If you would please join with me and turn in your Bibles [snorts] to John chapter 13, beginning at the first verse, John tells us, ‘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. And during the 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 around his waist. Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with a 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 afterward you will understand.’ And 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.’ And 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.’ 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. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. And if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them. This is the word of the Lord. Thanks be to God.
Let us pray. Heavenly Father, you have given us your word to teach us doctrine, to teach us your law, to show us how we ought to live, and love and work and serve you. Help us to hear you speak and give us the courage and the strength and the ability to follow the examples that you set before us as we glorify you by loving you. We pray this in Jesus’ name. Amen.
So, now that we’ve reached the 13th chapter of John, it’s worth pausing to note that the preceding 12 chapters covered approximately three years of Jesus’s public ministry. And while the next seven chapters will cover the last three days of Jesus’s earthly life, with five of those chapters being devoted entirely to Jesus’s words and his teaching during one evening meal. See, John has spent more than half of his gospel telling us about three years, and he will spend another third of it telling us about three days. Dedicating this much ink to such little time emphasizes just how important this period is and how important these teachings are for us to understand.
Well, but before we dive into this familiar story, there are four details we need to highlight, and we need to keep these in mind throughout the next several chapters of this gospel. First, the evangelist begins this upper room discourse with a specific time marker: before the feast of Passover. Although John doesn’t specifically state that this happened on the night of the Passover feast to remain consistent with the synoptic gospels and because the narrative leads directly into Jesus’s arrest and trial, we know that this teaching did take place during that same meal as is described in Luke 22 and in Matthew 26 when Jesus instituted the sacrament of the Lord’s Supper.
So by Jewish reckoning, we note that a day always began at sundown. So we know that this discourse and these events all began on the evening of the 14th of Nissan, six days after Jesus was anointed in Bethany on the evening of the 8th of Nissan, and just five and really a half days after Jesus’s triumphal entry into Jerusalem.
The second detail to note is that the evangelist wants us to remember that Jesus knew everything that was about to happen. He encourages us by emphasizing that Jesus, having loved his own who were in the world, loved them to the end. He reminds us that Jesus loved them from the beginning of his ministry, that he loved them through his trial and his execution, through his death on the cross, and that everything Jesus has done and was about to do was being done all out of his love for them and for us.
Third, the evangelist also wants us to remember that before, during, and after this meal, the devil had already put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray Jesus. But that’s not to say that the devil made Judas do it. He still had the freedom of will to choose his actions. And while it was Judas’s choice to do what he would do and how he would go about doing it, the inclination of his heart to specifically betray Jesus was placed there by the devil.
Now, scripture is very clear that within the heart of the natural man, of all unregenerate persons, every intention of the thoughts of his heart is only evil continually. And that the heart is deceitful above all things and desperately sick. And meanwhile, John has also already shown us that it was according to Judas’s nature that he would be willing to betray Jesus for money, writing that because he was a thief and having charge of the money bag, he used to help himself to what was put into it. But the means by which the devil put the idea into Judas’s heart is uncertain and unknown. It may have been a supernatural inputting, but I think it was more likely to have been through more ordinary and mundane means, such as by a chance encounter with an agent or representative of the conspiring Jews, someone who just happened to mention that they were looking for information about Jesus, which then prompted Judas to go to them.
But regardless, this upcoming betrayal would be done through Judas’s willful choice in his own responsibility for his own reasons and, most importantly, with Jesus’s full knowledge, awareness, and understanding.
The fourth thing is the evangelist wants us to remember that at this moment in time, particularly, Jesus was knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands and that he had come from God and was going back to God. See, Jesus knew that he held all power, all authority, and the ability to do whatever he wanted, however he wanted to do it. This underscores the fact that Jesus still willingly, intentionally, and with great purpose chose to experience and suffer everything that was about to happen over the next 48 hours, despite being able to stop it all in an instant.
I mean, while Jesus had to do it according to God’s eternal plan and according to his covenant agreement, Jesus also did not have to do anything against his will. And while Jesus, the God-man, surely did not want to suffer and die—I can’t imagine he wanted to do that—he still willed to do so by loving them and us to the end.
