The Sovereign Hand and the Wicked Heart Text: Mark 14:17-21
Introduction: The Anatomy of Betrayal
We have come to one of the most somber and searching scenes in all of Scripture. The shadows are lengthening. The cross is looming. Christ is gathered with His disciples, His inner circle, to eat the Passover, the great covenant meal of remembrance and deliverance. But this Passover is unlike any other. It is the last of the old and the first of the new. The Lamb of God is presiding over the very meal that points to His own sacrifice. And in this moment of profound intimacy, with the cross just hours away, the Lord Jesus drops a bombshell into the room. One of them, one of the twelve, one who has walked with Him, eaten with Him, and witnessed His miracles, is about to betray Him into the hands of sinners.
This is not a peripheral detail in the story. This is central. The betrayal of Judas Iscariot is not an unfortunate accident, a tragic miscalculation that caught God off guard. It is a crucial element of the divine script, written in the ink of Old Testament prophecy and ordained by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. But at the same time, it is a monstrous act of human wickedness, a sin so grotesque that Jesus says it would have been better for the man who committed it if he had never been born.
Here, in this upper room, we are confronted with the great mystery that modern man, in his arrogant autonomy, cannot stomach. I speak of the absolute sovereignty of God working itself out through the responsible, and in this case, damnable, choices of men. Our generation wants a god who is either a helpless spectator, wringing his hands in heaven as his plans are thwarted by human free will, or a cosmic tyrant who turns men into puppets, pulling their strings and calling it righteousness. The God of the Bible is neither. He is the sovereign Lord who ordains all that comes to pass, yet does so in such a way that men are not coerced, their wills are not violated, and their responsibility for their sin is not diminished in the slightest. As we will see, God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are not friends who need to be reconciled. They are friends who have never been at odds.
This passage forces us to look into our own hearts. It forces us to ask the same terrifying question the disciples asked: "Surely not I?" It reveals the difference between the godly grief of a true disciple and the worldly sorrow of a son of perdition. And it shows us that the deepest betrayals are not committed by enemies on the battlefield, but by friends at the dinner table.
The Text
And when it was evening He came with the twelve. And as they were reclining at the table and eating, Jesus said, “Truly I say to you that one of you will betray Me, the one who is eating with Me.” They began to be grieved and to say to Him one by one, “Surely not I?” And He said to them, “It is one of the twelve, the one who dips with Me in the bowl. For the Son of Man is to go just as it is written of Him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born.”
(Mark 14:17-21 LSB)
The Bomb at the Banquet (v. 17-18)
We begin with the setting and the shocking announcement.
"And when it was evening He came with the twelve. And as they were reclining at the table and eating, Jesus said, 'Truly I say to you that one of you will betray Me, the one who is eating with Me.'" (Mark 14:17-18)
The scene is one of covenant intimacy. This is not a public address to the multitudes. It is evening, a time of quiet fellowship. He is with "the twelve," the men He had chosen, taught, and loved. They are reclining at the table, a posture of rest and friendship in the ancient world. They are eating together, the most basic sign of communion and trust. To share a meal was to share life. Into this circle of trust, Jesus speaks words of shattering betrayal.
He begins with "Truly I say to you," His customary way of marking a statement of solemn, divine authority. "One of you will betray Me." The betrayal will not come from the Pharisees or the Romans, but from within the camp. The enemy is at the table. And Jesus sharpens the point: "the one who is eating with Me." This is a direct echo of the psalmist's lament over his own betrayal by a trusted friend. "Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me" (Psalm 41:9). Jesus is identifying Himself as the righteous sufferer of the Psalms, and He is identifying His betrayer as one who has violated the sacred trust of table fellowship.
This is a profound theological statement. The greatest sins are not committed by pagan outsiders who know no better. The greatest sins are committed by those who have been brought near, who have tasted the goodness of the Lord, and who then turn and spit in His face. It is the apostate, the covenant-breaker, who incurs the greatest guilt. Judas had been given a front-row seat to the ministry of the Son of God. He had heard the Sermon on the Mount from the mouth of the Preacher. He had seen the lame walk and the blind see. He had even been sent out to cast out demons in Christ's name. And now, he is about to sell his Master for the price of a slave.
Godly Grief and a Searching Question (v. 19)
The response of the true disciples is immediate and instructive.
"They began to be grieved and to say to Him one by one, 'Surely not I?'" (Mark 14:19 LSB)
Notice their reaction. It is not suspicion. They do not look at each other and whisper, "It must be Judas, I never trusted him." No, they look inward. Their first response is grief and self-examination. They were "grieved." This is godly sorrow. It is a sorrow that is horrified at the very thought of such a sin. It is a sorrow that takes the warning of Christ with the utmost seriousness.
And their grief leads to a question, asked "one by one." This is not a corporate, liturgical response. It is a personal, searching, individual cry: "Surely not I?" The Greek is even stronger, expecting a negative answer: "It isn't I, is it?" They are not feigning innocence. They are genuinely appalled, and yet, they know the weakness of their own hearts. A true believer does not say, "I could never do such a thing." A true believer, knowing the depths of his own potential for sin, says, "Lord, is it I? Keep me from such a sin. Hold me fast."
