1 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. 2 During supper, when the devil had 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 back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist. 5 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. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to Him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” 8 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.” 9 Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 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.” 11 For He knew who was to betray Him; that was why He said, “Not all of you are clean.”
Today we move into the second section of John’s Gospel. Jesus had completed His public ministry, and John 13 opens with the Passover Feast, when Jesus shared His Last Supper with the disciples. The events of this particular evening are recorded by John over the next 5 chapters. Chapter 13 begins with Jesus’ symbolic act of washing the disciples’ feet, which we are looking at today. It is followed by a lengthy teaching where Jesus tells them about His imminent departure and how God will provide for them during His absence. This takes us from the end of chapter 13, all the way through to chapter 16, while in chapter 17 we have Jesus’ High Priestly Prayer.
John chapters 13 through 17 are wonderful highlights in the Biblical narrative. As we study these 5 chapters in particular, we are given an insight into the depth of Jesus’ love for us. If you ever begin to doubt the Saviour’s love for you, read these 5 chapters in the Gospel of John.
James Montgomery Boice writes of this section, “Nowhere in the entire Bible does the child of God feel that he is walking on more holy ground. For here, more than in many other portions of Scripture, he hears the voice of Jesus leading him into a greater understanding of his new place before the Father and consequently also of his new position in the world. These chapters contain teaching about heaven, the new commandment, the person and work of the Holy Spirit, the mutual union of Christ with the disciples and the disciples with Christ, and prayer.”
John writes in verse 3-5, “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 the towel that was wrapped around Him.”
The teaching that Jesus was going to give at this Last Supper was of great importance, which is why it takes up 4 chapters in John’s Gospel. Some of what Jesus would say would be hard for them to understand and accept, so what does Jesus do? Before speaking about God’s love, He showed it to them in the most remarkable way by doing the work of a servant as He washed His disciples’ feet.
In New Testament times it was slaves who washed the feet of those who came to a meal at the home of a wealthy person. The roads and streets were unpaved and dusty. People wore open sandals, so quite naturally their feet became dirty.
Occasionally a prominent visitor might have his feet washed by the host, but foot washing was a lowly service normally performed by servants or slaves.
So we can only imagine the shock and disbelief of the disciples when Jesus got up from the meal and began to wash and dry His disciples’ feet. In verse 3 John makes it very clear that Jesus did this fully conscious of His identity: “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.” Despite this, Jesus began to wash His disciples’ feet anyway.
Jesus Christ leaves Heaven’s glory and comes down to this earth and He takes the place of a slave and washes feet.
But why would Jesus do such a thing? This event took place just before Jesus’ betrayal and crucifixion. This was more than three years into His public ministry, and by now the disciples would have known just who Jesus was, and in any case, His resurrection, just a few days away, was going to deal with any lingering doubts forever. So why did He do this? What was the purpose of God Himself washing the feet of normal, sinful human beings?
There are at least three reasons.
Firstly, Jesus washed their feet because He knew that He was about to leave our world. Although His ministry would continue after He went back to Heaven, Jesus needed to identify Himself with His people, and in a spiritual sense He still washes the feet of His disciples today. When Jesus spoke of this world, the original Greek uses the word kosmos, which means the world system, rather than the location we know as planet Earth. It is man’s world system, a world of sin. It is a civilisation that is anti-God and anti-Christ, and it is under judgment. And because He is leaving this world, He washes His disciples’ feet as a kind of commissioning to them and to us to continue the work of the Kingdom of God in a world which is hostile to Jesus and His Gospel.
Secondly, Jesus did this because He loves us. Jesus came to Earth, lived with us, died for us and lives for us today for one reason: God loves us with an everlasting love, and we cannot keep Him from loving us, even though we are sinful. Jesus’ message that night to His disciples and to us today is, “I love you. Your sin is an abhorrence to me, but I love you too much to cut you off, so I will deal with your sin. I will wash your feet and cleanse you.” His sacrificial act of washing their feet was, of course, a picture of the sacrificial death He was about to die.
The third reason is that another person had entered the room. There was an uninvited guest present. His name was Satan. He had polluted the heart of Judas Iscariot. Wherever the devil gets into Christian work, others are affected and the Lord must wash them. He must wash us if we are to have and maintain fellowship with Him, because Satan remains our greatest enemy.
So, Jesus takes off His outer clothing, His robe, and then He wraps a towel around His waist. He now takes the place of a servant. He is girded with the towel of service, and He is ready to wash their feet.
In Exodus 21 we find the law regarding slaves. A Hebrew slave served his master for six years, and he could go free in the seventh year. However, the slave could choose to stay. If he loved his master and his family, he could stay with them. Then the master, in public, would back him up to a doorpost and pierce his ear with an awl, which would identify him as a voluntary slave forever. Although he could have gone free, he stayed because of love.
