John 17:12

“While I was with them I kept those whom you have given me, and I guarded them and not one of them perished except the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled.”

Jesus has faithfully and successfully fulfilled His task with regard to those whom the Father has given Him. He has watched over them and protected them, and all are safe apart from the one who was ‘the son of perdition (or destruction)'. He was never given by the Father to Jesus, for he was marked for destruction. He was never a ‘son of God' but always ‘a son of perdition', one bound for and deserving destruction because he follows its ways.

‘The son of perdition' par excellence is the one who above all personifies Satan (2 Thessalonians 2:3), the ‘man of sin', the Antichrist. But Judas has sided with him, and revealed his true nature as one with him. John makes clear that Jesus knew the truth about him from the beginning (John 6:70). Just as at the end there will be one who will reveal Satanic control, a son of perdition, so also there was at the beginning. He was the beginning of the attempts of Satan to thwart the purposes of God.

‘That the Scripture might be fulfilled'. The main Scripture in mind is Psalms 41:9, ‘yes, my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate of my bread, has lifted up his heel against me' as Jesus tells us in John 13:18. It is not claiming that this is a specific prophecy of Judas' failure, but that Judas' failure follows the pattern of Scripture. What Scripture reveals that men are like in their attitude to those beloved by God here proves true.