M. C. Gahan
The Constancy of the Heart of Christ About His Own
John 13:1-101Now 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. 2And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him; 3Jesus knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he was come from God, and went to God; 4He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. 5After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded. 6Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet? 7Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter. 8Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me. 9Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head. 10Jesus saith 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. (John 13:1‑10)
1. 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:
4. He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded Himself.
5. After that He poureth water into a basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith He was girded.
6. Then cometh He to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto Him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet?
7. Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter.
8. Peter saith unto Him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not thou halt no part with Me.
9. Simon Peter saith unto Him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.
10. Jesus saith 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.
In this and the three following chapters of the Gospel of John, the Lord has historically reached the last stage of that journey that was about to close in the solemn darkness of the cross. In the very antechamber of death He gathers His own, as it were to relieve the tension upon His spirit by pouring out the thoughts of His heart in connection with the day that His resurrection was about to usher in. “In that day ye shall know,” etc. (John 14-20). The day of His actual presence with His disciples was to be exchanged for a day of separation from them and provision must needs be made to meet this contingency. The constancy of the heart of Jesus towards His own could admit of nothing less. He was about to provide for the objects of His love by the very fact of His going away and preparing a place for them in the Father’s house, and by coming again to take them unto Himself. But that was future. What about the interval period, whether long or short?
The answer to that question, solved by incarnate divine love, is presented in chapter 13; it was to be “part with” Him in spirit until place with Him in the Father’s house should fill up the full cup of mutual enjoyment in the heart of Christ and the hearts of His own.
The chapter opens with the prospect that lay before the Lord, and the pressure which lay upon His spirit; the former, that He was going to the Father, the latter, the circumstances and solitude of His own, consequent upon His departure. Having loved them He loved unto the end, and for them His love provided that which should be ample compensation for the solitude involved in His absence, even the enjoyment of “part with” Him in spirit, and the means by which this could be maintained in holy reality.
The perfect simplicity of the incident which the Lord selected to set forth the provision necessary to the accomplishment of the desires of His heart is arresting, but more so the perfect grace which made Him bend in lowly service to His disciples.
The towel, the basin, and the water were more familiar to the eastern mind in those days than now, but in the hands of Jesus they symbolized the inauguration of that service that was only to close with the translation of the saints to the Father’s house.
Peter was unacquainted with the thoughts of Christ on behalf of His own and swayed like a pendulum from one extreme to another, saying: (1) “Thou shalt never wash my feet,” and, (2) “Lord not my feet only but also my hands and my head.” The Lord replies in terms that served to tranquillize Peter’s impulsive spirit, reminding him that effective bath-washing calls for nothing more than the washing of the feet. It meant spiritually that while effective cleansing through the operation of the Word, as “born of water,” transforms the moral being of the man at new birth, as distinguished from atonement for sin and sins through the blood of Christ, yet by coming into contact in his daily walk with the spirit, principles, language, and motives of a defiled world, the believer contracts defilement which must be removed if part with Christ in the place into which He has now entered is to be enjoyed.
This does not imply that sinless perfection is essential to fellowship with the Son in heaven, but rather furnishes the means by which the Lord Himself in lowliest of grace, applies the word in cleansing, separative, renewing power to the heart that has become sensible of the chilling and lowering effects of worldly atmosphere and influences; and that with a view to lifting it again into touch with Himself in glory, and heavenly things; thus resuming the temporarily interrupted current of that which is involved in “part with Me.”
But this service of lowly grace is assumed to be occasional and intermittent. It is clear that the heart of Christ could never find its full divine satisfaction in a ministry that simply partook of the nature of negating and annulling the defiling effects of “this present evil world.” There remained the positive ministry of redemption’s glorious results; the things that “eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man” (1 Cor. 2, 9); “the unsearchable riches of Christ,” and “the riches of His glory” (Eph. 3:8,168Unto me, who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ; (Ephesians 3:8)
16That he would grant you, according to the riches of his glory, to be strengthened with might by his Spirit in the inner man; (Ephesians 3:16)); “the treasures of wisdom and knowledge” (Col. 2:33In whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. (Colossians 2:3)); “the high (heavenly) calling of God in Christ Jesus” (Phil. 3:1414I press toward the mark for the prize of the high calling of God in Christ Jesus. (Philippians 3:14)). Into all these great realities the Lord would have His people enter.
