Scripture Introduction
We enter an “inner sanctuary” when we open our Bibles to John 13.
J. C. Ryle: “In every age the contents of these chapters have been justly regarded as one of the most precious parts of the Bible. They have been the meat and drink, the strength and comfort of all true-hearted Christians…. ‘The place whereon we stand is holy ground’” (Ryle, Expository Thoughts, 1).
James Boice: Chapters 13-17 “contain probably the best-known and most-loved words of religious instruction ever uttered by any religious teacher” (Commentary on John, volume 4, ix).
Charles Ross: “…a unique and most precious portion of the Word of God…. ” (Ross, The Inner Sanctuary, 13).
Dr. Alexander Maclaren: “…the Holy of Holies of the New Testament. Nowhere else do the blended lights of our Lord’s superhuman dignity and human tenderness shine with such lambent brightness. Nowhere else is his speech at once so simple and so deep. Nowhere else have we the heart of God so unveiled to us. On no other page, even of the Bible, have so many eyes, glistening with tears, looked and had the tears dried. The immortal words which Christ spoke in that upper chamber are his highest self-revelation in speech, even as the Cross to which they led up is His most perfect self-revelation in act” (Expositions, 284).
Which such praise, the believer who desires to walk closely with the Lord must be thrilled by the anticipation of our study in these chapters over the next months. We begin with John 13.1-11. [Read John 13.1-11. Pray.]
Introduction
I have on my computer the recording by Sixpence None The Richer of the deeply moving, Beautiful, Scandalous Night:
Go on up to the mountain of mercy / To the crimson perpetual tide / Kneel down on the shore / Be thirsty no more / Go under and be purified. / Follow Christ to the holy mountain / Sinner sorry and wrecked by the fall / Cleanse your heart and your soul / In the fountain that flowed / For you and for me and for all.
Chorus: At the wonderful, tragic, mysterious tree / On that beautiful, scandalous night you and me / Were atoned by His blood and forever washed white / On that beautiful, scandalous night.
On the hillside, you will be delivered / At the foot of the cross justified / And your spirit restored / By the river that poured / From our blessed Savior’s side.
Chorus: At the wonderful, tragic, mysterious tree / On that beautiful, scandalous night you and me / Were atoned by His blood and forever washed white / On that beautiful, scandalous night.
The juxtaposition of “beautiful” and “scandalous” helps us feel the strange confluence of attraction and repulsion contained in the gospel. Through the prophet Isaiah, God foretold that his Son would be, “a stone of offense and a rock of stumbling” (Isaiah 8.14). The Greek word is [skandalon], “a stumbling stone, a cause of offense or revulsion.” The word, “scandalous,” comes into English directly from the Greek. People harbor vivid expectations of God and Messiah, and Jesus offends those human sensibilities.
Michael Card sings about this in, “Scandalon”:
The seers and the prophets had foretold it long ago, That the long awaited one would make men stumble. But they were looking for a king to conquer and to kill, Who’d have ever thought He’d be so meek and humble?
Chorus: He will be the truth that will offend them one and all. A stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And many will be broken so that He can make them whole, and many will be crushed and lose their own soul.
Along the path of life there lies a stubborn Scandalon, And all who come this way must be offended. To some He is a barrier, To others He’s the way, For all should know the scandal of believing.
It seems today the Scandalon offends no one at all, The image we present can be stepped over. Could it be that we are like the others long ago? Will we ever learn that all who come must stumble?
Chorus: He will be the truth that will offend them one and all. A stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes them fall. And many will be broken so that He can make them whole, and many will be crushed and lose their own soul.
In addition to Isaiah 8, Card reflects on Jesus’ own claim about himself in Matthew 21.44: “And the one who falls on this stone will be broken to pieces; and when it falls on anyone, it will crush him.” There are only two responses when encountering the true Christ. One is to stumble and fall—to be broken of our self so that God can make us whole, since he only works through brokenness. The alternative is to stumble, but catch yourself before you fall, and so save yourself from being broken. But those who are not broken by his salvation will eventually be crushed in judgment.
Because those options offend, because the gospel has a repelling element which “nice people” do not like, we may preach a different Jesus — one who does what we expect, who lives to please, and who always supports our self-centered agendas. Few stumble on that stone since he is so easily stepped over. But such is not the Jesus who stooped to wash Peter’s feet.
Now because Peter spewed out his thoughts and feelings in unguarded speech, this text shines a bright light on a three-fold scandal of the cross. There are many ways in which the cross offends respectable people; there are three touched by this text, and they must touch you if you would know God.
