read of Judas, except the damnatory remark of Joh_6:71. The question of Jesus preceding that running comment belonged, of course, strictly to the occasion, but the running comment itself is merely historic. But the closing days are now come. And they bring this man to the fore.
(1) He finds fault (or otherwise leads the fault-finding of himself and some others) with the loving devotion of a woman who, for priceless mercy received, brings the only present she knows to bring a present, no doubt, of what was costliest in her treasures, and admitted by all to be both precious and costly ointment with which to anoint the head and feet of Jesus. And Judas says, "It"s waste." And Judas asks, "Why was it not sold, and the hard cash put into the Master"s bag for the poor, which I carry?" Yes, and the Evangelist St. John adds, probably in the light of after developments, from which he carried too, i.e. from which he stole. And Judas incurred the silencing and reproof of the Master, and he does not forget that reproof. This was late as the fourth day of the fatal week.
(2) At the end, or immediately after the end of the very next day (equivalent to the evening which led in the sixth day), Judas also asks, "Is it I?" when the question was Who among those twelve there was the traitor? and he is pronounced, by the lip and the hand of Jesus, the traitor; and he withdraws from the solemn, sacred, pathetic Supper scene! And again he goes with a word of the Master in his hearing, nor forgets it either.
(3) Now but a few hours of night-time pass, when Judas reappears. It is into the Garden of Gethsemane a place he knew, because he had been there often with a Master who loved to go there olden that he enters, no longer, for ever and ever no longer, the disciple of Jesus, but now the leader of a band, who lighted a way, that surely much needed light, "with lanterns and torches," and who bore "swords and staves" (Mat_26:47-56; Mar_14:43-52; Luk_22:47-53; Joh_18:2-12) With a word and a kiss Judas betrays his recent Master, who asks him one gentle question, "Friend, wherefore art thou come?" And like a shadow Judas vanishes again from our sight.
(4) Once more, and once more only, does Judas come himself before us. He comes to show a certain violent repenting, an attempt at some sort of restitution and unreserved confession of his own individual sin; and for these the treatment that he gets from "the chief priests and elders" seems to ripen remorse and madden despair, and, witness against himself, and jury, and judge, he becomes his own swift executioner also, all four in one terrible demonstration! It stands a witness to the end of time (and there cannot in this instance be a doubt that eternity looks on) of the avenging force that couches in ambush, in the being in whom God has implanted a moral constitution, when that constitution is keenly affronted, wounded to the quick repeatedly, and in aggravated form sinned against! Woe is to that being; it had been better for him that he had never been born! And now we have exhausted all the actual information recorded for us respecting the career of Judas. Let us ask
II WHAT DEDUCTIONS REGARDING THE REAL CHARACTER OF JUDAS WE MAY BE WARRANTED TO DRAW FROM THESE MATERIALS. It has Been often thought that the key to the opening of his character is held out to us in the one word covetousness, This impression must be supposed to have been derived from the two facts that he filched from "the bag," and that he asked money for the iniquitous volunteered enterprise of being "guide to them that took Jesus." The foundation is perhaps something slander for what is built upon it. Likely enough his tendencies may have looked this way. He may have known a shade too well the use and "the love of money;" but evidence there is none that he loved money as a miser loves it. Nor did it seem to stick to his fingers as it does to those of an essentially covetous man not, for instance, when he threw it down on the temple floor at the priests" feet. May not other causes, that moved in deeper groove, and mined their unsuspected approaches in darker and more tortuous channel, have determined this monstrous deformity of growth? We believe that we have before us, in the unenviable, unwelcome riddle of this character:
1. A man to whom ambition (very probably native to him) was the misguiding, the fatuous, the disastrous light. This covetousness was in him; it had been looking out for its own food; it had comparatively long time looked in vain. But now, in what the history of two thousand years, perhaps rather of four thousand years, has shown to be the most dangerous direction of all, the opportunity seemed to open itself within the ecclesiastical sphere. He sees and snatches at the opportunity. Here is a manifest novelty Jesus! His pretensions are great, and are far from lacking probability, The mighty works he does are supported by significant indications, though not so popular, by mighty words, and deeper still by the framework of cherished prophecies not unknown to Judas, and with which just now the very air, natural, political, religious, is rife. The thought enters his mind to become a disciple it is not altogether business, for his heart owns to a gentle upheaving of enthusiasm towards Jesus. He essays to become a disciple, puts himself in the way, keeps near and in the right company, and finds himself "called" in the sacred circle. Adventure, religiousness, and a practical good chance seemed all combined.
2. A man with an immense power of self-deception. No form of deception is more aggravated in its character and in its effects than self-deception. The victimizer is the same with the victim. The deadliest harm suffered from another may have, even in the supreme moment, some possible compensation for the sufferer, in high moral feeling, in the exercise of high moral grace, such as forgiveness, or patience under unmerited, uncaused suffering, nay, in the bare thought that one is suffering through another. For now, at all events, the vicariousness of suffering, in a wide range of degree, has a charm of real glory. But to have the very faculty of self-deception is to have one of the worst of enemies while character grows, one of the most vengeful of enemies when the day of settlement comes. And Judas, whether in aiming to become a disciple or in only consenting to it, had little idea of the amount of his unfittedness for it. And so the months that flew on increased the unfittedness and the ignorance by equal strides.
3. A man of amazing power of veiling his real self behind an impassive exterior, when he gradually came to know that real self, and of keeping his own secret.
(1) Was it not getting time for conscience to show itself in the cheek for Judas, when Jesus said, "Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?
(2) Was ever more perilous stuff pent up in the breast, and yet not a sign of it on the countenance, nor even in a faltering tone of voice, when, that Last Supper evening, Judas found himself compelled to join the inquirers, and brought his lips also to say, "Lord, is it I?
(3) Was it not the very incarnation of the own devil"s deliberateness and of matchless coolness when Judas not only headed the cowed procession, armed with swords and staves, and lighted with lanterns and torches, into the garden, but that, when he "fell to the ground," he had nerve enough so soon to find his feet, and to go on with his work as though he had not fallen, and surpassed himself in then stepping forth to the very van of the troop, who had hitherto covered him in part to say "Hail!" to the Master, no longer his, and to "kiss" him? The very highest moral efforts have been sometimes accomplished just so much the more effectively because they have been accompanied by a certain force of moral nervous exertion. On this occasion the very highest immoral effort bore witness to a destitution of nervous sensibility hitherto incredible. Surely to the end of the world Judas will hold all his own the first place for secretiveness and deliberateness and unperturbedness, both in darkest design and in execution of it. His calm, balanced, impassive bearing serves him with every one, except with him who knows the hearts of all men.
1. A man who, finding that he is playing a losing game, or thinking so, dares to attempt to retrieve what he counts his error, by heading a dark and desperate scheme, and by providing himself (for this was the probable reason of his occasional "thefts," and of his asking payment for the betrayal) with something in compensation of the "all he had left," together with the other disciples, when he first "followed" Jesus. However, now he stakes "all" on one cast the event too clearly demonstrates it. He shows himself not the man to bear disappointment and loss, especially when riled, as he probably now felt, by a conviction of having suffered under some delusion. He is not of the temper to brook a practical affront, let it have come whence or how it may! He refuses to remain partners with inward discontent one unnecessary, one avoidable hour! And not the first man of the kind, though the undoubted first of the solemn pitch of enormity, he miscalculates awfully miscalculates the hour, and in another hour is falling into the lowest Tophet, under the name of "the son of perdition"! So fell the selfish and typical gambler of this world and time.
2. A man emphatically not "stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted," but whose branded heart and seared conscience were stricken of God, being restored for one moment to their maximum vitality, that moment their very last! It is impossible to account for the previous phenomena of the history of Judas as recorded, and for this fierce end of his career, without believing that he had long been hardening heart and conscience grievously and dreadfully injured. Nemo fit repente turpissimus. And Peter, the thricedenier, stands close by Judas, the betrayer, to point with Heaven"s own method of distinctness the difference. The death-struggle not unfrequently has witnessed to the measure of life that body and mind together can claim. And supineness has suddenly snatched and for a moment wielded the weapons of preternatural, if not supernatural, force. And it must be that this was the philosophy of Judas doing these three things at once himself," "confessing his sin," and hanging himself." The third of this series interprets for us the former two. The man who breaks thus, breaks because he is intrinsically weak. The keenest potency of feeling, the fullest, simplest confession of sin, the unequivocal renunciation of his unholy gain, and this all in the right arena, in face of the priests and on the temple floor and yet these not followed by mercy and forgiveness, but blackened to sight by a self-inflicted dog"s death must proclaim a man strengthless, hopeless, for ever the disinherited son of perdition." Let us ask
III WHAT IMPLICATIONS MAY BE INVOLVED IN THE STRANGE AND REMARKABLY STRONG EXPRESSION HERE APPLIED TO JUDAS, AS DESCRIPTIVE OF THE END OF HIS EARTHLY CAREER. St. Peter says that Judas "fell by transgression" from his apostleship, "that he might go to his own place." It can scarcely be that Peter, who rose to speak thus in the midst of his "brethren," should entirely forget how near he himself bad been to falling from his apostleship; and yet there are essential considerations so differencing the two cases that we could imagine it possible that, in real fact, he never connected them for so much as a moment in his own mind. This the difference not that, having strayed, Peter so soon and with so genuine a penitence came back, and not that he had been perfectly sincere and was so sound at heart still, but that, though he undoubtedly fell suddenly by transgression (as Judas fell suddenly), he did not fall "that he might go to his own place." He fell that he might get more estranged from "his own place," and, regaining his footing, might find himself nearer "placed" to his Master, and safer far than before. It is very noticeable that St. Peter does not say that Judas went "to his own place" because he." fell by transgression," but that his fall, come at by distinct and flagrant transgression such as admitted neither defense nor palliation, made his own way to his own place. Some make a bridge of escape, and some cut off from their enemies or for higher reasons from themselves a bridge of escape, but Judas, "by transgression," actually bridges a way of destruction for himself; yes, "by transgression" so pronounced, so aggravated, so enormous, but which drew its greatest, its most distinctive peculiarities from what was antecedent to it. Its long roots lay in a long past. From these it was nourished till it became monstrous. Harder than it is to "pluck a rooted sorrow from the memory" did Judas find it, arrived at a certain point, to pluck himself from "his own" destruction. The disease will now have its course. The road leads to a visible precipice, but Judas cannot stop his driving. The stream bears irresistibly to the gulf. To what do these things point? What were the antecedent peculiarities?
1. Very strong individuality of character ungoverned. Such may make very fine character. But it needs very skilful management, very strict observation; a very firm hand must be kept upon it. Let it be ever remembered that it is not likely to be and is not on side issues that the battle of character, of life, of destiny, is fought. And it is not on side issues that any man"s "own place" is determined. And this is the reason why human judgments of self or of others are so often wrong, because they are so prone to be arrested by the glitter or else the glare of what may be a most minor point, a mere detail, a really side issue, instead of being of the very web and woof. A man"s "own place" is neither determined nor ascertained by the side issues, which are so often all that lie visible. But there are some potencies of character that do, or otherwise undo, the work. A certain strong persistence of some force a thought, a taste, a wish, a passion. And when a man has a character of this sort, his best friend has one gospel to preach to him this, that his work lies clear as noonday before him; he has an option of trembling significance before him; he is set to master or to be mastered, to guide and rule and rise high as the angels, or to be lured, drawn, dragged, driven, all the appalling way down to "his own place"!
