Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                    Chapter Thirteen

                                                                                                                                               Verses 21-26

Before Jesus could begin to teach His true disciples about how He would sanctify and purify His Church, He first had to excommunicate the unbeliever. The thought of what He had to do troubled Jesus and caused Him grief. Jesus loved Judas Iscariot just as He does all humans. Jesus informed His disciples that one among them would betray Him.

Jesus' disciples looked at each other, and they doubted Jesus' word. Apparently, Jesus' true disciples had complete confidence in Judas Iscariot that he was also a true disciple. One of the strange facts of life is that evil people are often well known to be so by good people, but extremely evil people are quite often accepted by good people because extremely evil people happen to be very good at pretending to be good people. Good people have often been conned out of millions of dollars by extremely evil persons, and they have even been able to become the leaders of nations who have caused wars and mass murder.

Peter asked the Apostle John, who was the youngest disciple and who was leaning on Jesus' chest, to ask Jesus who the traitor was. God loves all humans equally, but He has His favorites, and apparently John was Jesus' favorite disciple. John asked Jesus who the traitor was. Jesus answered that the traitor would be the one to whom He would give a piece of bread after He had dipped it in some kind of sauce. Jesus dipped the bread and gave it to Judas Iscariot.

In all three of His synoptic gospels, Jesus taught that the wine that He gave to His disciples represented His new covenant with His Church in that His shed blood would remit their sins and save them by His grace. Matthew 26:26-29; Mark 14:22-25; Luke 22:14-20. Jesus also gave them the broken bread which represented His broken body, but He did not teach His disciples that His broken body would be a part of His new covenant with His Church. This fact could mean that the broken bread symbolically represented not only Jesus' salvation of His Church from eternal spiritual death, but also the salvation of the rest of humanity from eternal spiritual death. Hebrews 2:9-15. When Jesus gave the broken bread to Judas Iscariot, Jesus could have meant by that gift that a day would come when Jesus will cause even Judas Iscariot to repent and believe in the lamb of God and be saved from the regions of death. Revelation 5:11-14. Jesus did teach that He would lay down His life for His friends. John 15:13. Jesus called Judas Iscariot "friend" when he came with a mob to have Jesus arrested. Mathew 26:50.