But the incident of feet-washing recalls the type of the laver, standing between the altar of burnt sacrifice and the door of the tabernacle, where the priests were ceremonially required to wash hands and feet, preparatory to entering the tabernacle or temple, in which the full glories of Jehovah shone forth for the satisfaction of those who were entitled to enter there: for “in His temple every whit of it uttereth His glory” (marg. Psa. 29:99The voice of the Lord maketh the hinds to calve, and discovereth the forests: and in his temple doth every one speak of his glory. (Psalm 29:9)). The “cloths of service” mentioned in Exodus 31 to, immediately after the laver, in all probability did service in this connection, closing the ceremonial circumstances of washings, preparatory to the priests’ entrance into the scene in which everything spoke of and displayed the glory of Jehovah, and bringing them as cleansed from what we may assume to be involuntary defilement, — for sacrifice was provided for transgression — into touch with those things which were “the example and shadow of heavenly things” and the “patterns of things in the heavens” (Heb. 8:5; 9:235Who serve unto the example and shadow of heavenly things, as Moses was admonished of God when he was about to make the tabernacle: for, See, saith he, that thou make all things according to the pattern showed to thee in the mount. (Hebrews 8:5)
23It was therefore necessary that the patterns of things in the heavens should be purified with these; but the heavenly things themselves with better sacrifices than these. (Hebrews 9:23)).
In the type the laver was but preparatory to contact with the glories of Jehovah’s house, so here the Lord passes from the incident of feet-washing to the revelation of glories of which those of tabernacle or temple were but shadows. Nor is there any delay, save to wait, patient to the last, upon the movements of Judas, that is, until he “having received the sop went immediately out,” — out into the night. Those feet so recently washed in lowly grace by the Lord and Master, now hurry Judas to the betrayal of his Lord and his own appalling doom. The moral night of darkness into which Judas stepped out of that upper room, one may well conceive, has never been paralleled in the history of a soul.
But what about those within? It could not be night where He was, of whom tabernacle and temple were but shadows, and where glories were revealed which were infinitely greater than the material glories that once dazzled priestly eyes. For, now that Judas is gone out, Jesus introduces immediately to those who were really “His own,” the glories connected with His death and resurrection and ascension. “Now is the Son of Man glorified, and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him” (vss. 31-32). And from that point He passes on to unfold the glories, privileges, and blessings, of which the following chapters are full, without pause or interruption, save for interrogation here and there from the amazed disciples, until the climax of all is reached in the closing verses of John 17.
Thus was the Lord’s heart set free to open up its treasured secrets to those He loved, and who, in spite of all their failures, were true at heart to. Him and here He is “minister of the sanctuary and of the true tabernacle which the Lord pitched, and not man,” fitting His people, by the way of the laver, for part with Him in all that belongs to “heaven itself” (Heb. 9:2424For Christ is not entered into the holy places made with hands, which are the figures of the true; but into heaven itself, now to appear in the presence of God for us: (Hebrews 9:24)) where He now appears “in the presence of God for us.”
And this feet-washing, this service of lowly grace (which we too are privileged to render one towards another, as enabled of Him — v. 14) He will continue to exercise towards us until the moment shall come when such service will no longer be necessary, because the redeemed shall have reached the place where the street of the city shall be of “pure gold, as it were transparent glass,” where “there shall in no wise enter into it anything that defileth,” and where the laver shall give place to the “pure river of water of life, clear as crystal, proceeding out of the throne of God and of the Lamb” (Rev. 21 and 22.).
These were untrodden paths as yet for the beloved disciples, and utterly unintelligible to them (ch. 14: 5, 8, 22; 16:17, 18, 29, marg. “parable”); but the pressure of the glory that lay beyond the cross was apparently upon the spirit of Jesus, at the threshold of which glory the Spirit, “the Comforter which is the Holy Ghost,” was to be given, who should bring all things to their remembrance “whatsoever I have said unto you” (chap. 14:26). So for a moment, as though it were through a rift in the storm-cloud that was about to burst upon the devoted head of Jesus, a beam of the glory that belonged to the day of a glorified Christ and the given Spirit shone out with dazzling effect on the vision of the disciples, ere, for an hour, the Sun of all their hopes set in darkness, only to rise in all the glory of accomplished redemption, when the promised Spirit of truth should come, guide them into all truth, and skew them things to come.