2. Splendid opportunities grossly neglected. The same phenomena and facts of character and of growth to the very end, may and naturally must be true anywhere, any time. But as the "own place" of Judas was different from what could be the "own place" of vast numbers to whom for instance the very name of Christ is unknown, so it is fair to take into account the fact that his opportunities were, for his time of day and for every time of day to which they could apply, literally splendid. The principle will be very rarely unobservable, that in proportion as opportunity was good, gross neglect of it made the surest ill end, yet surer. And make whatever deductions possible, the opportunities of any one of the twelve disciples were splendid then certainly none more splendid than they. To see, to hear, to watch such excellence, the excellence of naturalness, of simplicity, of perfect truth, of tenderest human kindness, of superhuman holiness, was it not splendid opportunity? To have the personal inspection, occasional correction, deep-sighted suggestions, and high warnings, not unmingled with gracious encouragement that never bore a tint of flattery, was it not splendid time of opportunity? To root confidence in such aWorker, not of gaping wonders but of majestic beneficence, was it not splendid opportunity? In brief, to witness that activity, to hear that teaching, to study that Model, was a mass of opportunity that all the world beside could not give, and that all the world beside ought not to have been able to take away. But Judas let the world, or a small portion of the world, take it away nay, he pitched it away himself. And he did this to get on to "his own place.
3. The fearful irritation (working sometimes underneath even the calmest exterior) of an unreal religious profession. The horrors of a false position must be counted to be in good truth multiplied infinitely when the false position lies within the domain of religion, and when it consists in the unreality of the person, rather than in merely a temporary unsuitableness to him of the place or the niche in which he has got fixed. In the recesses of a lowly spirit, in the calm retreat and silent shade of religious meditation, in the all-sacred shrine of deepest self-surrender and self-consecration, what music of angels, what whisperings of the Spirit, what tones of Jesus himself, are heard, and what peace that passeth understanding steals blissfully in! But of the vacant hollows of religious unreality, mocking echoes are the tenants habitual, and winds of the most dismal wail wander endless in them! The heart of Judas was not in his work these three years. His concealed irritation must often have been severe. His thoughts were neither where his hands or lips were, and chagrin was often his meat day and night together. His life was joyless; and as the sun ripens all good fruits and many a bad fruit too, so as surely, though strangely, does the sunlessness of joylessness ripen with fearful rapidity and affect the ill fruits of the hypocrite and of religious unreality. And, beyond any doubt, it had been so now with Judas. Irritation, inside and unseen, brings, in bodily disease, many an unhealthy humor to the surface, and out of these forms the loathsome tumor, not infrequently fatal. It is so with the burnouts and the turnouts of a religious profession, career, and office, destitute of reality. In no other directions do disease and inward injury rankle to so deadly effect. Judas is a great Scripture typical warning against the profession, the work, the ministry, and the dignity of religion assumed for whatsoever reason, and by whomsoever, without reality. This is par excellence the usurpation that finds "its own fall, while the usurper falls by some "transgression," little matter what, to find "his own place.
4. The suffering to drift along a huge moral wrong in character and life. Judas was guilty, certainly, of such moral wrong. He was guilty of it in three directions as it affected his professed Master, as it affected his so-called fellow-disciples, and of necessity most of all as it concerned his own soul. If a man lets any serious wrong in his earthly affairs drift, it is not long before he finds it out, for it finds him out. Business rarely indeed drifts right of itself. But wrong never drifts right. Least of all does that highest fashion of moral wrong ever drift right, when the question lies in the domain that brings into contact that which is or ought to be highest in ourselves with that which is indisputably highest out of ourselves. All here is matter of consciousness, of real life, of spirit. It is past us altogether to say, what we almost irresistibly imagine, that Judas was often on the point of making a clean breast of it; but it is not past us to say that during those three years conscience must have often urged him to confess his mistake, to resign the livery he wore, to quit the Master"s shamed service, and the disciples" shamed society. In that event there would have been "room for repentance;" there would have been room for help; there would have been room to remonstrate, to rebuke, to revive some spark of grace, to recover yet a soul alive. From some loving brother he might have heard anticipated the words, "How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation?" and again, "It is impossible for those who were once enlightened if they shall fall away, to renew them again unto repentance." And the falling away might have been at the last averted. But no! Judas has no mercy on his own soul, because he will not be faithful even to it. The betrayer of his Master is the man to be the betrayer of himself. At every turn the career of Judas is fraught with solemn lessons for every one to whom the grace of discipleship to the Lord Jesus is offered. The character of the test ordained for him is scarcely less plainly or less concisely written than that ordained for our first parents. Yet, nevertheless, thousands of years have not passed away morally in vain in the world"s history. And in place of the test of an humble, practical obedience to one individual and merely physical command, the probation for Judas, and for every one of ourselves, is self-consecration to Jesus, Master and Savior, without one reservation, and personal holiness the sequel. B.
Vers. 16-19. Judas, an apostle.
That Judas should have been selected by Christ has occasioned much difficulty to Bible-readers. It is assumed that our Divine Lord, by his omniscient power, must have known what Judas really was, and what Judas would ultimately do. But it is so difficult for us to realize that, in gracious condescension, God put himself, in Christ, within the limitations and conditions of manhood; and as our Lord would not use his miraculous powers to provide for his own necessities, so he would not use his own miraculous knowledge to secure himself against the changes and possible crimes of his disciples. Keeping our thought of our Lord"s divinity back in our minds, we are to see that, in the selection of Judas, our Lord acted as a good and wise teacher might today. He estimated the qualities of Judas, and his fitness for the apostolic office, and on the ground of these he called him. That Judas had some special fitnesses, which others than Christ could recognize, is shown in the fact that all agreed to his having the trust of the. (Joh_13:29) Possibly for his practical business abilities he was chosen. Our Lord was condescendingly pleased to order his human life on the earth by his ordinary intellectual abilities as a man, and not by his Divine omniscience. And in this lies the great marvel of his humiliation and limitation. Nothing is said, on the occasion of the call of the apostles, to mark Judas off in any way. He is, indeed, named last, but this may have been due to the subsequent feeling of his brethren against him. That Jesus did absolutely know the character of the betrayer is indicated in Joh_6:64, Joh_6:70, Joh_6:71; but his allusions to him were not at the time understood by the apostles. The evil side of his character comes to view in Joh_12:6. His plot for the betrayal of Jesus may be given in detail. The idea that he deluded himself to suppose that his action would bring matters to a crisis, and lead Christ to declare himself and set up his kingdom, seems hardly tenable. If such was his thought, his money-loving gaze was set oil securing the chief place of trust in the new kingdom. His vice was covetousness. These remarks indicate so fully the line of thought respecting the office and the character of Judas, that we need give little more than the main topics needing treatment. The effort should be made to show that a root of evil lay in the very disposition of Judas; the circumstances in which he was placed ought to have checked its growth, and even turned it from evil to good. Instead of this, the circumstances were misused made to foster the evil into strength; and at last there came blossom and fruitage at which Judas himself, a little while before, would have shuddered. In this there is a solemn lesson for all time. We want to keep and cherish such a daily openness to God, that his grace shall sanctify all surrounding circumstances and influences to our good culture.
I THE EARLY PROMISE. "Once fair for the celestial city." Singularly privileged in call to apostleship. Early sincerity without depth. Usefulness for business qualities.
II THE FATAL TESTINGS. Privilege was too great. Trust of money tested his one great weakness money-loving. Opportunity of peculation became too great a temptation. Life finds scenes that surely test what we really are.
III THE AWFUL CRIME. The utter baseness of Judas"s action should be fully shown. Intense moral indignation against all betrayers of trust or of friends is perfectly right. The infinite tenderness and long-suffering of the Lord Jesus make this betrayal the worst ever known on earth. Is it possible that men nowadays may commit Judas"s crime? If so, how?
IV THE MISERABLE END. Remorse came. It is ever bitter and hopeless. It drove to suicide. Judas hanged himself in the very field bought with the rewards of his iniquity; and, being heavy, when they cut him down his body was miserably broken in its fall. The story adds the uttermost shame to the worst of crimes.
Learn that one evil disposition, if unchecked, may poison a whole life; and that this is peculiarly true if the evil disposition be covetousness. R.T.
Vers. 16-20. Jewish Christian reading of the Old Testament.
The Jews set an extraordinary value on their ancient Scriptures. They edited them with the utmost care; counted letters and words to ensure that no changes were made; read in them with regularity and order at synagogue-worship; and made elaborate commentaries on them. Of all these things details may be given. We notice
I THAT REFERENCES TO MESSIAH IN THE OLD TESTAMENT WERE FULLY RECOGNIZED BY THE JEWS. Apart altogether from the question In whom do we find the Messianic promise realized? it is well for us distinctly to see that the Jews always did, and do still, clearly recognize the Messianic feature of their ancient Scriptures. Christians do not import this element into them. So Christians and Jews have a common standing-ground and basis of argument. And from this common standpoint the apostles make their appeals. With an open Bible they plead for Christ"s claim to fulfill the predictions concerning Messiah. But we can hardly say that the Jewish modes of reading and translating the ancient Scriptures are altogether satisfactory to us as Christians in these days. The intense national feeling concerning Messiah made them over-keen to discover Messianic allusions, and they had ways of allegorizing and spiritualizing which we are unable to appreciate. Some of the so-called proofs, from Old Testament Scriptures, given by the apostles appear to us to be illustrations rather than argumentative proofs. We cannot find any designed reference to Judas Iscariot in the passage here taken from the Psalms, only an appropriateness in the historical allusion to one who, though righteous, was a victim of treachery. The psalmist presents a parallel case to that of Judas; but to recognize this suffices for us, and we need not see a definite prophecy of the betrayer. Urge the essential unity and harmony of God"s Word in its great principles, which find repetition in every age. Show that we endeavor first fully to apprehend the original, local, and historical reference of a passage, and from it gather the principle which may be of permanent application. Further point out that distinct Messianic references, many and various in form, can be traced; but caution is necessary, lest we force these unduly, and add to them upon insufficient grounds. We recognize two senses of Scripture, which may be called
(1) the literal and historical; and
(2) the moral and mystical.
For the first we need culture, for the second spiritual insight and sympathy. Then if we have these fitnesses to us the Bible seems to be full of Christ, because of the truths he came to declare, and the life he came on earth to live the life of believing and obedient sonship to God.
II To THESE MESSIANIC REFERENCES IN THE OLD TESTAMENT THE APOSTLES HAD A QUICKENED VISION. They knew well the life-story of the Lord Jesus. They fully believed him to be the Messiah. With this in their minds, the Old Testament seemed to them to be full of him. But there was some danger of extravagance. They were liable to bring the Messiahship into passages, rather than to find him in them. The Divine Spirit in them needed to be fully followed, as "leading them into all truth." At the time of Peter"s speech the special gift of the Spirit had not come to the apostles; so we have only Peter"s opinion, and must take it for what it may be worth. Impress our duty to God"s sacred Word. The reverence with which it should ever be treated; the anxiety we should cherish lest, to any portion of it, we should give a private and self-willed interpretation; the need for constant openness to the leadings of the Holy Spirit; and the certainty that he will help us to find Christ everywhere, the "Alpha and Omega" of the Book. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv16, 21, 23 Men and brethren, this Scripture must needs have been…
Act_1:16-20
Men and brethren, this Scripture must needs have been fulfilled … concerning Judas.
