Did Matthew & Judas Change The Chosen?

Letter to Ephesians: Did Jesus “test” ex-tax collector Matthew, then, ex-thief Judas by trusting the one to record history & the other with the disciples’ treasury? If so, how revealing was a changed Matthew’s flight to his new job & Judas’s foolish embracing his old one unto the Great Betrayal? Will the “Chosen” finale say?

The debate still rages in Christian circles, if not Hollywood, as to whether Judas was nothing more than a heartless “thief” who “did not care about the poor” as claimed by John, or whether he was arguably a “saint,” if imperfect, like the rest of Jesus’s disciples because he appears to also have played a key role in fulfilling God’s plan to reconcile Himself with mankind through the crucifixion of The Christ. Regardless, might one wonder whether the most enduring difference between Matthew & Judas (and greatest lesson to be learned from their fates) was their willful desire to CHANGE their lives around upon meeting their Savior? To be “Born Again”?

Maybe there’s more than meets the eye when Jesus “changed” Matthew’s name from Levi. The ex-tax collector obviously knew the harm he had done to so many people. Did Jesus look into Matthew’s soul & see the profound change in him after being told to “follow me,” including his future unselfish service to the poor & Messiah? Meanwhile, upon joining Jesus’s inner circle, Judas’s greed clearly continued to dominate his will as he pilfered from donations; and he only saw the evil in himself after Jesus was brutally murdered with his help as evidenced by his returning the Sanhedrin bribe & hanging. Had Jesus long since seen thru Judas whose “change” of heart had come too late? A perpetual reminder that the infinite God’s patience with willful sin, even for The Chosen, is not infinite?

Davd Soul