14 Then one of the twelve, whose name was Judas Iscariot, went to the chief priests 15 and said, “What will you give me if I deliver him over to you?” And they paid him thirty pieces of silver. 16 And from that moment he sought an opportunity to betray him.
There is a certain stark significance in the fact that these verses which tell of the plan to betray our Lord stand in such close proximity to the institution of the Lord's Supper - the covenant between the chief priests and the traitor on the one hand and the covenant between Christ and His disciples on the other (28). That the Last Supper should be set in the context of such a foul and unspeakable betrayal seems to be meant to indicate how closely our Lord became implicated and involved in human sin (yet without sin) in order to become our Saviour, and how low He stooped to reach down to where we were. The disciples' 'Is it I?' (22) has perhaps a deeper significance than lies on the surface, for there is a sense in which it was all humanity that betrayed Him and handed Him over to the cross. All the available evidence points to the fact that the tragedy of Judas was not a sudden, inexplicable failure and disaster, but rather something that grew and developed gradually and imperceptibly over a long period. This is always so. The open disaster of a moral collapse, although it may take others completely by surprise, always has a history, and is simply the visible fruit of something that has been going on for a long time. It is true, of course, that there had to be a Judas (24), but this gives no warrant to think of him in fatalistic terms, as if he could not help himself. He was a responsible being, and the traitorous spirit grew in him, and was allowed to grow. At the beginning, his life was surely bright with promise. Not only so; it is certain that Judas never meant to go as far as he did. Most men never dreamt they would go so far in their sin. It was just that it went out of control - as sin always does. This is the frightening, terrifying thing