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The subserviency of crime to the purposes of God
We know not a more remarkable expression than The wrath of man shall praise Thee, the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain. The manner in which God overrules wickedness, and by which crime is as much an instrument in His hands as obedience, evidences our Makers greatness as well as His unlimited dominion. God is able to reckon with thorough certainty upon the commission of a crime, and yet leave men quite free in the commission. We are so accustomed to denounce the traitor for his crime, that we are apt to overlook the important ends which are eventually subserved. It will be our object to exhibit generally the testimony to Christianity which is furnished by the treason of Judas.
I. Let us premise one or two observations upon the character of Judas; for bad as this was, it may by possibility be misrepresented. We see no reason to believe that Judas had any design on the life of his Master, for, seeing the consequences of his treachery, he was tern with mortification and remorse. He might have supposed it highly improbable that, by placing Christ in the hands of His enemies, he would have been instrumental in His death; for the Jews had then no legal power of putting to death; and it was not likely that the Romans would pay attention to their accusations. Judas then may have calculated that all that could be done to Christ would be putting some restraint upon His person, and preventing Him from further propagating the religion, by whose precepts he himself was condemned.
II. We shall proceed, on this supposition, in tracing the ends which the treachery subserved. You may imagine that the traitor seized a favourable opportunity of indulging his avarice, and of stopping the diffusion of a religion, which, as a money-grasping man, he must have cordially disliked, Now, if he had been possessed of any information which at all tended to invalidate its truth, how eagerly would he have adduced it, and the chief priests have received it! The mere putting to death was as nothing compared with the proving Him a deceiver. And yet Judas, eager as he was for money, and anxious to crush the new religion, has no intelligence to give which may disprove Christs pretensions. This is amongst the strongest of proofs that Christ was a teacher sent from God.
1. Our Lords pretensions rested chiefly on His miracles, so that to show deceit in the one would have overthrown the other. Infidelity will sometimes argue that there might have been collusion in the miracles. Now, had this been the case, Judas must have known it, and if Judas must have known, this would have been a fine piece of intelligence to have sold to the chief priests, and by communicating it he would at once have enriched himself and destroyed Christianity. Nay, he would have done a righteous deed; and while gratifying his avarice, he would have laid up no food for remorse.
2. The infant religion might have been assailed with at least equal power through the moral character of its Founder. And one of the most beautiful arguments by which we may defend Christianity is derived from the more than human purity of Christ. And if it were possible to invalidate in the least degree the truth that Christ did no sin, neither was guile found in His mouth, the whole system would fall to the ground. Mark, that the chief priests and all the council sought for witness against Jesus to put Him to death; and they found none. Yet they were bargaining with Judas, one of His intimate associates, who must have been accurately acquainted with all the flaws, if such there were, in His character. In the silence of this traitor in selling his Master, we find irresistible attestation to the fact that Christ Jesus was indeed a lamb without blemish and without spot.
3. The prophecies might have been frustrated. It had been declared, in Zechariah, that the Messiah should be sold for thirty pieces of silver, and this price be given to the potter. Now had the chief priest and scribes offered more than thirty pieces, or had Judas been contented with fewer, or had the price of blood, when returned by the traitor, been spent on the land of any but a potter, there would have been a defect in the evidence that Jesus was the Christ. And the infatuated rulers could not see this. Perhaps they drove a hard bargain with Judas, beating him down till they reached the exact sum which prophecy specified as the number of the pieces of metal. They never thought, when exulting that they had bought Jesus at the price of a slave, that they had completed the evidence of His being their king. The like may be said of the potters field. With all their profligacy, they were scrupulous in touching the money; and therefore will they use it in proving Jesus the Christ. It shall buy the potters field--the only purpose to which it can be turned; and after being the price of His blood it shall serve to prove His commission. The only prophecies with which infidelity could be successfully pressed are those in which it is impossible that the parties professedly interested should have planned or procured the accomplishment. Nothing can more directly answer this commission than those which have reference to the compact with Judas. Conclusion: This is our consolation whilst the heathen rage and the people imagine a vain thing--we know that the will of our Creator shall take effect. Hostility and malice and treachery shall prevail nothing against the Lord and His Christ. They shall but defend and consolidate the Church. Judas Iscariot vindicates the Master he betrayed, and sustains the cause from which he apostatised. Therefore need we be nothing dismayed if the wicked combine to oppose Christianity. There is one that sits above the tempest, and so directs it, that its fury shall be spent on those by whom it has been raised. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
Judas: his sin
He was guide to them that took Jesus.
I. There are two ways to take Christ.
1. Faith takes Jesus. It takes Christ at His word.
(1) In His promises.
(2) In His warnings, when He directs the life by those careful provisions and restrictions which are found everywhere in His Word.
(3) In His precepts, when it strives to obey that which He commands, to submit to that which He appoints.
(4) In His person.
(5) In His covenanted presence in this world by the Spirit.
2. Falseness takes Christ. Inspired by hatred of His words, by restlessness under His control, by uncongeniality with His spirit, it cries, I will not; have this man to reign over me. And when that spirit of opposition is developed there is no mode of destruction too vile for falseness to accept. The world is full of those who are controlled by this hostility. Opposition to Jesus among men only lacks leadership; and whensoever such a guide is found they covenant with him even to a costly sacrifice if he will deliver the Jesus of the Church into their hands. Pilates timidity, and Herods overweening, weak curiosity, are bad enough in condemning Christ; but He says, He that delivered Me unto thee hath the greater sin. It is not enough that the Judas who guides this hostility should plead his own freedom from violence. He adds meanness to his other sins when he shirks the responsibility he has assumed. There are multitudes who need no accusers before Gods throne. There are those who confess that they are opponents, and mean to be such, and whose only apology is, At all events, we do not profess to be anything better, and in Gods book of remembrance their apology becomes their accusation. Then there are those who say, We know the truth perfectly. Then, brother, if thy life is still against Christ, when thou shalt stand before that terrible bar thine own faith shall testify against thee. Of all dooms there is none so dreadful as that of him who strives to hold the privilege of professed discipleship, and yet is a guide to them that take Jesus.
II. Three steps which such a guide must take. Only three? How short a journey it is! David sums it up with other words in his first Psalm. The likeness of Judas life in these three respects can be traced, I fear, in that of some of us.
1. He counsels with Jesus enemies.
2. He reveals His hiding.
3. He perverts a profession of affection. (S. H. Tyng, D. D.)
Gods foreknowledge practically considered
Foreknowledge and predestination are not subjects for a careless, trifling, or cavilling mind to grapple with. Neither are they subjects which, under any circumstances, admit of being treated in an abstract or mere speculative way. That God foreknows all actions, and all occurrences, we cannot deny, without at once stripping Him of an essential attribute of His being. That His foreknowledge comprehends the final destiny of every human being, is clear. In order, however, to get rid of this inevitable conclusion, the doctrine of contingencies is sometimes resorted to; and we are asked how a thing can be certainly foreknown which is dependent upon occurrencies that may or may not take place. This is a mere evasion--the raising of a second difficulty, in order to dispose of the first. Is it more difficult for God to foresee the working contingencies, and the specific movements of pure volition, than it would be to foresee those results if they were suspended upon an absolute decree? But we are told that by pressing the doctrine of foreknowledge we place ourselves on the threshold of predestination; inasmuch as a thing definitely foreknown is as certain as a thing positively foreordained. I have neither the power nor the will to resist this inference, because I believe it to be a legitimate conclusion arising out of undeniable premisses. But then we are told, further, and by another class of persons, that foreknowledge and predestination involve in them the execution of a decree, whereby a large portion of mankind are reprobated and doomed to eternal misery; and the case of Judas is referred to as an instance in point. Here we are completely at issue with them, and for this plain reason--that the Bible speaks a different; language from that which they see fit to employ on the subject. The Bible represents the door of mercy as being wide open for the admission of every son and daughter of Adam. If the language actually employed by the inspired writers does not tell me that Christ died for all, could any other language have been adopted by them, calculated to convey the idea more forcibly, admitting that they wished to convey it at all? A second thought which presses itself upon the attention, as the result of a fair survey of the book of God, is,--that where the offers of mercy are rejected, such rejection is altogether voluntary: in other words, that obstacles to salvation rest entirely with man; and that every sinner who perishes under a blaze of evangelical light, is, to all intents, a self-destroyer. Still, however, though the theory of absolute unconditional reprobation is disproved by the testimony of Scripture, there is a rebounding echo which says that foreknowledge is certainty; and that if God foreknows who of His creatures will be finally saved, and who of them will be eternally lost, it amounts to the same thing, so far as the single point of destination is concerned, as if He had positively decreed life to some and death to others. This, again, is a position which I shall not attempt to controvert; and yet it is a position requiring to be taken in connection with the elucidation of certain principles which are constantly and practically operating in the affairs of human life. God foreknows everything; and yet man acts as if He foreknew nothing. Volition is as perfect, the will is as unfettered in the one case as it would or could be in the other. Simple foreknowledge, as distinguished from absolute predestination, is founded on free agency, and in no way does it influence or control it. The very certainty by which it is characterised is the result of free agents acting as they please, of rational intelligences ranging at large in the wide field of unrestrained liberty. If men are not saved, it is because they refuse to be saved, and for no other cause; and hence we may well ask, Where is the humility, where is the wisdom, where is the piety, of persons disquieting their minds, because their Creator is an omniscient Intelligence, and because the attribute of omniscience involves foreknowledge and certainty? You will observe that I have confined myself to the point of foreknowledge, leaving that of predestination, excepting incidently, untouched. I have done so because I consider it as irrelevant to the case of Judas, and not propounded, either directly or by implication, in the text. Predestination stands closely connected with sovereignty; and sovereignty has exclusively to do with the bestowment of good; exerting itself solely in acts of beneficence; decreeing blessings, not curses; ordaining men to life, not dooming them to destruction. At the same time, I cannot refrain from saying, in reference to predestination, that, in a practical point of view, it presents, so far as I can judge, no greater difficulties to the mind than those connected with foreknowledge. It is equally consistent with the freedom of man as a rational agent, with the universality of gospel offers, and with the fulness of gospel grace. Conclusion:
1. The subject we have considered constitutes a loud call to humanity. Instead of cavilling at difficulties, let us resolve them into the imperfection of mortal vision; and, instead of boasting our mental powers, let us lie prostrate at the Divine footstool, as those who feel their own littleness, and are sensible how blind and ignorant they are, in reference to heavenly things.
2. The subject should guard us against the error of suffering ourselves to be fettered by any human system. Let promises and precepts, doctrines, and duties, decrees and responsibilities, occupy the places assigned to them on the page of Scripture; and what God has joined together let not the presumptuous hand of man dare to put asunder.
3. The contemplation of Gods foreknowledge should never be engaged in otherwise than in close connection with gospel promises and gospel precepts. God knows no such character as a sincere inquirer shut out from mercys gate; and sooner shall the sun be shorn of its beams--sooner shall the rainbow discharge its beauteous colours--than a praying soul shall perish, because Divine foresight takes cognizance of human destination.
4. The doctrine of Divine foreknowledge, as taught in Scripture directly and inferentially, tends, when duly apprehended, through a spiritual medium, both to impart comfort, and to prompt exertion. In proportion as faith and hope ripen into assurance, the soul is perceptibly strengthened for the performance of its active duties; and on the same principle, the certainty of Divine foreknowledge, irradiated with the bright beams of evangelical promise, so stimulates the believers energies Chat he becomes ready to every good work--steadfast, unmoveable, always abounding in the work of the Lord. (Wm. Knight, M. A.)
