Clough John Lesson 49
The Footwashing Incident; The Doctrine of Confession – John 13:1-20
Tonight we begin a new section in the Gospel of John and to prepare for that new section turn to Deuteronomy 4. Whenever God begins a new era He always gets across the lesson of His authority, just so everyone understands where everyone else is located in the overall plan. And God can be very severe with His discipline to enforce His law. Now there’s another characteristic that occurs with God over and over again but this time after He has done some great work of redemption. After He has, or is about to, do a work with believers, He always goes back to illuminating the grace principle. What is the grace principle? That God loves and that out of this love comes the concept of our reception or our receiving, and then when we are on the receiving end of His love then we go back to a situation where we have love from us outward. In other words, the believer does not love God first, God loves the believer first. Now believe it or not, that is a truth taught in the Old Testament. In the book of Deuteronomy, which is one of the central books that teaches this in the Old Testament we have several verses that I think it would be good to look at, lest you be polluted with that stereo type of the God of Old Testament as some sort of a boogie man who gave His Law and then proceeded to clobber anyone who backed off from it.
In Deuteronomy 4 Moses is exhorting the people a second time. He is exhorting them to utilize the Law but the basis of his appeal to people is on the basis that God has first loved them. Put in an English word I guess he’s emphasizing the theme of gratitude. So this is why in Deuteronomy 4:1 he says, “Hearken, O Israel, unto the statutes and unto the judgments which I teach you, to do them, that ye may live, and go in and possess the land which the LORD God of your fathers gave you.” And then he goes on to say what God has done for them.
Deuteronomy 4:7, “For what nation is there
so great, who has God as near unto them, as the LORD our God is in all things
that we call upon Him for? [8] And what
nation is there so great, that has statutes and judgments so righteous as all
this Law, which I set before you this day?”
In other words, it’s a stimulus to submit to Scripture because God gave
us the Scripture and He gave it for our benefit, so said Moses. And then he says, verse 20, God “has taken
you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, out of
So Moses places an obligation of obedience upon the people because of God’s first love toward them. Now that’s a theme of how God always operates in history so when we come to John 13 lo and behold, we discover the same pattern all over again.
John 13; with John 13 we begin the passion
narrative. Up until 13 we have been
showing how Jesus Christ has gone throughout the area of
There are lots of things that show how He does this and in John 13 Jesus does very significant and quite startling things in the middle of the Jewish Passover. This is the chapter that we read every communion service, and I hope when we finish tonight you’ll understand why I’ve chosen John 13 for that point in the communion service, why we read it when we do, after the lighting of the candle, after the woman has come up and after we work into that particular phase of it. Why do we read John 13?
Now Jesus, in John 13, is going to purify the apostolates, that is the body of apostles, by His love, not by His judgment, but by His love. And He’s going to do this in such a way that the only remaining unbeliever is turned off and is ejected from the group, out of his own choice, out of his own rebellion, out of his own refusal to accept God’s love. And so Christ shows here His love for men and He is going to change what sin is. Up until this point in the popular mind sin could be equated as rebellion, transgression, something like that. The spiritual believer in the Old Testament, however, realized that sin was more than just rebellion against God. That’s its basic essence, that remains unchanged but there’s a greater dimension to what sin is. And when we get into passages like Deuteronomy 4 and John 13 this added dimension starts coming out and the added dimension that God shows in Scripture is ingratitude, he sin has amplified in its ugliness by being exposed for what it is, not just rebellion against an authoritative God, that it is, but even above that, it’s ingratitude toward a loving God. And this is the theme behind John 13, purging the Church of the last remaining unbeliever in its leadership and at the same time setting an example for all time that ingratitude is fundamental to sin.
This is why we emphasize over and over “in everything give thanks, for this is the will of God in Christ Jesus concerning you.” Why? Because giving thanks nullifies any tendencies in our heart to ingratitude. The expression of thanks is the expression of gratitude and that’s why that giving of thanks is so important and that’s why we can safely say that every sin problem has ultimately stems from ingratitude to what God has done for us. It begins with a lack of thanksgiving. Remember Paul in Romans 1, he says even the unregenerate heathen, where does their sin begin? They knew not God, they glorified Him not, neither were thankful, and so even the non-Christian’s rebellion begins at the point of ingratitude to a God who loves him. This is the theme.
