Last week I finished listening to a sermon series by one of my favorite preachers, John Piper, on “Spectacular Sins” – sins committed and recorded in Scripture that had devastating consequences. His final message was on Judas’s betrayal of Christ as the “ultimate” sin. In my quiet time yesterday, going through the Gospel of Luke, I happened to read in Luke 22 how “Satan entered Judas,” and then Judas went to the Jewish leaders to plot how he might betray Jesus. This caused me to consider how this could have happened, for Judas had spent three years watching, listening to and learning from Jesus. How could Satan enter him, leading him to betray the Savior of the world?

A number of verses came to mind. In James 1:14-15, we read of the lure and downward spiral of sin: temptation, desire is conceived, sin is born, sin grows up and gives birth to death. SCARY! The point is that betraying Jesus wasn’t “Step 1” for Judas. He had been walking in a pattern of sin, allowing it to grow up in him and take control of him for some time.

We read about one example of this in John 12, where Judas got upset with Mary anointing Jesus with expensive perfume, saying that the money should have gone to the poor. The passage clarifies that Judas did not say this because he cared about the poor, but because he was a thief, and would help himself to money in the community money bag, and he wanted some of those funds from the perfume.

In Ephesians 4:27, we are told that our anger can give the devil a foothold into our life. I think Judas was disillusioned with Jesus, who kept predicting that he would be betrayed, tried, condemned and murdered. Judas wanted a conquering hero, and Jesus frustrated Judas, allowing the devil a foothold.

By way of application, where is it in our life that we are allowing Satan a foothold? Where has a temptation and desire conceived and a small sin been born, allowing the way for Satan to pry his way deeper into our life through more invasive sin? I know where my weak areas are, and I must fight against them, every day. Do you know yours? Are you engaging in the battle, squelching any chance of Satan getting his foot in the door?

May God give us the grace to “resist the devil, and he will flee from you. Come near to God and he will come near to you.” (James 4:7-8) Let us praise God for the work of Christ, and how through his substitutionary death on the cross, we have forgiveness for our sins and a chance to conquer Satan, eternal death, and the temptations we face.

Pressing on by God’s grace,
Eric