God’s Word for You
Mark 14:43-46 The Traitor, The Kiss
by Pastor Timothy Smith on Saturday, February 3, 2024
43 While Jesus was saying this, there came Judas, one of the twelve, and with him there was a crowd with swords and clubs, sent from the chief priests, the scribes, and the elders. 44 Now the traitor had given them this signal, saying, “Whoever I kiss, that is the one. Arrest him and lead him away under guard.” 45 So when he came, he went right away to Jesus and said, “Rabbi!” and kissed him. 46 Then they laid hands on him and arrested him.
The kiss of Judas is the kiss of betrayal, the kiss of death, and the kiss of murder—and the Holy Spirit proves this point by leading Mark to recall that the murderous companions of Judas (who only that morning, that very afternoon, had still been one of the Twelve) were carrying swords and clubs. There was no small detachment of soldiers here to arrest the Son of God. It was a whole crowd of men, surely too many for all of them to stand in the sacred stillness of Gethsemane. They were sent by cowards. The chief priests and the scribes and elders did not come themselves, but sent their servants and soldiers to do this dirty work. Their turn would come soon enough behind closed doors in an illegal trial.
The traitor had arranged a signal: the one he kissed was the one to be arrested. The custom isn’t ours today, except for a man’s wife, daughter, sister, or mother to be kissed in public or private. As a minister, I have sometimes kissed the foreheads of elderly women on their deathbed. Otherwise, we leave kissing to marriage. It was not so in Jesus’ time. Jesus greeted his disciples and friends with a kiss (Luke 7:45), and Paul talks about kissing in the church (Romans 16:16; 1 Corinthians 16:20; 2 Corinthians 13:12; 1 Thessalonians 5:26), and so does Peter (1 Peter 5:14).
Treason and betrayal are terrible crimes. Betrayal ends friendships and marriages. Treason ends lives. A king puts a traitor to death to end his rebellions. A spouse throws out a betraying spouse because of grief and anger and to put an end to mistrust and broken promises. What does Jesus do to his betrayer? The traitor, Judas, was already known to him. He had known before Judas came to the Garden. He had known before Judas left the meal, hours before. He had known long before that! He told them after he fed the Five Thousand, “One of you twelve is a devil” (John 6:70). But he did not stop Judas. He went willingly into the hands of the men who arrested him. He let the kiss happen.
With this kiss, Judas the traitor threw away his trust in God and in Christ. He broke the First Commandment.
With this kiss, Judas the betrayer fulfilled a vow to the wicked priests to do evil. He broke the Second Commandment.
With this kiss, Iscariot the man of sin did not pray to Jesus or do the work of God, but the work of the devil. He joined his life with Satan. He broke the Third Commandment.
With this kiss, Judas the Treacherous cursed and betrayed his teacher, his Rabbi, and his Lord to torture and death. He allowed himself to be the claw of Satan, who wanted nothing more in the whole of creation than to kill the Son of God. Judas broke the Fourth Commandment.
With this kiss, Judas the Murderer condemned Jesus the Lord of life to death. He said “Rabbi” but may as well have said “Raca” or far worse. He pretended to love but it was only disguised greed and unbelief. He broke the Fifth Commandment.
With this kiss, this Devil among the Twelve wanted to get rich by the betrayal of a friend. He got in the way and hindered what would have been advantageous to his neighbor, and therefore he broke the Seventh Commandment.
With this kiss, Judas Iscariot acted as a betraying witness to officials of a court, the courts of the High Priest, of the Sanhedrin, and of Pontius Pilate, by being the bounty hunter who struck a deal to arrest an innocent man; a man innocent of any crime whatsoever, as Pilate himself attested to, three times over. Judas broke the Eighth Commandment.
With this kiss, Judas Iscariot, devil, traitor, betrayer who broke the bond of the Twelve, impenitently strove and desired to have that which was not his: the money of the temple itself. What he coveted was the money of the priests; of the high priest. This money was theirs through the offerings of the people, people like the parents of Jesus who brought their offering out of faith and love when their baby was circumcised and named and redeemed as the firstborn son; people like the poor widow who had given her worthless copper coins, all she had, out of her poverty. Judas the thief and the robber wanted money given to God for himself. Judas the thief coveted and broke the Ninth and the Tenth Commandments.
With this kiss, did Judas the Kisser break the Sixth Commandment? Should we praise a man for barely keeping one out of the Ten?
They arrested Jesus, and sealed his death. What did Judas gain? What had his Rabbi warned him about? “What good is it for a man to gain the whole world, yet forfeit his soul?” (Mark 8:36). We know that his treachery was used by God for our good, and even for our eternal good. That does not mean that we need to smile at Judas’ treachery. That one of the Twelve broke nine of the Ten, and killed the One.
Praise be to you, O Christ, and to you alone. For who else in all the world could have brought any good from what this traitor did? The serpent struck at your heel, O Christ. Your pain was beyond bearing. By your wounds we are healed
In Christ,
Pastor Timothy Smith
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. To receive God’s Word for You via e-mail, please visit the St. Paul’s Lutheran Church website.