Is Confession of Sin Necessary? John 13:1-11

We come to an entirely new section of the Gospel of John. There is a major shift that takes place in the thematic structure of the Gospel as John wrote, starting with this chapter. Up to this point Jesus has been presenting His messianic claims to the entire nation of Israel. His ministry has been public; now it is private, it is for believers only. It is at this point that Jesus is going to do several very interesting things in the midst of the Passover celebration with His disciples the night before he goes to the cross. Beginning here we see a crucial vocabulary shift that takes place, and it is that vocabulary shift that helps us understand the topical shift, the doctrinal shift, that takes place in this Gospel. Up to this point we have seen an emphasis on such things as light, the Light of the world, love and judgment. The word “light” in the Greek, phos [fwj], occurs a total of twenty-three times in the first twelve chapters, but after chapter twelve it is not seen at all. It is no longer the issue. The Light has come, and as Jesus said in the previous chapter, “I have come {as} Light into the world, so that everyone who believes in Me will not remain in darkness.” He warns them that the Light is not with them for long and that they must respond quickly. They do not, and so it now goes from the public light and revelation of Christ into darkness. Then we have another word, “life.” This is zoe [zwh] in the Greek and it is used 32 times in the first twelve chapters, and yet after 13:1 it is only used four times. The word “love” is used eight times in the first twelve chapters of either man’s love for God or the Son’s love for God, or God’s love for mankind. It is used twice for man loving the wrong thing: men loved darkness rather than the light, or men loved human approval; but it now occurs twenty-seven times in chapters 13-17. Then judging: the word krisis [krisij] or one of its forms occurs 29 times in the first twelve chapters and only four times in chapters 13-17. So this shows that there is a tremendous thematic shift as Jesus goes from a public ministry where He is revealing Himself as Messiah to the nation to a private ministry where now that light is shielded from the people and the interest is now on God’s love for His people, the church, and what God has graciously provided for believers in relationship to His love. And not only God’s love for believers but believers’ love for God the Father and believers’ love for one another.

Up to this point we have seen that the depths of God’s love has been evidenced in the revelation of God in Christ. Notice it is an emphasis on grace in God taking an action. Love is expressed in an action, not in terms of emotion or sentiment or warm fuzzies. How do we know the love of God? It is because it is objective in space-time history. He gave His unique son to die on the cross. Paul echoes this in Romans 5:8 ^NASB “But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” We know God’s love only because we have the self-revelation of God is words and sentences in rhe Bible. We don’t know God’s love through some emotional experience, we know God’s love because the Bible tells us about it. In fact, one theologian said that the summation of everything in the Bible is “Jesus loves me, This I know, For the Bible tells me so.” This is why we emphasise the teaching of God’s Word.

In chapter thirteen Jesus is going to teach some things in this chapter that tell us about the reality of God’s love. What we have seen before is the revelation of God’s love in Christ and now we have the explanation of the reality of the love of God, that this is something divorced from emotion; it is not some inner feeling or warm fuzzy but it is an objective revelation that God has told us. It is something concrete, unchanging, immutable, something we can go to again and again to stabilise us when we are going through emotional swings. Because of the turbulence in our lives we can go to the never, never changing Word of God and read the promise of God and know that our inner feelings and emotions can be stabilised by His eternal, immutable truth.

In John 13:1-3 we see the introduction to this section. John 13:1 ^NASB “Now before the Feast of the Passover, Jesus knowing that His hour had come that He would depart out of this world to the Father, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” That introduces the theme of this section. It is going to talk about how Jesus loved His own and how He loved them and persevered in that love all to the way to the end of His life.

Twice John emphasises that Jesus knows exactly what is going on. There is an emphasis in the first three verses of Jesus’ sovereignty, divine control of human history. Jesus Christ controls history. In the events that are going to take place here, if we read this account looking at the introduction, we might think things are out of control. Judas is going to betray Jesus and sell Him out to the Sanhedrin, and poor Jesus. But what we see by John’s emphasis in these first three verses is that Jesus knows exactly what is taking place, He is in complete control of the situation, and everything is working itself out according to the plan and purposes of God in fulfilment of prophecy from the Old Testament. So John is telling us to be careful not to misinterpret what is going on here. We must focus on the sovereignty of Christ knowing that he controls history and that there are important things going on in this whole scenario as he begins to teach the disciples the doctrinal principles that will govern their lives during the new church age.

