Is it Unbiblical for Jesus to pray for Judas? (The Chosen Season 5 Controversies)
Updated: 3 days ago
Dallas Jenkins recently released a clip of The Chosen Season 5 in which Jesus challenges Judas to choose which “Master” he belongs to and offers to pray for him. In response, critics of The Chosen have begun questioning whether the scene is unbiblical and if the show is contradicting the Gospel of John, in which Jesus refers to Judas as a “son of destruction" (or "son of perdition"). But is The Chosen really contradicting what the Bible says? Dallas has already offered his own defense, but I've got a few thoughts as well.
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Judas, the Son of Destruction (“Son of Perdition”)
The Scripture that critics of The Chosen have been pointing to is a single line from Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer:
I am praying for them. I am not praying for the world but for those whom you have given me, for they are yours. All mine are yours, and yours are mine, and I am glorified in them. And I am no longer in the world, but they are in the world, and I am coming to you. Holy Father, keep them in your name, which you have given me, that they may be one, even as we are one. While I was with them, I kept them in your name, which you have given me. I have guarded them, and not one of them has been lost except the son of destruction, that the Scripture might be fulfilled. (John 17:9-12, ESV)
In this prayer, Jesus asks the Father to keep the disciples united in the Name even after he has departed. Jesus explains that he himself kept them in the Name while he was on earth – except for “the son of destruction,” who “has been lost,” in fulfillment of the Scripture.
It is important to distinguish what this line implies from what it does not imply. Clearly, Jesus anticipates Judas’ betrayal. This is made even clearer at earlier points in the Gospel of John. After telling the disciples that they have been spiritually cleansed, Jesus clarifies that not all of them have been cleansed and John explains, “For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, ‘Not all of you are clean’” (John 13:11). Jesus even lets Judas know that he knows what Judas plans on doing and tells Judas, “What you are going to do, do quickly” (John 13:27). Going back even further in the Gospel, after the feeding of the 5,000, Jesus tells the disciples that even though he chose them all, one of them is “a devil” and John explains, “He spoke of Judas the son of Simon Iscariot, for he, one of the twelve, was going to betray him” (John 6:70-71). But even though Jesus anticipated Judas’ betrayal, that doesn’t necessarily mean he would have given up on him – at least not until a crucial moment.
Judas’ Point of No Return in The Chosen Season 5 and Scripture
Although Judas did many sketchy things throughout his life (e.g. John 12:6), the Gospels suggest that he crossed a clear “point of no return” right around the time of the Last Supper. Before his betrayal, the Gospel of Luke and the Gospel of John both say that “Satan entered into [Judas]” (Luke 22:3, John 13:27). This is an extraordinary phrase – at no other point in Scripture is Satan himself said to inhabit a human being, much less a follower of Jesus. The result of this event pretty clearly seems to be what Jesus is referring to when he says that Judas is a “son of destruction” who has been “lost.”
Sidenote: The underlying Greek word for destruction (“apoleia”) is closely related to the name for the demonic Destroyer (“apollyon”) (Revelation 9:11). It’s worth noting how, earlier in John, Jesus accuses his Jewish opponents of having the devil as their father (i.e. being sons of the devil) because they are acting in accord with the devil’s desires (8:44) by seeking to kill Jesus (8:40-41). This seems to be a lesser version of what Jesus is talking about when he calls Judas a “son of destruction.” Just as Christians start living out the will of the Father after the Spirit enters into them, Judas starts living out the will of the Destroyer after Satan enters into him.
It seems like the Season 5 tête-à-tête between Jesus and Judas takes place sometime before this critical “point of no return.” Indeed, during the scene, Judas himself ironically seems to hint at this, warning Jesus that they are reaching the knife’s edge – when the slightest mistake could ruin everything. The irony is that he thinks Jesus is the one teetering on the brink of ruin, not himself.
Now, as someone from the Reformed Tradition, I believe that God, from his eternal perspective, knew Judas’ fate from before the foundation of the world. But in Scripture when Jesus relates to individuals, he does so according to their current spiritual state, not on the basis of divine foreknowledge of their eternal destiny. That is to say, we never see Jesus refuse to exhort, pray for, or show compassion to a person because he knows they will ultimately reject him anyway. There are times when Jesus refuses to speak to or perform miracles for individuals, but this is always in response to the current state of that person’s heart. And so, if Judas’ heart is still open to repentance at the moment depicted in the Season 5 scene, there’s no reason to think that Jesus wouldn’t have pleaded with him and prayed for him like he does in the show. We can’t say for sure whether Judas’ heart really was still open at that point, but it’s certainly not a open-shut case of heresy vs. orthodoxy.
The Other Devil Among the Disciples
Judas is not the only disciple who betrays Jesus – nor is he the only disciple whose betrayal is foreseen. Jesus famously predicts that Peter will betray him three times before the rooster crows (twice) (Matthew 26:34, Mark 14:30, Luke 22:34, John 13:38). And, like Judas, Peter is also compared by Jesus to a demonic being (Matthew 6:23, Mark 8:33).
If Jesus refused to pray for or exhort others based on his foreknowledge of their future actions, you would expect him to not pray for Peter. And yet we know that Jesus does indeed pray for Peter’s faith to not fail when Satan asks to sift him like wheat (Luke 22:31-32). Moreover, Jesus exhorts Peter to “Pray that you may not enter into temptation” (Luke 22:40, 46). In spite of his divine foreknowledge, Jesus relates to Peter according to his present spiritual state, praying for him and exhorting him to pray for himself. This seems to be perfectly in line with how Jesus relates to Judas during the controversial scene from Season 5.
The Value of Adaptation
I think there is a strong case to be made for how The Chosen Season 5 depicts Jesus appealing to and praying for Judas. But I also acknowledge that one could make a fairly compelling case in the other direction. Because The Chosen is delving into an element of Jesus’ story that is not directly included in Scripture, we have no way of knowing for sure whether the show got it right or not. But what should be clear is that this is not a question of orthodoxy vs. heresy. Reasonable arguments can be made by either side of this debate. There is not an obvious historical consensus among Christians on the issues involved in this controversy like there are in other first and second order matters of faith. And so, I’m fine with people disagreeing with what The Chosen Season 5 is doing – but anyone who goes so far as to condemn the show as heresy on this account is acting in bad faith (one of the critics is the same guy responsible for the foolish attempt to boycott the show last year).
In the wake of the controversy that erupted over Ramah’s death, I argued that one of the values of an expansive and speculative Bible adaptation like The Chosen is that it encourages us to contemplate theological conundrums that we might not have otherwise considered – and in the process come to a deeper understanding of God and Scripture. This controversy over Jesus and Judas is quite similar. We know Jesus and Judas must have had some kind of relationship before the betrayal of Jesus, but we don’t know much about it. Probing what that relationship might have looked like forces us to explore our preconceptions and ideas about divine foreknowledge, how God relates to humans in time, etc. I am excited to see how The Chosen Season 5 challenges me and its audience to think through these topics anew. I only wish the show’s critics would appreciate the way that it is provoking deeper theological thought – instead of rushing to condemn it because it hasn’t reached the exact same conclusions that they have. Unfortunately, I suspect that this will not be the last controversy facing The Chosen Season 5.