Now in this incident, from verses 1-20, the first incident, the footwashing episode, we have a shift of vocabulary. One scholar has done a tabulation of three words in the Gospel of John. I think that when I put the chart up and show you what’s happened to the vocabulary you’ll see that by the time of this last section of John something has changed. This man did a word study of the word “light,” “life,” and “love.” And he computed the number of times these words occur per chapter. The word “light” in the first 12 chapters occurs at the rate of 2.7 times a chapter. John is hammering away the theme, Christ is the light of the world, “I am the light of the world,” this is the light that lighteth all men that cometh into the world. After John 12 it never occurs. Why? The light has gone out, because as of John 13 the light is no longer in the world in practice. The light has now contracted down to showing itself only to that inner circle of the disciples. The world is being deprived of its light.
“Life” occurs 4.2 times per chapter in the first 12 chapters of John; after this, it occurs at the rate of only one-half, i.e. one every two chapters. But “love,” which occurred at the rate of one time every two chapters, now after occurs at the rate of six times a chapter. This vocabulary study, very objective, shows a clear statistical shift in the way this Gospel is written after this point. And obviously it is showing us that John is shifting his fire, the Holy Spirit using the Apostle John is going to emphasize a completely different point from this period on in. We’re going to see a different side to Jesus than we’ve seen before. We’ve seen Him ferociously yelling across the temple, we’ve seen Him beating people up in the temple; we’ve seen Him dealing tenderly with the woman at the well, with Mary and with Martha. This is the judgmental, the krisos, the judgment of the light and the darkness, we’ve seen that, that’s been the theme, life and death.
But now, the theme of love, as only John, of all the apostles portrays it. And when we start this section of the Gospel of John we’re going to see love objectively shown. The love of God is not a feeling in the heart. The love of God is something that He shows us in His Word and when we see the depths of the love of God for us we just have to stop with our mouths hanging open because some of the things that the Lord Jesus Christ does for men in this chapter are absolutely fantastic. And they’ve been recorded for all time so that all down the centuries believers who feel like they’ve been through the spiritual wringer, who begin to doubt whether God really loves them, everybody is picking on me, etc. etc. etc. can go back to these refreshing glimpses of God Himself and then be encouraged that God does love you and even if everybody did pick on you, which would you rather have? A lot of human beings with their depraved hearts loving you or Jesus Christ? Which counts?
Let’s look at the text. In John 13:1-3 the Apostle John is trying to emphasize something by repeating the theme over and over again of sovereignty. Notice, “Now before the feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end. [2] And supper being ended, the devil having now put 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 was come from God, and went to God;” and then he goes on. Now the question: why does John in three verses doubly emphasize that all things are under control? Why does he do this? Obviously again we know John is not a waster of words, and so if John is putting this theme, for example in verse 1, “Jesus knew that His hour was come that he should depart of the world,” in verse 3, “Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things,” including Judas Iscariot and the treachery, “all things into His hands….” Why does John do this? Because what Jesus is going to do could be very badly misinterpreted, sentimentally interpreted. We have some maudlin sentimentalists who would read John 13 like they always read 1 Corinthians 13 and come up with some gooey syrupy idea of the love of God. And that would be to completely fail.
So the reason that John does this is to guard very carefully, with the essence of God, based on the other attributes, to set man’s mind in the right frame so when the love of God is exposed it will be correctly interpreted. Jesus is not appealing in a [can’t understand word] way for men to love Him. You see, if Jesus appeals to people to respond to Him, can’t that be interpreted two different ways. Couldn’t I, if I saw Jesus, going to an extreme of appealing to someone to respond to Him, couldn’t I interpret that as Jesus is weak and in the eleventh hour of His life He’s desperately appealing for popularity? So love, the giving of love, can be misinterpreted as weakness, and so John is very, very careful here. He says no matter what you conclude, and no matter how this hits you, what’s coming up, be very careful that you never, never interpret what He’s going to do in terms of weakness. Jesus is not doing this out of weakness; He is not doing this to solicit, oh please, believe people; please believe! He’s not doing that at all because all things are delivered into His hands; He never loses His majesty in His humility, there’s a balance between God’s majesty and God’s humility. All the attributes work together. So this is a preliminary observation in the text.
Now let’s
look at it a little further. It says in
verse 1, “the feast of the Passover.”
