And yet Judas was in no sense coerced into doing what he did. No invisible hand forced him to betray Christ. He acted freely and without external compulsion. He was responsible for his own actions. Jesus said he would bear the guilt of his deed throughout eternity. His own greed, his own ambition, and his own wicked desires were the only forces that constrained him to betray Christ.
How do we reconcile the fact that Judas’s treachery was prophesied and predetermined with the fact that he acted of his own volition? There is no need to reconcile those two facts. They are not in contradiction. God’s plan and Judas’s evil deed concurred perfectly. Judas did what he did because his heart was evil. God, who works all things according to the counsel of His own will (Ephesians 1:11), had foreordained that Jesus would be betrayed and that He would die for the sins of the world. Jesus Himself affirmed both truths in Luke 22:22: “Truly the Son of Man goes as it has been determined, but woe to that man by whom He is betrayed!”
John MacArthur, Twelve Ordinary Men: How the Master Shaped His Disciples for Greatness, and What He Wants to Do with You
(Thomas Nelson, Nashville, TN: 2002), 185.