Now, despite this narrative being found only here in John’s gospel, the story of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet is very well known to Christians. Its importance to our Christian practice of faith greatly exceeds the amount of ink dedicated to telling it. And there are countless practical applications that may faithfully be drawn out of it. Such applications are important because they do help us to put our faith into practice. But we want to focus more at the moment on the specific meaning of this text—a meaning that is the foundation for all of those applications.
So then Jesus, he rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, he tied it around 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. When you hear that, does something about the story feel wrong to you? It should. I mean, this should make us all feel uncomfortable if we do have a high enough view about God. I mean, this is not something that we like to think Jesus should do. It is not something that we think is either right or appropriate for the Son of God to do.
It’s not something that we want to think our Jesus would or should do, is it? Yet Jesus did. Jesus got up and did the servant work as king. But here it is in scripture, inherently written in black and white by John the Evangelist. So if we truly believe that the Lord God, that Jesus is holy and exalted high above us, then the thought of him washing our feet, which is one of the lowest and most menial things a person can reasonably do, that should make us very uncomfortable if we have a proper understanding of who we are.
I mean, the disparity in this should be making us uncomfortable and self-conscious even. But when we understand more of why Jesus did it, then we should be feeling even more grateful to him for his grace and his mercy.
I mean, there are several details and pieces of context that we as 21st-century Christians need to be reminded of—context that would have been implicitly understood by earlier hearers and readers of this gospel. I mean, first, though they were using somebody else’s guest room for their Passover meal, Jesus, as being the rabbi, had the role of host, and every host was responsible for all aspects of his household’s hospitality.
The particular element of hospitality that our story is concerned with was the cleanliness and comfort of his guests. The practice of foot washing was a necessary need because, since most people wore sandals for their footwear, their feet and legs would be covered by dirt and dust, mud, or other less pleasant substances just from their ordinary daily travels. So people needed to wash or to be washed before they entered into someone’s home.
Water might have been left out at the entrance for people to politely use for washing themselves prior to coming in, or a servant might have been tasked to wash guests. But nevertheless, because ensuring provision for this comfortable politeness was a requirement of hospitality, and because this provision had apparently been neglected or forgotten for Jesus and his disciples, Jesus rose to the occasion and satisfied this need.
Now there are several things that we can easily interpret just from the simple fact of what Jesus did. Rather than complain about something that had not been done, Jesus took it upon himself and did it himself. Rather than ask someone else to do it, like one of the twelve, Jesus took it on himself to do it. Jesus showed respect and gratitude to the owner of the guest room by choosing to not complain and to be thankful for everything that had already been graciously provided.
Jesus demonstrated his lack of self-importance, demonstrating a blatant disregard for cultural perceptions about social status or hierarchy. Jesus demonstrated that when we should see a need, we should meet that need if we are able and willing rather than to complain or wait for someone else to do it. Jesus demonstrated a physical aspect of his humility, showing us that no job was beneath him. Jesus demonstrated a spiritual aspect of his humility—an aspect which Paul describes in Philippians 2, writing, ‘Who though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.’
Demonstrating that despite actually being better, greater than everyone else, Jesus’s betterness and greaterness mattered to him less than his love for his disciples. Jesus demonstrated that necessary work is never demeaning and that those who do such work are worthy of our consideration even when it may cause a person to sacrifice some of their own pride.
Even the dirty jobs, like those showcased by Mike Rowe, like collecting garbage or emptying septic tanks—jobs like that are still as valuable, worthwhile, and deserving of respect and honor by others. So if you ask what would Jesus do, understand and remember that that includes washing feet.
And so while Jesus was doing this work, he came to Simon Peter who said to him, ‘Lord, do you wash my feet?’ And Jesus answered him, ‘What I’m doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.’ Peter said to him, ‘You shall never wash my feet.’ And Jesus answered, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.’ And Simon Peter said to him, ‘Lord, then not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.’
And Jesus said, ‘The one who is bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.’ Because he knew who was about to betray him. That was why he said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’
Now, this section of the passage is more challenging and difficult to interpret than we might want to think. It actually becomes dangerous if we overspiritualize. But this exchange between Peter and Jesus is very spiritually informative. But first, let’s consider the exchange on the physical level. Peter expressed his concern about Jesus doing this work, asking, ‘Lord, do you wash my feet?’ and self-assuredly asserting, ‘You shall not wash my feet.’
