NOTES for Mar 14:12-25
The Savior's words about His own path and about the one who will betray Him—that it would be better for such a person never to have been born—throw His disciples into turmoil. However ready they may have been, by their own account, to die for their Teacher, not one of them doubted that he might become a traitor—not even Peter, who had more than once expressed that readiness aloud and with complete confidence. It seems that the experience of their own inadequacy, which all the apostles had by then accumulated, had taught them something. Time and again they had become convinced that without their Teacher they could do nothing. And now, facing what they believed would be an impending uprising and a great messianic war, the disciples suddenly realized the very real possibility of finding themselves without support at the most dangerous moment. Their Teacher was quite clearly about to go somewhere, and He was not inviting them to accompany Him; this meant they would have to spend at least some time without Him. Who knew what might happen while He was away…
Jesus, however, clearly has something else in mind: He is speaking not of weakness, but of the deliberate betrayal committed by Judas. At the same time, Jesus states plainly that His path has been determined beforehand, but this in no way absolves the traitor of responsibility. Here we confront the antinomy of the fallen world and the evil in which it lies: after the Fall, evil became inevitable for the fallen world, and so the Savior's path, like His death, was predetermined—predetermined, of course, not by the Father, who does not create evil, but by the evil in which the world lies. Having entered the world fully and in complete reality, the Savior inevitably had to encounter evil, which became real for Him to the extent that He came into contact with the world—and thus in all its fullness, for our fallen world also became real for Him in all its fullness, although He had not created that reality.
Yet even in such a world, steeped in evil, human beings still have freedom of choice. The weakness of fallen nature is one thing; a deliberate choice is quite another. If a person knowingly chooses evil, that person bears full responsibility for the choice, with no allowance made for circumstances, whether the world's evil as a whole or a particular situation. This is what Jesus reminds His disciples of as He breaks bread with them at the Last Supper.