Robert Murray McCheyne (1813–1843) on Christ’s Love for Judas and Those Like Him

My friends, there may be some within these walls with a heart as hard as that of Judas. Like Judas, you are about to partake of the most moving ordinance the world ever saw; like Judas, your heart may grow harder, and your life more sinful than ever. And you think, then, that Jesus is your enemy? But what does the Bible say? Look here: he that once shed his blood for you, now sheds his tears for you. Immanuel grieves over you. He wept over Jerusalem, and he weeps over you. He has no pleasure that you should perish—he had far rather that you would turn and have life.

There is not within these walls one of you so hard, so cruel, so base, so unmoved, so far from grace and godliness, so Judas-like, that Jesus does not grieve over your hardness, that you will still resist all his love, that you will still love death, and wrong your own soul. Oh! that the tears which the Saviour shed over your lost and perishing souls might fall upon your hearts like drops of liquid fire; that you might no more sit unmelted under that wondrous love that burns with so vehement a flame, which many waters cannot quench, which all your sins cannot smother—the love which passeth knowledge. Amen. Larbert, August, 1836

R. M. McCheyne, “Melting the Betrayer,” in From the Preacher’s Heart (Ross-shire, Scotland: Christian Focus Publications, 1993), 69. Originally published in 1846 with the title Additional Remains of the Rev. Robert Murray McCheyne.