verse4today: "I am sending an angel before you to protect you on your journey and lead you safely to the place I have prepared for you" (Exodus 23:20).
Posted on 2012-02-10 via Twitter
Who names a son "Judas"? The answer is clear: No one! Yet, who names a son "Peter"? The answer is just as clear: a whole lot of people.
Why would we never name a son "Judas," but choose to name a son "Peter"? Both men were apostles of Jesus Christ. Both men left all to follow Christ. Both men held positions of influence among the apostles. Both men witnessed wondrous miracles and heard amazing teachings. Furthermore, both men betrayed Jesus. Judas took a bribe and arranged for the arrest and eventual crucifixion of Jesus. Similarly, after Jesus was arrested, Peterdenied that he ever knew him.
Philip Yancey, in The Jesus I Never Knew, describes the important difference between the two apostles. Judas, he writes, was "remorseful but apparently unrepentant." Yancey concludes that Judas "accepted the logical consequences of his deed, took his own life, and went down as the greatest traitor in history. He died unwilling to receive what Jesus had come to offer him" (196). Peter, in contrast, was "humiliated but still open to Jesus’ message of grace and forgiveness." He "went on to lead a revival in Jerusalem and did not stop until he reached Rome" where we gave up his life for the Lord.
The difference between the two, then, was not their faithfulness or lack of faithfulness to the teachings of Christ but their faith or lack of faith in the grace of Christ. So now the name "Judas" is used derogatorily to describe someone who betrays another, while the name "Peter," reminds all that there is hope for what matters in life.
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