This gives us a picture of what Jesus did for us on the cross. He came down to earth, took on humanity, but went one step further. He had the option to leave. Jesus, as God, had all the supernatural powers He could have wanted at His disposal. When Peter cut off the ear of the Roman soldier when Jesus was arrested, He said to Peter, “Put your sword back into its place. For all who take the sword will perish by the sword. Do you think that I cannot appeal to my Father, and He will at once send me more than twelve legions of angels? But how then should the Scriptures be fulfilled, that it must be so?” (Matthew 26:52-54)
Jesus could have left at any time He wanted, but He chose, as a slave who loved us, to remain. And as a sign of His commitment to us He was backed up against a piece of wood and had three awls driven through His flesh.
He did all this because He loves us. He could have gone free, but He chose to die on the cross to provide salvation for us. He did this so that we could be reconciled to God. Jesus became a slave because He loves us.
It must have been an amazing scene to witness. I’ve often wondered about the stunned silence or nervous giggles of the disciples. It seems they just sat there, too amazed to say anything until Jesus came to Peter. As usual Peter had something to say. He blurted out, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” To Peter, and undoubtedly to the others, what Jesus was doing was totally inappropriate.
When Jesus dismissed the implied criticism, Peter took a stand. “You shall never wash my feet.” Peter simply would not permit Jesus to do anything that seemed to Peter to be demeaning.
How fascinating this conversation is. Peter rightly addressed Jesus as Lord. Yet Peter took it upon himself to tell Jesus what He should or should not do. How like us Peter was. We acknowledge Christ as Lord, yet we’re very quick at times to take it upon ourselves to judge the right or wrong of what Jesus is doing in other believers’ lives.
Jesus then bluntly tells Peter, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
What did Jesus mean by that? He meant that without this washing there can be no fellowship with Him. In our sinful state we can’t even come into the presence of God, let alone have a relationship with Him. There has to be a cleansing process before we can even contemplate calling Jesus Lord.
How does Christ wash us today? The answers we can find in Scripture. Psalm 119:9 reads, “How can a young man keep his way pure? By guarding it according to your word.” Jesus says in John 15:3, “You are clean because of the word that I have spoken to you,” and Paul says in Ephesians 5:25-26, “Christ loved the Church and gave Himself up for her that He might sanctify her, having cleansed her by the washing of water with the word.”
It is the Word of God that will keep the believer clean. And when we sin, how are we cleansed? 1 John 1:9 has the answer. “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.”
Confronting our sin and confessing it is always the first step in building a relationship with Jesus. We cannot be spiritually cleansed without first recognising our need to be cleansed. Confession and repentance are vital to our salvation.
Then Peter says, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” (John 13:9) I think that most of us would have said something very similar to Peter, but there is a crucial lesson in Jesus’ reply. Almost cryptically, Jesus says in verse 10, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean.”
The two important words here are bath and wash. In the original Greek text, John uses two different words: Louō, which means “bathed,” and niptō which is translated as “wash,” and there is an important difference implied here.
In those days people went to a public bath. Only the very rich had in their homes what we would call a bathroom today. After bathing in a public bath, a man would put on his sandals and go home. The problem was though, that during his walk home, his feet got dirty again, so at home was a basin of water for him to wash his feet. So even though he had just had a bath, he had to wash his feet when he got home.
This is the point that Jesus was making. When we first come to Jesus, we are washed all over. That is the bath, louō, regeneration.
But when we walk through this world dirt clings to our feet. We get dirty, because we continue to struggle with our sinful nature. We become disobedient, and sin gets into our lives. No Christian can go through a day without getting just a little dirty. Jesus is saying that we cannot have fellowship with Him if we are dirty. So the washing of the feet, nipto, is the cleansing in order to restore us to fellowship, but we don’t need to be saved all over again.
We need daily cleansing as we confess our sins. We need our dirty feet cleaned each day, but but we don’t need to be washed again in the spiritual sense. Salvation is a one-time act of justification by faith, but the lifelong process of sanctification is something which occurs daily. You don’t need me to remind you that we struggle with temptation and sin every day. The penalty of those sins has already been dealt with, but we need to be constantly confessing our sins as we grow in grace.
This is why it is important to understand just what Jesus meant when He said to Peter, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean.”
When we are saved and we confess our guilt and sin, we receive total and complete forgiveness, and nothing is necessary to further cleanse us from our sin, because at the moment we are justified, we are clothed in the perfect righteousness of Christ. 2 Corinthians 5:21 says, “For our sake He made Him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God.”
But we do need ongoing cleansing from the effects of living in the flesh in this dark world. This is something which is done by the power of the Holy Spirit, who lives within us, through the “washing of water by the Word” as Paul writes in Ephesians 5:26.
Jesus taught that those who come to Him in faith receive a once-for-all cleansing that never needs to be repeated. Jewish dinner guests would bath first, but as they walked through dirty streets on their way to the meal, their feet needed to be washed. In verse 10 Jesus said, “You are clean.” This means that by His blood Jesus paid the debt of all the sins of those who trust in Him. If you have confessed your need of the cleansing that Jesus offers and believed in Him for the forgiveness of your sins, you will never be more clean in the sight of God than you were at that moment and than you are right now.
