It is of capital moment to hold fast along with atonement the washing of water by the word. Else the blood of Christ is diverted from its true aim and effect before God, and practically used as the resource in case of failure. Let us hear Calvin as an influential witness of the error it involves, where he teaches from the word of reconciliation in 2 Cor. 5:20 (“Be reconciled to God"), that Paul is here addressing himself to believers, instead of illustrating the message of grace to the world. “He declares to them every day this embassy. Christ therefore did not suffer, merely that He might once expiate our sins, nor was the gospel appointed merely with a view to the pardon of those sins which we committed previously to baptism, but that, as we daily sin, so we might also by a daily remission be received by God into His favor. For this is a continued embassy, which must be assiduously sounded forth in the church till the end of the world; and the gospel cannot be preached unless remission of sins is promised. We have here an express and suitable declaration for refuting the impious trust of Papists, which calls upon us to seek the remission of sins after baptism from some other source than from the expiation that was effected through the death of Christ. Now this doctrine is commonly held in all the schools of Popery—that, after baptism we merit the remission of sins by penitence through the aid of the keys (Matt. 16:19)—as if baptism itself could confer this upon us without penitence. By the term penitence however, they mean satisfaction. But what does Paul say here? He calls us to go, not less after baptism than before it, to the one expiation made by Christ, that we may know that we always obtain it gratuitously. Further, all their prating as to the administration of the keys is to no purpose, inasmuch as they conceive of keys apart from the gospel, while they are nothing else than that testimony of a gratuitous reconciliation, which is made to us in the gospel.” (Comm. Epp. to the Cor. Calvin Soc. ii. 240, 241.) Clearly this teaching is erroneous, not only founded on a misapplication to saints of the gospel ministry to sinners, but consequently unsettling their reconciliation as a great finished fact. It is not true that the apostle declares this embassy to believers every day. He declares on the contrary that the work is done, and the worshippers once purged so as to have no longer any conscience of sins, that is, no question of imputing sins or errors, nor of God's judgment of them by-and-by. The error undermines or excludes the constant relationship of the Christian on the ground of peace made by the blood of Christ's cross, and present and permanent fitness for showing the justice of the saints in light. (Col. 1) The one offering of Christ does not merely once expiate our sins but has perfected in perpetuity the sanctified. The Romanist meets the need created by failure after baptism by penitence aided by the keys; the Protestant by fresh approach to the sacrifice of Christ, the one being as ignorant as the other of the washing of the defiled feet by the word in answer to the advocacy of Christ with the Father. The continued embassy is by the Lord's servants in proclaiming the gospel to the world. There is no such thing as God's receiving the believer by a daily remission into His favor. There may be the necessity of removing the uncleanness of flesh or spirit which hinders communion, but this supposes the groundwork of propitiation undisturbed and of the favor in which we stand. That the Christian requires to be reconciled afresh, that the call “be reconciled to God” goes out to failing believers proves that Calvin, able as he was and a saint himself, was ignorant even of the elementary and distinctive truth of the gospel, and opened the door to the opposed error of Arminianism which takes its stand more consistently on the same mistake, that the failing believer has to start afresh, as if eternal life had no meaning, and the blood of Christ lacked everlasting efficacy.