Now we know that there was a time in the Jewish Passover, it had a
regular format, you remember when
And now the second thing that would be done by the men, after the first cup was drunk, would be to wash hands. Only one person would wash his hands, it would be the server at the table. Now some research has been done and again this is probability, this is not dogmatism, nobody took a photograph of how all these disciples were set up in the upper room. But it appears that that famous picture of Michelangelo of Jesus sitting in the center of the table is not correct. For one thing, they didn’t sit at a table; they lay down. The men were usually sprawled around a U-shaped table, head-feet, head-feet, all the way around. They leaned, it was excellent for children at those days, you know how they sit at the table; they could sit at the table and lean and be perfectly acceptable at that time. The best idea of what was going on here was that Peter was seated across the table, Jesus Christ was seated here, on his right was John and on his left was Judas. Due to various things that happened during the feast we know that Jesus leans over and He whispers something to John and Judas never hears it and yet Judas is next to Jesus because he’s going to get the sop at the end of this and we’ll deal with the significance of that act. And Peter is the one who has his feet washed first. Jesus gets up, gets a pan of water and starts washing, all the way around, until He comes around to John.
Now while this is going on, this represents a departure from the Passover celebration at this point. Normally what would have happened would be that if Jesus is the server He would get up and He would wash His hands, signifying that He was set apart from the rest of the people in the Passover meal. This was normal. The one who was the priest must be cleansed and He’s acting as a priest as He partakes of the Passover. So the normal feature would be for all the servers to wash his hands to set himself apart from the other. Now when Jesus gets to this point in the feast He radically modifies it as we’re about to see; he does it in such a radical way that it shocks John. The language that he uses in the original, and those of you with a Greek text, notice the tenses of the verbs and how they start getting very interesting here. John is still shocked; remember John wrote this Gospel years and years and years after the fact. John is an elderly man by the time he writes this and that scene is so vivid in his mind that he can’t refrain from using present tenses. For example, the King James tries to translate it in verse 4, you notice it doesn’t say He rose from supper; it says “He rises from the supper.” That’s called a dramatic present. John sees this in his mind occurring over and over again as he thinks back on that last feast and he says I can see it again, He rises and He does this. So it’s the present tense of the dramatic vividness.
Again, this all details of the first 4-5 verses, but let’s go back to that first verse and look at something else, “the feast of Passover, when Jesus knew that His hour had come,” we discussed that last time, “that He should depart out of this world unto the Father,” now it says, “having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them unto the end,” telos. Now this loving “unto the end” can be taken two ways, and as usually with John I think that He meant us to take it both ways, both are true. One means to the end of time, that is, until He dies. Jesus loves His disciples and cared for them to the last hour of His life. That’s one way of taking to “the end.” But there’s another way of taking it: to the end of possibility. Jesus Christ loves His disciples to the maximum. And John wants us to know this because in John 3:16, “God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son,” that verse, actually the force of it is that God loved the world this way, what He gave His only begotten Son, it’s emphasis on degree, not just kind of love. So again, at the end of verse 1 John emphasizes the tremendous degree; verse 1 is kind of a lead-off verse for everything that’s going to come in chapters 13, 14, 15, 16, all the way to chapter 19 when He finally dies; all of it is He loves His own and He loves them to the nth degree.
In John
13:2, the “supper being ended,” and this is the end of the regular meal,
apparently, and they’d go into the Passover format, “the devil” or Satan
“having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son to betray Him,”
it shows you the conflict of spiritual powers behind the death of Christ. Compare this verse, where the devil puts this
into the heart of Judas, with John
Jesus has known this for some time; we don’t know how He knew it. Some have asked this question on the feedback cards, did Jesus know this? Well, obviously in His deity He did, but in His humanity probably it only gradually came to Him that Judas was the traitor. It’s very interesting, remember, Jesus had true humanity, enlightened humanity above us but not infinite knowledge. In His humanity He gradually came to the conclusion of watching Judas over and over. Jesus knew by now that Judas was a thief, he kept stealing; Judas wasn’t responding the way a really regenerate person would respond to this kind of thing, and now it’s very obvious, Jesus knows exactly who it is and what’s going to happen.
So that’s why in verse 3 lest we get lost it says, “knowing the Father had given all things into His hands, that He was come from God, and went to God,” a magnificent verse before the humiliation of Christ, to prepare us; do not think…repeat, do not think that what is coming is weakness on Jesus’ part, or is a last ditch attempt to head off Judas Iscariot, to plead with Judas, oh Judas, Judas, Judas, wouldn’t you do this. Now Jesus is pleading with Judas but as the sovereign, as respecting the sovereign plan of God. Judas, we plead with you genuinely to change at this point. But nevertheless, it is God’s will that Judas be the one and so therefore Judas is the one.