Verse 1 begins with a temporal clause: “Now before the Feast of the Passover.” It begins with a conjunction, de [de], a transition, simply a now clause. Then a temporal clause introduced by the preposition pro [pro]. There is a problem here. Clearly the preposition indicates that the feast itself has not begun, and for that reason some people think what this means is that this is before the feast takes place. The 15^th of Nisan begins at sundown and extended to sundown the next night, so they had to have the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb on the afternoon of the 14^th. The first day or the 15^th is really the beginning of a long feast that lasted eight days called the Feast of Unleavened Bread. This is important because it is an Old Testament feast and everything in the Old Testament feasts was designed to teach certain things through a very concrete visual method doctrine about the person and work of Jesus Christ. That is what is called typology, and typology simply means that there are certain things that mirror ultimate fulfilment in the life of Christ. Just as a lamb was taken and roasted on the fire for the Passover meal that was to tell certain things about Jesus in His sinless humanity. So every aspect of this is very important for what it reveals and what it displays.

The conundrum here is that some people think that “before the Feast” means that the dinner here is not the Passover meal. But it is clearly the night before He goes to the cross. If we compare that with what is going on in the Synoptic Gospels this clearly portrays this meal as a Passover meal. The problem chronologically is that we have sunset to sunset of the 14^th, sunset to sunset on the 15^th, and if the Passover meal is just after sunset on the 15^th and Jesus is crucified in the afternoon of the 14^th and the night before He has a meal, how can this be the Passover? Because the lamb that they ate for a Passover meal was required by law to be sacrificed under certain conditions in the temple precincts on the 14^th. So there is a chronological problem is to die on the cross in fulfilment of Old Testament types. Between twelve noon and 3pm on the afternoon of the 14^th the Paschal lamb was sacrificed in the temple precincts by the high priest. At the same time Jesus is on the cross bearing the sin of the world the high priest in typological reflection is in the temple sacrificing the Paschal lamb and imputing to it the sins of the nation.

So far in verse 1 what is basically being said is that Jesus knew that His time had come. So before this time, before the 14^th, Jesus was fully aware of the significance of all these events and he knows on the afternoon of the 14^th He is going to be going to the cross. What John is telling us is that because Jesus knew that His time was up and that He would depart out of this world, John says: “…, having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the end.” What John is saying to us is that Jesus has an objective expression of His love for the disciples. How is that love for His disciples expressed? He is going to teach them many things in the next two or three chapters on how to survive and how to live what will be the Christian life in the age to come. So how do we know Jesus loves His disciples? He teaches them doctrine. How does a pastor express his love for the congregation? By teaching them doctrine. The bottom line is that the sheep need to grow to spiritual maturity and they can only do that on the basis of being fed spiritually.

There are fourteen reasons why this must be a Passover meal

1) Matthew, Mark and Luke specifically state that this is a Passover meal. Matthew 26:2, 17-19; Mark 14:1, 12-16; Luke 22:1, 8, 13, 15.

2) It follows the procedures and policies that are stated in the Mosaic Law in Deuteronomy 16:7. It takes place within the walls of Jerusalem despite the fact of the crushing crowds.

3) The upper room was clearly made available to them in keeping with the Passover custom.

4) The meal is eaten at night. Normally the Jews wouldn’t eat a major meal at night, so this, too, indicates that there was something special about this meal. Matthew 26:20; Mark 14:17; John 13:30; 1 Corinthians 11:23.

5) In custom with the standard operating procedure of the Passover meal Jesus limited Himself to a rather small group of the twelve rather than eating with a larger group.

6) They ate in a reclining posture. A reclining posture was reserved for special occasions.

7) The meal followed the Levitical ritual purification procedures.

8) Jesus broke the bread during the meal rather than at the beginning of the meal. Matthew 26:26; Mark 14:22.

9) They drank red wine which was also a sign of a special occasion.

10) Some of the disciples thought that Judas left to purchase items for the feast or perhaps to take money to the poor (they didn’t hear the interchange). If it was to purchase items that would indicate that he couldn’t do it the next day.

11) Some of the disciples thought that Judas left to give money to the poor, which was another custom observed on the Passover. John 13:29.

12) The meal ended with the singing of a hymn, which was typical of a Passover meal. They always ended by singing Psalm 118.

13) Jesus did not return to Bethany which was outside of the Jerusalem city limits, He instead went to the Mount of Olives that night. If He had gone to Bethany He would have left the confines of Jerusalem and that is where Passover had to be held, He had to stay there.

14) The use and interpretation of the elements in terms of the Lord’s table was in keeping with the Passover ritual.