1. God Scandalizes Us with the Washing of Justification (John 13.3-8)
Peter’s quick response reveals his heart: “Look Jesus: I know you are the Christ, the Son of the living God! You must not bow before me like a slave! You shall never wash my feet.”
But Jesus answers: “There is no other way, my friend. You cannot clean yourself; you are dirty, defiled, damned, dead. Every soul that would be saved, I must wash. Do not object to this service which so well illustrates the greater grace I must give you.”
Of course, the real scandal here is not simply the grace of God, is it? A God kind, merciful, compassionate, and loving is not terribly offensive. The greater difficulty with Jesus’ action is what it says about me. I am not able to clean myself. God must wash my filth or I must be condemned to hell. Is that too harsh for moderns?
I remember about 10 years ago, I was riding in the car with my dad. He had listened to one of my sermons in which I said that many people think of life as a balance scale in which your good deeds go on one side and your bad ones on the other, then God weighs them out and if your good deeds tip the balance, you enter heaven. He was surprised that I called that incorrect, and he was confident that his good deeds were sufficient. His view lined up well with a recent poll which found that less than 4% of Americans believe they could end up in Hell.
People naturally think well of themselves, and “good people” are offended when they are told that they are more evil than they would ever dare imagine. But when the Apostle Paul, in Romans 3, explains why God is right to judge and condemn us as sinners, he says: “All [people], both Jews and Greeks, are under sin, as it is written: ‘None is righteous, no, not one; no one understands; no one seeks for God…. No one does good, not even one’” (Romans 3.9-12).
In the 1500s, Martin Luther wrote The Bondage of the Will to defend the Biblical teaching of the depravity of our nature and our slavery to sin. Luther’s work was in answer to the writings of Erasmus on free will: “Your book struck me as so worthless and poor that my heart went out to you for having defiled your lovely, brilliant flow of language with such vile stuff. I though it outrageous to convey material of so low a quality in the trappings of such rare eloquence; it is like using gold or silver dishes to carry garden rubbish or dung.”
Obviously, Luther was unimpressed with Erasmus’ theology or scholarship. Even so, he thanked Erasmus for debating the question of depravity: “You alone, have attacked the real thing, the essential issue. You have not worried me with those extraneous issues about the Papacy, purgatory, indulgences and such like—trifles, rather than issues…. You and you alone have seen the hinge on which all turns, and aimed for the vital spot. For that I heartily thank you.”
The vital spot is: “Are we dead in sin (or just maimed)? Is salvation a gift of God’s free grace (or something with which we cooperate)? Am I really without hope apart from God’s sovereign mercy (or is my decision the key)? These are the issues that matter. The wrong answers fill Roman and Methodist churches every Sunday. Respectable people hate the Bible’s answer.
I read a sermon by a pastor in South Africa. He saw a plumber’s van with this advertisement painted on the side: “No place too deep, too dark, or too dirty for us!” When Jesus picks up the basin and the towel, he says to Peter: “The sin is too deep, too dark, too dirty for you—but not for me. Let me wash you; let me fix your heart; let me free your soul.”
John Flavel: “How dangerous it is to join anything of our own to the righteousness of Christ, in pursuit of justification before God! Jesus Christ will never endure this; it reflects upon His work dishonorably. He will be all, or none, in our justification…. Christ is no half-Savior. It is a hard thing to bring proud hearts to rest upon Christ for righteousness. God humbles the proud by calling sinners wholly from their own righteousness to Christ for their justification.”
Have you been scandalized by the grace of salvation? If not, then you need to be washed by Christ.
2. God Scandalizes Us with the Washing of Sanctification (John 13.9-10)
Peter responds with enthusiasm. He is impulsive, excitable, zealous. So when Jesus suggests that if his feet are not washed he would have no part in the Savior, he says: “wash my hands and head too!”
Jesus’ response is more subdued: “Those I have justified do not again need to be saved; you do, however, need the daily grace of sanctification, represented by the dirt your feet. None of you lives a day without defilement, and the need for forgiveness anew.”
That is a hard saying for good Presbyterians. We pride ourselves in doing all things right and orderly. But many a professing Christian has grown a hard heart and a Pharisaical mind by refusing to acknowledge the defiling effects of sin clinging to their souls.
I read two examples this week. Doug Wilson wrote about food fads among Christians, noting how frequently we imagine that what we eat or do not eat pleases God: “There is no more defilement in ‘eating healthy’ than there is in stopping by McDonald’s. The only defilement possible is a defilement that comes out of the heart, and not what goes into the mouth. However this does create a caution for those who are heavy into ‘eating healthy.’ To say that one food over against another puts you closer to God is false religion, and that does defile…. Americans have a long tradition of thinking that we can deal with sin by means of false sacraments” (Credenda/Agenda, Summer 2008, 16).