Now in John 13:3 it says, “the Father had given all things into Jesus hands,” isn’t that a little ironic in the sense that it looks like Jesus is a victim of circumstances. After all, one of His innermost circle turns traitor, the police come up the hill, the Mount of Olives and arrest Him, He’s dragged before Pilate, He’s dragged before Herod, if anything the [can’t understand] outside of a general sense, well Jesus may have a lot of things but everything isn’t under His hands now; oh yes it was, says John, oh yes, don’t ever misinterpret Jesus. Everything was in His hands! Even though this occurred everything was still in His hands. We stress this point before we go to what He did here and the significance of what He did.
One further
point in verse 3, “knowing that He was come from God, and that He is going,”
present tense, “to God.” In the Greek it
looks like this, pros ton Theon; pros, to; “the God.” The significance of that is that’s used in
John 1:1, “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was pros ton Theon,” it was “with God.”
And when I introduced the Gospel of John I said in that one verse of
chapter 1, when he announced the Logos
was with God, He was full deity, that’s the Son with the Father in the throne
room carrying on. And so pros ton Theon here is emphasis on Jesus
deity. Verse 3 is the magnificent, the divine nature of Christ, His infinity,
His sovereignty. John wants us, he
struggles over this, get this in mind or you’ll miss what’s coming up. Now as we move to the next couple of verses
John hits us, as it were, with a wet towel, in the most dramatic shift, I
think, in all of the Gospel; John turns us away from the absolute sovereign
majesty of Jesus Christ over to the following portrait.
John 13:4, “He rises from supper, and laid aside His garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself. [5] After that He pours water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded.” He rises from supper, He takes a towel, He girds Himself, He pours water into a basis, He begins to wash the disciples’ feet, all in the present, over and over, it’s a picture that John can’t get out of his head. Once he saw this it was like it was indelibly impressed in his mind. Now the significance, in verse 4, “He rises from supper,” see, they were laying down at the table, He takes off His “garments,” plural, most people think of Him just taking…as a man takes off His sports jacket or something, no He didn’t, He took off His clothes all the way down to His loin cloth at this point. The words, “He took off His garments” is the word used when they prepared Him to die on the cross. [Tape slips; this section may have missing words and not be accurate] And on the cross, at this point John’s narrative is [can’t understand word], it’s not exactly that He was naked but that He had only His loin cloth, it would be equivalent today to a man taking off his clothes except his shorts. That’s the picture of Jesus Christ here. You see why John emphasized verse 3, over and over; he said look who He is, look who’s doing this—the God of the universe into whose hands are all things, and He takes off His clothes. Why? What’s the significance? Because He takes the role of a slave; that’s the uniform of a slave. It says in verse 5, “the towel with which He was girded,” a slave would take care of this, that’s the loin cloth and the towel, the towel would be around his waist, it’d be a big long thing, maybe 8-10 feet long, this towel that He’d wrap around and He’d just go from person to person to person at the feast and wipe their feet, wash them. That was the job of a slave. And not only was it the job of a slave but Hebrew slaves did not have to do this work if they didn’t want to, only Gentile slaves had to do that kind of work. So in the most demeaning way Jesus Christ takes off clothes, strips to His shorts, takes up the position of a slave, and begins to wash their feet.
That’s what John the Apostle can’t get out of his mind. That’s why John in verse 1 and verse 3 so carefully prepares us for the shock, by saying look who it is that’s doing this, it’s not just anybody, it’s the [can’t understand] that’s doing this, and this is the [can’t understand] that comes to Peter. [6 Then cometh He to Simon Peter: and Peter says unto him, Lord, dost Thou wash my feet?]
And Peter asks, incredulously, “Lord, do You wash my feet?” Because Peter, in spite of the fact that he often had his mouth in high gear and his brain in neutral, nevertheless, was a person who did comprehend and love the Lord very much. [Can’t understand words] this thing, this is ridiculous, for one thing in the Passover this is never done. In the Passover always before it was the servant who washed his hands to set himself apart and what are You doing stripping down to Your shorts and taking the role of a slave, and washing everybody’s feet instead of washing Your hands? You can’t get much opposite than that. And this is what Peter’s… the question in verse 6 is just—You’re going to do that? [7, “Jesus answered and said unto him,] and said, “What I do you know not now; but you shall know hereafter.” In other words, “hereafter” means after the cross, after the Spirit has come, after the apostles have had time to think this over. Well, they’re going to know a little bit more as Jesus explains it to them, but even then, by the end of this chapter they really don’t know; “you will know hereafter,” after it’s all over, the crisis is settled, and you’ve had time to think about what I’ve just done, you’ll understand then.
