Joh 13:1-5 | KingComments | STEP | The Lord has withdrawn with His disciples to be alone with them. He wants to open His heart to them and tell them Who His Father is for them. Now that He is about to leave them, He wants to tell them in various ways what their new position before God the Father and in the world is in contrast to their position in Israel. Therefore He has moved into the upper room of a house in Jerusalem. In that upper room He wants to celebrate the Passover with them. In the other Gospels we read about the preparations for this and get to know the outer circumstances of the Passover ( ). John does not occupy himself with that. He describes a different kind of preparation. He writes about the spirit or mind in which the Lord gathers His own to celebrate it. In a special way he gives us a taste of the atmosphere of Divine love in which this event takes place. This preparation is done by the Lord Himself. He does this in full awareness of the fact that His hour has come ( ; cf. ). Christ is the only Man with Whom nothing ever happens unexpected. He knows everything perfectly in advance. That His hour has come means that He will die on the cross, rejected by men and forsaken by His God. Yet John does not speak about that. What John says about the end of Christ’s life on earth fits his Gospel. John does not describe the wickedness of man or satan, nor God’s wrath over sin, but tells us about the Son’s departure from the world back to the Father. This is what preoccupies the Lord Jesus and what forms the background of the coming chapters. It is all about the Father and what the Son’s going to the Father means to His disciples as objects of His love. Everything is known and felt by Him in the presence of the Father. That is why His going to the Father out of this world is directly connected with His love for His own who are in the world. We have also read about “His own” in the beginning of this Gospel ( ). There it is about His people Israel as His own, but that they, His people, did not receive Him. Now John speaks again about ”His own”. That is not His people as a whole, but it is they from His people who have received Him. They are truly His, they belong to Him, they are His sheep. To them, His departure to the Father means a great loss. How lonely they will feel in a hostile world. The Lord Jesus is aware of this and therefore He will leave them with an impressive proof of His love for them, a love that will be there to the end. The proof of that tremendous love certainly concerns His work on the cross. We can think of an infinite depth of love. His love also extends lengthwise, into the future, for it is a love of which, no matter how far we look, the end cannot be seen. That is what John means when he writes about “loved them to the end”. If we can think of something having an end, His love goes beyond that. No matter how far we can look into the future, His love is there too. Whatever misery and sorrow we may experience, His love goes deeper. The measure of this love cannot be fathomed or measured. We can only experience and admire this love.

‏ John 13:1-5

Endless Love

The Lord has withdrawn with His disciples to be alone with them. He wants to open His heart to them and tell them Who His Father is for them. Now that He is about to leave them, He wants to tell them in various ways what their new position before God the Father and in the world is in contrast to their position in Israel. Therefore He has moved into the upper room of a house in Jerusalem. In that upper room He wants to celebrate the Passover with them.

In the other Gospels we read about the preparations for this and get to know the outer circumstances of the Passover (Lk 22:8-13). John does not occupy himself with that. He describes a different kind of preparation. He writes about the spirit or mind in which the Lord gathers His own to celebrate it. In a special way he gives us a taste of the atmosphere of Divine love in which this event takes place. This preparation is done by the Lord Himself. He does this in full awareness of the fact that His hour has come (Jn 12:23 ; Jn 17:1; cf. Jn 2:4 ; Jn 7:30 ; Jn 8:20).

Christ is the only Man with Whom nothing ever happens unexpected. He knows everything perfectly in advance. That His hour has come means that He will die on the cross, rejected by men and forsaken by His God. Yet John does not speak about that. What John says about the end of Christ’s life on earth fits his Gospel. John does not describe the wickedness of man or satan, nor God’s wrath over sin, but tells us about the Son’s departure from the world back to the Father. This is what preoccupies the Lord Jesus and what forms the background of the coming chapters.

It is all about the Father and what the Son’s going to the Father means to His disciples as objects of His love. Everything is known and felt by Him in the presence of the Father. That is why His going to the Father out of this world is directly connected with His love for His own who are in the world.

We have also read about “His own” in the beginning of this Gospel (Jn 1:11). There it is about His people Israel as His own, but that they, His people, did not receive Him. Now John speaks again about ”His own”. That is not His people as a whole, but it is they from His people who have received Him. They are truly His, they belong to Him, they are His sheep.

To them, His departure to the Father means a great loss. How lonely they will feel in a hostile world. The Lord Jesus is aware of this and therefore He will leave them with an impressive proof of His love for them, a love that will be there to the end. The proof of that tremendous love certainly concerns His work on the cross. We can think of an infinite depth of love.

