‘Jesus answered them, “Did I not choose you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?” Now he spoke of Judas, the son of Simon Iscariot, for he it was who would betray him, being one of the twelve.'
Yet even now Jesus knew that, although He had especially chosen them as his henchmen, there was one who was not true. ‘Have I not chosen you, the twelve, and one of you is a devil?' This latter phrase is not, of course, to be taken literally but means ‘is doing the work of the Devil'. The one whom He had in mind was, of course, Judas the Betrayer. Yet we should note that He would still give him the chance to repent if he would.
To be chosen by Jesus Christ for a unique privilege and yet to betray Him! It almost seems impossible. But we must recognise from this that Jesus already knew Judas' heart and mind. Why then did He choose him? We must assume that Judas was at least partly sincere at this stage. He would after all perform miracles and cast out evil spirits as did the other Apostles. And every man must be given a chance. But his commitment was not full and true. He too believed for the wrong reasons, and the greed for money got the better of him. He was not following Jesus for the right reasons, he was gripped by ambition and hopes of power. We too must learn to root out anything within us that in the least hinders our obedience to Christ, or we too may find that our trust is not in the real thing. We must ask ourselves - Am I really committed to Him for Him to save, or is my Christianity just a social thing or a way of self advancement or in order to boost my self-esteem or for what I can get out of it? That is the crucial question.
‘Iscariot'. This probably means ‘man of Cherioth', but other alternatives have been suggested. It was a way of distinguishing him from ‘the other Judas' (John 14:22) among the twelve