The Last Supper

John 13:1-17; Matthew 26:17-35

Reflection 🤯
These passages include multiple instances when Jesus knows what will happen in the future. The Bible shows us that this is no surprise; God’s omniscience transcends the constraints of linear time. From Psalm 139, God knows our words before we speak. From 2 Peter 3 “with the Lord one day is as a thousand years, and a thousand years as one day” (though according to Wikipedia most biblical scholars have concluded that Peter is not the author, thereby considering the epistle pseudepigraphical). From 1 Chronicles 28, God understands every desire and every thought. (For a visual representation of God in relation to linear time, see Figure 11.1 from Wayne Grudem’s Systematic Theology, Chapter 11: God’s Incommunicable Attributes - How is God Different from Us?)

I feel deeply somber and amazed that this — God’s ability to simultaneously see all points in time — must mean that Jesus knew all along that Peter would deny knowing Him, that Judas would betray Him, and that the pain and reality of an excruciating crucifixion was real and imminent.

Personally, I will never have omniscience (it is an incommunicable attribute of God, after all! — thank you Grudem) but I am getting a glimpse of this ability via prediction: the much lesser, younger cousin of omniscience. The more wise I become, the more I can predict or anticipate what people will do next — including when and how they will disappoint or hurt others. I hope to remain loving regardless of what they will do.

Additionally, my human experience is that I am denying God all the time. I will be repenting because I have sworn to place God first above everything else. As C.S. Lewis adeptly puts in The Four Loves, ‘When God arrives (and only then) the half-gods can remain.’

This reflection wouldn’t be complete without addressing the ultimate denial of God: the permanent, conscious decision to not be with God. Judas knows that Jesus is real yet chooses to deny Him forever. This reminds me of Carl Jung, a famous psychiatrist, who also became conscious of the spiritual world throughout his life. In his autobiography Memories, Dreams, Reflections, Jung has a vision of the wedding supper of the lamb (something I have experienced too). He later reaches a deep understanding — and perhaps appreciation — of God’s love. Jung says, “I sometimes feel that Paul’s words - ‘Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not love’ - might well be the first condition of all cognition and the quintessence of divinity itself.” Unfortunately, at the end of his life, Jung gives in to the demon within him. “There was a daimon in me, and in the end its presence proved decisive. It overpowered me, and if I was at times ruthless it was because I was in the grip of the daimon.” Despite encountering God in their lives (for Judas, in the flesh and for Jung, through spiritual experiences), these men ultimately chose to not go to Heaven and to ostensibly go to Hell. My heart hurts thinking about this; these are decisions that impacted eternity. Are these men now in Hell, having gotten what they wanted — the rejection of God?