Judass iniquity and its consequences
From these learn--
1. How great a sin avarice is, and to what a depth of wickedness it precipitates a man.
2. How deep the fall of those who fall from great grace and from high privileges.
3. How grievous the sin of desperation. It was this which made the difference between the sin of the traitor and that of the denier. (Cornelius Lapide.)
Judas: his fate
He fell headlong, or, rather, flat on his face (cf. Josephus, Jewish Wars, 6:1-6)
, a fact not contradictory, but additional, to the circumstances mentioned in Mat_27:5, where the word is the same as that used by the LXX. concerning Ahithophel. Theophylact explained that the rope broke, Judas having flung himself off some height. It will be remembered that ten thousand Idumean captives, cast down from the top of a rock, after Amaziahs victory, were all broken in pieces (2Ch_25:12). (Bp. Jacobsen.)
A traitors death
The Duke of Buckingham, having by an unfortunate accident lost the army which he had raised against the usurper Richard III., was forced to flee for his life without page or attendant. At last he took refuge in the house of Humphrey Bannister at Shrewsbury, who, being one of his servants, and having formerly raised him from a low condition, would, he trusted, be ready to afford him every possible protection. Bannister, however, upon the kings proclamation, promising £1,000 reward to him that should apprehend the Duke, betrayed his master to John Merton, high sheriff of Shropshire, who sent him under a strong guard to Salisbury, where the king then was, by whom he was condemned to be beheaded. But Divine vengeance pursued the traitor and his family; for, on demanding the £1,000, that was the price of his masters blood, King Richard refused to pay it, saying, He that would be false to so good a master ought not to be encouraged. He was afterwards hanged for manslaughter: his eldest son fell into a state of derangement, and died in a hog-sty; his second son became deformed and lame; his third son was drowned in a small pool of water, and the rest of his family perished miserably.
The potters field
At Jerusalem traces of an ancient gateway have been discovered, apparently that known as The Gate of the Potters, the quarter where earthenware was manufactured. Opposite to this lies the Potters Field, still called Aceldama, on which rises an old ruin thirty feet long and twenty feet wide, the whole forming a flat-roofed cover to a dismal house of the dead. Two caverns open in the floor, their rocky sides pierced with holes for bodies; and galleries of holes run into the hill from the bottom. Holes in the roof are still seen through which the corpses were let down by ropes, and there are marks of the steps by which the tombs were entered. (C. Geikie, D. D.)
Aceldama, the field of blood
Bought with the price of blood (Mat_27:8), and, according to received tradition, stained with the blood of Judas. The name would remind Jewish readers of that bloodshedding, the consequences of which had been invoked on themselves and on their children. The place commonly shown as Aceldama has ever been famous on account of the sarcophagus virtue possessed by the earth in hastening the decay of dead bodies. Shiploads of it were carried to the Campo Santo in Pisa. (Bp. Jacobsen.)
Aceldama
The gambling spirit, which is at all times a stupendous evil, ever and anon sweeps over the country like an epidemic, prostrating uncounted thousands. There has never been a worse attack than that from which all the villages, towns, and cities are now suffering.
1. This sin works ruin, first, by providing an unhealthful stimulant.
2. Again, this sin works ruin by killing industry.
3. Furthermore, this sin is the source of dishonesty.
4. Notice also the effect of this crime upon domestic happiness. (T. de Witt Talmage.)
The prophecies in Peters speech
The first quotation (verse 20) down to therein is taken substantially from Psa_69:25, with some compression of LXX., and a variation in the number of the pronoun from plural to singular, by which Judas is taken as a representative of Christs enemies. This Psalm, quoted in the New Testament oftener than any other, except 22., is pre-eminently Messianic. Verse 9 is applied to Christ by John (Joh_2:17); the words immediately following by Paul (Rom_15:3); and the fulfilment of verse 21 is noted by John (Joh_19:28-30). The second quotation is taken with verbal exactness from LXX., Psa_109:8 --the Iscariot Psalm. The conduct of Judas warranted the identifying him with Doeg and Ahithophel. David and his enemies are treated as types of Christ and His enemies. And after the exposition given by our Lord (Luk_24:44), it is out of the question to impute to Peter misunderstanding or misapplication. (Bp. Jacobsen.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v24 Chapter 4
Chapter 4
THE ELECTION OF MATTHIAS.
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Act_1:24-26
We have selected the incident of this apostolic election as the central point round which to group the events of the ten days expectation which elapsed between the Ascension and Pentecost. But though this election is a most important fact, in itself and in the principles involved therein, yet there are numerous other circumstances in this waiting time which demand and will amply repay our thoughtful attention.
I. There is, for instance, the simple fact that ten days were allowed to elapse between Christs departure and the fulfilment of His promise to send the Comforter to take His place with His bereaved flock. The work of the worlds salvation depended upon the outcome of this Divine agent. "Tarry ye in the city till ye be endued with power from on high"; and all the time souls were hurrying on to destruction, and society was becoming worse and worse, and Satans hold upon the world was daily growing in strength. God, however, acted in this interval according to the principles we see illustrated in nature as well as in revelation. He does nothing in a hurry. The Incarnation was postponed for thousands of years. When the Incarnation took place, Christ grew up slowly, and developed patiently, till the day of His manifestation to Israel. And now that Christs public work on earth was done, there is no haste in the further development of the plan of salvation, but ten days are suffered, to elapse before His promise is fulfilled. What a rebuke we read in the Divine methods of that faithless, unbelieving haste which marks and mars so many of our efforts for truth and righteousness, and specially so in these concluding years of the nineteenth century. Never did the Church stand more in need of the lesson so often thus impressed upon her by her Divine Teacher. As Christ did not strive nor cry, neither did any man hear His voice in the streets, so neither did He make haste, because He lived animated by Divine strength and wisdom, which make even apparent delay and defeat conduce to the attainment of the highest ends of love and mercy. And so, too, Christs Church still does not need the bustle, the haste, the unnatural excitement which the world thinks needful, because she labours under a sense of Divine guidance, and imitates His example who kept His Apostles waiting ten long days before He fulfilled His appointed promise. What a lesson of comfort, again, this Divine delay teaches! We are often inclined to murmur in secret at the slow progress of Gods Church and kingdom. We think that if we had the management of the worlds affairs things would have been ordered otherwise, and the progress of truth be one long-continued march of triumph. A consideration of the Divine delays in the past helps us to bear this burden, though it may not explain the difficulty. Gods delays have turned out to His greater glory in the past, and they who wait patiently upon Him will find the Divine delays of the present dispensation equally well ordered.
II. Then again, how carefully, even in His delays, God honours the elder dispensation, though now it had grown old and was ready to vanish away. Christianity had none of that revolutionary spirit which makes a clean sweep of old institutions to build up a new fabric in their stead. Christianity, on the contrary, rooted itself in the past, retained old institutions and old ideas, elevating indeed and spiritualising them, and thus slowly broadened down from precedent to precedent. This truly conservative spirit of the new dispensation is manifest in every arrangement, and specially reveals itself in the times selected for the great events of our Lords ministry-Easter, Ascension, then the ten days of expectation, and then Pentecost. And it was most fitting that it should be so. The old dispensation was a shadow and picture of the higher and better covenant one day to be unfolded. Moses was told to make the tabernacle after the pattern shown to him in the mount, and the whole typical system of Judaism was modelled after a heavenly original to which Christ conformed in the work of mans salvation.
At the first Passover, the paschal lamb was offered up and the deliverance from Egypt effected; and so, too, at the Passover the true Paschal Lamb, Jesus Christ, was presented unto God as an acceptable sacrifice, and the deliverance effected of the true Israel from the spiritual Egypt of the world. Forty days after the Passover, Israel came to the mount of God, into which Moses ascended that he might receive the gifts for the people; and forty days after the last great Paschal Offering, the great spiritual Captain and Deliverer ascended into the Mount of God, that He, in turn, might receive highest spiritual blessings and a new law of life for Gods true people. Then there came the ten days of expectation and trial, when the Apostles were called to wait upon God and prove the blessings of patient abiding upon Him, just as the Israelites were called to wait upon God while Moses was absent in the mount. But how different the conduct of the Apostles from that of the more carnal Jews! How typical of the future of the two religions - the Jewish and the Christian! The Jews walked by sight, and not byfaith; they grew impatient, and made an image, the golden calf, to be their visible Deity. The Apostles tarried in patience, because they were walking by faith, and they received in return the blessing of an ever-present unseen Guide and Comforter to lead them, and all who like them seek His help, into the ways of truth and peace. And then, when the waiting time is past, the feast of Pentecost comes, and at Pentecost, the feast of the giving of the old law, as the Jews counted it, the new law of life and power, written not on stony tables, but on the fleshy tables of the heart is granted in the gift of the Divine Comforter. All the lines of the old system are carefully followed, and Christianity is thus shown to be, not a novel invention, but the development and fulfilment of Gods ancient purposes. We can scarcely appreciate nowadays the importance and stress laid upon this view among the ancient expositors and apologists. It was a favourite taunt used by the pagans of Greece and Rome against Christianity that it was only a religion of yesterday, a mere novelty, as compared with their own systems, which descended to them from the dawn of history. This taunt has been indeed most useful in its results for us moderns, because it led the ancient Christians to pay the most careful attention to chronology and historical studies, producing as the result works like "The Chronicle of Eusebius," to which secular history itself owes the greatest obligations.
The heathens reproached Christians with the novelty of their faith, and then the early Christians replied by pointing to history, which proved that the Jewish religion was far older than any other, maintaining at the same time that Christianity was merely the development of the Jewish religion, the completion and fulfilment in fact and reality of what Judaism had shadowed forth in the ritual of the Passover and of Pentecost.
III. We notice again in this connection the place where the Apostles met, and the manner in which they continued to assemble after the ascension, and while they waited for the fulfilment of the Masters promise: "They returned unto Jerusalem, and they went up into an upper chamber." Round this upper room at Jerusalem has gathered many a story dating from very early ages indeed. The upper room in which they assembled has been identified with the chamber in which the Last Supper was celebrated, and where the gift of the Holy Ghost was first received, and that from ancient times. Epiphanius, a Christian writer of the fourth century, to whom we owe much precious information concerning the early ages of the Church, tells us that there was a church built on this spot even in Hadrians time, that is, about the year 120 A.D. The Empress Helena, again, the mother of Constantine the Great, identified or thought she identified the spot, and built a splendid church to mark it out for all time; and succeeding ages have spent much care and thought upon it. St. Cyril of Jerusalem was a writer little referred to and little known in our day, who yet has much precious truth to teach us. He was a learned bishop of Jerusalem about the middle of the fourth century, and he left us catechetical lectures, showing what pains and trouble the Early Church took in the inculcation of the fundamental articles of the Christian creed. His catechetical lectures, delivered to the candidates for baptism, contain much valuable evidence of the belief, the practice, and the discipline of the early ages, and they mention among other points the church built upon Mount Zion on the spot once occupied by this upper room. The tradition, then, which deals with this chamber and points out its site goes back to the ages of persecution; and yet it is notable how little trouble the book of the Acts of the Apostles takes in this matter. It is just the same with this upper chamber as with the other localities in which our Lords mighty works were wrought. The Gospels tell us not where His temptations occurred, though man has often tried to fix the exact locality. The site of the Transfiguration and of the true Mount of Beatitudes has engaged much human curiosity; the scene of Peters vision at Joppa and of St. Pauls conversion on the road to Damascus, -all these and many other divinely honoured localities of the Old as well as of the New Testament have been shrouded from us in thickest darkness, that we might learn not to fix our eyes upon the external husk, the locality, the circumstances, the time, which are nothing, but upon the interior spirit, the love, the unity, the devotion and self-sacrifice which constitute in the Divine sight the very heart and core of our holy religion. They assembled themselves, too, in this upper chamber in a united spirit, such as Christianity, though only in an undeveloped shape, already dictated. The Apostles "continued steadfastly in prayer, with the women also, and Mary, the mother of Jesus." The spirit of Christianity was, I say, already manifesting itself.
