The Lord down here was ever a servant among His own, since He came to minister, not to be ministered unto; but now that He was about to depart, His disciples would have thought that He necessarily ceased to serve them. And Jesus, knowing that His hour was come that He should depart out of this world unto the Father, rises from the supper, so as to separate Himself from them and go figuratively to heaven. He then takes a towel and a basin of water and sets Himself to wash their feet. In this way His service always continues in heaven for His disciples. If His earthly service is ended, now He commences the heavenly. If He is obliged to leave them to go to heaven, He will act so as to make them fit for heaven, that they may be ever with Him. Oh, the infinite love of Jesus! The distance from heaven to earth does not exhaust nor diminish His love. He in heaven will still occupy Himself with us, as in fact He does occupy Himself, praying and interceding for us. He has not only loved us to the cross, but He loves us forever, even “unto the end.”
It was the work of slaves to wash the feet of those who came from off a journey; thus has Jesus made Himself a slave to serve us. Simon Peter is ever putting himself forward, but always without much spiritual intelligence; however, the answers the Lord gives him are of great value to us. It was the sense of the greatness and the majesty of the Lord that made Peter say, “Dost thou wash my feet?” But Jesus makes them all feel that if He could not remain in their company, He must cleanse them from every uncleanness, in order that they may be with Him in heaven. We could not enjoy communion with the Lord if our feet were defiled walking in this world of sin; nevertheless, though we are sons (“God, we may constantly defile ourselves in the mire of sin. Peter then, whose heart desired to have a place with the Lord, replies: — “Not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.” To this Jesus says: — “He that is bathed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit; and ye are clean.” He that was bathed, that is, born anew, of water, —figure of the word—is all clean; this work is never renewed. Our righteousness is Christ, ever the same before God for us; and the infinite value of the blood is ever before the eyes of God; so that there is no need to have any doubt as to our acceptance with God. But if we are always clean, our feet are not so always, because we have the flesh in us, and sin within and without us. The Lord is in heaven our Advocate, and is Priest for us, interceding for us that we may not fall; and, if we fall, He lifts us up, assists us, strengthens us, applying to us by the Holy Spirit the holy word, making us feel and judge the evil, that we may be humbled, and more careful for the time to come. In this way the soul is restored.
In all this it is not a question of imputation, which has been settled once and forever at the cross, by Jesus Himself. But if I am not vigilant and neglect to nourish myself in the things of God, evil thoughts enter immediately, and communion is interrupted, lost; because I cannot have communion with the Lord if the heart is occupied with evil things (see 1 John 2:1, 21My little children, these things write I unto you, that ye sin not. And if any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous: 2And he is the propitiation for our sins: and not for ours only, but also for the sins of the whole world. (1 John 2:1‑2)). When one fails, one ought not to have recourse to the law, which condemns us, nor to the renewed application of the blood, because the sacrifice of Christ cannot be renewed—expiation has been made; but we ought to have recourse to grace, remembering that Jesus is there for us before the Father, interceding for us, to restore our souls. It is there that grace begins: Christ intercedes for him who has sinned, then the Holy Spirit works in the heart to humble us. The intercession of Christ precedes, to produce humiliation in the soul. It is said, “If any man sin,” not, if he repents: the repentance is produced by the intercession of Christ. See the case of Peter. Christ prayed for him, and Peter is humbled because Christ prayed for him; it was not because Peter was humbled that Christ prayed for him.
In the red heifer (Num. 19) we have a very beautiful figure of this instruction. The blood was sprinkled seven times in the place where God met the people. This work was not repeated; but if a person had touched a dead body, or was rendered unclean in any way, then such a one was to wash himself in the water where the ashes of the heifer had been put. The fact is, that sin has been entirely burned at the cross, but when one who has been purged by the blood has been made impure in any way whatsoever, then the Holy Spirit applies by the Word the memory of the cross to restore the soul. With all this, communion is more easily lost than restored. An evil thought may be the occasion of a great fall. God sometimes allows it in order to awaken the conscience of a Christian who neglects communion with the Lord. At other times falls are not only the effects of an evil thought, but of the state of the soul, which may be the effect of pride or too much confidence, as was the case with Peter. A fall is a chastisement of the greatest kind, as we see in his case.
What a comfort that Jesus is always there in heaven, occupied about us to make us enjoy Himself! In this chapter we have, then, a very beautiful figure. Jesus wishes our hearts to be full of confidence in Him. Who would do what He does-wash our feet? and nevertheless, the Lord! We ought to imitate Him, washing one another’s feet, because such is also our portion as being priests, the Lord having introduced us fully into His position. But, to exercise this priestly office towards one another, we need much humility; we should entreat and speak to the weak brother fallen into an error, making use of the word with the power of the Holy Spirit towards him, and in such a way restore his soul. It is not the office of a judge, but of a priest.
