"What's Your Price?"

"Then one of the Twelve - the one called Judas Iscariot - went to the chief priests and asked, "What are you willing to give me if I hand him over to you?" So they counted out for him thirty silver coins. From then on Judas watched for an opportunity to hand him over." (Matthew 26:14-16

This passage marks the manifestation of what has been going on in the heart and mind of Judas Iscariot, one of the twelve disciples. As many of you are already aware, Judas, for thirty silver coins agreed to "hand" Jesus "over" to the chief priests. The reasons that Judas took these actions are unclear and highly debatable. Judas walked with Jesus and talked with Jesus, and yet under the right circumstances, he was willing to "deliver" (entrust?) Jesus over into the hands of those who were already looking for an opportunity to arrest, and ultimately kill Him.

In Christendom today, the name "Judas" has come to be utterly repulsive amongst the believing Body. How could one of Jesus' own disciples, a person Jesus called "friend," just give Him over to the enemy like this? How could someone who was in Christ's inner circle abandon Him like this? Even the biblical writers refer to him as "the betrayer" on a number of occasions, reinforcing the way we read about Judas. We drag the name "Judas" in the mud as if he were Satan in the flesh.

The bible doesn't speak to the motives of why Judas did what he did, but in this short passage it becomes clear that thirty coins was all it took for Judas to "betray" the Christ. In short, thirty coins was Judas' price.

Question: Do you have a price?

My suspicion is this:

While many of us condemn and slander Judas for "betraying" Jesus, if we were honest many of us have "handed" the Christ "over" in a similar manner, and do regularly. Even though we may not do it in a physical sense, we often times "betray," "hand over" or "entrust" Jesus to those who do not remotely have His cause in mind. Many of us, under the right circumstances, will just "give" away the Christ, instead of fighting for Him and defending His cause. Instead of defending the faith, we treat it like a credit card, swiping it when we need it, and keeping it tucked away in our wallets/purses when we don't (as if there were ever a time that we don't need our faith). So again I ask, "Do you have a price?"

My challenge is this:

Begin to take your faith seriously and treat Christ as a treasure that you would be willing to give your life for; He did it for you. We should all come to a place where when someone asks if we have a price, we can say with boldness, "No!" Until we are willing to give our lives for Christ, then it is safe to say that we do have a price.

Be blessed...