John 13:1–11
Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.
During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it round his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.
He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, ‘Lord, do you wash my feet?’
Jesus answered him, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterwards you will understand.’
Peter said to him, ‘You shall never wash my feet.’
Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.’
Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!’
Jesus said to him, ‘The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.’ For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’[p 103]
A time to learn
Chapters 13–16 of John’s Gospel lead us through what can be called Christ’s school of holiness. While some of the later lessons were taught along the way to Gethsemane, Christ taught the early lessons, appropriately enough, in the quiet seclusion of a private guest room where he and his apostles had met to celebrate the Jewish Passover. As they reclined in oriental fashion around the meal table in intimate, heart-to-heart fellowship, Christ showed them that holiness is not primarily a question of keeping rules and regulations (though there are plenty of commandments to keep) but a question of our response of love to the love of God shown to us through his Son, Jesus Christ.
It is at the beginning of these lessons that John records for us an act by our Lord Jesus that no one else has anywhere recorded, namely that in the middle of the Last Supper, he rose from the table, set aside his outer clothes, girded himself with a towel, poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples’ feet. As we read it we get the idea that this particular act was going to set the scene for all the conversation that subsequently followed. Let us think of this act in its own particular context, and listen to hear what it has to say to us; each of us with our own particular need for the cleansing that the Lord Jesus offers if we will come to him.
Washing his disciples' feet
John tells us that the Lord Jesus, in the course of the supper, took a bowl of water and began to wash his disciples’ feet. It comes to be, therefore, in the very first place, a tremendous lesson in humility. He himself so applies it, for the Gospel tells us:
When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, ‘Do you understand what I have done to you? You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.’ (John 13:12–15)[p 104]
This is the first lesson then. It is a practical lesson in the Christian duty of humble service to others, and the early church took the lesson very seriously. For instance, the Apostle Paul, talking to Timothy about the question of enrolling widows and supporting them from church funds, says, ‘Yes, but you must first enquire as to how this woman has behaved. Has she lived a lazy life, or has she truly served other people? Has she “washed the feet of the saints”?’—meaning, has she humbly and selflessly given herself to the service of others? (See 1 Tim 5:9–10.)
But it is evident as well that this washing of the disciples’ feet conveyed not only a practical lesson in humility but, at a deeper level, a profound lesson in spiritual cleansing. That became clear when the Lord Jesus came to Peter, and Peter began to object.
I admire him for doing it. I nurse in my heart a secret wish that Peter was the first man the Lord came to; because, if those other gentlemen, John and James, had sat there and let the Lord wash their feet without any protest, then I should not think so highly of them. Therefore, Peter was, we hope, the first one he came to.
Peter protested at once, ‘Lord, you’re never going to wash my feet!’ In those days, washing somebody’s feet was the job you gave to a lowly servant or even a slave. That the Lord should rise and bow at his disciples’ feet and wash them was a staggering thing, and Peter protested. But the Lord cut him off, corrected him and said, ‘What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterwards you will understand’ (John 13:7).
‘Oh,’ Peter said to him, ‘you will never wash my feet.’ But the Lord said, ‘Look, Peter, if I don’t wash you, you don’t have any part with me.’
Peter, going as usual from one extreme to another, and being there to put the Lord right when he felt the Lord needed to be put right, said, ‘Well, if that’s so, then not only my feet but also my hands and my head!’
And Jesus replied, ‘The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you’ (13:10). So obviously the Lord has now moved far beyond saying that this is a simple lesson in humility; it is a deeper, profoundly spiritual, lesson.[p 105]
Two levels of washing
We begin learning what that spiritual lesson is by noticing that there are two levels with this cleansing by water. There is what Jesus calls being ‘bathed’ all over, and then there is what he calls a ‘washing’ of the feet. He asserts that if a man has once been bathed, he only needs to rinse his feet, but the rest of him is otherwise clean.
He is, of course, borrowing from the day-to-day experience of people in the east in those far-off days. Very few people had private bathrooms and all of the modern conveniences. If you wanted a bath, you had to go down to the public baths where, of course, you bathed all over. Being bathed all over, you had to walk home, and by the time you got home your feet would have been dusty and dirty with the dust of the road, and the grit between your toes decidedly uncomfortable. But when you got home, you didn’t bathe all over again; what you had to do was simply to rinse your feet. And the Lord Jesus was saying that there is in the spiritual realm something that answers to that. There is an initial bathing all over, once and for all, that never needs to be repeated; but then there is a necessity for the constant rinsing of hands and feet.