In the temple, as in the synagogues to this day, the women prayed in a separate place; they were not united with the men, but parted from them by a screen. But in Christ Jesus there was to be neither male nor female. The man in virtue of his manhood had no advantage or superiority over the woman in virtue of her womanhood; and so the Apostles gathered themselves at the footstool of their common Father in union with the women, and with Mary the mother of Jesus. How simple, again, this last mention of the Blessed Virgin Mother of the Lord! how strangely and strongly contrasted the scriptural record is with the fables and legends which have grown up round the memory of her whom all generations must ever call blessed. Nothing, in fact, shows more plainly the historic character of the book we are studying than a comparison of this last simple notice with the legend of the assumption of the Blessed Virgin as it has been held since the fifth century, and as it is now believed in the Church of Rome. The popular account of this fabled incident arose in the East amid the controversies which rent the Church concerning the Person of Christ in the fifth century. It taught that the Holy Virgin, a year or so after the ascension, besought the Lord to release her; upon which the angel Gabriel was sent to announce her departure in three days time. The Apostles were thereupon summoned from the different parts of the world whither they had departed. John came from Ephesus, Peter from Rome, Thomas from India, each being miraculously wafted on a cloud from his special sphere of labour, while those of the apostolic company who had died were raised for the occasion. On the third day the Lord descended from heaven with the angels, and took to Himself the soul of the Virgin. The Jews then attempted to burn the body, which was miraculously rescued and buried in a new tomb, prepared by Joseph of Arimathaea in the Valley of Jehoshaphat. For two days the angels were heard singing at the tomb, but on the third day their songs ceased, and the Apostles then knew that the body had been transferred to Paradise. St. Thomas was indeed vouchsafed a glimpse of her ascension, and at his request she dropped him her girdle as a token, whereupon he went to his brother Apostles and declared her sepulchre to be empty. The Apostles regarded this as merely a sign of his customary incredulity, but on production of the girdle they were convinced, and on visiting the grave found the body gone.
Can any contrast be greater or more striking between the inspired narrative, composed for the purpose of ministering to godly life and practice, and such legendary fables as this, invented to gratify mere human curiosity, or to secure a temporary controversial triumph? The Divine narrative shrouds in thickest darkness details which have no spiritual significance, no direct bearing on the work of mans salvation. The human fable intrudes into the things unseen, and revels with a childish delight in the regions of the supernatural and miraculous.
What a striking likeness do we trace between the composition of the Acts and of the Gospels in this direction! The self-restraint of the evangelical writers is wondrous. Had the Evangelists been mere human biographers, how they would have delighted to expatiate on the childhood and youth and earlier years of Christs manhood. The apocryphal Gospels composed in the second and third centuries show us what Our Gospels would have been had they been written by men destitute of an abundant supply of the Divine Spirit. They enter into the most minute incidents of our Lords childhood, tell us of His games, His schoolboy days, of the flashes of the supernatural glory which ever betrayed the awful Being who lay hidden beneath. The Gospels, on the other hand, fling a hallowed and reverent veil over all the details, or almost all the details, of our Lords early life. They tell us of His birth, and its circumstances and surroundings, that we might learn the needful lesson of the infinite glory, the transcendent greatness of lowliness and humiliation. They give us a glimpse of our Lords development when twelve years old, that we may learn the spiritual strength and force which are produced through the discipline of obedience and patient waiting upon God; and then all else is concealed from human vision till the hour was come for the manifestation of the full-orbed God-Man. And as it was with the Eternal Son, so was it with that earthly parent whom the consensus of universal Christendom has agreed to honour as the type of devout faith, of humble submission, of loving motherhood. Fable has grown thick round her in mere human narrative, but when we turn to the inspired Word, whether in the Gospels or in the Acts, - for it is all the same in both, - we find a story simple, restrained, and yet captivating in all its details, ministering indeed to no prurient curiosity, yet rich in all the materials which serve to devout meditation, culminating in this last record, where the earthly parent finally disappears from out of sight, eclipsed by the heavenly glory of the Divine Son:-"These all continued stedfastly in prayer, with the women, and Mary, the mother of Jesus."
IV. And then we have the record of the apostolic election, which is rich in teaching. We note the person who took the first step, and his character, so thoroughly in unison with that picture which the four Gospels present. St. Peter was not a forward man in the bad sense of the word, but he possessed that energetic, forcible character to which men yield a natural leadership. Till St. Paul appeared St. Peter was regarded as the spokesman of the apostolic band, just as during our Lords earthly ministry the same position was by tacit consent accorded to him. He was one of those men who cannot remain inactive, especially when they see anything wanting. There are some men who can see a defect just as clearly, but their first thought is, What have I to do with it? They behold the need, but it never strikes them that they should attempt to rectify it. St. Peter was just the opposite: when he saw a fault or a want his disposition and his natural gifts at once impelled him to strive to rectify it. When our Lord, in view of the contending rumours afloat concerning His ministry and authority, applied this searching test to His Apostles, "But whom do ye say that I am?" it was Peter that boldly responded, "Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God." Just as a short time afterwards the same Peter incurred Christs condemnation when he rebuked the Saviour for the prophecy of His forthcoming death and humiliation. The character of St. Peter as depicted in the Gospels and the Acts is at unison with itself. It is that of one ever generous, courageous, intensely sympathetic, impulsive, but deficient, as impulsive and sympathetic characters often are, m that staying power, that capacity to bear up under defeat, discouragement, and darkness which so conspicuously marked out the great Apostle of the Gentiles, and made him such a pillar in the spiritual temple of the New Jerusalem. Yet St. Peter did his own work, for God can ever find employment suitable to every type of that vast variety of temperament which finds shelter beneath the roof of Christs Church. St. Peters impulsiveness, chastened by prayer, solemnised by his own sad personal experience, deepened by the bitter sorrow consequent on his terrible fall, urged him to take the first conscious step as the leader of the newly-constituted society. How very similar the Peter of the Acts is to the Peter of St. Matthew; what an undesigned evidence of the truth of these records we trace in the picture of St. Peter presented by either narrative! Just as St. Peter was in the Gospels the first to confess at Caesarea, the first to strike in the garden, the first to fail in the high priests palace, so was he the first "to stand up in these days in the midst of the brethren," and propose the first corporate movement on the Churchs part.
Here again we note that his attitude at this apostolic election proves that the interviews which St. Peter held with Christ after the Resurrection must have been lengthened, intimate, and frequent, for St. Peters whole view of the Christian organisation seems thoroughly changed. Christ had continued with His Apostles during forty days, speaking to them of the things concerning the kingdom of God; and St. Peter, as he had been for years one of the Lords most intimate friends, so he doubtless still held the same trusted position in these post-resurrection days. The Lord revealed to him the outlines of His kingdom, and sketched for him the main lines of its development, teaching him that the Church was not to be a knot of personal disciples, dependent upon His manifested bodily presence, and dissolving into its original elements as soon as that bodily presence ceased to be realised by the eye of sense; but was rather to be a corporation with perpetual succession, to use legal language, whose great work was to be an unceasing witness to Christs resurrection. If Peters mind had not been thus illuminated and guided by the personal instruction of Christ, how came it to pass that prior to the descent of the Spirit the Apostles move with no uncertain step in this matter, and unhesitatingly fill up the blank in the sacred college by the election of Matthias into the place left vacant by the terrible fall of Judas? The speech of St. Peter and the choice of this new Apostle reflect light back upon the forty days of waiting. No objection is raised, no warm debate takes place such as heralded the solution of the vexed question concerning circumcision at the council of Jerusalem; no one suggests that as Christ Himself had not supplied the vacancy the choice should be postponed till after the fulfilment of the Masters mysterious promise, because they were all instructed as to our Lords wishes by the conversations held with Christ during His risen and glorified life.
Let us pause a little to meditate upon an objection which might have been here raised. Why fill up what Christ Himself left vacant? some shortsighted objector might have urged; and yet we see good reason why Christ may have omitted to supply the place of Judas, and may have designed that the Apostles themselves should have done so. Our Lord Jesus Christ gifted His Apostles with corporate power; He bestowed upon them authority to act in His stead and name; and it is not Gods way of action to grant power and authority, and then to allow it to remain unexercised and undeveloped. When God confers any gift He expects that it shall be used for His honour and mans benefit. The Lord had bestowed upon the Apostles the highest honour, the most wondrous power ever given to men. He had called them to an office of which He Himself had spoken very mysterious things. He had told them that, in virtue of the apostolic dignity conferred upon them, they should in the regeneration of all things sit upon thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel. He had spoken, too, of a mysterious authority with which they were invested, so that their decisions here upon earth would be ratified and confirmed in the region of heavenly realities. Yet when a gap is made by successful sin in the number of the mystical twelve, who are to judge the twelve tribes, He leaves the selection of a new Apostle to the remaining eleven, in order that they may be compelled to stir up the grace of God which was in them, and to exercise the power entrusted to them under a due sense of responsibility. The Lord thus wished to teach the Church from the earliest days to walk alone. The Apostles had been long enough depending on His personal presence and guidance, and now, that they might learn to exercise the privileges and duties of their Divine freedom, He leaves them to choose one to fill that position of supernatural rank and office from which Judas had fallen. The risen Saviour acted in grace as God ever acts in nature. He bestowed His gifts lavishly and generously and then expected man to respond to the gifts by making that good use of them which earnest prayer, sanctified reason, and Christian common-sense dictated.
St. Peters action is notable, too, in another aspect. St. Peter was undoubtedly the natural leader of the apostolic band during those earliest days of the Churchs history. Our Lord Himself recognised his natural gifts as qualifying him to fulfil this position. There is no necessity for a denial on our part of the reality of St. Peters privilege as contained in such passages as the verse which says, "I will give unto thee (Peter) the keys of the kingdom of heaven." He was eminently energetic, vigorous, quick in action. But we find no traces of that despotic authority as prince of the Apostles and supreme head over the whole Church with which some would fain invest St. Peter and his successors. St. Peter steps forward first on this occasion, as again on the day of Pentecost, and again before the high priest after the healing of the impotent man, and yet again at the council of Jerusalem; for, as we have already noted, St. Peter possessed in abundance that natural energy which impels a man to action without any desire for notoriety or any wish to thrust himself into positions of undue eminence. But then on every occasion St. Peter speaks as an equal to his equals. He claims no supreme authority; no authority, in fact, at all over and beyond what the others possessed. He does not, for instance, on this occasion claim the right as Christs vicar to nominate an Apostle into the place of Judas. He merely asserts his lawful place in Christs kingdom as first among a body of equals to suggest a course of action to the whole body which he knew to be in keeping with the Masters wishes, and in fulfilment of His revealed intentions.
