It would seem that towards the last part of the life of Jesus the moral antagonism between himself and Judas grew more pronounced and intense.
As the spiritual life of Jesus waxed brighter and stronger, so much the more vivid became the contrast between it and the worldly aims of the traitor. Judas saw the kind of worldly prosperity to which he had aspired receding. He saw that Jesus, instead of using his splendid miraculous powers to draw towards him the chiefs of his nation, was becoming every day more in antagonism with them. Instead of meeting the popular desire to make him a king he had drawn back from it, and by that very act lost many followers. His extreme spiritual teachings had disgusted many of his disciples and led them to go back and walk no more with him. And now the talk of Jesus was more and more of persecutions and sufferings and death, as lying just before him. To a worldly eye all this looked like a fanatical throwing away of the very brightest opportunity for fame and fortune and dominion that ever was given to a leader. Judas became sullenly discontented, not yet ready openly to throw off all hopes of what might be got by adhering to his Master, but yet in a critical and fault-finding spirit surveying all his actions.
It is an awful thought that it was possible for a man to share the daily bread of Jesus, to be in his family, treated as a beloved child, to hear all his beautiful words, to listen to his prayers day after day, and yet, instead of melting, to grow colder and harder--to grow more earthly as his Master grew more heavenly, and to find this want of sympathy slowly hardening into a sullen enmity which only waited its hour to declare itself openly. Christ said to the unbelieving Jews, "Ye have both seen and hated both Me and my Father." Judas was fast preparing to join that party.
According to the narrative of St. Matthew, it was after this rebuke in the matter of Mary that Judas went into negotiations with those who were plotting the destruction of Jesus. He was a disappointed man. He had joined a party which he confidently expected to lead to triumph, success, and wealth. Instead of this, Jesus had lost every opportunity, lost the favorable hour of popularity, and concentrated on himself the hatred of the most powerful men of the nation, and now was talking only of defeat and rejection.