See, his complaint revolved around the assumption about the appropriateness of his social superior, his rabbi, performing such a menial task. I mean, Peter, it seems, did not believe that this was something that Jesus should do—what Jesus was doing somehow felt wrong to Peter. And even though he did not think this was good for Jesus to do, notice Peter did not offer or try to replace Jesus in doing it. Or perhaps, you know, here Peter, perhaps Peter objected out of personal embarrassment. Perhaps he didn’t want to see Jesus to see just how dirty his feet really were.
I mean, sure, he knew that Jesus knew that his feet were dirty. I mean, they’d been walking all day. But Jesus would not have known just how dirty they were, would he?
And when Jesus answered him, ‘What I am doing, you do not understand, but afterward you will understand,’ he implies that what Jesus was doing was meant as a lesson that would be explained. But when Peter doubled down on his objection, Jesus answered him, saying, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.’ That caused Peter to realize that this was truly something far more important than he could imagine.
So he, in classic Peter form, overcorrected to the opposite extreme by insisting then, ‘Lord, not my feet only but my hands and my head.’ Peter went from ‘don’t wash my feet’ to ‘give me a full bath.’ But I don’t think he was intending this as an argument of absurdum. I suspect that Peter’s blustering was really more a matter of an attempt to cover his lack of understanding and comprehension.
I mean, how often do we do something similar when we compensate for our own felt deficiencies? Then responding to Peter’s zealousness, Jesus explained, ‘The one who is bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.’
And while this could have been understood simply as a matter of hygiene, the evangelist here adds further explanation by telling us that Jesus knew who was about to betray him. Otherwise, Jesus’s retort of ‘If I do not wash you, then you have no share with me’ would be understood simply as a host’s concern for the cleanliness of the table. Meaning more something along the lines of, unless you are sanitary, you cannot join in the fellowship of my table. Parents ever tell your kids to go wash your hands before we come to have dinner? That kind of idea.
Now, there are three words that show up throughout this exchange that we need to pay very close attention to in order to help us understand both the physical and spiritual meaning. The words are nipto, which is translated as the verb ‘to wash’; luo, which is translated as the word ‘to bathe’; and catharos, which is translated as the adjective ‘be clean.’
Now, nipto was used to simply describe ordinary washing—soaping, scrubbing, rinsing, drying, you know, to make something or someone clean. But it was also used contextually to describe the ritualistic and ceremonial washing that was necessary for spiritual and religious purification.
Luo was ordinarily used to describe the total or full body washing of a person, literally in the sense of taking a bath. It was only later in our Christian use that the term has received an added metaphorical meaning for spiritual cleansing, such as in relation to Christian baptism, a washing that’s only made effectual by the power of the Holy Spirit.
And catharos plainly described something in the state of being clean in the sense of being free from dirt or other unwanted soil. But it was also a commonly used metaphor to describe a person who is considered morally righteous or things that are spiritually pure and undefiled.
And so we may plainly and most simply understand this story as a matter of hospitality—a host who is providing for the comfort of their guests by washing them, emphasizing this great importance of hospitality in Jewish and Christian life and culture as we are commanded to not neglect to show hospitality to strangers. Thereby some have entertained angels unawares.
So Jesus here elevates the importance of hospitality through his example of humility through the act of sacrificial service, even as an honored host. But Jesus’s promise that afterward you would understand—that’s what prompts us to analyze and consider these things beyond the plainest or most ordinary meaning. His promise warns us that he is adding an extra, a new layer of extraordinary meaning to an ordinary activity.
But it also makes us question whether it is a meaning added to the activity itself or a meaning added to this incident, this one occasion only. But before we try to answer those questions and understand the spiritual meaning of Jesus washing his disciples’ feet, we need to pay attention first to Jesus’s explanation.
After he 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. Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.’
See, Jesus explained that he just set an example for them and for us, that they and we should do as he had just done to them. He told them that if I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet, thereby instituting the sacrament of foot washing. Right? No.
