Daily Inspiration Quote by Thomas Goodwin

Judas heard all Christ's sermons, and that blunt fact is the whole blade of Goodwin's point. As a 17th-century Puritan divine, he’s writing in a world where salvation is fought over in the interior life: assurance, hypocrisy, backsliding, the terrifying possibility of sitting in church and still being spiritually dead. The line works because it refuses the comforting fantasy that proximity to holiness is protective. Judas isn’t the outsider heckling from the back pew; he’s the attentive insider, close enough to memorize the cadences, close enough to carry the moneybag, close enough to kiss.

Goodwin’s intent is pastoral, but the subtext is acid: exposure to the best preaching is not the same as transformation. Sermons can inform, even move, without converting; religious experience can become a kind of cultural literacy. Judas functions as the Puritan nightmare exemplar of the “almost Christian,” the man with access to light who still chooses darkness. The implication lands on Goodwin’s listeners with surgical cruelty: you can take notes, nod at the right moments, weep at the right moments, and still be selling out the very thing you claim to love.

The line also plays in the Puritan suspicion of outward forms. It polices the boundary between genuine grace and performance, warning that the church can incubate betrayal as easily as it cultivates faith. If Judas can sit under Christ himself and remain Judas, no congregation gets to confuse attendance with allegiance.