At v. 21 The soul of Jesus is troubled, thinking that he who should betray Him was one of His intimate companions and friends. Remark the progress of evil in Judas: first, the lust for money, then Satan presents the temptation of procuring it, and finally the heart is hardened, when it is said that Satan entered into him, so that he betrays and sells his Master-a perfidy so horrible that many worldly men would not commit it. Judas thought, perhaps, that the Lord, by His power, would free Himself from His enemies, and that he would have his money; but when he saw that He did not free Himself, then he repented, but with the repentance of despair. At v. 20 we find the value of the Word of God; it matters not from whom we receive the Word, the essential point is if one receives the Word of God. The instrument who brings the word may be bad, as it was in the case of Judas, who was sent out to preach; and if he brings the Word, we are bound to receive it, because it is from God. He that receives the Word receives Christ, and he that receives Christ receives the Father.
John was leaning on the bosom of Jesus; so that Peter, who was farther off, asks him to inquire of Jesus who he was of whom He had said that he would betray Him. John was nearer, he was more familiar with Jesus, because John loved Jesus, and Jesus loved John. It was his love, then, that kept him so near to Jesus, and therefore he was in a position to learn more from Him than the others. Some have asked if Judas took of the Supper; to whom the reply is, that, at least, according to the Gospel of Luke, it seems so: “Behold, the hand of him that betrayeth me is with me on the table” (Luke 22;21). But it is of no importance to us; first, because we have nothing given to us here of the Church, nor of discipline: and, in the second place, we have, as it is, a very useful instruction, because Judas had not yet been manifested as to what he was. Jesus knew him by His own divine knowledge, by which He knew everything that was in man; and if He had wrought according to His knowledge, how could we imitate Him? Our rule is that we should not judge unless evil is manifested; and had he been known as a traitor, who would dare maintain the doctrine and the practice that we ought to admit traitors, openly known as such, to the Lord’s table? —and traitors of such a sort?
Vv. 31 and 32 are very precious. God has been glorified by the case of the Son of Man, and this is much more than the pardon of our sins, because the cross has glorified God in every sense. Had God destroyed man for his sin, His righteousness would have been satisfied, but not His heart; had He pardoned him without atonement, His righteousness would not have been satisfied. But the cross has satisfied every attribute of God—His majesty, His righteousness, His love, in fact, are perfectly glorified. God was, as it were, dependent upon man for this glory; and it is an immense glory for man to have glorified God; and that is what Christ has done on the cross; and, in return, man is glorified, as it is written, “and shall straightway glorify him.” God does not wait for the kingdom to glorify Jesus, but He has glorified Him already, and that is what happened when He ascended to heaven, as the Holy Spirit testifies to us that He is now crowned with glory and honor (Heb. 2:99But we see Jesus, who was made a little lower than the angels for the suffering of death, crowned with glory and honor; that he by the grace of God should taste death for every man. (Hebrews 2:9)). The pardon of sins and the glory are two very distinct things; God might have been content to have pardoned us and saved us, without giving us the glory, but the cross has so glorified God, that He is bound to glorify man.
At v. 33 it is said that men in the flesh could not go to the cross, and by the cross to heaven, because the cross would be their eternal death; as the Jordan would have been for Israel, had they attempted to cross it without the ark. But now that Jesus has passed through death, we can go through it also ourselves; death is for us now but the door that introduces us into heaven.
In v. 34 we have the new commandment which is called “old” in 1 John 2:77Brethren, I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment which ye had from the beginning. The old commandment is the word which ye have heard from the beginning. (1 John 2:7). It becomes new ‘inasmuch as it comes practically not from the old man, but from the new, divine life in us, “because the darkness is passing and the true light is now shining.” We ought to love one another, as Christ has loved us; this is the character of the love. Christ loves us notwithstanding our faults and our weaknesses; the motive for His love is not in us, but in His own heart, and we ought to love after the manner of the love of Jesus.
At the end of this chapter we have to find poor Peter full of self-confidence, and therefore God permitted his fall, in order that he might learn and find out his own weakness; then only would he be of use in comforting his brethren, after he had bitterly experienced his own weakness: but Christ prayed that his faith would not fail; He did not pray that he should not be sifted, for of that he had need; and He prayed for him not after he repented, or because he repented, but in order that he should repent.