So for these fourteen reasons it becomes clear that this meal is a Passover meal. How do we harmonise this chronologically? John 18:28 makes the statement that after Jesus is arrested and they take Him to the Praetorium to Pilate, the Jews would not enter the chambers “in order that they might not be defiled but might eat the Passover.” If they had gone into this gentile quarter that would have defiled them and they couldn’t eat the Passover. That indicates that the Jews at that point had not eaten the Passover meal yet. If they had they would not have worried about being defiled. So if this meal the night before is Passover and these Jews the next afternoon had not eaten Passover how do we put these things together? This is the chronological conundrum that we must resolve. There are several solutions that people have come up with over the years in order to try to harmonise this.

1) That Jesus just simply eats the Passover meal early. That, however, would be impossible because the Passover lamb had to be slaughtered within the temple precincts and therefore no Passover lamb would have been slaughtered yet.

2) Jesus and His disciples followed the calendar of the Essenes who lived down at Qumran. This would have put the Passover meal on the Qumran calendar two days earlier than the Judean calendar. But there is no indication that Jesus or His disciples had any association with the Essene community at Qumran.

3) The Pharisees and the Sadducees operated on two different calendars. With the Pharisees the Passover would be celebrated one night and the Sadducees had a calendar that said the 14^th and the 15^th is the next night.

4) The best solution is that they computed their days differently. One way to divide time is from midnight to midnight, the Gentile way, the Roman calendar way. Then the Judeans figured it from sunset to sunset, Exodus 12:18. Then there is a Galilean calendar that ran from sunrise to sunrise. This we see from Matthew 28:1 where it says the women came to the tomb late on the Sabbath “as it began to dawn toward the first {day} of the week.” So they are coming early in the morning just before dawn and it is called “late on the Sabbath.” So 5am, or what we would call Sunday, is still Saturday. Sunday didn’t begin until the sun came up. So obviously some were operating on a different calendar system. The best solution to the problem is that both of these were in operation during Jesus’ time. The Galileans and the Pharisees operated on a sunrise to sunrise calendar. It tells us that according to a Galilean calendar—and Jesus is with His disciples who are all Galileans—their day starts at sunrise, so they would eat the Passover meal legitimately based on their calendar on one night and the Judeans and the Sadducees were operating on a completely different calendar and would observe Passover the next night.

John 13:2 ^NASB “During supper, the devil having already put into the heart [kardia] of Judas Iscariot, {the son} of Simon, to betray Him, {Jesus,} knowing that the Father had given all things into His hands, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God [3] got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself.” So Satan is going to introduce some ideas into the thinking of Judas Iscariot and Judas accepts this as his own. This is demon influence. Jesus knows that His hour has come and Judas has already decided to betray Jesus. All of this has been set in motion prior to their coming to the meal that night. Judas has his plan and agenda, the devil has his plan and agenda, and the Lord has His plan and agenda; guess who is in control! The Lord is in control. Because He knows the plan and the purposes of God and that everything is under control He rose from supper. That is the relationship: because He knows this, because there is doctrine in His soul, because He understands the plan of God, because He understands the purposes of God, He understands that a shift has taken place because of the rejection of the people, now He is going to change from a public to a private ministry and begin to inculcate some doctrine into His disciples to prepare them for the new age.

John 13:4 ^NASB “got up from supper, and laid aside His garments; and taking a towel, He girded Himself.” We know that the Roman soldiers gambled for His robe. He has on a very expensive, tailor made garment. It is a seamless garment, one of the most expensive suits he could have worn at the time. By stripping down to His undergarments and just taking this towel and wrapping it about Him He is dressing now, instead of an aristocrat with this expensive garment on, as the lowest of the slaves. The rabbis would have various disciples and the disciple of a rabbi would do almost anything for the rabbi except, according to the Mishnah, was feet. This is so demeaning that the Jewish households would hire Gentile slaves to do the foot-washing. No Jew would wash the feet of another Jew. So Jesus is taking on the form and the function of a servant.

This is a portrayal not just of being a simple servant and of love for one another, it goes far beyond that. He is showing the specifics of how He is going to do this on the next day. John 13:5 ^NASB “Then He poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded.” Then He comes to Simon Peter, probably the last one He came to, and Peter in his typical stubborn manner says: [6] “Lord, do You wash my feet?” That is, there is no reason for you to be washing my feet. [7] “Jesus answered and said to him, ‘What I do you do not realize now, but you will understand hereafter’.” Notice: “said to him” is 3^rd person singular pronoun. He, Jesus, said to him, Peter. He is talking to one person; He is not talking to anybody else. The point is, “What I am doing,” present active indicative, “you do not know now,” at this immediate time. In other words, Right now you don’t understand this; it is important and you will understand it in the future.