The bathing all over
Some people have thought that by the bathing all over Christ was referring to the fact that he can cleanse our consciences from the guilt of our sins, because when he died on the cross and poured out his blood, he paid the penalty of our sins. Now, of course, it is wonderfully true that the moment we put our trust in Christ, God assures us that the blood of Jesus Christ, his Son, cleanses us from all sin (1 John 1:7); and so thorough and complete is that cleansing that God can promise us: ‘I will remember their sins and their lawless deeds no more’ (Heb 10:17). But when our Lord wanted to symbolize the fact that through his blood we have the cleansing and forgiveness of our sins, he filled a cup with wine (not water), gave it to his disciples and told them to drink it—not bathe themselves in it (Matt 26:27–28). The symbol that he used in the enacted parable in John 13, however, was not wine, representing his blood, but water. It points, then, to that other magnificent, once for all, cleansing which Christ offers to all who come to him in true repentance and faith: the washing of regeneration.[p 106]
What then is the bathing all over? The ‘bathing all over’ is that onceand- for-all experience of regeneration that occurs when a believer first trusts the Saviour and receives the Holy Spirit. It is called a ‘washing’ because what the Holy Spirit does is to take his inspired word and apply it to the heart of the sinner, inducing repentance: getting the man or woman to change his or her mind to agree with what God says, to accept God’s standards instead of their own inadequate moral standards, and to agree with God that they have fallen short and are powerless to attain to those standards. This is the way the Holy Spirit begins to cleanse a person, by applying the word of God to induce repentance.
But then, of course, there is the positive side to it. There is the regeneration, there is the new life, when the Holy Spirit speaks the word of God creatively into the person’s heart. Just as at creation he worked to bring out of the dark, formless, shapeless chaos a living world, so does the Holy Spirit speak in the believer’s heart to produce new spiritual life.
That experience happens when we first become Christians, and it needs never to be repeated. Babies, once born, cannot and need not be physically born again; but, having been once born, they can become dirty and have constantly to be cleansed. Even so, when we have received Christ and we have received new spiritual life, and become children of God, we don’t have to be born spiritually again, once more or constantly; but we do need constantly to allow the Lord, so to speak, to rinse our feet, because this world is a dirty place.
Christians, as they walk through this world, will find that some of the dirt and filth of this world begins to brush off on them. And in addition they will find that it provokes their own inner maladjustments: they will become angry or envious or fretful, and these attitudes will spoil and defile their spirits. They will need constantly to come to the Lord and to his word to allow that word to wash away those impurities.
So, then, we have two things: we have the initial washing that is once for all, and we have the constant cleansing of the feet.
Learning the lessons
Now, if those are the major lessons of the passage, let’s try to put them into their detailed context. It is obvious that the Lord Jesus was about to teach his disciples a fundamental lesson in holiness. This is the very first lesson that we shall all have to learn if we are to be[p 107] holy—that we need this basic cleansing of being born again; and then that we need this constant rinsing, that is, the ‘washing of water by the word’ (see Eph 5:25–27). How would he teach the lesson?
Simply, but dramatically, John begins to describe the scene. Here are the disciples sitting or reclining on the cushions by the table. Jesus is going to leave them presently; he’s going to die; he’s going back to heaven. They are going to be left in a hostile and filthy world. He must teach them these lessons of holiness. As he looks at them, he knows everything, of course. John tells us that he knew his hour had come; he knew that Judas was going to betray him; and he knew that Peter was going to deny him. He could see John and James with their excitable temperaments—men who would willingly cry down the wrath and fire and brimstone of heaven on anybody who got in their way (see Luke 9:51–56). They were a very mixed group, and he knew them perfectly. How would he begin to cleanse their characters and make their personalities sweeter and fresher?
