Bible Questions and Answers

Thanks for your question.

Mark 14:1-5 After two days was the feast of the Passover, and of unleavened bread: and the chief priests and the scribes sought how they might take him by craft, and put him to death. And being in Bethany in the house of Simon the leper, as he sat at meat, there came a woman having an alabaster box of ointment of spikenard very precious; and she brake the box, and poured it on his head. And there were some that had indignation within themselves, and said, Why was this waste of the ointment made? For it might have been sold for more than three hundred pence, and have been given to the poor. And they murmured against her. 

John tells us that Judas was one that murmured and gives his motive:

John 12:6 This he said, not that he cared for the poor; but because he was a thief, and had the bag, and bare what was put therein.

Mark 14:10,11 And Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve, went unto the chief priests, to betray him unto them. And when they heard it, they were glad, and promised to give him money. And he sought how he might conveniently betray him. 

After the last supper he left the upper room, went to the high priest, collected the soldiers, led them to Jesus and betrayed him with a kiss. Money was more important to him than the life of the greatest benefactor of mankind that ever lived. Three years of hearing the words of God and witnessing the miracles of healing meant nothing to Judas when set against his desire for money. As Paul says: 1Timothy 6:10 For the love of money is the root of all evil: And so it was with Judas. 

Peter, on the other hand, denied Jesus in an ordeal of fear. He was ready to defend him with a sword against the odds in Gethsemane and brave enough to follow him into the High Priest’s courtyard, but in the cold light of dawn surrounded by soldiers his courage failed him. Who, under the same circumstances, would have done better? 

Judas and Peter followed Jesus for different reasons: Judas for money, Peter for eternal life. 

I hope this helps

Glenn Smith