V. The address of St. Peter led the Apostles to practical action. He laid the basis of it in the book of Psalms, the mystical application of which to our Lord and His sufferings he recognises, selecting passages from the sixty-ninth and the one hundredth and ninth Psalms as depicting the sin and the fate of Judas Iscariot; and then sets forth the necessity of filling up the vacancy in the apostolic office, a fact of which he had doubtless been certified by the Master Himself. He speaks as if the College of the Apostles had a definite work and office; a witness peculiar to themselves as Apostles, which no others except Apostles could render. This is manifest from the language of St. Peter. He lays down the conditions of a possible Apostle: he must have been a witness of all that Jesus had done and taught from the time of His baptism to His ascension. But this qualification alone would not make a man an Apostle, or qualify him to bear the witness peculiar to the apostolic office. There were evidently numerous such witnesses, but they were not Apostles, and had none of the power and privileges of the Twelve. He must be chosen by his brother Apostles. and their choice must be endorsed by heaven; and then the chosen witness, who had known the past, could testify to the resurrection in particular, with a weight, authority, and dignity he never possessed before. The apostolic office was the germ out of which the whole Christian ministry was developed, and the apostolic witness was typical of that witness to the resurrection which is not the duty alone, but also the strength and glory of the Christian ministry; for it is only as the ministers and witnesses of a risen and glorified Christ that they differ from the officials of a purely human association.
After St. Peter had spoken, two persons were selected as possessing the qualifications needful in the successor of Judas. Then when the Apostles had elected they prayed, and cast lots as between the two, and the final selection of Matthias was made. Questions have sometimes been raised as to this method of election, and attempts have been sometimes made to follow the precedent here set. The lot has at times been used to supersede the exercise of human judgment, not only in Church elections, but in the ordinary matters of life; but if this passage is closely examined, it will be seen that it affords no justification for any such practice. The Apostles did not use the lot so as to supersede the exercise of their own powers, or relieve them of that personal responsibility which God has imposed on men, whether as individuals, or as gathered in societies civil or ecclesiastical. The Apostles brought their private judgment into play, searched, debated, voted, and, as the result, chose two persons equally well qualified for the apostolic office. Then, when they had done their best, they left the decision to the lot, just as men often do still; and if we believe in the efficacy of prayer and a particular Providence ordering the affairs of men, I do not see that any wiser course can ever be taken, under similar circumstances, than that which the Apostles adopted on this occasion. But we must be careful to observe that the Apostles did not trust to the lot absolutely and completely. That would have been trusting to mere chance. They first did their utmost, exercised their own knowledge and judgment, and then, having done their part, they prayerfully left the final result to God, in humble confidence that He would show what was best.
The two selected candidates were Joseph Barsabas and Matthias, neither of whom ever appeared before in the story of our Lords life, and yet both had been His disciples all through His earthly career. What lessons for ourselves may we learn from these men! These two eminent servants of God, either of whom their brethren counted worthy, to succeed into the apostolic College, appear just this once in the sacred narrative, and then disappear for ever. Indeed it is with the Apostles as we have already noted in the case of our Lords life and the story of the Blessed Virgin, the self-restraint of the sacred narrative is most striking. What fields for romance! What wide scope for the exercise of imagination would the lives of the Apostles have opened out if the writers of our sacred books had not been guided and directed by a Divine power outside and beyond themselves. We are not, indeed, left without the materials for a comparison in this respect, most consoling and most instructive for the devout Christian.
Apocryphal histories of all the Apostles abound on every side, some of them dating from the second century itself. Many of them indeed are regular romances. The Clementine Homilies and Recognitions form a religious novel, entering into the most elaborate details of the labours, preaching, and travels of the Apostle Peter. Every one of the other Apostles, and many of the earliest disciples too, had gospels forged in their honour; there was the Gospel of Peter, of Thomas, of Nicodemus, and of many others. And so it was with St. Matthias. Five hundred years after Christ the Gospel of Matthias was known and repudiated as a fiction. A mass of tradition, too, grew up round him, telling of his labours and martyrdom, as some said in Ethiopia, and as others in Eastern Asia.
Clement, a writer who lived about the year 200, at Alexandria, recounts for us some sayings traditionally ascribed to St. Matthias, all of a severe and sternly ascetic tone. But in reality we know nothing either of what St. Matthias did or of what he taught. The genuine writings of apostolic times carry their own credentials with them in this respect. They are dignified and natural. They indulge in no details to exalt their heroes, or to minister to that love of the strange and marvellous which lies at the root of so much religious error. They were written to exalt Christ and Christ alone, and they deal, therefore, with the work of Apostles merely so far as the story tends to increase the glory of the Master, not that of His servants. Surely this repression of the human agents, this withdrawal of them into the darkness of obscurity, is one of the best evidences of the genuineness of the New Testament. One or two of the earliest witnesses of the Cross have their story told at some length. Peter and Paul, when compared with James or John or Matthias, figure very largely in the New Testament narrative. But even they have allotted to them a mere brief outline of a portion of their work, and all the rest is hidden from us. The vast majority even of the Apostles have their names alone recorded, while nothing is told concerning their labours or their sufferings. If the Apostles were deceivers, they were deceivers who sought their rewards neither in this life, where they gained nothing but loss of all things, nor in the pages of history, where their own hands and the hands of their friends consigned their brightest deeds to an obscurity no eye can pierce. But they were not deceivers. They were the noblest benefactors of the race, men whose minds and hearts and imaginations were filled with the glory of their risen Redeemer. Their one desire was that Christ alone should be magnified, and to this end they willed to lose themselves in the boundless sea of His risen glory. And thus they have left us a noble and inspiriting example. We are not apostles, martyrs, or confessors, yet we often find it hard to take our part and do our duty in the spirit displayed by Matthias and Joseph called Barsabas. We long for public recognition and public reward. We chafe and fret and fume internally because we have to bear our temptations and suffer our trials and do our work unknown and unrecognised by all but God. Let the example of these holy men help us to put away all such vain thoughts. God Himself is our all-seeing and our ever-present Judge. The Incarnate Master Himself is watching us. The angels and the spirits of the just made perfect are witnesses of our earthly struggles. No matter how low, how humble, how insignificant the story of our spiritual trials and struggles, they are all marked in heaven by that Divine Master who will at last reward every man, not according to his position in the world, but in strict accordance with the principles of infallible justice.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 23, 24 16. This scripture must needs have been fulfilled. Psa.…
16. This scripture must needs have been fulfilled. Psa. 69:26.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On vv18, 20, 25 Mat 27:3-10; Act 1:18-19. Matthew: “Then Judas, the one…
REMORSE AND SUICIDE OF JUDAS
Mat 27:3-10; Act 1:18-19. Matthew: “Then Judas, the one having betrayed Him, seeing that He was condemned; giving way to remorse, brought the thirty pieces of silver to the high priests and elders, saying, I sinned, betraying the innocent blood, And they said, What is that to us? You see to it.” “Repented,” in E. V. is incorrect, as it is not metanoeo, the word properly translated “repent” in the New Testament, but metamelomai, which means to be flooded with remorse. When man repents, God always saves. Hell is full of remorse, but no repentance. If the lost souls in perdition could repent, salvation would take them out quickly. Repentance is one of the graces of the Holy Spirit; who never visits people in hell: Judas had passed the dead-line possessed by Satan, so that he could not repent. The remorse that seized him was really a prelude of hell’s torment. That is the reason why he committed suicide. Even this prelude of damnation is so awful as to drive people precipitately into suicide.
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“And throwing down the money in the temple, he went away, and having gone, hanged himself.” The Temple Campus is very near Pilate’s judgment- hall. I am perfectly satisfied that Judas had no thought of the matter turning out as it did. He did not believe they could arrest Him or hurt Him, as he had seen them try it over and over, and always fail. We are not apologizing for him. He had yielded to the love of money and become a poor backslider, thus opening the door for Satan to tempt him along that line.
Jesus had pronounced him a thief, doubtless because of his intention to sell Him for money when he was satisfied that they could not take Him. Judas, as well as the other eleven, was on the constant outlook for Him to put forth His miraculous power, which he had so often witnessed, extricate Himself from His enemies, and, as they hoped, ascend the throne of Judea. Now that he sees the last hope of His release is gone, Pilate having ceased to labor for His deliverance, signed His death-warrant, and acquiesced in His crucifixion, he gives way to despair, and is inundated with a flood of intolerable remorse, so that, rushing to the temple, where the money was kept, and throwing it all down, he ran away off out of the city, beyond the deep Valley of Hinnom, and hanged himself.
“Then indeed he purchased the ground from the reward of iniquity; and falling headlong, he bursts open in the middle, and all his bowels ran out. This was known to all those living at Jerusalem, so that that place is called, in their language, Aceldama, that is, Place of blood.” (Act 1:18-19.)
Judas was a robust Jew, corpulent and heavy. In his precipitation, crazy with remorse, he hanged himself to a tree whose limb extended out over the deep chasm of Hinnom. The rope broke, and he fell a great way, and was dashed to pieces on the rocks beneath. N. B. — The Israelites, and especially in that day, either buried in caves or in stone sepulchers hewn out of the cliff. During my recent tour, I visited the tombs of Aceldama, and went into a number of them as large as an ordinary room in a dwelling, where, on the shelves prepared for the dead bodies, I saw great piles of bones, illustrating the custom of bringing a corpse into a tomb, and laying it on the dry bones of others which have long been there wasting. I saw vast piles of human bones in those tombs, confirming this Scripture in reference to the purchasing of this portion of those rugged cliffs with the money which Judas threw: down. So many Jews, from all parts of the world, thronged the metropolis during the festivals, that it was not improbable that many strangers would die and be buried there. A reason why they sold it so readily was because the death of Judas had defiled it, and in Jewish estimation rendered it unclean. You see all this predicted in Zec 11:12, and Jer 32:6. The sad fate of Judas should put a tremor on us all when we contemplate the love of money, as his financial office as apostolical treasurer surely prepared the way for his apostasy and ruin. I never would have a money office.
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On v21 Act 1:21 - Act 1:22.
Acts
THE APOSTOLIC WITNESSES
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Act 1:21 - Act 1:22.
The fact of Christ’s Resurrection was the staple of the first Christian sermon recorded in this Book of the Acts of the Apostles. They did not deal so much in doctrine; they did not dwell very distinctly upon what we call, and rightly call, the atoning death of Christ; out they proclaimed what they had seen with their eyes-that He died and rose again.
And not only was the main subject of their teaching the Resurrection, but it was the Resurrection in one of its aspects and for one specific purpose. There are, speaking roughly, three main connections in which the fact of Christ’s rising from the dead is viewed in Scripture, and these three successively emerge in the consciousness of the Early Church.
It was, first, a fact affecting Him, a testimony concerning Him, carrying with it necessarily some great truths with regard to Him, His character, His nature, and His work. And it was in that aspect mainly that the earliest preachers dealt with it. Then, as reflection and the guidance of God’s good Spirit led them to understand more and more of the treasure which lay in the fact, it came to be to them, next, a pattern, and a pledge, and a prophecy of their own resurrection. The doctrine of man’s immortality and the future life was evolved from it, and was felt to be implied in it. And then it came to be, thirdly and lastly, a symbol or figure of the spiritual resurrection and newness of life into which all they were born who participated in His death. They knew Him first by His Resurrection; they then knew ‘the power of His Resurrection’ as a pledge of their own; and lastly, they knew it as being the pattern to which they were to be conformed even whilst here on earth.
The words which I have read for my text are the Apostle Peter’s own description of what was the office of an Apostle-’to be a witness with us of Christ’s Resurrection.’ And the statement branches out, I think, into three considerations, to which I ask your attention now. First, we have here the witnesses; secondly, we have the sufficiency of their testimony; and thirdly, we have the importance of the fact to which they bear their witness. The Apostles are testimony-bearers. Their witness is enough to establish the fact. The fact to which they witness is all-important for the religion and the hopes of the world.
