I think we forget something about God that is significant in this question.....predestination. Did God predestine Judas to become a traitor, or was it that God's ability to see into the future merely predicted and recorded the event, foreseen long before it took place? God does not predestine things to happen unless he directly intervenes to create an event to fulfill his purpose. The main thing that come to mind is the birth of Jesus Christ and his mission to rescue the human race, plunged into sin and death in the beginning.This was predetermined and so was the Kingdom, led by Christ, that would lead fallen humans back to God.
It is stated quite clearly that a close friend must betray Jesus to fulfill scripture, and must be cursed. I'm not going to quote to you the many verses that ultimately present that as the salient point, you know where they are. Doesn't it bother you? If it was written in the old testament and quoted in the new,
it is a prediction that someone is to be predestined toward the role, and someone had to fill it. How could you possibly see that any other way? You alternatively say something about God writing down what he sees in the future, but then go on to say that we all have free will. I think your opener here seems a bit like your trying to toss me into a big tangle of red herrings... Even if he 'predicted what he saw in the future,' if all the causation was more frozen than an open prophecy would guarantee, it still indicates that some poor mere human must be stripped of his possible neutrality to forcibly play an evil role of some kind.
Why do you say that satan works for God? The fact that God uses satan to test out his free-willed intelligent creation, doesn't mean that he sanctions his actions.
The verse you are thinking of is probably
James 1:13-15...
"When under trial, let no one say: “I am being tried by God.” For with evil things God cannot be tried, nor does he himself try anyone. 14 But each one is tried by being drawn out and enticed by his own desire. 15 Then the desire, when it has become fertile, gives birth to sin; in turn sin, when it has been carried out, brings forth death."
We see in the trials of Job that God permitted the tests that satan brought on him, but only because God was confident that the man's faith was strong enough to withstand them.
1 Corinthians 10:13...
"No temptation has come upon you except what is common to men. But God is faithful, and he will not let you be tempted beyond what you can bear, but along with the temptation he will also make the way out so that you may be able to endure it."
If God uses satan to test out his free-willed intelligent creation, then he
does sanction what satan does. God says his tests are like that of a crucible, which to me indicates that someone like Job could fail. (but not Job, who needed to win merely for the sake of the story.) It says he will
put them into the fire, refine them like silver and test them like gold. How does James wrestle his ideas out of that notion? All of this is sort of a red herring, but I would point out that it shows a contrast to the fate of Judas, who seemed to have an actual
fate. My point is that he was never tested in the metaphorical crucible, rather, he was predestined to cause trouble, and we should wonder if that is spiritually ethical.
Don't confuse regret with repentance. Judas was not compelled by God to do anything. What he did was out of greed. He had been stealing money from the treasury box that Jesus and his apostles used to buy their necessities.
That 'satan entered into Judas' simply means that he found a willing dupe.
Why would the holy band even need to buy anything, Jesus could make bread or clothes or blankets appear in mid-air couldn't he.
Paul's actions as a Pharisee were not wrongly motivated. He was so zealous for God's worship that he saw the Christians as a threat to his beloved Judaism, which he believed at the time to be the only true faith. Only when Jesus paid him a personal visit was he compelled by his own heart to reapply his zeal to the true worship promoted by Jesus, rather than the corrupted form that Judaism had become. After all, Jesus did not come to start a new religion...he came to clean up the old one and lead the "lost sheep" into a new pen...worshipping the same God in a new way, under a new covenant. (
Jeremiah 31:31-34)
By that logic, zeal of any kind is possibly not wrongly motivated. If Jesus simultaneously paid a visit to every zealous person the earth, wouldn't they then all convert in the same way? Instead, it seems that message must move slowly over the course of thousands of years with Christian missions. But to go back to the comparison with Judas, didn't they both have 'scales' in their eyes? The scales being a metaphor that they should be unknowingly blind to Christianity in order for things to be fulfilled? So in that sense, Paul's actions were never 'motivated' by anything at all, just like the actions of Judas. They were filling predestined parts for the sake of the overall story.