J C Ryle
Let us mark, in these verses, the power and malignity of our great enemy the devil. We are told, at the beginning of the chapter, that he “put it into the heart” of Judas to betray the Lord Jesus. We are told here that the devil “entered into” him. First he suggests; then he commands. First he knocks at the door and asks permission to come in; once admitted, he takes complete possession and rules the whole inward man like a tyrant.
Let us take heed that we are not “ignorant of Satan’s devices”. He is still going to and fro in the earth, seeking whom he may devour. He is about our path and about our bed, and spies out all our ways. Our only safety lies in resisting him from the first, not listening to his first advances. For this we are all responsible. Strong as he is, he has no power to do us harm if we cry to the stronger One in heaven and use the means which He has appointed. It is
1Comments, with editing, on John 13:21-30 from Ryle’s Expository Thoughts on John, vol. 3.
a standing principle of Christianity which will ever be found true: “Resist the devil, and he will flee from you” (Jas 4:7).
Once let a man begin to tamper with the devil and he never knows how far he may fall. Trifling with the first thoughts of sin, making light of evil ideas when first offered to our hearts, allowing Satan to talk to us and flatter us and put bad notions into our hearts – all this may seem a small matter to many. It is precisely at this point that the road to ruin often begins. He that allows Satan to sow wicked thoughts will soon find within his heart a crop of wicked habits. Happy is he who really believes that there is a devil and, so believing, daily watches and prays to be kept from his temptations.
Let us mark also, in these verses, the extreme hardness which comes over the heart of a backsliding professor of religion. This is most painfully brought out in the case of Judas Iscariot. One might have thought that the sight of our Lord’s trouble and the solemn warning: “One of you shall betray Me”, would have stirred the conscience of this unhappy man. But it did not. One might have thought that the solemn words, “That thou doest, do quickly,” would have arrested him and made him ashamed of the sin he intended to commit. But nothing seems to have moved him. Like one whose conscience was dead, buried and gone, he rises and goes out to do his wicked work, and parts with his Lord for ever.
The extent to which we may harden ourselves by resisting light and knowledge is a most fearful fact about our nature. We may become past feeling, like those whose limbs are mortified before they die. We may lose entirely all sense of fear or shame or remorse, and have a heart as hard as the nether millstone, blind to every warning, and deaf to every appeal. It is a sore disease, but one which, unhappily, is not uncommon among professing Christians. No one seems so liable to this disease as those who, having great light and privilege, deliberately turn their backs on Christ and return to the world. Nothing seems likely to touch such people but the voice of the arch-angel and the trump of God.
Let us watch jealously over our hearts and beware of giving way to the beginnings of sin. Happy is he who fears always and walks humbly with his God. The strongest Christian is the one who feels his weakness most, and cries most frequently, “Hold Thou me up, and I shall be safe” (Ps 119:117).
No judgement of God, on this side hell, is greater than a hard heart and stupid conscience under the Word; it were better the providence of God should blast thy estate, take away thy children, or destroy thy health, than harden thy heart and sear thy conscience under the Word. So much as thy soul is better than thy body, so much as eternity is more valuable than time, so much is this spiritual judgement more dreadful than all temporal ones.
John Flavel