I. First, then, the Witnesses.
Here we have the ‘head of the Apostolic College,’ the ‘primate’ of the Twelve, on whose supposed primacy-which is certainly not a ‘rock’-such tremendous claims have been built, laying down the qualifications and the functions of an Apostle. How simply they present themselves to his mind! The qualification is only personal knowledge of Jesus Christ in His earthly history, because the function is only to attest His Resurrection. Their work was to bear witness to what they had seen with their eyes; and what was needed, therefore, was nothing more than such familiarity with Christ as should make them competent witnesses to the fact that He died, and to the fact that the same Jesus who had died, and whom they knew so well, rose again and went up to heaven.
The same conception of an Apostle’s work lies in Christ’s last solemn designation of them for their office, where their whole commission is included in the simple words, ‘Ye shall be witnesses unto Me.’ It appears again and again in the earlier addresses reported in this book. ‘This Jesus hath God raised up, whereof we all are witnesses.’ ‘Whom God hath raised from the dead, whereof we are witnesses.’ ‘With great power gave the Apostles witness of the Resurrection.’ ‘We are His witnesses of these things.’ To Cornelius, Peter speaks of the Apostles as ‘witnesses chosen before of God, who did eat and drink with Him after He rose from the dead’-and whose charge, received from Christ, was ‘to testify that it is He which was ordained of God to be the Judge of quick and dead.’ Paul at Antioch speaks of the Twelve, from whom he distinguishes himself, as being ‘Christ’s witnesses to the people’-and seems to regard them as specially commissioned to the Jewish nation, while he was sent to ‘declare unto you’-Gentiles-the same ‘glad tidings,’ in that ‘God had raised up Jesus again.’ So we might go on accumulating passages, but these will suffice.
I need not spend time in elaborating or emphasising the contrast which the idea of the Apostolic office contained in these simple words presents to the portentous theories of later times. I need only remind you that, according to the Gospels, the work of the Apostles in Christ’s lifetime embraced three elements, none of which were peculiar to them-to be with Christ, to preach, and to work miracles; that their characteristic work after His Ascension was this of witness-bearing; that the Church did not owe to them as a body its extension, nor Christian doctrine its form; that whilst Peter and James and John appear in the history, and Matthew perhaps wrote a Gospel, and the other James and Jude are probably the authors of the brief Epistles which bear their names-the rest of the Twelve never appear in the subsequent history. The Acts of the Apostles is a misnomer for Luke’s second ‘treatise.’ It tells the work of Peter alone among the Twelve. The Hellenists Stephen and Philip, the Cypriote Barnabas, and the man of Tarsus-greater than them all- these spread the name of Christ beyond the limits of the Holy City and the chosen people. The solemn power of ‘binding and loosing’ was not a prerogative of the Twelve, for we read that Jesus came where ‘the disciples were assembled,’ and that ‘the disciples were glad when they saw the Lord’; and ‘He breathed on them, and said, “Receive ye the Holy Ghost: whose soever sins ye remit, they are remitted.”‘
Where in all this is there a trace of the special Apostolic powers which have been alleged to be transmitted from them? Nowhere. Who was it that came and said, ‘Brother Saul, the Lord hath sent me that thou mightest be filled with the Holy Ghost’? A simple ‘layman’! Who was it that stood by, a passive and astonished spectator of the communication of spiritual gifts to Gentile converts, and could only say, ‘Forasmuch, then, as God gave them the like gift, as He did unto us, what was I that I could withstand God?’ Peter, the leader of the Twelve!
Their task was apparently a humbler, really a far more important one. Their place was apparently a lowlier, really a loftier one. They had to lay broad and deep the basis for all the growth and grace of the Church, in the facts which they witnessed. Their work abides; and when the Celestial City is revealed to our longing hearts, in its foundations will be read ‘the names of the twelve Apostles of the Lamb.’ Their office was testimony; and their testimony was to this effect-’Hearken, we eleven men knew this Jesus. Some of us knew Him when He was a boy, and lived beside that little village where He was brought up. We were with Him for three whole years in close contact day and night. We all of us, though we were cowards, stood afar off with a handful of women when He was crucified. We saw Him dead. We saw His grave. We saw Him living, and we touched Him, and handled Him, and He ate and drank with us; and we, sinners that we are that tell it you, we went out with Him to the top of Olivet, and we saw Him go up into the skies. Do you believe us or do you not? We do not come in the first place to preach doctrines. We are not thinkers or moralists. We are plain men, telling a plain story, to the truth of which we pledge our senses. We do not want compliments about our spiritual elevation, or our pure morality. We do not want reverence as possessors of mysterious and exclusive powers. We want you to believe us as honest men, relating what we have seen. There are eleven of us, and there are five hundred at our back, and we have all got the one simple story to tell. It is, indeed, a gospel, a philosophy, a theology, the reconciliation of earth and heaven, the revelation of God to man, and of man to himself, the unveiling of the future world, the basis of hope; but we bring it to you first as a thing that happened upon this earth of ours, which we saw with our eyes, and of which we are the witnesses.’
To that work there can be no successors. Some of the Apostles were inspired to be the writers of the authoritative fountains of religious truth; but that gift did not belong to them all, and was not the distinctive possession of the Twelve. The power of working miracles, and of communicating supernatural gifts, was not confined to them, but is found exercised by other believers, as well as by a whole ‘presbytery.’ And as for what was properly their task, and their qualifications, there can be no succession, for there is nothing to succeed to, but what cannot be transmitted-the sight of the risen Saviour, and the witness to His Resurrection as a fact certified by their senses.
II. The sufficiency of the testimony.
Peter regards {as does the whole New Testament, and as did Peter’s Master, when He appointed these men} the witness which he and his fellows bore as enough to lay firm and deep the historical fact of the Resurrection of Jesus Christ.
The first point that I would suggest here is this: if we think of Christianity as being mainly a set of truths-spiritual, moral, intellectual-then, of course, the way to prove Christianity is to show the consistency of that body of truths with one another, their consistency with other truths, their derivation from admitted principles, their reasonableness, their adaptation to men’s nature, the refining and elevating effects of their adoption, and so on. If we think of Christianity, on the other hand, as being first a set of historical facts which carry the doctrines, then the way to prove Christianity is not to show how reasonable it is, not to show how it has been anticipated and expected and desired, not to show how it corresponds with men’s needs and men’s longings, not to show what large and blessed results follow from its acceptance. All these are legitimate ways of establishing principles; but the way to establish a fact is only one-that is, to find somebody that can say, ‘I know it, for I saw it.’
And my belief is that the course of modern ‘apologetics,’ as they are called-methods of defending Christianity-has followed too slavishly the devious course of modern antagonism, and has departed from its real stronghold when it has consented to argue the question on these {as I take them to be} lower and less sufficing grounds. I am thankful to adopt all that wise Christian apologists may have said in regard to the reasonableness of Christianity; its correspondence with men’s wants, the blessings that follow from it, and so forth; but the Gospel is first and foremost a history, and you cannot prove that a thing has happened by showing how very desirable it is that it should happen, how reasonable it is to expect that it should happen, what good results would follow from believing that it has happened-all that is irrelevant. Think of it as first a history, and then you are shut up to the old-fashioned line of evidence, irrefragable as I take it to be, to which all these others may afterwards be appended as confirmatory. It is true, because sufficient eye-witnesses assert it. It did happen, because it is commended to us by the ordinary canons of evidence which we accept in regard to all other matters of fact.
With regard to the sufficiency of the specific evidence here, I wish to make only one or two observations.
Suppose you yield up everything that the most craving and unreasonable modern scepticism can demand as to the date and authorship of these tracts that make the New Testament, we have still left four letters of the Apostle Paul, which no one has ever denied, which the very extremest professors of the ‘higher criticism’ themselves accept. These four are the Epistles to the Romans, the first and second to the Corinthians, and that to the Galatians. The dates which are assigned to these four letters by any one, believer or unbeliever, bring them within five-and-twenty years of the alleged date of Christ’s resurrection.
Then what do we find in these undeniably and admittedly genuine letters, written a quarter of a century after the supposed fact? We find in all of them reference to it-the distinct allegation of it. We find in one of them that the Apostle states it as being the substance of his preaching and of his brethren’s preaching, that ‘Christ died and rose again according to the Scriptures,’ and that He was seen by individuals, by multitudes, by a whole five hundred, the greater portion of whom were living and available as witnesses when he wrote.
And we find that side by side with this statement, there is the reference to his own vision of the risen Saviour, which carries us up within ten years of the alleged fact. So, then, by the evidence of admittedly genuine documents, which are dealing with a state of things ten years after the supposed resurrection, there was a unanimous concurrence of belief on the part of the whole primitive Church, so that even the heretics who said that there was no resurrection of the dead could be argued with on the ground of their belief in Christ’s Resurrection. The whole Church with one voice asserted it. And there were hundreds of living men ready to attest it. It was not a handful of women who fancied they had seen Him once, very early in the dim twilight of a spring morning-but it was half a thousand that had beheld Him. He had been seen by them not once, but often; not far off, but close at hand; not in one place, but in Galilee and Jerusalem; not under one set of circumstances, but at all hours of the day, abroad and in the house, walking and sitting, speaking and eating, by them singly and in numbers. He had not been seen only by excited expectants of His appearance, but by incredulous eyes and surprised hearts, who doubted ere they worshipped, and paused before they said, ‘My Lord and my God!’ They neither hoped that He would rise, nor believed that He had risen; and the world may be thankful that they were ‘slow of heart to believe.’
Would not the testimony which can be alleged for Christ’s Resurrection be enough to guarantee any event but this? And if so, why is it not enough to guarantee this too? If, as nobody denies, the Early Church, within ten years of Christ’s Resurrection, believed in His Resurrection, and were ready to go, and did, many of them, go to the death in assertion of their veracity in declaring it, then one of two things-Either they were right or they were wrong; and if the latter, one of two things-If the Resurrection be not a fact, then that belief was either a delusion or a deceit.
It was not a delusion, for such an illusion is altogether unexampled; and it is absurd to think of it as being shared by a multitude like the Early Church. Nations have said, ‘Our King is not dead-he is gone away and he will come back.’ Loving disciples have said, ‘Our Teacher lives in solitude and will return to us.’ But this is no parallel to these. This is not a fond imagination giving an apparent substance to its own creation, but sense recognising first the fact, ‘He is dead,’ and then, in opposition to expectation, and when hope had sickened to despair, recognising the astounding fact, ‘He liveth that was dead’; and to suppose that that should have been the rooted conviction of hundreds of men who were not idiots, finds no parallel in the history of human illusions, and no analogy in such legends as those to which I have referred.
It was not a myth, for a myth does not grow in ten years. And there was no motive to frame one, if Christ was dead and all was over. It was not a deceit, for the character of the men, and the character of the associated morality, and the obvious absence of all self-interest, and the persecutions and sorrows which they endured, make it inconceivable that the fairest building that ever hath been reared in the world, and which is cemented by men’s blood, should be built upon the mud and slime of a conscious deceit!
And all this we are asked to put aside at the bidding of a glaring begging of the whole question, and an outrageous assertion which no man that believes in a God at all can logically maintain, viz. that no testimony can reach to the miraculous, or that miracles are impossible.
