How very much Jesus loved His disciples! “Having loved His own which were in the world, He loved them unto the end.” He knew that the Father had given all things into His hands, He knew that He was come from God and was going to God, but at that last supper He got up from the table and laid aside His garments, and took a towel and girded Himself. Then He took a basin of water and began to wash the feet of His disciples, wiping them with the towel with which He was girded.
Peter must have watched his Lord with wondering eyes; and when it came to his turn he could not keep silence any longer, he said, “Lord, dost thou wash my feet?” Jesus answered, “What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.”
Peter said, “Thou shalt never wash my feet.”
Jesus said to him, “If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me.”
Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.”
Jesus said to him, “He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.”
Why did Jesus say, “But not all?” It was because the traitor Judas was there. He had gone about with Jesus, he was even numbered among the apostles, but his heart was still black and stained with sin in God’s holy sight. He had never, like Peter, fallen down at the feet of Jesus and owned himself a sinful man, and been washed and forgiven.
After Jesus had washed their feet and had taken His garments and sat down again, He told them why He had done this. He said, “Ye call Me Master and Lord and ye say well; for so I am: If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.”
Jesus was going to leave His dearly-loved disciples. He was going back to His Father in heaven, but they would still be left down here, and even though their hearts had been washed white and clean they would be walking through a world where their feet would get weary and travel-stained. He wanted them to love one another so much that they would take care to wash one another’s feet, so that things of this world might not hinder them from following Him where He was going to be with the Father. Let us never forget those words of Jesus, “I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.”
Those disciples must have been very happy sitting together in that upper room with Jesus. Ah! but there was one there of whom Jesus had to say, “He that eateth bread with Me hath lifted up his heel against Me.” And then, more plainly still, He told them, “Verily, verily, I say unto you, that one of you shall betray Me.”
No wonder was it that “the disciples looked one on another, doubting of whom He spake.” Peter would look at John, and John at Peter; and Andrew would look at Philip, and Philip at Andrew — it was too horrible to think of, that one of themselves should betray Jesus to His enemies. Peter was not near enough to Jesus to whisper the question he was longing to ask, so he made a sign to John, the disciple whom Jesus loved, who was leaning on His bosom, and he said to Jesus, “Lord, who is it?”
“Jesus answered, He it is, to whom I shall give a sop, when I have dipped it. And when he had dipped the sop, he gave it to Judas Iscariot, the son of Simon. And after the sop Satan entered into him. Then said Jesus unto him, That thou doest, do quickly.”
But even so, neither Peter, nor John, nor any at the table understood why Jesus said this to Judas; some of them thought, because he had charge of the money, that Jesus was sending him out to buy something for the feast, or to give something to the poor. What God’s Word says of him is this, “He then having received the sop went immediately out and it was night.”
Judas took the sop that Jesus had dipped for him with His own hand, and went out immediately to betray Him, and it was night. Oh! the awful blackness of that night!