John 13:18 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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John 13:18

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The public ministry of Christ has now been concluded. He has uttered his last words to the general public, to the Jewish leaders, to the gathered people. Now he has withdrawn to the Upper Room with his disciples where he will inaugurate the Lord’s Supper and teach them privately. Chapters 13 to 17 are entirely devoted to his instruction to his disciples and then he will go to his betrayal and to his suffering and his death. All will be accomplished in a matter of hours. The day after these statements he will be suffering and dying on Calvary’s cross, and now the whole language of this chapter is – this is about to happen. ‘I am going where you cannot follow. I will be lifted up from the earth, and so on.’ And he will be preparing them for the inaugural Lord’s Supper, where he will be speaking of his broken body and his poured out blood.Before the inauguration of the Supper, we see seven things which Christ tells them, things hidden from them, things they had not discerned, and then in the following chapters, he enlarges upon each one. The first is here in verse 18, and it is this: the Lord reads the heart. There is one among them who is not clean; there is one of the disciples who will be the betrayer. David had an experience, more than once, of being betrayed by somebody who was close to him, and David’s experience, enshrined in Psalm 41 is also predictive – because David is a type of Christ – of what would happen to Christ.And now in verse 18 – ‘He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me.’ If you ever have time, you may look at Psalm 41.9 and you will find the quotation is not complete. Christ leaves out some words which do not apply in his case. ‘Mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted,’ said the psalmist. ‘He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel.’ My own familiar friend whom I trusted – Christ leaves out of the quotation because he knew the heart of Judas all along. He allowed it to happen. He never did trust him. The other disciples did. He was such a hypocrite, Judas, he completely deceived the other disciples who lived with him for three years. They would never have known that he was not one of them, that he did not share their objective, that he was after something for himself, a high place in the administration of the political Messiah, which is what he thought.

Application

Questions

Why did Christ need to be betrayed? Have you wondered about that? Why did he even need a betrayer? He was a very public figure. The chief priests and the scribes and the Pharisees, his enemies, knew full well who he was. He needed a betrayer because the leading Jews had never succeeded in taking him in public. Whenever they tried to arrest him and stone him, they never succeeded. He would just walk through the midst of them, or he would leave in the crowd, and they would not be able to touch him. They were aware of this, and they were afraid of the crowd - there could well be a riot. So they had evidently, we assume, fixed on a private arrest. They would need to know in order to accomplish this where he went (they did not know) at nightfall out of the city, up into the mount of Olives. And if they arrested him under darkness, how would they know who was the one they should seize? It would have to be done quickly, with a great force. They did not underestimate the strange power that surrounded Christ. So they needed a betrayer, somebody who could tell them where he would be, somebody who would walk up to him and identify him. They gambled on this – that once they had taken him and bound him, then his mystique would be lost. When the crowds saw him, not as a great preacher or orator or healer of people, but as somebody looking haggard, who had been beaten, seized, bound, somebody who appeared helpless, then their devotion to him would evaporate. That is what they hoped.

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John 13:18 Commentary and Bible Study