In John 17:12, Jesus prays to God the Father: “While I was with them [his disciples], I protected them in your name that you have given me. I guarded them and not one of them was lost except the one destined to be lost, so that the Scripture might be fulfilled.” Did Judas Iscariot truly have a choice?
The language of predestination assumes that God lives in time the same way that we humans do: one moment after another (chronological time). But that forces a human limitation onto God. Doing that is an unintentional but subtle form of idolatry. What if God is present to time immediately and not sequentially? Although Judas was indeed free, he made a very bad choice, but he may have repented before taking his own life.
