Those whom You gave Me I have kept; and none of them is lost except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.  (John 17:12)

Jesus prays in respect of twelve men, those the heavenly Father gave into his care, and he reflects that he discharged his duty even to Judas, who he calls the ‘son of perdition’.  Judas he ‘lost’; and the translation is of the Koine Greek verb, ἀπόλλυμι apollumi, which is formed from the prefix apo, ‘away from’, and ollymi, ‘to destroy’, thus, ‘to utterly destroy after being cut away’.

Judas hanged himself and, in circumstances that are tantamount to the bathetic, ‘falling headlong, he burst open in the middle and all his entrails gushed out’, Acts 1:18.

Jesus then is saying that by his efforts, none of his charges have been destroyed, save one, Judas.  His destiny was to fulfil Scripture and Peter after Jesus’ ascension would later supply that prophecy from the psalter, quoting first from psalm sixty-nine, and then from this hymn of condemnation from David, which he now applied to Jesus’ betrayal.  Judas supplied false witness and so suffers the fate of David’s ‘accuser’:

That He may cut off the memory of them from the earth;
Because he did not remember to show mercy,
But persecuted the poor and needy man,
That he might even slay the broken in heart.
As he loved cursing, so let it come to him;
As he did not delight in blessing, so let it be far from him.  (Psalm 109:15b-17)

David prays to God for the utter and complete ruination of those that spoke deceitfully of him and would seek to ruin him.  But David speaks of an earthly penalty, including that the betrayer’s name be forgotten:

Let his posterity be cut off,
And in the generation following let their name be blotted out. (Ibid 109:13)

To Israel, generational oblivion was the greatest of all punishments, because sin was prosecuted in the temporal.  God would bring disease, poverty and death, along with being struck out of the tribal record. Moses recognises that the justice in this:

‘The Lord is longsuffering and abundant in mercy, forgiving iniquity and transgression; but He by no means clears the guilty, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and fourth generation.’  (Numbers 14:18)

Justice can only be served when the guilty are punished.  The object of any judicial process is two-fold; first, to establish guilt and secondly, to declare the penalty for the guilty; but note that in the temporal, the impact of any transgression will have ongoing consequences.  

Yet for Judas Iscariot, there awaits a greater penalty, while there are no children recorded to keep alive his name; nevertheless, his name will be remembered.  His ruin is only partly in the temporal and exacted at the Field of Blood, the site of his death.  He is also the Son of Perdition, which means his suffering must, and will, continue after his suicide.

The Greek noun ἀπώλεια apóleia conveys the real horror of Judas’ fate.  Cognate with apollymi, this speaks of being cut off from God in the eternal.  And it is critical to understand the sense here is to suffer ruinously.  While it means ‘destruction’, this is emphatically not annihilation.

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. (Romans 6:23)

The penalty for sin is death, yet death is merely the transition from the mortal to the immortal, while the second death is simply describes the possible condition of immortality.  At no point, does God having created life, expunge it – for Judas and for all who dies opposing God, there is perdition.  

Redemption is the gift of eternal life in Christ, not the gift of an eternal existence.

Judas had complete agency, although his destiny was to be betray the Son of God; notwithstanding, as the Son of Perdition, he acted on free will and is thus accountable to the Heavenly Father.  

Jesus’ speaks of the fate of all those who will be held personally accountable and for whom, by substitutionary mechanism of redemption for faith, he does not bear their penalty.  Here is parabolic teaching he predicts what he will say: that 

‘“I tell you I do not know you, where you are from. Depart from Me, all you workers of iniquity.”  There will be weeping and gnashing of teeth, when you see Abraham and Isaac and Jacob and all the prophets in the kingdom of God, and yourselves thrust out.’  (Luke 13:27)

And in this also from Jesus:

‘Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a dragnet that was cast into the sea and gathered some of every kind, which, when it was full, they drew to shore; and they sat down and gathered the good into vessels, but threw the bad away.  So, it will be at the end of the age. The angels will come forth, separate the wicked from among the just, and cast them into the furnace of fire. There will be wailing and gnashing of teeth.’ (Matthew 13:47-50)

It is imperative that all attend to Jesus’ words.  While Peter echoes Moses in saying, God is ‘longsuffering toward us, not willing that any should perish but that all should come to repentance’, 2 Peter 3:9, the default for any person is perdition, unless any repent and through faith seek God’s gift of an eternity spent with and ‘in’ his Son,

And the apostle Paul says this is always available as on option, even in days before Scripture, the Patriarchs, the Law of Moses or even the fulfilment in Christ, through Jesus Immanuel.

 For the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteousness of men, who suppress the truth in unrighteousness because, what may be known of God is manifest to them, for God has shown it to them. For since the creation of the world His invisible attributes are clearly seen, being understood by the things that are made, even His eternal power and Godhead, so that they are without excuse… (Romans 1:18-20)

God’s wrath is expiated by the punishment of perdition.  Hell is founded by the Father of Perdition, Satan, but all may become his ‘sons’ by not heeding God’s warning.

When all are created in the womb and born, God grants them life and none are ever unmade, because the Creator never rescinds anything he spoke into being.  The only choice then before humanity is what is the individual nature of each one’s eternity.

In fact, as it broadly understood that all the disciples for who Jesus prayed suffered the cruel deaths of martyrs, and the only exception then was John.  Thus, Jesus’ prayer is ultimately in respect of the disciples’ souls not their flesh, for Judas alone will suffer the destruction of his soul through the enduring suffering that is perdition.  While all of ‘The Twelve’ but one die a dreadful first death, only one will experience the second death, and John, the only disciple to survive persecution would see in his old age a vision:

And the dead were judged according to their works, by the things which were written in the books. The sea gave up the dead who were in it, and Death and Hades delivered up the dead who were in them. And they were judged, each one according to his works.  Then Death and Hades were cast into the lake of fire. This is the second death.  And anyone not found written in the Book of Life was cast into the lake of fire.  (Revelation 20:12b-15)

Perdition is the second death of the divinely condemned and is an enduring destruction from which there is no escape, no respite of oblivion.  God has warned us all, without exception.