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I. WHO THEN WILL SAY THAT THE MEN WITH WHOM CHRIST BEGAN HIS NEW KINGDOM WERE MORE THAN MEN; not bone of our bone, but a princely sort, quite away from the common herd? On the contrary, they fairly represented human nature in its best and worst aspects — gentleness, ardour, domesticity, enterprise, timidity, courage, and one of them was a devil — a man like the others, but in him a pre-eminent capacity for the foulest mischief.

II. A wonderfully instructive fact is this that JESUS DID NOT POINT OUT THE SUPREMELY WICKED MAN, but simply said, "One of you is a devil." Thus a spirit of mournful self-suspicion was excited, culminating in the mournful "Is it I?" It is better not to know the worst man in the Church: to know only that judgment will begin at the House of God, and to be wondering whether that judgment will take most effect on ourselves. No man fully knows himself. The very star of the morning fell from heaven: why not you or I?

III. ISCARIOT'S WAS A HUMAN SIN RATHER THAN A MERELY PERSONAL CRIME. Individually, I did not sin in Eden, but humanly I did; personally, I did not covenant for the betrayal of my Lord, but morally I did; I denied Him, and pierced Him; and He loved me and gave Himself for me.

IV. WHY DID CHRIST CHOOSE A MAN WHOM HE KNEW TO BE A DEVIL.? A hard question, but there is one harder still. Why did Jesus choose you?

(J. Parker, D. D.)

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KJV: Jesus answered them, Have not I chosen you twelve, and one of you is a devil?

WEB: Jesus answered them, "Didn't I choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?"