And now Peter comes out with what I’m sure most of us would come out with what I’m sure most of us would come out with. See, we wouldn’t mind if Jesus were just a teacher, if He was just a rabbi, to wash our feet but what is so incongruous and gives you this queer feeling is the God of the universe washing your feet, that’s what hits you and that’s what hit Peter so hard. And Peter reacts to this in the strongest way that the Greek language permits. He says, You shall never wash my feet.” But that’s not quite the way the Greek is. In the Greek it’s ou me or ma, ou me, it’s a double negation, “You will never wash my feet!” but then the Greek goes even further and adds, “forever.” It is totally incongruous, says Peter, for who You are… remember, Peter has confessed in Matthew, “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
It is totally incongruous and I will not have this forever, said Peter, the God of the universe coming here and washing my feet in the uniform of a slave, that is totally unacceptable to me, says Peter. And that’s the reaction that one of the scholars who studied this passage said, Dr. Temple, “we rather shrink from this revelation; we are ready, perhaps, to be humbled before God but we don’t want Him to be humble in His dealings with us. We should like Him who has the right to glory in His goodness and greatness, then we, as we pass into His presence, may be entitled to pride ourselves on such achievements as distinguish us above other men. Man’s humility does not begin with the giving of service, it begins with the receiving of it, for there can be much pride and compensation in giving service.” [8, “Peter says unto Him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou has no part with me.”]
So here Christ prepares and takes the first step to construct His Church. The mental attitude of Peter will be destroyed, intolerable to the organization of the Church. Peter, in effect, is saying that I believe you are divine, I believe You’re the Messiah but I cannot have a glorious Messiah this humiliated, because Peter doesn’t understand that if you think this is humiliation, just wait around a few hours Peter, your Messiah, your Son of the Living God, is going to be in a loin cloth again and He’s going to be stretched out, dying on the cross, even greater humiliation. So Peter, if you can’t take the Son of the Living God in His loin cloth washing your feet, what are you going to do when you see the Son of the Living God in His loin cloth dying for your sins? See, all this is preparatory to prepare the disciples for the greatest humiliation the God of the universe will ever suffer. And that goes back to the theme of the Old Testament, gratitude. You see, God is going to propel the Church Age into existence by an act of love and He is then going to make, after the cross, after this fantastic outpouring of His love, after that point is made clear to men, then men reject, and then the go on negative volition , then it is a clear case of ingratitude. It’s not just rebellion any more, it’s ingratitude.
So this is why Jesus says before you guys think about your great service for Me, let me preempt and let me cut off that pride of service by giving you something. Now that’s hard; some people have a harder time at this than others and it’s been interesting as a pastor watching this in the congregation, just on a normal, every day basis. Some believers have a great deal of difficulty receiving something; they would rather give, give, give, give, give to someone else but let someone else give to them and it’ll shock their system. And it causes a real problem in their own thinking, to be on the receiving end of grace. Now you see, that’s dangerous. If you’re that kind of a person who feels kind of oochy and uncomfortable when you’re on the receiving end of grace, that should be a danger signal, because aren’t we all, by our position in Christ, on the receiving end of grace, therefore aren’t we… don’t take if flippantly, I don’t mean that way, be grateful for it, but to be uncomfortable on the receiving end of grace would seem to imply that you must be uncomfortable on the receiving end of the grace of the cross also. It would be much better in our pride as creature to come before a holy God and say well God, I’m so righteous I don’t need that, save the cross for somebody else, I don’t need it. Now that is an ego trip, that pride that would love…all of us have it, we’d love to come before God not needing the cross, not needing this kind of thing. But we can’t do it and so Jesus, in a very dramatic act, modifying the entire Passover proceeding does this.
