Serve One Another (John 13:1-17)

One of the Most Astonishing Things Jesus Ever Did

Because we are familiar with the Gospels, it is easy to lose the shock of this passage. But we need to understand that this is one of the most astonishing things the Lord Jesus ever did — and that is saying something. The timing alone makes it extraordinary. All through John's Gospel, Jesus' "hour" has been approaching but has not yet come. Then in chapter 12, verse 23, for the first time we are told that the hour has finally arrived: "The hour has come for the Son of Man to be glorified." Jesus is deeply troubled by this prospect (12:27). He is just a few hours away from the most horrific suffering any man has ever experienced.

Picture a condemned man on death row eating his final meal, surrounded by family and friends. He has no appetite. He cannot relax or enjoy this last time together, because all he can think about is the terror of what awaits him. And yet Jesus, facing all this horror within the next few hours, is not thinking about Himself. He does not retreat into Himself. Instead He pours Himself out all the more for His disciples, taking time at this critical moment — the crossroads of the universe — to consider others more important than Himself.

And then there is Judas. Jesus is fully aware of his treachery and has known about it from the start. On top of the pressure of His rapidly approaching death, on top of the need to pastor and prepare His disciples, He is dealing with satanic hostility and hatred in the eyes of one of His own. Yet at this moment of all moments, He chooses to kneel and wash their feet.

An Act of Humble Service

Foot washing was the humblest, lowliest, most despised menial task that one human being could perform for another in this culture. It always fell not just to a slave, but to the lowest slave in the household — the one every other slave hoped they would not become. Male Jewish slaves were not even permitted to wash feet; it was considered beneath them and was reserved for Gentile slaves, female slaves, children, and pupils. There is no instance anywhere in all ancient literature of a superior washing the feet of an inferior.

One famous example tells of the mother of Rabbi Ishmael, who wanted to wash her son's feet. He would not let her. She took him to court and argued that for such a great man, it would not be demeaning but an honour. She lost the case. It simply did not happen.

John slows the narrative right down, telling the story frame by frame as if in slow motion. Jesus gets up from the meal. He takes off His outer clothing. He wraps a towel around His waist. This was not the first-century equivalent of rolling up your sleeves for manual work — this was how a slave dressed for duty. No self-respecting man would ever dream of dressing like this. And then it gets worse: not only is the Lord dressing like a slave, He begins to wash their feet. You can imagine the disciples looking at each other in stunned silence, thinking: we must be dreaming. This is a nightmare. Surely He is not going to — He is. He is washing our feet.

Nobody speaks until Jesus comes to Peter. You can picture Peter drawing up his legs, pulling his feet away in revulsion, horrified by the inappropriateness of everything that is happening. Our English translations do not fully capture the spluttering indignation and force of his question in verse 6. The two pronouns — "You" and "my" — are emphatic in the original Greek: Lord, are YOU going to wash MY feet? The disciples would probably have washed Jesus' feet willingly enough; they believed He was the Messiah. But it was completely out of order for Him to wash theirs.

Imagine hosting a highly respected, eminent guest in your home. You have gone to great lengths to make sure everything is just perfect — a delicious meal on the best china. And just as you are clearing the plates, you notice your guest slipping on a pair of rubber gloves and reaching for a bottle of cleaning spray. "What are you doing?" "I'm just going to nip in to the bathroom and give it a quick clean for you before we have coffee." You would be horrified. That is not for you to do; you are our honoured guest. And yet that does not even come close to how distressing Jesus' action must have been for the disciples.

Perhaps the nearest parallel in our culture is an article about the practice of manual scavenging in India — the emptying of dry toilets and the clearing of blocked sewage pipes with bare hands, a job still carried out by the lowest of the low, the Dalit caste. It was outlawed in 1993 and yet it still goes on. Can you imagine the prime minister of India going to help a manual scavenger for the day? That is something like the shock the disciples would have experienced watching the Son of God kneel before them with a basin and a towel.

A Picture of Sacrifice (vv. 1–11)

But why does Jesus choose to perform this act of humble service now, at this particular moment? He could have done it at any point during His ministry, yet He never has before. The answer lies in verses 3 and 4, which John links together as cause and effect. Verse 3: "Jesus knew that the Father had put all things under His power, and that He had come from God and was returning to God." So — verse 4 — "He got up from the meal, took off His outer clothing, and wrapped a towel around His waist."

That does not seem to make sense. The two verses appear to contradict each other. You would expect verse 4 to read something like: "So Jesus received His followers' worship and adoration," or "So Jesus commanded His disciples to wash His feet as their Lord and God." But instead: So He wrapped a towel around His waist and began to wash His disciples' feet. How do those two verses fit together?

The answer is that the time has come for Jesus to go to the cross, and what He is doing in washing the disciples' feet is giving them a visual aid of what the cross is all about. He is preparing them for what is about to happen. The foot washing is a picture of the humiliation of Calvary and of the cleansing that it accomplishes. This becomes clearer in verses 6–8, when Peter asks what He is doing and Jesus replies that Peter will not understand it fully now, but "later you will understand" — literally, "after these things": after the cross, after the resurrection, after the ascension. And then the crucial words in verse 8: "Unless I wash you, you have no part with me." Jesus is no longer just talking about foot washing. He is talking about what Peter could only understand after the cross — that you can only belong to Jesus if you have been washed in His blood.

Put simply: in the upper room that night, Jesus humbles Himself in an unthinkable way to make His disciples' feet clean. He takes on the role of a despised servant so that He can make them clean. And that is why the foot washing is such an effective, beautiful picture of the cross. If you think the foot washing is shocking, if you think it is humiliating, you have not seen anything yet — because in just a few hours, the Son of God is going to humble Himself in an infinitely more astonishing way. He is going to become obedient to death, even death on the cross (Philippians 2:8). And that act of humiliation is not just going to wipe away a few bits of dust and dirt from someone's feet; it is going to cleanse the stain of sin that clogs up our hearts. That is what Jesus has done to make sinners clean: He humbled Himself to the cursed death of the cross to wash away the dirt and filth of our guilt and all our sins.

This sermon is part of the One Another Commands series at Covenant Christian Fellowship, Galway. The companion evening message, Serve One Another as Christ Did (John 13:12–17), explores the foot washing as a pattern of service.