HALIFAX, Nova Scotia, July 6, 2025 – One of God’s chief promises is that he will never betray us. I think this promise doesn’t get the star treatment it deserves because most people haven’t lived long enough or suffered enough betrayals to understand its true value. During his time on Earth, Jesus never entirely confided in anyone except God, never put himself in a position of emotional vulnerability with anyone except God because, as scripture tells us, he knew people’s hearts. And knowing people’s hearts, Jesus knew that people were just a hair’s breadth away from betraying him at any given moment.

And he wasn’t wrong about that, considering that even his most loyal disciples ran from him at his arrest and then later denied knowing him. But knowing people’s high probability of betraying you gives you the advantage of not being surprised or even let down when they proceed to do so. We see this in how Jesus responded to his disciples’ betrayal. We need to deal with people who betray us in the same way Jesus dealt with them, all while learning from their betrayal that we’re to trust no-one but God.

I have lived long enough and suffered enough betrayals that I now, like Jesus, only put my trust in God. But it was a hard journey to get there. Unless we live in complete isolation, we interact daily with people, most or likely all of whom are not born again and therefore don’t consider themselves answerable to God. Not considering themselves answerable to God, they’re capable of virtually anything they believe they can get away with, and I’ve personally experienced some real doozies (and done a few myself, before I was reborn). But in every case where I was betrayed after my rebirth, I really didn’t have anyone but myself to blame for trusting people I knew in my heart I shouldn’t trust, not because they purposely choose evil, but because they’re guided by evil without knowing it.

It’s not virtuous to be unwise, and to trust people who are not born-again is unwise. That’s not to say that people can’t be trusted to a certain extent; you have to trust them with mundane everyday tasks or you’d have to withdraw entirely from society and live like John the Baptist before he started his ministry. Even Jesus didn’t do that and prayed that we’d be protected from the world, not taken out of it. He didn’t want us to isolate ourselves from the world, just to be wary of it and be protected from it. In other words, he prayed that we’d interact with the world on the same terms as he interacted with it during his ministry years.

God’s emphasis on his promise not to betray us highlights the importance God places on loyalty. If God values loyalty to such a great extent, so should we. That means we should not only expect it (though again, not from people), we should give it first and foremost to God, but also to people who are likely to turn around and betray us.

We are to expect betrayal from people and so not be surprised when they fulfill our expectations. In not being surprised, we should also not be angry or vengeful about it. Jesus wasn’t. Instead, knowing people’s hearts, Jesus chose not to make himself vulnerable in any way to people so that their inevitable betrayals would not hurt him.

Does this mean we should emotionally harden ourselves as a form of protection? God forbid. We were given a heart of flesh for our heart of stone at our rebirth, and we dare not go back on that trade. We should never emotionally harden ourselves but instead live with the understanding that we will, at some point, be betrayed even by those closest to us, but we will never be betrayed by God. Having this understanding, we allow ourselves to be ourselves only with God, and to give our confidences only to God, and to trust only God. This we can choose to do (it’s a choice), and if we choose not to do it, we have no-one to blame but ourselves when we suffer the consequences of human betrayal.

I love God with all my heart, soul, mind, and strength, and when I’m hurting in any way, I run to him for relief. Among God’s many wonderful characteristics is his utter candor, and so when I run to him with my hurts, he generously lets me know how they came to pass. He does this not while standing at a distance and pointing a finger at me but while I’m sitting on his lap and he’s soothing me. And in every instance, I learn (thanks to God’s candor) that I brought the pain on myself one way or another, usually by trusting the wrong person.

I thank God for this lesson, and his candor, and his soothing.

God’s promise not to betray us is an implicit invitation for us not to betray him. It’s also an implicit invitation to live like Jesus did during his ministry years, not hardening our heart to others but choosing very carefully what to confide and what to hide. God’s promise not to betray us likewise implies that everyone else will sooner or later betray us, a sad fact of this world that is backed up by scripture. Knowing this, we should expect betrayal and not be surprised or outraged by it. Rather, like Jesus, we should do all we can to avoid opening ourselves to betrayal, but if we still end up suffering it, we should take our hurt to God. He will soothe us, all while dealing with our betrayers in his time and in his way.

We can trust God implicitly to do that because he promises us he will, and he would never betray a promise to us.