The Slippery Slope of Sin: How Judas's Thoughts Led to Betrayal

Over the past few days, we have thought about what may have influenced Judas to betray Christ. Satan gained some control over Judas’s life through his acts of deception and stealing from the moneybag: “He did not say this because he cared about the poor but because he was a thief; as keeper of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it” (John 12:6).

Some things lower our spiritual defenses and invite satanic activity into our lives. For example, being involved in the occult opens the door to the enemy, but Satan's main way to access a person's life is through habitual sin. The enemy seeks a toehold in the door of our lives and, after that, a foothold, and if we give in to his prompting, he gains a stronghold. The more territory we surrender to him through habitual sin, the more he will take. Give him an inch, and he will take a mile. The temptation begins first in the mind, and the more we yield to the thought, the more ground in our actions the enemy gains. The more we submit our will to sinful thoughts, the more a compulsion becomes ingrained in our character. God spoke to Cain after he had murdered his brother Abel and said:

If you do what is right, will you not be accepted? But if you do not do what is right, sin is crouching at your door; it desires to have you, but you must master it (Genesis 4:7).

Satan did not use external force to make Judas’ feet go to the religious leaders. Instead, Judas willingly followed the inner motivations Satan planted in his heart. He lost ground to the enemy by contemplating how to steal from the moneybag, but in the end, he was led to betray Christ. A person becomes a slave to whoever's voice they obey. Here's what Paul the apostle said about surrendering to sinful habits:

Don't you know that when you offer yourselves to someone to obey him as slaves, you are slaves to the one whom you obey—whether you are slaves to sin, which leads to death, or to obedience, which leads to righteousness? (Romans 6:16).

As Satan repeatedly whispered and appealed to different motives in Judas, he became a willing tool of the enemy, ready to do his will. Jesus warned the disciples that the enemy had infiltrated one of them:

⁷⁰Then Jesus replied, "Have I not chosen you, the Twelve? Yet one of you is a devil!" ⁷¹(He meant Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, who, though one of the Twelve, was later to betray him.) (John 6:70-71, emphasis added).

The mind is the seedbed of our character and actions, and Judas allowed the enemy to visit him there and sow seeds of destruction into his heart. Having evil thoughts come to us is not inherently a sin. It becomes a sin when we dwell on those thoughts and act on them. A wise person once said that we cannot stop a bird from flying around our heads, but we can prevent it from building a nest there! Francis Schaeffer said, "The spiritual battle, the loss of victory, is always in the thought world." A man is not what he thinks he is, but what he thinks, he is. Satan wore down Judas's natural barriers by nesting in his mind and heart. Let this serve as a warning to us all to keep our thoughts pure. Keith Thomas

Click on the following link for all our 3-minute Bible devotionals:

https://www.groupbiblestudy.com/devotionals

Taken from the series on the Gospel of Luke. Click on Study 58. The Betrayal of Jesus.