The Bible teaches that Jesus’ own perfect righteousness is imputed to us, and that act of grace will not be taken away. Remember His words in John 10:27-29, “My sheep hear my voice, and I know them, and they follow me. I give them eternal life, and they will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father, who has given them to me, is greater than all, and no one is able to snatch them out of the Father’s hand.”
If you have been granted repentance of sins and you believe that Jesus died in order for you to be saved, you are His, for all of eternity. But until such time as we cross the threshold into glory, our feet get dirty every day. We live in a dirty world, and sin continues to affect us. We are clean in the sight of God, but our feet get dirty as we walk through the world, so it is not our standing before God that needs ongoing cleansing, but our walk as Jesus’ disciples that needs to be brought to Him for cleansing on a daily basis. Look at the prayer Jesus taught us: “Lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from evil.”
What is confession? It means to agree with what the Word of God says about our sin. It means to say the same thing about your sin that God says about your sin, and then seek His cleansing. 1 John 1:9 again: “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” John was writing this to Christians, to people who had already been saved, so it is quite possible that he was remembering what Jesus said to Peter that night in the Upper Room when he wrote these words which remind us of our constant need to be cleansed from the daily effects of sin.
Getting back to Jesus’ reply when Peter first refused to allow Jesus to wash his feet, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me,” the meaning here is clear. It is only Christ who can save us. If you are going to have your feet washed, you have to put them into the hands of the Saviour and no one else.
David wrote in Psalm 139:23-24, “Search me, O God, and know my heart! Try me and know my thoughts! And see if there be any grievous way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting!”
We cannot go through a single day without some sin, so we need to confess that to God and be cleansed. We are washed by the Word of God. We put our feet into His hands, which means that we are completely yielded to Him, and this puts us in fellowship with Jesus. Don’t let a single day go by without this fellowship. Don’t allow sin come in to break your fellowship with Him.
The disciples had often heard Jesus talk about servanthood, and now they were given a practical demonstration, but even this remarkable act of Jesus washing their feet would be overshadowed by what was about to happen at Calvary.
As usual, there is so much more for us to see in the words and actions of Jesus, and His washing of the disciples’ feet in John 13 is no exception. When Jesus said that Peter would have no share, or no part with Him, the Greek word is meros, which means an inheritance. So Jesus was telling Peter that unless He washed him, Peter could not enter into Jesus’ inheritance. He was speaking about eternity.
Jesus’ act of servanthood was more than just a demonstration of humility. It pointed to the greater humiliation of the cross, and if you read the account carefully, you can see His entire ministry being acted out.
Verse 4 tells us He rose from His seat, just as He rose from His heavenly throne in order to come into our world. In the same verse He “laid aside His outer garments.” The apostle Paul in Philippians 2:6 describes how Jesus set aside His glory. “Though He was in the form of God, He did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped.” Jesus then took a towel and tied it around His waist. Paul continues in Philippians 2:7 by writing that Jesus, “made Himself nothing, taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”
Next, in verse 5, Jesus “poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet,” just as in a matter of hours later He would pour out His blood for the washing away of human sin. Verse 12 tells us, “When He had washed their feet and put on His outer garments, He resumed His place.” This reminds us of His resurrection and ascension into glory after the finished work of salvation on the cross. There is a clear connection between John 13:12 and Hebrews 1:3. “After making purification for sins, He sat down at the right hand of the Majesty on high.”
This is why Jesus responded in the way He did to Peter by saying that Peter had to be washed by Him. Peter finally did grasp what Jesus meant in verse 7, but not on that particular night. “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”
The commentator Leon Morris wrote, “Jesus was about to die, to die the atoning death that meant cleansing for His people. There is no other way of being Christ’s than in receiving the cleansing He died to bring. If He does not wash us in this way, we have no part with Him. It is only in accepting the truth that we cannot secure our salvation by our own effort, but that Christ can cleanse all who trust Him, that we are freed from our sin and brought into Christ’s salvation.”
Have you put your trust in Jesus Christ? Has He cleansed you by His blood shed on the cross? And are you putting your feet in the hands of the Saviour each day?
Without these things, you have no share with Christ, and no share in the salvation that He offers you.
Homegroup Study Notes
Read John 13:1-11
See Peter’s conversation with Jesus in verses 6-10.
Strong’s Dictionary of Hebrew and Greek Words says,
λούω lŏuō, a primary verb; to bathe the whole person; whereas νίπτω niptō means to wet a part only.
The word lŏuō is used to describe washing in verses 6 and 8, while Jesus uses niptō in verse 10.
What does this teach us about salvation, and the total and complete forgiveness of sins? (see also Romans 8:1)
Why is it necessary for us to continually confess our sins if we have already been totally forgiven?
What does this teach us about the exclusivity of salvation through Jesus Christ alone?
We can learn so much from the example of Jesus, and how we should emulate Him as we serve others, but how does this remarkable episode reflect the earthly mission of Jesus?