I. Look at the question, "Lord is it I?" in connection with the scene and the time when each disciple was shocked and startled into asking it. You have, perhaps, in the mirror of memory, the picture of a certain tranquil sunset. If in that moment, and without any premonitory sign, there had all at once burst out upon the tranquillity a peal of terrible thunder, you could not have been so startled as were the disciples when these words struck upon them. There never was a sunset like this, the sunset of the Sun of Righteousness. It was an hour of beautiful peace and farewell revelation, when out broke the thunderclap, "One of you shall betray Me." Never before had words filled souls with the shock of such an unspeakable surprise.
II. Look at this question in connection with the remark that called it forth: "The Son of Man goeth as it is written of Him: but woe unto that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! it had been good for that man if he had not been born." Reading these predictive words in the light of what we find farther on, we know that they pointed to Judas.
III. Look at the question in connection with the simple, unsuspecting brotherliness it revealed in those to whom it was spoken. It might have been thought that instant suspicion would have fastened on Judas. His character had always been open to question. When, therefore, Christ's declaration was made, "One of you shall betray Me," it would not have been wonderful if such words as these had passed through various minds: "It is Judas I always mistrusted that Judas I never liked his grasp of the bag." No such thoughts were in open or secret circulation. With lips that were tremulous, and cheeks that were blanched, each one said, not "Lord, is it he?" but "Lord is it I?"
IV. Note the fear for himself shown by everyone who asked this question. Pitiless detectors of sin in others should begin at home.
V. Note the love that worketh in the heart of the questioner. Not one of them ever knew how much he loved his Lord, but this shock brought the love out.
VI. Note the answer to the question. Eleven times the question had been asked, for the scare was felt and the cry was uttered by every man at the table. Then it was forced from Judas, who repeated it, and Jesus answered, "Thou hast said." You can read what is on the open page, Jesus can look through the lids of the book read off the shut-in print. You can see the whited sepulchre, He can see the skeleton within. You can see the body, He can see the soul.
C. Stanford, Evening of Our Lord's Ministry,p. 36.
(with John 13:25)
I. In the first form of the question: "Is it I?" we have an example of that wholesome self-distrust, which a glimpse into the possibilities of evil that lie slumbering in all our hearts ought to teach every one of us. Every man is a mystery to himself. In every soul there lie, coiled and dormant, hybernating snakes evils that a very slight rise in the temperature will wake up into poisonous activity. And let no man say, in foolish self-confidence, that any form of sin which his brother has ever committed is impossible to him. The identity of human nature is deeper than the diversity of temperament, and there are two or three considerations that should abate a man's confidence that anything which one man has done it is impossible that he should do. (1) All sins are at bottom but varying forms of one root selfishness. (2) All sin is gregarious; is apt not only to slip from one form to another, but any evil is apt to draw another after it. (3) Any evil is possible to us seeing that all sin is but yielding to tendencies common to us all. (4) Men will gradually drop down to the level which before they began the descent, seemed to be impossible to them.
II. We have here an example of precisely the opposite sort, namely, of that fixed determination to do evil, which is unshaken by the clearest knowledge that it is evil. Judas heard his crime described in its own ugly reality, he heard his fate proclaimed by lips of absolute love and truth; and notwithstanding both he comes unmoved and "unshaken with his question." The dogged determination in the man that dares to see his evil stripped naked, and is not ashamed, is even more dreadful than the hypocrisy and sleek simulation of friendship in his face.
III. We have in the last question an example of the peaceful confidence that comes from communion with Jesus Christ. It was not John's love to Christ, but Christ's love to John, that made his safety. He did not say, "I love thee so much that I cannot betray thee." For all our feelings and emotions are but variable, and to build confidence upon them is to build a heavy building upon quicksand; the very weight of it drives out the foundations. But he thought to himself or he felt rather than he thought that all about him lay the sweet, warm, rich atmosphere of his Master's love, and to a man that was encompassed by that, treachery was impossible.
A. Maclaren, Christian Commonwealth,March 5th, 1885.
References: Matthew 26:24. Preacher's Monthly,vol. i., p. 269; E. Mason, A Pastor's Legacy,p. 386.