John 13:8 ^NASB “Peter said to Him, ‘Never shall You wash my feet!’…” Peter is emphatic, he uses a double negative in the Greek and he intensifies that by using the word a)iwnoj which is the word for eternity: You will not ever, for all eternity, wash my feet. The Lord answers: “… Jesus answered him, ‘If [3^rd class condition] I do not wash [nipto] you, you have no part with Me’.” For “wash” He uses the word nipto [niptw]. The word “part,” meros [meroj] also indicates portion of inheritance. It is doubtful that He is talking about salvation here to Peter at this point. There is a hint here. He is going to use two words for washing, nipto and louo [louw]. luo indicates bathing, full washing, a bath; nipto can mean just a partial washing, like washing the feet or the hands. Bathing, luo, indicates salvation phase one; nipto indicates forgiveness of phase two sins, cleansing, use of 1 John 1:9. Portion would indicate inheritance in the kingdom. So Jesus is saying Peter is going to forfeit his position in the kingdom—not salvation but position in the kingdom—if He doesn’t wash him.

John 13:9 ^NASB “Simon Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, {then wash} not only my feet, but also my hands and my head’.” In other words, give me a bath; let’s go the whole way. Then the Lord has to straighten him out again and this is where everything comes together. [10] “Jesus said to him, ‘He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all {of you.}’” The word “bathed” is louo, perfect middle participle, meaning the one who has bathed in the past with results that go on. That is the emphasis of the perfect tense. LUO is talking about complete washing as opposed to nipto which is partial washing. So Jesus says that he who has been bathed needs only to wash to be completely clean again. Why? Because everything else has already been cleansed and now the feet need to be cleansed again because you have been out walking around and they have become dirty. “…and you [all] are clean,” plural. He was talking to Peter; now He is talking to all the disciples. And He means completely clean because He uses the adjective holos [o(loj] which means whole or complete.

The word “clean” is katharos [kaqaroj] which means to be ritually clean or purified. It used is two senses, alone and with the adjective “complete.” What this means is complete cleansing = justification, phase one salvation. When it is just used without the adjective to modify a whole it is referring to cleansing from sin, post-salvation confession, cleansing from sin. “…but not all {of you.}’” Jesus begins in verse 7 with a conversation solely to Peter, as expressed through the second person singular pronouns and verbs, but by the end of verse 10 Jesus is saying something about the entire group: that they are all completely clean but not everyone in the group is completely clean, completely clean meaning saved. At least one of them is not holos katharos, wholly clean.

holos katharos is a designation of salvation, not a designation of simple forgiveness of sin. So the point is that this indicates that at least one person of the twelve has not been wholly cleansed, is not a believer. “He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all {of you.}” John 13:11 ^NASB “For He knew the one who was betraying Him; for this reason He said, ‘Not all of you are clean’.”

In the Old Testament in Exodus 29:4 we are told about the consecration of Aaron to the priesthood. When Aaron and his sons were dedicated to the priesthood they were to be washed. “Then you shall bring Aaron and his sons to the doorway of the tent of meeting and wash them with water.” This is one of the few times in relationship to the priesthood that there is this Greek word louo used in the Septuagint. It was used of the cleansing of the priest to initiate his ministry. It was complete bathing so they used LOUO. Then when it came to his ritual cleansing every time he went into the temple, when all he did was wash his feet and his hands, they used nipto. Everything that Jesus is saying here in John 13 has to do with the complete grace provision of God. God has provided our salvation but His grace does not stop there. God knows that after salvation we are going to commit numerous sins, but the blood of Jesus Christ (1 John 1:7) continually cleanses us from our sins. That means we cannot lose our salvation.

This is what Jesus is teaching the disciples here. He is teaching them about God’s love, that He has provided everything the believer needs in life. The whole act of foot-washing here is not simply to show that we are to serve one another but that God has provided everything for forgiveness. That is why when Jesus comes back and talks about this it is not just talking about serving. John 13:14 ^NASB “If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet.” He is talking about the fact that the whole imagery of foot-washing is to demonstrate what took place at the laver in the Old Testament which is the application of the forgiveness of God. This the same point that Paul makes in Ephesians chapter four. We are to forgive one another just as God for Christ’s sake has forgiven us. Jesus is talking specifically about the fact that if we are going to love one another in the model and the pattern that is based upon what God did for us through Jesus Christ, forgiving all of our sins. And that just as God loved us in that remarkable way we are to take that and apply it in terms of other people. That is the expression of impersonal love through forgiveness whenever there is sin, and this is the example Jesus gave us. The point is that God’s grace has provided everything, nothing is dependent upon us.