This is the mark of a tender conscience. The eleven are not perfect. In a few hours, they will all desert Him. Peter will deny Him with oaths and curses. But their hearts are His. Their grief is genuine. They tremble at the thought of betraying their Lord. Judas, on the other hand, remains silent here in Mark's account. In Matthew's gospel, he has the audacity to ask the same question, "Is it I, Rabbi?" (Matt. 26:25). But his sorrow is not the godly sorrow that leads to repentance, but the worldly sorrow of a man who has been found out, a sorrow that leads only to death (2 Cor. 7:10).
The Intimacy of Treason (v. 20)
Jesus then provides a further, chilling detail.
"And He said to them, 'It is one of the twelve, the one who dips with Me in the bowl.'" (Genesis 1:3 LSB)
Again, He emphasizes that the traitor is from the innermost circle, "one of the twelve." But then He specifies further: "the one who dips with Me in the bowl." In that culture, a shared bowl of sauce was common. To dip your bread into the same bowl as another was a sign of camaraderie and friendship. For a host to dip a piece of bread and give it to a guest, as John's gospel records Jesus doing for Judas (John 13:26), was an act of special honor.
Jesus is not just identifying a culprit. He is exposing the heinous nature of the crime. The betrayal is not a distant, impersonal act. It is an act of intimate treason. It is a violation of the deepest bonds of fellowship. The hand that will take the silver is the same hand that is dipping in the dish with the Son of God. This is a picture of all covenant-breaking. It is taking the privileges of fellowship, the bread and the wine of communion with Christ, and trampling them underfoot.
This should be a sober warning to us. It is possible to be in the church, to sit at the Lord's Table, to dip in the bowl with Christ, and to have a heart full of treason. It is possible to go through all the outward motions of discipleship while inwardly plotting to sell out the Savior for thirty pieces of silver, whether that silver takes the form of money, or sexual pleasure, or worldly reputation.
Sovereign Plan, Human Guilt (v. 21)
The final verse of our text is the theological heart of the matter, where the great doctrines of God's sovereignty and man's responsibility are brought together in perfect, biblical tension.
"For the Son of Man is to go just as it is written of Him; but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed! It would have been good for that man if he had not been born." (Mark 14:21 LSB)
The first clause establishes the sovereign plan of God. "The Son of Man is to go just as it is written of Him." The crucifixion is not a tragedy. It is an appointment. The path to the cross was mapped out in the pages of the Old Testament Scriptures and in the eternal counsel of God before the foundation of the world. The suffering, the rejection, and the betrayal were all part of the script (e.g., Psalm 22; Isaiah 53). Jesus is not a victim of circumstance; He is the willing Lamb, going to the slaughter in fulfillment of His Father's will. This is our great comfort. Our salvation is not a divine afterthought or a frantic Plan B. It is the culmination of God's eternal purpose.
But divine sovereignty does not erase human guilt. Look at the second clause: "but woe to that man by whom the Son of Man is betrayed!" The word "but" is crucial. It shows that God's ordination does not cancel out Judas's culpability. God's purpose and Judas's wickedness run on parallel tracks that meet at the cross. God used Judas's sin to accomplish the greatest good in history, but that does not make Judas's sin any less sinful. Judas was not a helpless pawn. He made his choices. He loved money more than Jesus. He entertained the devil's suggestions. He acted on his greed. And for that, he is fully and eternally responsible.
Jesus pronounces a "woe" upon him, a declaration of divine judgment. And the nature of that judgment is terrifying: "It would have been good for that man if he had not been born." Think about that. Existence itself is a gift from God. But Judas's sin was so profound, his rebellion so absolute, that his eternal torment will be so severe that non-existence would have been preferable. This is one of the most sobering statements in all of Scripture. It utterly demolishes any sentimental notions of universalism. There is a real hell, and it is a place of such horror that it would be better to have never been created than to end up there.
Conclusion: Examine Yourselves
So what do we do with a passage like this? We do what the eleven disciples did. We examine ourselves. We do not look at Judas and thank God that we are not like other men, extortioners, unjust, adulterers, or even as this traitor. We look into our own hearts and we ask, "Surely not I?"
Do you know the difference between the grief of Peter and the grief of Judas? Both men sinned grievously. Peter denied Christ. Judas betrayed Him. Both men wept bitterly. But Peter's grief was a godly grief that drove him to repentance and restoration. He ran back to the Savior. Judas's grief was a worldly sorrow, a mixture of remorse and pride, that drove him to despair and a rope. He ran away from the Savior.
The question for each of us is this: what kind of sorrow do you have for your sin? Does it drive you to the foot of the cross, to the one who goes "as it is written of Him" to pay for that very sin? Or does it drive you into yourself, into the endless hall of mirrors that is pride, despair, and self-pity?
The good news of the gospel is that the betrayal of Judas was not the final word. The final word was the cross. The very act that Judas intended for evil, God intended for good, to bring about the salvation of many people. Christ took the ultimate act of human treason and turned it into the ultimate act of divine love. He took the cup of betrayal and transformed it into the cup of the new covenant in His blood, shed for the forgiveness of sins.
Therefore, do not despair. If you are grieved by your sin, if you are asking "Is it I?", then run to Him. The fact that you are asking is a sign of life. Run to the one who was betrayed for you, so that you might never be forsaken by God. Cling to the one who went to the cross according to the script, so that the script of your life might be rewritten from damnation to eternal life.