Jn.13:3-5 – “Jesus, knowing that the Father had handed all things over to Him, and that He had come forth from God and was going back to God, got up from supper and laid His outer garments aside; and He took a towel and tied it around Himself. Then He poured water into the basin, and began washing the disciples’ feet and wiping them with the towel which He had tied around Himself.”
Jesus kept astounding His disciples and everyone who reads the gospels all the way until the end. This is His last night with His disciples and what does He do? He washes His disciples’ feet. This is the job of servants in the world Jesus lived in, not the role of the Son of God who is King of all kings. He loved His disciples until the end, He loves us until the end. Here is how Chrysostom describes this scene.
“This was not his first inkling that his hour had come. He had known long before that he was going to depart. The Evangelist is most eloquent in calling his death a departure.… Being so near to leaving his disciples, he shows greater love for them. “Having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them to the end,” means that he left nothing undone that one who greatly loved should do. Why then didn’t he do this from the beginning? He reserved this for the end so that their love might be increased by it and to prepare them by this consolation for the terrible things that were coming. John calls them “his own” in the sense of personal attachment.… The word was used in another sense in the beginning of the Gospel, “His own received him not.”
There are two major lessons we can take from Jesus washing His disciples’ feet. First, Jesus is the giver, we are the receivers. Peter had to learn the lesson that night when he was corrected when he resisted the foot washing. Our ability to minister begins here, we must be still again and again and let Jesus come and minister to us. He is still serving as a servant in His glory, He wants to wash you in His love again and again. The second lesson flows out of the first, we step into the foot washing ministry as a result of Him washing us. Once He comes to us and baths us in His love again and again we have no other response. We have to find someone with “dirty feet” and wash them with the love of God.
Wash over me Lord