Judas Come Home – All is Forgiven

Someone passed this article about Judas and forgiveness to me and I just can’t get it out of my head. God’s ways are different than our ways and God’s forgiveness runs deeper than anything we can imagine. Someone needs to read this today. Happy Easter.

Judas Come Home – All is Forgiven

I have never given much thought about Judas other than he was the person who betrayed Jesus with a kiss. However, this all changed recently one morning as I felt the Holy Spirit speaking to me from these verses.

Then when Judas, who had betrayed Him, saw that He had been condemned, he felt remorse and returned the thirty pieces of silver to the chief priests and elders, 4 saying, “I have sinned by betraying innocent blood.” But they said, “What is that to us? See to that yourself!” 5 And he threw the pieces of silver into the temple sanctuary and departed; and he went away and hanged himself. Matthew 27:3-5

I had never considered that Judas felt deep sorrow and made an attempt to repent. The only problem was he repented to the wrong people, the religious crowd. I began to consider what would have happened if Judas instead of going out and killing himself had went to Jesus as He was dying on the cross and pursued forgiveness from Him. What would Jesus do? Would He have forgiven Him? Will God forgive anything and everything? These were all questions that were swirling in my mind. I do believe Jesus would have forgiven Judas if He was given the opportunity, but Judas could not forgive himself so he took matters into his own hands and killed himself.

I knew the Lord wanted to show me more; in a sense I felt Judas had something to say to me. So I continued to pray over this and I also talked to friends about their perspective on Judas and within days someone walked up to me and handed me a book titled, The Gospel According To Judas, by Ray S. Anderson. Actually, they were asking me to give the book to [my wife] Becky; they had no clue what had been going on with me about Judas. I knew this book was more for me than Becky. I did not even get past this first sentence in the prologue when I read what Judas was telling me.

“I saw it in the men’s restroom in a restaurant in San Francisco, printed in block letters with a blue felt tip pen across the top of the mirror:

                                    JUDAS COME HOME – ALL IS FORGIVEN!”

When I read that phrase it was like someone stuck a red-hot sword into my heart. All the memories from my own Judas days came into my mind. I remembered the feelings of rejection, loneliness and not having a place I could call home. I also begin to think about all the people I knew who had lost face in the church and suffered rejection, shame and eventually left.

Then I heard a whisper from heaven saying to all the Judas’ out there, “Come home all is forgiven, I love you”. That little phrase really broadened my revelation of the Father’s heart and love toward us. It made me want to go to everyone I knew that had lost face and ran way and tell them “Come home, all is forgiven, the Father loves you.” This is what Judas was trying to tell me – it was about how big the Father’s heart really is.

In the epilogue of the book Ray gives us a wonderful picture of the love and grace of the Lord.

“My choosing of you counts more than your betrayal of Me!” Through His grace I discovered that the calling of God by which we become children of the kingdom does not rest upon our faith alone, but upon His faithfulness toward us.”

Judas please come home, I know how you feel, but all is forgiven, the Father loves you.

this article first appeared here.