Let’s read on and see what happens. Peter quickly reverses himself and as usual, overshoots the other way. John 13:9, “Simon Peter says unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” If you’re in this grace business, give it to me. But then Jesus pulls him back to center and says, verse 10, “Jesus says to him, He that is bathed needs not save to wash his feet, [but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all].” Now there are two words used here. One, to bathe, the other is to wash feet. Those are two completely different acts. When a guest was invited to a meal, such as this meal, he bathed before he went and when he got there, he’d been walking in the dusty streets so his feet would be dirty and they’d wash his feet. He wouldn’t take a bath, a bath had been taken. So there are two different complete acts and John is always pointing to the spiritual truth, so now we’ve got to come up with some sort of interpretation to…
[Tape turns] …carefully, “he that has been washed,” perfect tense, once and for all with the results continuing down to the present time. He who has taken a bath does not have to take it again. All he has to do is wash his feet. But notice, lest we, in our interpretation just base it on this verse, notice one other piece of data. Notice that in verse 7 Jesus says you do not know what I am doing. Peter answers, I will not have You wash my feet. Then Jesus makes this startling answer: If I do not wash your feet, you have no part with Me. So however we interpret these two actions, both are necessary for salvation; both are necessary for salvation. Both are necessary for salvation. Well, what are those two actions? The bathing is very clearly regeneration. That’s the action that the Holy Spirit takes at the time that you trusted in Christ. You didn’t feel this, there’s no little dial that you can put on your shoulder to take your regeneration pressure or something; it is empirically undetectable—at first. But it happened, instantly; it’s a fiat creation of God; God creates and there’s regeneration; no man can do this, no psychotherapy can do this, only God can do this. All right, that’s what the bathing is, and he who has been regenerated need not be regenerated again. Once is enough.
But then what does the footwashing mean? The footwashing is the cleansing in time, the cleansing throughout the Christian life. And notice, Jesus says if you’re not cleansed throughout the Christian life “you have no part with Me.” Now this goes back to the doctrine of perseverance, and why, if you read the fourth framework pamphlet it’s explained there, why evangelicals, particularly in our camp have a fatalistic distortion in which we will all assent that the cross is absolutely necessary for salvation. We’ll all assent that the resurrection is absolutely for salvation. But then we have some sort of a screwed up idea that what goes on between regeneration and death doesn’t really matter in salvation; we’re afraid of the Arminian, we’re afraid of people who say well you’re going to lose your salvation if you stop believing, we’re afraid of all that so we overreact and dump the significance of day by day Christian life.
Now there are two verses that represent this; turn to Romans 8:34 and look at the significance. “Who is He that condemns? Christ has died, yea rather, He rose again,” now, present tense, “He is at the right hand of God, who is making intercession for us continually.” Now I submit to you that if the cross of Christ was sufficient by itself, without application to save you, why is it necessary for Christ to make intercession for us? It is absolutely essential that Christ keep on applying His finished work to your account and to mine or we would go to hell. Said another way, if Jesus got tired of praying for you and for me, we’d go to the lake of fire. It’s that simple. Jesus ministry in time is as vital as His ministry once and for all on the cross. We have to understand that our lives are hanging, as Jonathan Edwards said, by a very slender thread of grace. Yes, God has promised, He is going to get us from point A to point B for sure, but don’t forget means; fatalism ignores means. Biblical sovereignty always adds means and the means of getting us from here to there is this constant interceding ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ on our behalf.
We see this again in another passage, Hebrews 7:25, depicting the work of the great high priest. “Wherefore, He is able also to save them to the uttermost that come unto God by Him, seeing He ever lives to make intercession for them.” See the word salvation? How is salvation affected? What is the means of salvation? The constant interceding ministry of Christ. Now lest someone be confused this is not Romanism. We are not saying Christ is constantly remaking His sacrifice. He has once for all made His sacrifice; no need to repeat the sacrifice over and over and over again. The point is that the finished work of the sacrifice has to constantly be applied, applied, applied, applied, applied, applied, applied until the time we die or we remain uncovered; that’s the point. Every time a second goes by you might say we could potentially run out of application of the atonement. As the clock ticks we’re entering a new phase of history and the atonement has to be applied to it. As time moves on we grow, we move out from under the past, into the present, and the atonement must be brought to the present hour. And then the next day the clock has ticked further and we are one day older and again we can’t rely upon the grace of yesterday, it is the grace of today that the present interceding ministry is shown. That’s why “thy faithfulness is renewed every morning.” That’s what that hymn is about; that’s what Jeremiah is talking about. It’s not thy faithfulness was on the cross so forget it; but thy faithfulness is constantly renewed every day; there is an active ministry of Christ still going on.
Now turn back to John 13 and see how it shows that. Jesus said he that has bathed does not need to bathe again. Regeneration is sufficient, but He said, you have to have your feet washed; you have to have My constant prayer intercession for you or your salvation will not be empirically, experientially, historically, valid, it will just be a promise on a piece of paper, that’s all, it won’t actually exist. It doesn’t exist until the high priest who exists makes real prayers in existent history and has a real historical forgiveness; that is where salvation is shown. Now there’s something else to this. Next time when we confess our sins, we use 1 John 1:9, we read Psalm 51, and we think of the great high priest making intercession for us, instead of thinking of the high priest with his great garments, with his glory shining, in sort of a sterilized atmosphere with no shock to himself making this intercession, well, we’ll just intercede for this believer and this believer and this believer, and this believer and this believer, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, on down for 19 centuries and have kind of a mechanistic, detached, sterilized view, think of this passage. This shows you how humiliating it is to Jesus, even in the present hour, to have to constantly apply His atoning work to sinners whom He loves. That’s what the picture is in John 13.