We do, you know. John Harvey Kellogg, a Seventh-day Adventist, developed corn flakes because he felt a meatless breakfast would reduce sexual drive and promiscuity. Thomas Bramwell Welch created unfermented grape juice because, as a Wesleyan Methodist, Christians were not to drink wine. The Reverend Sylvester Graham invented the Graham cracker to suppress carnal urges and promote sanctification.
All this in spite of Colossians 2.20-23: Since you died with Christ to the basic principles of this world, why, as though you still belonged to it, do you submit to its rules: “Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch”? These have indeed an appearance of wisdom in promoting self-made religion and asceticism and severity to the body, but they are of no value in stopping the indulgence of the flesh.”
It offended Graham and Welch and Kellogg for Jesus to say that he had to wash away daily the filth of sin; they would solve the problem for Jesus by eating healthy.
Another example of the subtle ways in which the sinful heart imagines it does not need the continued grace of God is the way we view worship. With smugness unbefitting those convinced of depravity, we decry “immature” Christians who come to church to “get something out of it.” I have thought that.
But I am well corrected by Jeffery Meyers’ writing: “We have been told by well-meaning teachers, even otherwise orthodox Reformed theologians, that it is downright wrong to come to church on order to get something…. First, and above all, we are called together in order to get, to receive. This is crucial. The Lord gives; we receive. Faith will never reach that degree of maturity where it could live without receiving. A grateful reception of God’s gracious gifts will always remain the task of Christian worship…. Then, second, only in reciprocal exchange do we give back what is appropriate as grateful praise and adoration…. Everything we are and have we received from him (1Corinthians 4.7). He stands in no need of our service or praise. He has not created us primarily to get glory for himself, but to distribute and share the fullness of his glory with his creatures…. If the church’s worship is the place where God glorifies his saints by distributing his life-giving Word and Sacraments, if it is the occasion for God to serve the congregation, then we can, to some degree, transcend the rigid dichotomy regarding the purpose of the Sunday service—is it for evangelism or worship? Why do we have to choose between one or the other? If unbelievers are present they may be served as well.”
Every religion teaches that people must serve their god. The very definition of “religion” is “people’s beliefs about how they must worship and serve their god.” Jesus alone among gods serves his people. As Jesus will explain in a later chapter: “As the branch cannot bear fruit by itself, unless it abides in the vine, neither can you, unless you abide in me. Apart from me you can do nothing” (John 15.2,4).
3. God Scandalizes Us with the Washing of Election (John 13.10b-11)
Judas was baptized with water, kept company with Christ, performed miracles and taught the Bible, was a professing member of the church—and betrayed Jesus. Are there some here today that know the right answers, recite your catechism questions, attend services regularly, and profess the true faith, yet your heart is far from broken by the grace of God? Please, do not count on outward forms in place of a cleansed heart. The truly gracious heart does not cry out: “I made a decision for God; I joined the church; I was baptized; I know the chief end of man; I raised my children properly; I never drink diet coke.” The gracious heart cries, instead: “God convicted me; Jesus washed me in the water of his gracious love; the Holy Spirit lives in me uniting me, body and soul, to the savior who loves me and will not let me go.” All of Christ! All of Christ!
4. Conclusion
The story is told of an orphan boy living with his grandmother when their house caught fire. The grandmother try to climb upstairs to rescue the boy, but perished in the flames. Fortunately, his cries for help were answered by a man who climbed an iron drainpipe and came back down with the boy hanging tightly to his neck.
Several weeks later there was a public hearing to determine who would receive custody of the child. A farmer, a teacher, and the town’s wealthiest citizen all gave the reasons they felt they should be chosen to give the boy a home. But as they talked, the lad’s eyes remained focused on the floor. Then a stranger walked to the front and slowly took his hands from his pockets, revealing severe scars on them. As the crowd gasped, the boy cried out in recognition. This was the man who had saved his life. His hands had been burned when he climbed the hot pipe. With a leap the boy threw his arms around the man’s neck and held on for dear life. The other men walked away, leaving the boy and his rescuer alone. The marred hands settled the issue.
Your Redeemer kneels to wash with marred hands. Do not turn away, with pride offended by your inability to cleanse yourself and your dependence on God’s mercy. Look at his love and allow “self” to be broken by this scandalous Savior.