No testimony reach to the miraculous! Well, put it into a concrete form. Can testimony not reach to this: ‘I know, because I saw, that a man was dead; I know, because I saw, a dead man live again’? If testimony can do that, I think we may safely leave the verbal sophism that it cannot reach to the miraculous to take care of itself.
And, then, with regard to the other assumption-miracle is impossible. That is an illogical begging of the whole question in dispute. It cannot avail to brush aside testimony. You cannot smother facts by theories in that fashion. Again, one would like to know how it comes that our modern men of science, who protest so much against science being corrupted by metaphysics, should commit themselves to an assertion like that? Surely that is stark, staring metaphysics. It seems as if they thought that the ‘metaphysics’ which said that there was anything behind the physical universe was unscientific; but that the metaphysics which said that there was nothing behind physics was quite legitimate, and ought to be allowed to pass muster. What have the votaries of pure physical science, who hold the barren word-contests of theology and the proud pretensions of philosophy in such contempt, to do out-Heroding Herod in that fashion, and venturing on metaphysical assertions of such a sort? Let them keep to their own line, and tell us all that crucibles and scalpels can reveal, and we will listen as becomes us. But when they contradict their own principles in order to deny the possibility of miracle, we need only give them back their own words, and ask that the investigation of facts shall not be hampered and clogged with metaphysical prejudices. No! no! Christ made no mistake when He built His Church upon that rock-the historical evidence of a resurrection from the dead, though all the wise men of Areopagus hill may make its cliffs ring with mocking laughter when we say, upon Easter morning, ‘The Lord is risen indeed!’
III. There is a final consideration connected with these words, which I must deal with very briefly-the importance of the fact which is thus borne witness to.
I have already pointed out that the Resurrection of Christ is viewed in Scripture in three aspects: in its bearing upon His nature and work, as a pattern for our future, and as a symbol of our present newness of life. The importance to which I refer now applies only to that first aspect.
With the Resurrection of Jesus Christ stands or falls the Divinity of Christ. As Paul said, in that letter to which I have referred, ‘Declared to be the Son of God, with power by the resurrection from the dead.’ As Peter said in the sermon that follows this one of our text, ‘God hath made this same Jesus, whom ye have crucified, both Lord and Christ.’ As Paul said, on Mars Hill, ‘He will judge the world in righteousness by that Man whom He hath ordained, whereof He hath given assurance unto all men, in that He hath raised Him from the dead.’
The case is this. Jesus lived as we know, and in the course of that life claimed to be the Son of God. He made such broad and strange assertions as these-’I and My Father are One.’ ‘I am the Way, and the Truth, and the Life.’ ‘I am the Resurrection and the Life.’ ‘He that believeth on Me shall never die.’ ‘The Son of Man must suffer many things, and the third day He shall rise again.’ Thus speaking He dies, and rises again and passes into the heavens. That is the last mightiest utterance of the same testimony, which spake from heaven at His baptism, ‘This is My beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased!’ If He be risen from the dead, then His loftiest claims are confirmed from the throne, and we can see in Him, the Son of God. But if death holds Him still, and ‘the Syrian stars look down upon His grave,’ as a modern poet tells us in his dainty English that they do, then what becomes of these words of His, and of our estimate of the character of Him, the speaker? Let us hear no more about the pure morality of Jesus Christ, and the beauty of His calm and lofty teaching, and the rest of it. Take away His resurrection from the dead, and we have left beautiful precepts, and fair wisdom, deformed with a monstrous self-assertion and the constant reiteration of claims which the event proves to have been baseless. Either He has risen from the dead or His words were blasphemy. Men nowadays talk very lightly of throwing aside the supernatural portions of the Gospel history, and retaining reverence for the great Teacher, the pure moralist of Nazareth. The Pharisees put the issue more coarsely and truly when they said, ‘That deceiver said, while He was yet alive, after three days I will rise again.’ Yes! one or the other. ‘Declared to be the Son of God with power by the resurrection from the dead,’ or-that which our lips refuse to say even as a hypothesis!
Still further, with the Resurrection stands or falls Christ’s whole work for our redemption. If He died, like other men-if that awful bony hand has got its grip upon Him too, then we have no proof that the cross was anything but a martyr’s cross. His Resurrection is the proof of His completed work of redemption. It is the proof-followed as it is by His Ascension-that His death was not the tribute which for Himself He had to pay, but the ransom for us. His Resurrection is the condition of His present activity. If He has not risen, He has not put away sin; and if He has not put it away by the sacrifice of Himself, none has, and it remains. We come back to the old dreary alternative: ‘if Christ be not risen, your faith is vain, and our preaching is vain. Ye are yet in your sins, and they which have fallen asleep in Christ’ with unfulfilled hopes fixed upon a baseless vision-they of whom we hoped, through our tears, that they live with Him-they ‘are perished.’ For, if He be not risen, there is no resurrection; and, if He be not risen, there is no forgiveness; and, if He be not risen, there is no Son of God; and the world is desolate, and the heaven is empty, and the grave is dark, and sin abides, and death is eternal. If Christ be dead, then that awful vision is true, ‘As I looked up into the immeasurable heavens for the Divine Eye, it froze me with an empty, bottomless eye-socket.’
There is nothing between us and darkness, despair, death, but that ancient message, ‘I declare unto you the Gospel which I preach, by which ye are saved if ye keep in memory what I preached unto you, how that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that He was raised the third day according to the Scriptures.’
Well, then, may we take up the ancient glad salutation, ‘The Lord is risen!’ and, turning from these thoughts of the disaster and despair that that awful supposition drags after it, fall back upon sober certainty, and with the Apostle break forth in triumph, ‘Now is Christ risen from the dead, and become the first-fruits of them that slept’!
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv16–25 See notes on verse 15
See notes on verse 15
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv20, 25 (Greek - ναός, overseership). See "elders" (See Scofield "Tit…
bishoprick
(Greek - ναός, overseership). See "elders" (See Scofield "Tit 1:5")
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v21 The choosing of Matthias:
The choosing of Matthias:
v. 21. Wherefore of these men which have companied with us all the time that the Lord Jesus went in and out among us,
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v. 22. beginning from the baptism of John, unto that same day that He was taken up from us, must one be ordained to be a witness with us of His resurrection.
v. 23. And they appointed two, Joseph, called Barsabas, who was surnamed Justus, and Matthias.
v. 24. And they prayed and said, Thou, Lord, which knowest the hearts of all men, show whether of these two Thou hast chosen,
v. 25. that he may take part of this ministry and apostleship from which Judas by transgression fell, that he might go to his own place.
v. 26. And they gave forth their lots; and the lot fell upon Matthias; and he was numbered with the eleven apostles.
Having briefly referred to the regrettable vacancy in the number of the apostles, Peter now makes a proposal as to the selection of a man to succeed Judas in the high office which he had held. He stated that it was necessary for them to choose someone of the disciples that had associated with them and with Jesus from the very beginning, one that had been their companion during the whole time that Jesus went in and out before them, one that had, in other words, been a witness of the whole course of Christ’s life, beginning with His baptism by John and ending with the day of His ascension from their midst. Note that Peter speaks of the ascended Christ as a human being, as being still in the flesh, although he incidentally calls Him Lord, thus yielding to Him full divine honor and majesty. But the chief point to be taken into account was this, that the man to be chosen must be a thoroughly competent witness of the resurrection of Christ. The resurrection of Christ as St. Paul shows 1Co 15:1-58, is the seal of God upon the completed work of redemption of Jesus. Without its certainty established, Christianity becomes an illusion and a farce It is self-evident that the experience of matters of fact went hand in hand with the possession of a firm faith in the matters witnessed. The apostles were called to testify of that which they had seen and heard with their own eyes. The Church has received the Gospel of Christ out of the mouth of credible eye and ear-witnesses. Peter’s proposal having been accepted by the assembly, they put forward, or nominated, two men for the vacancy, one Joseph Barsabas, apparently one of the seventy disciples, whose surname Justus had been adopted after the custom of the time, and Matthias. These two men may have been the only two that possessed all the qualifications laid down by Peter. Concerning these two men, the candidates for the vacant position in the number of the apostles, the disciples assembled now made an earnest prayer. They addressed their prayer, literally, to the Heart-knower, to their risen Lord, Jesus Christ. See Jer 17:10. The thoughts and prayers of all true Christians are now ever directed to their exalted Lord and Savior. He knows all things; He guides all things in the interest of His believers and for their benefit. The Lord knows the hearts of men, Joh 2:25; He was able to judge exactly as to the qualifications of either candidate; His choosing would not have to be the result of long and deliberate weighing and reflecting. He should merely designate His choice of these two men, in order that the chosen man might take the place of the ministry and apostleship left vacant by Judas. Note once more the tactful reference to the traitor, as having gone "to his own place. " As the words read, they may refer as well to the place of reward as to that of punishment. The disciples very properly leave the decision in this grave matter to the great Judge above, and do not themselves pronounce the condemnation, although it is included that Judas went to the place to which the hypocrites and apostates go after death. Mark also: The prayer of the disciples is a model of its kind. "The petitioners had a single object for which they bowed before the Lord, and to the proper presentation of this they confine their words. They do not repeat a thought, nor do they elaborate one beyond the point of perspicuity.... So brief a prayer on so important an occasion would in this voluble age be scarcely regarded as a prayer at all. " Having thus sanctified the occasion with the Word of God and with prayer, the disciples were ready to proceed to the selection of the twelfth apostle. To do this, they gave forth their lots. Just how this was done is not certain. But it is probable that the usage prevailing in the Old Testament was observed. "Tablets on which the names of Joseph and Matthias were written, were employed; these were shaken in the vase or other vessel in which they had been deposited, and the lot which first fell out furnished the decision. " See 1Ch 24:5; 1Ch 25:8; Lev 16:8; Num 34:13. Matthias having been designated in this manner, he was now henceforth numbered with the eleven apostles, as the twelfth. The manner of selecting the man to fill the vacancy left by the defection of Judas was an unusual one, and undoubtedly resorted to in this case by a special command of God. The method, therefore, is not to be considered an example to be followed under similar circumstances. But the use of the Word of God and the earnest appeal to the Lord to direct the choice of officers of the Church according to His will and for the welfare of His kingdom, should never be lacking at any meeting for the purpose of electing officers in a Christian congregation.
Summary.The author gives a brief account of the last speeches of the Lord, of His ascension, of the meeting of the disciples, and of the election of Matthias.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv17, 20, 21, 24 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
In verse 17 Peter continues his speech to the believers that he began in Acts 1:16.
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General Information:
In verses 18-19 the author tells the reader background information about how Judas died and what people called the field where he died. This is not part of Peter's speech. (See: Background Information)
General Information:
Although Peter is addressing the entire group of people, here the word "us" refers only to the apostles. (See: Exclusive and Inclusive "We")
Now this man
The words "this man" refers to Judas Iscariot.
the earnings he received for his wickedness
"the money that he earned from the evil thing that he did." The words "his wickedness" refer to Judas Iscariot's betraying Jesus to the people who killed him. (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
there he fell headfirst, and his body burst open, and all his intestines poured out
This suggests that Judas fell from a high place, rather than just falling down. The fall was severe enough to cause his body to burst open. Other passages of scripture mention that he hanged himself. (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
Field of Blood
When the people living in Jerusalem heard of the way in which Judas died, they renamed the field.
translationWords
to minister
evil
Jerusalem
blood
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv16, 18, 20, 21, 23 1:16-17 the Scriptures had to be fulfilled: See 1:20.
1:16-17 the Scriptures had to be fulfilled: See 1:20.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.