The intercessory ministry of Christ is, in His mentality, as menial as what He has done with the washing of the feet. It is to show in some concrete way, because we can’t go to heaven, we can’t take a space ship there and we can’t interview Him on a tape recorder and say how does it feel to intercede for us in all our filth. And Jesus, if we went there in a time machine or some sort of space ship and tried to record it He’d say go read John 13, that’s how it feels, just like I felt when I stripped to My loin cloth and I washed your feet because your feet have to be clean and I insist on washing your feet, and you’re going to have to let Me wash your feet and I will have to undergo this as long you sinners remain in history; this is necessary for Me to do. So John 13 gives us a picture, maybe, of 1 John 1:9 that we didn’t know before.
Notice something else, verse 10, you are clean, completely, that means every whit. When I get through, said Jesus, you are clean and you need not add anything to My gracious provision for you. You are clean! “And you are clean, but not all of you are clean. [11] For He knew who should betray Him; therefore said He, ye are not all clean. [12] So after He had washed their feet, and had taken His garments, and was set down again, He said unto them,” now isn’t it interesting that something else happened here. I said shortly in this evening, this dramatic evening, the Lord Jesus Christ is going to give the sop to Judas and Judas is going to go off but before Judas goes off what has Jesus done for him? He’s washed his feet. You see, this is what’s going to make the rebellion and treachery of Judas so despicable, that Jesus Christ got in a loin cloth, lowered Himself to the position of a slave and washed the mud and the dirt and the caked manure off of Judas Iscariot’s feet. See, then it was after that that Judas said I’m going to betray you. And so you see, sin takes on a dimension here of ingratitude as well as rebellion against the holy God. This will come out in the text shortly.
Jesus goes on in verse 12 and He says do you understand now [Know ye
what I have done to you]? You call Me… and verse 13 is also a bombshell of a
verse, “You call Me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am.” Jesus is accepting officially the title of Kurios at this point. There’s no reticence in a monotheistic Jewish
society to accept a divine title. Jesus
dogmatically affirms this. “You say
well, because I am.” Can you think of a
religious teacher that would say this kind of thing meaning what Jesus
meant? You won’t find another one in
history, I’ll tell you that. All the
gurus in
So now in John
What Jesus is showing the apostles is that they’re going to be His representatives in the world and as His representatives in the world they must understand that if they’re going to represent Christ they must represent Christ’s character and Christ’s character toward a fallen universe is that He loves it and stoops to a slave to solicit its response… to solicit its response. See, why verses 1 and 3 were up there, because otherwise you’d get wrapped up in verse 12, 13, 14 and you get down here and you’d start to think what Christ is doing is appeal, please world, believe on Me. See, you’d get a weak Jesus here. Well John cut us off from that interpretation; no, that’s not what’s going on. What’s going on is that the mighty sovereign Lord is appealing on a person to person basis with His creatures. And He is saying do you respond to Me, I love you and I show you My love by doing these things for you; the next turn is yours. And so man sits there, what he’s to do when you’re faced with the Lord who’s done this for you? There’s only one of two responses; in gratitude, you can’t pay Him back, you can only respond to Him, or you can be a Judas Iscariot, I’ll betray you, I don’t care, it means nothing to me to have You love me. That’s what sin is, that’s what the Holy Spirit is trying to show, that God can pour out His love toward an unbeliever like Judas Iscariot; that unbeliever turns against Christ and when the unbeliever turns against Christ he has just declared Your love means nothing.
Now this is why we preach an unlimited atonement. It’s a hard doctrine to teach correctly but there’s something about the unlimited atonement position that makes this clear that God has done something for the unbeliever who goes to hell with Judas Iscariot that causes that unbeliever now to go to hell, not just as a rebel who shakes his fist in God’s face, yes, he does that, but now more. What did you do? You shook your fist in God’s face when, before or after He showed His love to you? You shook your fist in God’s face after He showed His love to you. And so when it says that Christ died for the sins of the world it renders them the unsaved person who eventually dies in rebellion against God and goes to hell, it renders that person in a position of absolute ingratitude to a real act of love toward him.