The church has never universally accepted or interpreted foot washing as a sacramental right, nor has tradition made it a required practice of the Christian faith. So clearly the apostles had to have understood this as something other than being about foot washing. Otherwise, the whole church has been in willful disobedience of this particular command of Christ for 2,000 years.
No, Jesus meant this as an example for us to follow, but not as that specifically prescribed practice. Jesus asked them, ‘Do you understand?’ implying that the meaning was greater than the act itself. But what is that meaning?
Jesus told them, ‘Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent them.’ He describes an obvious truth—the truth of hierarchy that’s understood by everyone who is subordinate to another. Because obviously, servants are less socially important than their masters, and messengers are less important than the person who sent the message.
But the difference, the change here, is not in what Jesus had just said, but in what Jesus did. Jesus, this teacher and Lord, having the role of master in the example just shown, washed the feet of his followers, those who had the role of servants, showing that he did not consider himself to be greater than them.
By his willing condescension, he elevated them until they were his social equals. But through Jesus’s action, they also each became equally clean. According to the plain understanding of catharos, though by the evangelist’s stated exception, they were not equally clean spiritually.
So now we can go back. Now we can consider the spiritual sense of that exchange between Peter and Jesus. So Jesus, he washed the feet of the disciples. He nipped them, he removed the dust, the dirt, and grime that contaminated them, purging them of all of that soiling nastiness and restoring them to purity and cleanness.
This is easy for us to spiritually interpret because obviously washing the dirt away was representative of Christ’s removal of our sin and its spiritual pollution. Easy. But Peter’s objection of ‘You shall never wash my feet,’ well, that spiritually represents our obstinate attempts to reject, to refute, or defy the intention and purpose of our mighty king in sanctifying us.
And Jesus’s answer, ‘If I do not wash you, then you have no share in me,’ emphasizes his active agency and then refocuses us onto the spiritual benefit of our compliant submission for our union with Christ. The repeated use of nipto in the story reminds us that just as things cannot wash themselves—we even need one hand to wash the other—we need to be washed by another.
We cannot wash ourselves. We are reminded that our being cleansed of having our sins washed away through the forgiveness of Christ only happens if Jesus is the one to wash us. He is the one who must sanctify us for us to be sanctified truly.
But the last portion is more challenging to understand rightly, and it has been used to support certain doctrinal errors. After Peter, he asked Jesus to wash his whole self—his feet, his head, his hands—Jesus answered, ‘The one who is bathed does not need to wash except for his feet, but is completely clean.’
Now for us, since ordinarily bathing is a very personal and individual activity, we might assume that bathing—or having bathed—could be representative of our own works of righteousness, our works of pious devotion, our good works, and our good faith efforts to please God. While Jesus’s washing here simply completes the work of our being made clean, we might assume based on this example that God accepts our righteous efforts, and then Jesus, he just makes up the difference in all the righteousness that we lack.
But we could not be more wrong. That idea describes the heresy of Pelagianism, which, although it’s been condemned by the church since the fifth century, often reappears and creeps back in. That idea about our salvation which ultimately relies upon and depends on one’s own self for salvation rather than relying entirely upon the grace of God through faith in Jesus Christ.
Instead, here, by the context of the Greek grammar, the bathing action was completed and it was done to the subject, not by the subject, which makes the King James version of the verse ‘He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit’ make that more correctly clear.
This washing by Jesus is more representative of a repetitive washing—the regular removal of accumulated dirt or spiritual pollution. So if we interpret the cleanliness of already having been bathed as the washing of regeneration by the Holy Spirit, then this washing becomes representative of the cleansing we enjoy after our regularly needful confession and our repentance of sin, our restoration to righteousness that leads to our assurance of pardon and our peace of conscience.
This interpretation consistently preserves the sovereignty of God in our election and our regeneration, and in the uniqueness of Christ’s work for our salvation. So since this story, since it does teach us about the exemplary humility of self-sacrificial hospitality, and since Jesus is the one who willingly condescended to stoop down to our ordinary human status so as to raise us up to his, and since it teaches us about the spiritual cleansing work of Jesus Christ—namely, our regeneration and sanctification by the removal of our sin—and since the purpose of that cleansing is so that we may have a share in Christ of being united with and into Jesus Christ, and since the example provided by Jesus was not to literally be washing one another’s feet, then what does his example teach us?