His love also extends lengthwise, into the future, for it is a love of which, no matter how far we look, the end cannot be seen. That is what John means when he writes about “loved them to the end”. If we can think of something having an end, His love goes beyond that. No matter how far we can look into the future, His love is there too. Whatever misery and sorrow we may experience, His love goes deeper. The measure of this love cannot be fathomed or measured. We can only experience and admire this love.

Preparation for Washing of the Feet

After the introductory words about His going to the Father and His love for His own, we now come to the scene of the washing of the feet during the Passover. But first John mentions what the devil managed to do in the heart of Judas. This shows us the great contrast between the Lord’s actions and those of Judas. The Lord acts by the Spirit of love for the Father and His own, while Judas has opened himself to the devil. The Lord Jesus gives Himself for others; Judas betrays the Lord out of his own interest.

When the supper has begun, the Lord gets up from supper to serve His own. While He gets up to do so, He is fully aware of His connection with His Father. As the Son of the Father, He knows that He has received all things into His hands, just as He knows that He will soon fall into the hands of depraved people. It is therefore impressive to realize that He Who gets up to serve the disciples is the eternal Son Who, as Man, receives all things from his Father’s hands in order to share them with those who participate in His death and resurrection.

It is also noticeable that Jn 13:3 speaks of both “the Father” and “God”. When we read the name “Father” it is usually in connection with our privileges, with our blessings. When we read the name ”God” it is usually in connection with our responsibility.

The Lord Jesus knows that He came from God. His purpose was to serve God on earth. He knows that He fulfilled that service perfectly to God’s glory and thereby answered His responsibility entirely. That is why He can go back to God. This relationship of the Son to His Father and His God is the starting point for the washing of the feet. The Son wants us to share with Him what He received from the Father and what He did for God. For that we need the washing of our feet.

Fellowship with the Son in what the Father has given Him can only be possible if we are aware that that Father is also the holy God in Whose presence nothing can exist that has to do with sin. Nobody is more aware of that than the Son. He knows His Father and God in a perfect way, and He knows exactly how His Father and God values Him. Therefore, no one but He can do the cleansing of defilements which enables a person to partake with Him. That is why He gets up from supper and lays aside His garments. Symbolically He renounces all glory that His God and Father has given Him.

Then we read that He takes a towel. He does that with the very hands in which the Father has placed all things. He does not use His hands to exercise power, but to serve. He uses His hands to wash the feet of His disciples. Then He girds Himself with the towel He has taken. Girding points to serving (Lk 12:37 ; Lk 17:8). By what He does to His disciples, He gives us an unforgettable lesson in humility. It seems that Peter has understood that lesson (1Pet 5:5).

The Washing of the Feet

When the Lord has prepared Himself for His servant work, He pours water into the basin and begins to wash the feet of the disciples and wipe them with the towel with which He has girded Himself. The washing of the feet by the Lord has a spiritual meaning. The Lord serves here as a Slave. When He became Man, He took the form of a Slave (Phil 2:7). He will never give up this position and service of Slave (Lk 12:37; Exo 21:5-6).

We might think that He stopped being a Slave when He entered glory. He shows us here that this is not the case. He begins a new service among His own that consists of removing the uncleanness they have acquired in their wanderings through the world. For this purification He uses the Word of God which is compared with water (Eph 5:26; Jn 15:3). When we read God’s Word, it has the effect that our thoughts are cleansed. If we have things in our life that are wrong, He makes us aware through His Word. We can then confess that and remove it. That is the cleansing He works.

For this cleansing, the Lord uses water, not blood. It is about presenting the truth, that is, God’s Word as that which cleanses. The blood has more the aspect of reconciliation. He uses the Word to cleanse those who are already reconciled by the blood. The blood cleanses in relation to God, the water cleanses in relation to the believer. The blood is applied just once. God always recognizes its value. The effect is eternal. The believer is sanctified by the blood once and for all (Heb 9:12 ; Heb 10:14). The application of the blood never needs to be repeated, just as no one once born of God needs to be born of God again.

After the Lord has washed their feet, He wipes them with the towel with which He was girded. Wiping also has an important spiritual meaning. Wiping the feet means getting rid of the memory of the cleansing. When someone has been cleansed of a sin by the Lord through His Word, He does not come back to it. This is also important for believers among themselves. If a believer sins and someone else points this out to him and the sin is confessed, then that sin is gone. That sin may not be brought to mind as an accusation of the other again.