Now let’s look further at some details. In verse 17 he calls for an application, “If you know these things,” and it’s “if,” first class if, if and you do, “If you know these things, blessed,” it’s the same word in the beatitudes, “blessed are you if,” third class, “you do them.” In other words, I know, says Jesus, that you know this. All of you gentlemen have sat here, you’ve watched Me strip to the loin cloth, you have watched Me come around and wash all your feet and you know very well what I am doing now but it’s up to you whether you’re going to act on it or not. See, it’s an invitation; “If you know these things, happy are you if you practice them,” that’s the point. “If you practice,” that same concept. Yes, God hates the wrathful world but God has shown that world of wrath and darkness that He has loved them, and if we are to be His ambassadors we have to show that too. Now we can’t show it in a gooey sense and Christ is not showing it in a gooey sense here because of the fact of the way verses 1 and 3 protect it; the gooey interpretation can’t get caught in here because verses 1 and 3 were put in there to sweep it aside. This is not some sentimentalism that’s going on in this verse; this is the most dramatic act, probably, that John the Apostle ever saw. You can just tell the way he presents this; this changed his life. In his first epistle, 1 John, even 2 John and 3 John, he keeps going back, Jesus loved us. And you can tell the way he uses the word he has this kind of thing on his mind. He loved us this much! John never got over this. This was a life changing hour for that man.
Now verse 18, to confirm our interpretation and tie it together, that in fact the whole theme of this passage is to point out sin as in gratitude and to therefore engender a thankfulness on the part of believers, Jesus said, “I speak not of you all: I know whom I have chosen: but that the scripture may be fulfilled, He that eats bread with Me hath lifted up his heel against Me.” Turn to Psalm 41 from which that passage is taken. Psalm 41 is one of the great psalms of David; we won’t have time to exegete it, I’ll only point to a few verses to get you seeing the overall context of the verse, verse 9 that was taken out by Jesus. Verses 1-3, “Blessed is he that considers the poor,” there’s a grace oriented believer, “Yahweh will deliver him in time of trouble.” Just a synonym for saying that Yahweh is pleased with a grace oriented believer. [2] “The LORD will preserve him, the LORD will keep him alive, and he shall be blessed upon the earth, and will not deliver him into the will of his enemies. [3] The LORD will strengthen him upon the bed of languishing; Thou will make all his bed in his sickness.” Now the complaint and in verse 5 he says, “My enemies speak evil of me, When shall he die, and his name perish? [6] And if he come to see me, he speaks vanity; his heart gathers iniquity to itself; he goes abroad and tells it. [7] All who hate me whisper together against me; against me do they devise my hurt.” This is not a paranoid, this is a real situation. [8] “An evil disease, they say, cleaves fast to him; and now that he lies down, he shall rise up no more. [9] Yea,” and this is the height of it, “mine own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, who did eat of my bread, has lifted up his heel against me. [10] But thou, O LORD, be merciful unto me, and raise me up, that I may requite them. [11] By this I shall know that Thou favors me, because my enemy will not triumph over me.”
And so the point that the psalmist is bringing out is that he’s threatened, he has been ripped off, he has been betrayed by a close friend. That’s the theme of the Psalm. Now what Jesus does, He excerpts a section of that Psalm and only a section, to be used over here to explain to these apostles; see, He’s saying, this whole thing that you’re watching, gentlemen, is but a replay of the theme of Psalm 41, the ingratitude. But notice how carefully Jesus quotes. If you read here in verse 9, “my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted, who did eat of my bread, has lifted up his heel against me.” Compare that to the way it’s quoted in John 13; what’s missing? Notice the verse in the Old Testament, then watch the way Jesus quotes it. What is missing is the whole phrase, “my own familiar friend, in whom I trusted,” see, Jesus never trusted in Judas Iscariot. John protects us, he says be careful, it was in gratitude but not quite the kind of ingratitude that David experienced. David was just a man; Jesus was more than a man.
Now He concludes the passage, [20] “Truly, truly, I say unto you, He that receives whomsoever I send receives Me; and he that receives Me receives him that sent Me.” What is verse 20 talking about? The sending of the apostles into the world as the foundation of the Church. Jesus is preparing; gentlemen, He says, you are now prepared, your preparation will continue after the cross but basically you are prepared men; you have observed the proper order of encounter with the world; you encounter them as messengers of the God who has once and for all demonstrated His love to men, the next play is up to man, the play of acceptance or the play of ingratitude and rebellion.
Father, we thank You for this passage…