It’s a difficult thing, isn’t it, to touch somebody’s personality? I can tell you it would be, if you tried it sometime with me! Come up to me and say, ‘You are insufferably proud, and a hopeless old spoilsport.’ Well, you would probably be speaking the truth, but I wouldn’t necessarily throw my arms around your neck and say, ‘Oh, what a wonderful person you are for telling me. I do enjoy being told that!’ In fact, if you’re not careful, you are liable to have the very opposite effect from what you intend. You’ll make me close up, and I shall become all defensive and argue that I’m better than you, and better than most people anyway.
Our Lord knows better than to adopt that approach. He is going to talk to these men about their personality difficulties, their behavioural difficulties, and he wants them to have such confidence that they are prepared to open their hearts and let him put his finger on the sore spot. So he gets up and quietly girds himself with a towel and begins to wash their feet.
If I could go home tonight, ring a bell and along came a servant who took my shoes off, brought my slippers and got the bath ready for me, I would think I was somebody special. What would you think if you could go home, ring a bell, and the Son of God appeared with a basin, took your shoes off and began to wash your feet?
It is staggering, isn’t it? Peter found it embarrassing. We may be sure it wasn’t mere ostentation on Christ’s part. He got down at their[p 108] feet to do that menial task because he genuinely loved them. They were the important men—he the servant. Because in his estimation they were important, he served them and cleansed them. He did it because he loved them, not because he enjoyed criticizing them. How gently he washed their feet! And when he wiped them, the towel was warm with the warmth of his own body. What a wonderful Saviour this is, who, even in the moment that he must point out the dirt and the blemishes and the spots and the wrinkles, makes us feel the warmth of his personal love and personal devotion.
The effectiveness of the cleansing
Here we shall need to maintain a proper and healthy balance. There are times in our spiritual lives, even as Christians, when we feel that we have blotted our characters and that all is hopeless. At that time we shall have to remember our Lord’s wonderful, triumphant word: ‘The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean.’ The cleansing that Christ provides starts with this cleansing of regeneration, this being born again, and once that has happened it never needs to be repeated. It is a cleansing that in itself is utterly perfect.
We do well to remember this in days when Satan would cause us to doubt. He will say, ‘There you are; you say you are a Christian. Just listen to yourself and that conversation you had just now. You really lost your temper, didn’t you? And you were bitter. Can you call yourself a Christian after that?’ But in those moments of despair, we should remember our Lord’s words, and say to ourselves, ‘If I have really trusted Christ, if I have been born again, then I have been bathed all over, and it never needs to be repeated.’
And tell me, between a ‘being bathed all over’ and a ‘rinsing of the feet’, which would you say is the more important? Which is the bigger thing? Would you not say it is being bathed all over? Of course it is; and the person who has trusted Christ knows that the biggest thing that pertains to their sanctification has already happened, and it never needs to be repeated.
But lest we should grow careless, and say, ‘Well, because I trusted Christ five years ago and I was born again, now it doesn’t really matter how I live’, we should remember our Lord’s words, ‘you must let[p 109] me rinse your feet, because if you don’t let me rinse your feet, you can have no part with me.’ What did he mean by that?
No share with Christ
If we are to answer this question satisfactorily, we shall need to notice, in the first place, exactly what our Lord said. Some translations have not thought it necessary to report his words exactly, and they say: ‘If I wash you not, you have no part in me’, which is a most unfortunate mistake, for our Lord did not say that. He said, ‘You have no part with me’, and that is very different. Once a person is born again and receives God’s Holy Spirit, he or she is baptized into the body of Christ and there is thereafter no severance. They are in Christ, and in Christ for ever.
Our Lord was not talking, then, about the question of being in him, but of having practical fellowship, having part with him in his work and ministry. He was saying to Peter, and to us all, that if we would have practical day-to-day fellowship with him in his work of blessing others, we shall need to submit to his constant washing of our feet.
As believers we are not sinless. Even though we have been born again, have received God’s Holy Spirit and are children of God, with his assurance that we shall never perish, the New Testament would have us notice that we still have sin in us. It is still grievously possible for us to ‘live according to the flesh’, as Paul puts it (Rom 8:12).
Suppose my next door neighbour’s boy gets a new bicycle and insists on cycling through my front gates into my garden and knocking down all my tulips. I may be within my rights to explode and scream and shout at him or his mother, or both. But I shall need to watch myself, for if I allow my temper to get out of hand, it will be pretty difficult for me the next day to turn round and tell her how much Jesus loves sinners, and how patient he is. She will rightly say that if I am any example of what Christ does for people, she would prefer he would not do it.