What are we supposed to be doing on account of it? The example given in this story by Jesus is not so much about any physical activity but about the meaning of that activity. Because loving them, Jesus humbled himself to serve those who did not deserve his care or consideration.
Loving them, Jesus washed and cleansed and sanctified them, purifying them by his grace. And through his work of service, loving them, Jesus redeemed them and joined them to himself. So the example that we are given to follow is for us to be serving others out of our love for them and to serve them by working to purify and sanctify them so as to bring them closer towards union with Christ.
We are called to serve those whom we might otherwise consider as being somehow less than ourselves, or whom we might consider to be unworthy or undeserving of our love. We are called especially to serve those whom we might be tempted to call our enemy. Because remember, even Judas was numbered among those that Jesus washed, and Jesus still lovingly washed him while having full knowledge of his imminent betrayal.
I mean, obviously, we are not capable of saving other people ourselves. We cannot remove the stain of sin from their souls. Only Jesus Christ can do that and only through the effectual power of the Holy Spirit. But what we are able to do is to share Jesus with others to teach others about Jesus and to offer them the hope that we have and the gracious promises of God. That’s the meaning of the example given by Jesus in the story.
Now we just need to apply that meaning to our present lives. And the first kind of service that we should do in following this example of Jesus is to evangelize. We need to tell others about who Jesus is as the Son of God and God the Son about what Jesus has done, having taken our sins onto himself and suffering death for them in our place, and how God the Father proved him righteous and vindicated him by raising Jesus up from the dead on the third day, which makes certain our confident hope in his promise to give us eternal life and justify us before God the Father.
We need to explain the forgiveness that we have received by faith in Christ Jesus, telling them about the removal of our guilt and our shame and about the peace of conscience we enjoy as we rest in God’s love. We need to show them the peace and wholeness that we have being reconciled with one another because of our being reconciled to God. We need to show them how we may live a better way, free from needlessly suffering anxiety and unreasonable fears by trusting God, by relying and depending on him, and being thankful for all of his good provision, knowing that he does work all things for good for those who are called according to his purpose—even things that we think that we do not naturally think are good.
The second kind of service is that we should do our loving works of goodwill and charity. We should work to help others as we are able and willing. Whether it’s by providing them with a meal, mowing their overgrown lawn, fixing a car, or even driving them to or from the doctor, we should work to heal the sick, improve the circumstances of the poor, feed the hungry, clothe the naked, and visit the lonely, following Jesus’s example.
And a third kind of service that we may and should do is to remain knowledgeable and involved civically with the world around us. I mean, we should always be seeking the good welfare of our city, state, and nation, and to pray on its behalf because in its welfare we find our welfare. We should work to elect governing officials who will strive to enforce justice and do what is right and beneficial for all those that they represent and govern.
For rulers are not a terror to good conduct, but to bad. For he is God’s servant for your good. If you do wrong, be afraid, for he does not bear the sword in vain. We should also support measures that align with biblical morality and oppose those that codify the permission or promotion of things that scripture names as evil. Woe to those who call evil good and good evil.
But this list is not exhaustive because we just don’t have the time or opportunity to consider every possible application or example of sanctifying service that a Christian may engage in. Yet such loving service is the purpose of Jesus’s example in the story, because he said, ‘If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.’
It’s not enough that we know and understand this, but to be truly blessed, we must respond to the grace of God with action. So, as Christians, we should always be working for the betterment of the world and its improvement. We should be working for its transformation and towards its eventual conformity to the kingdom of God. That’s not to say that we have any strong hope of total success or even any success, but we will certainly enjoy small successes for a time.
We cannot bring about heaven on earth even as we work towards and pray for God’s will to be done on earth as it is in heaven. We cannot create, and we cannot usher in, the reign of Christ on earth. Only God can do that, and one day he will when Christ returns with loud trumpet sound. Nevertheless, as we work to sanctify our own lives, let us also remember to be sanctifying the world around us. For still, this is our Advent hope today.
We have hope for the world in Christ through our works of Christian service until he returns and ultimately he perfects it and sanctifies it. Christ shall return, and then he is the one who shall wash us and the whole world, making us to be truly holy. Amen.