76 - Escaping Betrayal

It’s one thing to be wounded by an enemy, but it’s another to be betrayed by a friend. We expect enemies to hate us, and usually know why they do. There’s been an offense or profound disagreement and we haven’t been able to repair it. And it seems that no matter how nice we try to be to people we all end up with a certain number of enemies. It’s just a sad fact of life. But betrayal happens very differently. It comes as a shock, a complete surprise, from someone we trusted and thought loved us. We discover that this friend to whom we opened up our heart, and became vulnerable, now hates us, and may have hated us for a long time. The damage that revelation does to our self-esteem is profound. We are injured at a much deeper level. It causes us to question ourselves. If someone who knows us so well has decided we aren’t worth loving, we aren’t worth protecting, then maybe our own assessment of ourselves is wrong; maybe they’re right. Maybe we aren’t worth loving; maybe we aren’t worth protecting.

Enemies can bruise us, but only people we trust can betray us, and when they do, they injure us in a way that without God’s help, may never be healed. These are the wounds that can leave lasting depression, that are the hardest to forgive, that isolate us from others, and that leave us afraid to ever trust again. So, the apostle John has given us a precious gift. He has described, in intimate detail, the horrible moment when Jesus confronted His betrayer. It’s almost impossible to believe that anyone who knew Jesus so well could decide to betray Him. Why would you betray someone who is so completely good? Yet Judas did betray Him which proves beyond the shadow of a doubt that betrayal isn’t caused by a flaw in the victim, but by a flaw in the heart of the betrayer. It exposes the character of the disloyal, not the worth of the forsaken.

None of us is as good as Jesus, but none of us deserves to be betrayed. Yet it seems that sooner or later all of us are, which is why we need to study this passage. It shows us betrayal, but more importantly it shows us how Jesus responded to it. John lets us watch Him escape its grip, and that’s a lesson we all need to learn so that we can do the same.