The truth puts everything in its place. The blood of Christ abides in its unchangeable value before God sacrificially and judicially; but the failing believer is inexcusable, and needs to wash his feet. The word must deal with him morally, producing self-judgment and confession; and the Lord looks to it in His ever watchful grace by taking up His cause in living love with the Father. The Spirit too has His own suited function in producing, not the joy of fellowship with Christ in the things of Christ, but grief and shame, pain and humiliation in recalling the man's own ways—haste, levity, pride, vanity, and perhaps corruption or violence; for of what is the flesh unjudged not capable? By that word of truth he was begotten of God, awakened to self-judgment in His sight; by the same word in each defilement judged day by day, making it so much the more painful because He reminds the soul of what Christ suffered for the sins which the flesh feels so light. But far from dissolving the relationship, it is the sense of inconsistency with it, and with the grace which at so much cost and sovereign grace withal conferred it on us, that most of all tries and humbles the erring one. Flesh would like exceedingly to have its way and indulge its pleasures, and the soul begin again; but God holds the believer to a relationship, which if real, is everlasting and makes every delinquency therefore to be so much the deeper sin, because it is against not conscience and righteousness only, but the richest grace God could show Christ. We were reconciled to God through the death of His Son. There is no repetition of reconciliation any more than of the new birth. There is complete remission of sins through His blood, and hence no longer a sacrifice for sin. The one and only offering which could avail is made and accepted. But there is, whenever needful, a fresh application of water. And this ever deals with the soul. The word detects whilst it removes the defilement, applying the death of Christ thus to the man, as the blood dealt with the sins before God. Thus is the work carried on holily without weakening the sole foundation for a sinful man's peace as well as for His glory.
“When then he washed their feet and took his garments and reclined again, he said to them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call me the Teacher and the Lord, and ye say well, for I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, wash your feet, ye also ought to wash. one another's feet; for I have given you an example, that even as I did to you, ye should also do. Verily, verily, I say to you, A bondman is not greater than his lord, nor yet an apostle greater than be that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” (Vers. 12-17.)
Undoubtedly the humility of the Lord was beyond question in His washing the disciples' feet, and that He would have them cultivate it He had solemnly urged on them in the plainest terms, as we see in all the synoptic gospels. But then there is another and deeper instruction. It is the renewal of their defilements in walking through the world which is before His mind, now that He is about to leave them; and about this He would exercise their hearts by the question, “Know ye what I have done to you?” It is His way indeed to teach us afterward the good He has already done us; and as we grow up to Him in the truth we appreciate better what we understand but slightly at first. Grace teaches us, as well as acts on our behalf; and it is humbling to find out how little we have understood while its activity has never staid. But how good and strengthening it is to learn its ways and lessons
The Lord next enforces what He had done by appealing to the titles they habitually gave Him. “Ye call me the teacher and the Lord; and ye say well; for I am.” One to obey as well as to instruct, as could not but be where His personal glory is known. If He then stooped in love to wash their feet, what did they not owe one another? It is not only that we should serve the Lord in the gospel. By this shall all men know, He says, later on in this very chapter, that ye are my disciples, if ye have love one to another. Here however it is a definite call where we are apt most to fail to share His grace, in seeking the restoration of each other where failure has come in. On the one hand it needs faith and self-denial and divine affections. Indifference about it detects our own failure. But on the other hand the righteousness that censures another is as far as possible from washing the feet, resembling rather the scourge than the service of the towel and basin. And assuredly, if grace be needed to bear the washing, a far larger measure must be in action to wash the feet. Hence says the apostle, “Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any fault, ye that are spiritual restore such an one in a spirit of meekness.” Where flesh was judged, love could act more powerfully and with deeper sense that all is of grace. Self is the greatest hindrance in dealing with another's trespass.
The service of love in every form is the mind which was in Christ. Hence He calls them here to weigh what they had first seen. “For I have given you an example that ye also should do even as I did to you. Verily, verily, I say to you, A bondman is not greater than his lord, nor an apostle greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them.” The Lord knew the end from the beginning, and how soon His ministry would degenerate into a worldly institution, and become a title of pride, instead of being a work of faith and labor of love. Hence the need for His solemn formula, as a standing witness to all His own so prone in a world of vain show and selfishness to forget His word and wander from His way. But there His warning abides, to decline His service in washing the feet of His own is to set oneself above the Lord and to claim a greater place than His who sends even an apostle. O for the blessedness of doing as well as knowing these things! It is the fellowship of His love in one of its most intimate forms; and love is of God, and everyone that loveth hath been begotten of God and knoweth God.