“With desire I have desired to eat this passover with you before I suffer” (Luke 22:15). Even in his agony he did not forget or neglect his infinite love for them.
“And as they did eat, he said, Verily I say unto you that one of you shall betray me” (Matt 26:21). And everyone said, “Is it I?” — Judas along with the rest. Was there nothing in all those three years that Judas had done that would cause them to suspect, nor in all Jesus’ relationships with Judas? What a marvelous testimony to the impartial love Jesus had shown to his secret enemy among them!
“Yea, mine own familiar friend in whom I trusted hath lifted up his heel against me!” (Psa 41:9). How could Jesus trust him if he knew from the beginning he would betray him? Clearly it means that he treated him with the same trust that he treated the others. He made no distinction, though he knew what he would do. There is a great lesson for us here in our treatment of others.
There is another reason why the disciples did not suspect Judas. The outward difference between him and them was not as great as we might suppose. Truly they were basically sincere and he was not. But they were very childish and self-centered and uncomprehending — until the shock and sorrow of the cross made them men… And we find that right after he tells them that one of them will betray him, they are quarreling among themselves who shall be greatest in the Kingdom — right at the last supper, when Jesus was in his agony of love and sorrow. They sorrowed, like sympathetic but unrealizing children, when he spoke of betrayal and death, but they were soon too preoccupied with their own selfish rivalry to remember what he had said. It was then that Jesus girded himself with a towel, and washed their feet.
“Having loved his own, he loved them to the end” (John 13:1) — not for what they were, but in faith for what they would be when they grew up.
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One