John 13:12 When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you? 13 You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. 14 If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. 15 For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. 16 Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. 17 If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

The popular book UnChristian tells a story that most of us who work with young people already know: most young people in late high school and beyond have several highly negative views of Christianity. Growing up in a Christian home, attending church youth groups or campus ministries does a bit to temper this, but significant numbers of young people with these experiences in two have also concluded that Christians are shallow, narrow, over politicized, pushy, judgmental, specifically anti-homosexual and zealous for conversion.

These characteristics seem exaggerated, but unfortunately, they are often accurate. Many of those young people have experienced, painfully and personally, the truth that Christians take nothing quite so lightly as they do Jesus’ simple words “I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you.”Continue reading “The Example”

The Gospel According to John 13:1 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 During supper, when the devil had already put it 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 had come from God and was going back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” 9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!”

John’s account of the washing of the disciples’ feet is an important part of the Christian celebration of Holy Week. No more beautiful picture of the Gospel can be found anywhere in the Bible. Jesus acts out the profound truths of Philippians 2, where God becomes a servant, even to death on a cross.

No one disputes that the washing of the disciples’ feet is a picture of the work of God in Christ. Here is the forgiveness of God, the justification of sinful human beings, regeneration by the work of the Holy Spirit and sanctification by grace.Continue reading “The Yes or No”