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What think you, my brethren, if a similar declaration were made in regard to ourselves? Should we sorrowfully ask, "Lord, is it I?" Should we not be more likely to ask, "Lord, is it this man?" "Lord, is it that man?" Would not Peter be more ready to say, "Is it John?" and John, "Is it Peter?" than either, "Is it I?" It is a good sign when we are less suspicious of others than of ourselves, more mistrustful of ourselves than of others in regard of the commission of sin; as indeed we ought always to be, for we have better opportunities of knowing our own proneness to evil, our own weakness, our own deceitfulness, than we can have of that of others; and therefore we have far more cause to ask, "Is it I?" — the question showing that we dare not answer for ourselves, — than, "Lord, is it my neighbour?" — the question indicating that we think others capable of worse things than ourselves. Peter was safe when asking, "Lord, is it I?" but in sore danger when he exclaimed, "Although all shall be offended because of Thee, yet will not I."

I. Suppose Judas to have been aware, as he might have been, both from ancient prophecy, and from the express declarations of our Lord Himself, that Jesus, if He were indeed the Christ, must be delivered to His enemies, and ignominiously put to death — might he not, then, very probably say to himself, "After all, I shall only be helping to accomplish what has been determined by God, and what is indispensable to the work which Messiah has undertaken?" I do not know any train of thought which is more likely to have presented itself to the mind of Judas than this. "The Son of man goeth as it is written of Him." But this determination, this certainty, left undiminished the guiltiness of the parties who put Christ to death. They obeyed nothing but the suggestions of their own wilful hearts; they were actuated by nothing but their desperate malice and hatred of Jesus, when they accomplished prophecies and fulfilled Divine decrees. Therefore was it no excuse for them that they were only bringing to pass what had long before been ordained. The whole burden of the crime rested upon the crucifiers, however true it was that Christ must be crucified. It did not make Judas turn trailer that God foreknew his treason, and determined to render it subservient to His own almighty ends. God, indeed, knew that Judas would betray his Master, but God's knowing it did not conduce to his doing it. It was certain, but the foreknown wickedness of the man causes the certainty, and not the fore-ordained performance of the deed, Oh! the utter vanity of the thought that God ever places us under a necessity of sinning, or that because our sins may turn to His glory they will not issue in our shame.

II. And now let us glance at another delusion to which it is likely that Judas gave indulgence. This is the delusion as to the consequences, the punishment of sin, being exaggerated or overstated. It may be that Judas could hardly persuade himself that a being so beneficent as Christ would ever wholly lay aside the graciousness of His nature, and avenge a wrong done by surrendering the doer to intense and interminable anguish. But, in all the range of Scripture, there is not, perhaps, a passage which sets itself so decisively against this delusion as the latter clause of our Saviour's address in the text — "It had been good for that man if he had not been born." There is nothing in the Bible which gives me so strong an idea of the utter moral hardness in which a man is left who is forsaken by the Spirit of God, as the fact that Judas's question, "Lord, is it I?" followed immediately on Christ's saying, "Woe unto that man by whom the Son of man is betrayed;" and that his going forth to fill his accursed compact with the priests was on the instant of his having been told that Christ knew him for the traitor. I pause on the word "then," and I am tempted to ask, could it, oh! could it have been "then?" Yes, "then" it was that, with the words, "It had been good for that man if he had not been born," — words vocal of an eternity of unimagined woe — then it was that, with these words rung out to him as the knell of his own doomed spirit, Judas proceeded to address Christ with a taunting and insolent inquiry, and then went out to accomplish the traitorous purpose which had called forth the tremendous denunciation. With what earnestness should we join in that prayer in the Liturgy, "Take not Thy Holy Spirit from us!"

(H. Melvill, B. D.)

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KJV: And as they sat and did eat, Jesus said, Verily I say unto you, One of you which eateth with me shall betray me.

WEB: As they sat and were eating, Jesus said, "Most certainly I tell you, one of you will betray me—he who eats with me."