If we want to have practical fellowship with Christ and his work, we must let him constantly ‘wash our feet’, and cleanse away these defiling eruptions.
More than that. There have been situations when a person has been terribly wronged, and we have said to ourselves, ‘If I was in his place I would do this or that.’ Yet the person goes and does the very[p 110] opposite thing. He has mercy; he is kind and patient. We cannot understand him. Why? Because our outlook is different, and as long as we do not understand him there will be a gap between us.
Our experience of Christ is like that. We may belong to him, be children of God born again by his Holy Spirit, but unless we allow him to clear away our unworthy attitudes, there will be a gap between all our attitudes and reactions and his. We shall not be able to take in totally what it is to go out and seek the lost, and to have compassion on the fallen. We shall think it is enough to remain prim and proper in our very respectable drawing rooms. If we are to have this practical fellowship with Christ, we need this constant rinsing of our feet.[p 110]
The need for constant cleansing
To sum up what we are thinking about, we can do no better than to learn from the writings of Peter. As we shall consider in a later chapter, one of the lovable things about Peter is that although he often made appalling mistakes, yet in the end he did learn his lessons and therefore makes a very kindly teacher.
When our Lord went to wash Peter’s feet, he tried to stop him. Then he went to the other extreme and wanted him to bathe his hands and his head as well, and our Lord had to tell him that that was not necessary. But he had learned the vital lesson about this initial cleansing.
In Acts 15, Luke tells us that at one stage in the early Church’s history, a very great meeting was held when the apostles decided to send out a letter to tell the world at large how a person is saved, and in particular how a Gentile is to be saved. There were those in the Jewish community who thought that the way to get Gentile Christians living holy lives was to impose all sorts of rules and regulations upon them, such as circumcision.
Peter stood up in that council and said: ‘No! Even we ourselves, true blooded Jews, have to be saved simply by the grace of God; and now we have before us evidence in the conversion of Cornelius and his colleagues, that God gives the Holy Spirit to the Gentiles when they believe; making no difference between them and us, he has “cleansed their hearts by faith”’ (see 15:6–11).
In the context, the contrast is between trying to cleanse yourself by external ordinances, and being cleansed by personal faith in the[p 111] Lord Jesus. Peter is referring to what happened at the conversion of these Gentiles: when they first received the Holy Spirit, they were cleansed by faith.
Again in 1 Peter 1:22, talking to Christians, he says the same thing: ‘Having purified your souls by your obedience to the truth . . . ’. This basic purification is when a person faces the word of God and learns that he or she is unsaved and unholy and needs to be born again, and submits to that truth. So that person’s soul is purified by their obedience to the truth: ‘since you have been born again, not of perishable seed but of imperishable, through the living and abiding word of God’ (1:23). So Peter had learned the first, basic lesson.
Then he learned the next lesson: the need for constant rinsing of the feet. To these people who had been born again, who had purified their souls by faith, he says in this same letter, ‘Put away all malice and all deceit and hypocrisy and envy and all slander.’ He is telling them that, since they are like newborn infants, they must put those things away, and instead ‘long for the pure spiritual milk, that by it you may grow up into salvation’ (2:1–2). There is always the need for this constant putting away, this rinsing of the feet.
A final question
Let’s read again what John tells us was on Christ’s mind, just before he rose to serve them.
When Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it round his waist. (John 13:1–4)
He saw them all sitting there, and he knew their difficulties. He knew, for instance, how deep the wounds in Peter’s personality went, and yet it was not in any spirit of defeat that he rose from the table. He knew what Satan was planning to do to that little company to blast[p 112] them open, to prey on Peter’s weakness and to get Peter to deny him and blot his spiritual copybook almost beyond recovery.
Yet the Lord Jesus rose from supper to begin the work anyway, because he knew that he had come from God and was going to God, and that the Father had put all things into Christ’s hand and that he himself was equal to the task of cleansing his people. And it is with such a Saviour firmly before our minds that we may ask ourselves, indeed we should ask him, what level of cleansing we require, and then let him do what he has promised he will do.[p 113]
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