“A Symbolic Servant Ceremony” John 13:1-20
The cross is near for Jesus and the next 5 chapters cover Jesus’ farewell Passover meal and Jesus’ encouragement and prayers for His followers. We look at John 13:1 which is Jesus’ last supper where He washes His disciples’ feet:
“Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come that He should depart from this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” (What a beautiful verse! God certainly loves the world and sinners IN the world, but Jesus loves His own, His chosen ones who choose to follow Him; He loves them with His perfect self-sacrificial and self-denying, saving, eternal love!)
2 “And supper being ended, the devil having already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray Him, 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come from God and was going to God, 4 rose from supper and laid aside His garments, took a towel and girded Himself. 5 After that, He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.”
Judas had already made his decision to betray Jesus: His heart desired what the devil desired, namely, the death of Jesus. This would be how Jesus would be handed over to His executioners, and although it was the will of God to be done this way, Judas is in no way excused for his actions.
Knowing all these things, Jesus rises from the table and begins to wash the disciples’ feet, wrapping a towel around Himself, as if He were a household servant. Footwashing was commonplace because of the dusty and dirty conditions in the region, but it would be unheard of for the Teacher, the Rabbi, to stoop to such a menial and degrading task. It is a picture of a Love-Parable in Action.
The Love of Jesus would not be quenched by the power of evil. His love knows no barriers, social, or otherwise. God incarnate stoops to wash the feet of sinners. His love is active and joyful, even in the tasks that are menial and lowly. Jesus shows by his love that the Greatest is the one who serves others and He will soon demonstrate that fact in the greatest possible degree in the cleansing power of the cross. There He would wash the hearts of sinners, not with water, but with the shedding of His Blood.
The disciples may have been more than happy to wash the feet of Jesus, but they would hardly consider washing each other’s feet; that would be a task for the lowest menial servants-yet Jesus does not shirk from such service. In Luke 22:24 the disciples were arguing about who was the greatest, so they were no doubt shocked when Jesus moved from the table to wash their feet, and the furthest thing from their minds would have been to humbly wash each other’s feet.
Dirty Feet
We continue in verse 6: Then He came to Simon Peter. And Peter said to Him, "Lord, are You washing my feet?" 7 Jesus answered and said to him, "What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this." 8 Peter said to Him, "You shall never wash my feet!" Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me." 9 Simon Peter said to Him, "Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!" 10 Jesus said to him, "He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you." 11 For He knew who would betray Him; therefore He said, "You are not all clean."
Jesus was not merely being polite or responding to a dirty feet problem. As shocked as the disciples were by Jesus’ action, and as indignant as Peter appears, Jesus’ actions were serving as a symbolic and spiritual lesson. The selfless and humble service which Jesus was exemplifying through their footwashing was only the prelude which would be displayed by his death on the cross.
Peter as well as the other disciples failed to grasp the humble service at hand as symbolic of spiritual cleansing which only Jesus could provide, indicative of Jesus’ reply in verse 7: "What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this." What the disciples would later learn is that unless the Lamb of God cleanses a person’s sin, a person would have no part with the Lord Jesus. (Jesus’ response in vs. 8b: "If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.")
When Peter hears these words he reacts in unrestrained exuberance: “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” But Peter misses the point, probably owing to his own Jewish heritage and upbringing, He is thinking only of the washing of body parts and ceremonial ritualistic washings. Jesus, however, is not speaking of areas of the skin that need to be washed, but of the washing away of sin which only He could provide.
Verse 10 is a difficult verse: "He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you." “The cleansing that Christ does at salvation never needs to be repeated-atonement is complete at that point. But all who have been cleansed by God’s gracious justification need constant washing in the experiential sense as they battle sin in the flesh. Believers are justified and granted imputed righteousness, but still need sanctification and personal righteousness.” (Footnote, MacArthur Study Bible, p.1569) (See Phil. 3:8-14) Again, the “not all of you” is referring to Judas.
A Pattern for Living
Continuing in verse12, we read: “So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, "Do you know what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. 16 Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. 17 If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.”
The word, “example”, that Jesus uses, also means “PATTERN”. Jesus isn’t instructing His disciples to conduct regular footwashing ceremonies but rather to establish a model of living and loving one another in the same way that the Word Incarnate stooped in humility to wash the feet of those for whom He would die.
