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Reclining at table with his disciples, Jesus was deeply troubled and testified,
"Amen, amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me."
The fact that Jesus was God and thus able to foresee the events of his passion did not necessarily make those events any easier. In fact, it is quite possible that the ability to foresee those events combined with the necessity not to avoid them made them even more difficult. We see here that Jesus was deeply troubled to know that one of his closest followers would turn against him.
Even my close friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted his heel against me (see Psalm 41:9).
Even Judas was not completely corrupt at the beginning. He was one of the twelve sent out to preach and to work signs and wonders. He was one of those who were in closest fellowship with Jesus during his earthly life. Yet even though Jesus certainly loved Judas there was not a way for him to turn Judas aside from the course which Judas himself had decided to carry out. Any possible alternative would have been unfair to Judas and would have at the same time prevented Jesus from fulfilling his Father's perfect plan.
After Judas took the morsel, Satan entered him.
So Jesus said to him, "What you are going to do, do quickly."
Now none of those reclining at table realized why he said this to him.
Even with Peter Jesus could not in advance prevent the betrayal he was to commit, not even by warning him that it would be so. The burden of this divine knowledge was to see all of this coming but to stand fast and allow his love to absorb it and transform it into the possibility of repentance and mercy.
Jesus answered, "Will you lay down your life for me?
Amen, amen, I say to you, the cock will not crow
before you deny me three times."
Jesus did show mercy to Peter, a mercy that was always a part of his plan not only for Peter but for all of those who would be strengthened by Peter's restoration. This is why Jesus told him, "when you have turned again, strengthen your brothers" (see Luke 22:32). And Jesus would have shown mercy even to Judas had Judas but been willing to ask it of him. But does this willingness of the Lord to forgive mean that we should not even set resolutions like those of Peter to follow Jesus no matter the cost, since we know our own fallibility? Should we simply plan to sin in advance to ease the disappointment of our eventual failures? This is part of the question addressed by Paul:
What shall we say then? Are we to continue in sin that grace may abound? By no means! How can we who died to sin still live in it? (see Romans 6:1-2).
We have to face the world with a firm purpose of amendment, of living the grace we have been given. We can't skip past the inevitability of failure been planning on it. Rather, we must make every effort to respond to the grace we have been given. Yet when we do invariably find we fall short it is then that we can take comfort in the limitless mercy to be found in the heart of Jesus. After all, he did not come for the perfect, not to help angels (see Hebrews 2:16), but rather "Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I [Paul] am the foremost" (see First Timothy 1:15).
It is in his accomplishing of our salvation, of his pouring out his blood that we might receive mercy, that his glory is most fully revealed. It is from the cross that Jesus becomes a "light to the nations, that my salvation may reach to the ends of the earth"
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