In the Christian community, no one is exempt from humble tasks; how could a servant of the Lord Jesus exempt themselves from serving others when the Lord Jesus, Himself, stooped to, not only washing the feet of His followers, but carrying a cross and being subjected to all of the suffering and death that it included for sinful mankind. We as His disciples should exhibit a zeal for humble serving of the Savior and each other; it is a privilege to follow the Savior’s example, but only those who truly know the Lord Jesus will follow His example.
God’s Fulfillment in Judas
Look at verses 18-19: “I do not speak concerning all of you. I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, 'He who eats bread with Me has lifted up his heel against Me.' 19 Now I tell you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe that I am He.”
Again Jesus makes the contrast between His Chosen Ones and Judas. Jesus chose Judas as well as the others, but He chose Judas for a different purpose than the rest: Eleven will bring honor to God by carrying the Gospel message to the World; Judas will betray Him. (This is a clear example of Romans 9:21: “Does not the potter have power over the clay, from the same lump to make one vessel for honor and another for dishonor?”)
Moreover, the reason Jesus chose Judas was to fulfill Scripture. Psalm 41:9, quoted in verse 18, concerns David, the man of God portrayed as a type or model of the Christ to come. David, when he was very sick and being assaulted by his enemies, finds that his closest friends betray him. We read there: “Even my own familiar friend in whom I trusted, who ate my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.”
Friends, according to scripture, are to stand by each other in difficult times; Proverbs 17:17 says: “A friend loves at all times, and a brother is born for adversity.” The point in verse 18 is that the actions of Judas were unnatural because betrayal by an intimate friend is not the normal expected behavior. Allegiance and support would be the norm…Still, in a sinful world, betrayal happens more often than we would like, even among Christians. The norm in the Church should be forgiveness, reconciliation, and allegiance, and humble serving, not betrayal.
Jesus explains this beforehand to impress upon the disciples that He is not a victim who has been overtaken by surprise; the events at hand have been known in advance and are a providential part of the redemptive purpose for which Jesus was sent. There is an urgency again in verse 19 to believe in Jesus as the One sent from God to redeem: “Now I tell you before it comes, that when it does come to pass, you may believe that I am He.” We looked before at the grammatical construction of these words common to John’s Gospel, “that I am He.” Jesus clearly declares His deity.
Jesus is the undeniable object of our faith. Jesus is the I AM of the Old and comes in the flesh as Savior in the New: the “I AM WHO I AM” of Exodus 3:14, the Everlasting, self-existent, timeless One who is God and God alone. (Remember John 8:24: “Therefore I said to you that you will die in your sins; for if you do not believe that I am He, you will die in your sins.") The proper and only CONTENT of saving faith is having the very highest esteem and regard for the person of Jesus Christ. Unless we believe that Jesus is more than a man, we can never trust him with the kind of faith which will SAVE us! Only HOLY God is able to save sinful man and Jesus wants His Disciples and US to understand that Jesus is sovereign over all of the circumstances of His betrayal and crucifixion, and we can be assured that He is Sovereign over all the circumstances in our lives as well.
Representing the I AM
Last verse today, verse 20: “Most assuredly, I say to you, he who receives whomever I send receives Me; and he who receives Me receives Him who sent Me." What a statement! Here Jesus binds the His mission and the mission of His commissioned disciples to the highest authority in Heaven and on Earth-to that of the Eternal God Himself. The actions of Judas do not thwart the plan of God but precisely fulfill His plan as Judas becomes an instrument to accomplish God’s plan of Salvation for sinners.
There is a lot to consider in these verses: There is the model of humility in serving each other according to the pattern of the Lord Jesus. There is the teaching of God’s Perfect Sovereignty in salvation…and in your own life. Then there is the power and the presence of the Living God in the lives of those who are the Chosen Ones of God.
Do you need a renewed confidence to share the Gospel to friends and family who are lost in sin? Contemplate this fact: God has saved you by His grace through His Son so that you might represent Jesus to those people in your world, those around you in your daily sphere of influence. We have been saved to serve the Everlasting One, our Savior God. What a marvelous mission…to serve in the same way as our Loving Savior. May God grant us all that we need in order to serve Him in joyful and Holy obedience. To God alone be the Glory! Amen!
