Christ’s solemn knowledge.
How John 13 helps us understand the depths of the Lord’s loving resolve for the likes of you and me.
The Gospel of John is the most unique out of the four Gospel accounts of Jesus’s earthly ministry. While Matthew, Mark, and Luke are often grouped together as the “Synoptic Gospels,” John’s account is never included in that classification. In many ways, his Gospel is a category unto itself. This is fitting since John’s Gospel is fundamentally theological. His aim, from beginning to end, is to showcase the certainty of Jesus’s identity as the only begotten Son of God. He wasn’t merely a good teacher nor was he just a kind-hearted humanitarian. He was and is the Christ of God; Yahweh’s Word embodied (John 1:14). Accordingly, John’s narrative bent highlights Jesus’s miracles, each of which shows forth his power and authority over all things, leaving little doubt that he is the Lord of Glory come to save groveling sinners.
John’s Gospel is also unique once you notice its structure. Chapters 1 through 12 comprise a quick yet dense tour of Jesus’s life and ministry, with a focus on all of the signs he left behind that bear witness to who he is. This leaves almost half of the book, from Chapter 13 onward, to deal with the last twenty-four hours of Jesus’s earthly mission. While each of the Synoptics places special significance on the cross and the events that led up to it, John’s Gospel is the only one that spends nearly 50% of its narrative volume on the Savior’s last day, which lets us understand the significance of those final hours. Chapters 13 through 17 are especially poignant since they encapsulate all of Jesus’s teachings and actions leading up to his betrayal, arrest, and eventual execution on the cross.
According to tradition, the scene that opens Chapter 13 occurs on a Thursday. After entering Jerusalem for the final time (John 12:12–19), the first few days of Holy Week were filled with disputes with the Pharisees and last-minute arrangements for the impending Passover meal. In the solemn scene that follows, as Jesus stoops to wash his disciples’ feet, we are made to understand the depths of his loving resolve for the likes of you and me.
Christ’s unsettling knowledge.
On three separate occasions, John informs us about something Jesus “knew,” two of which are concerned with the unpleasant circumstances that would unfold over the next few hours (John 13:1, 3, 11). The “hour” Jesus refers to in verse 1 isn’t a throwaway line to a certain sixty-minute time block, it’s an allusion to an especially eventful moment to which his entire life and ministry has been building. This, of course, is the cross; that ghastly sight at which all things would be revealed. The “hour of the cross” is a motif that can be traced throughout John’s Gospel (John 2:3–5; 7:28–30; 8:18–20; 12:23,27). Jesus was always conscious of how his life would end. Haunting every step he took was a cross-shaped shadow that reminded him of what was coming. He was fully aware that he was “the Lamb of God” who had come to “take away the sin of the world” (John 1:29). As the apostle says of him, he is “the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” (Rev. 13:8). This is just to say, that the cross wasn’t a surprise.
Jesus was not caught off guard by the mounting tensions and brewing conspiracies against him. The reason for his incarnation was to be the reconciliatory sacrifice for a world full of sinners. This was his mission and now the “hour” had come for that mission to be fulfilled. “The tipping point” for the ultimate revelation of who he was (and is) had arrived. The reason this is filed under the heading of “unsettling knowledge,” however, is because that’s how Christ understood it, too. His impending departure meant enduring all of the agonizing horrors and cruel sufferings of death. Even as he sat at that table with his beloved disciples, he knew that in less than twenty-four hours he would be pegged to a Roman torture device and hanged as the epitome of sin and shame for all the world to see. Consequently, as Jesus has previously divulged, his soul is “troubled” by the knowledge of the terrible grief that was waiting for him (John 12:27).
His grief was compounded by the fact that he also knew that one of his own would betray him. “For he knew who was to betray him,” John adds, “that was why he said, ‘Not all of you are clean’” (John 13:11). Painting this entire scene in a tragic and unsettling hue is the fact that Christ was well aware of Judas’s treacherous heart. As the layers of betrayal are slowly peeled back throughout the course of that evening’s meal, everyone at the began to eye each other with increasingly suspicious glances (John 13:21–22). The room had gone from a pensive celebration of the Passover to an apprehensive dinner with a covert traitor in their midst. All the while, though, Jesus was cognizant of who his betrayer was:
During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, 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 . . . (John 13:2–3)
Instead of listening to his Lord and Teacher, who had been with him for three years, Judas chose to listen to “the father of lies.” This was not a sudden or spontaneous decision on his part. Slowly but surely, he opened his heart to that slithery deceiver (John 6:70–71; 11:57; 12:4). He did not resist the devil’s advances but nurtured them until they gave birth to a conspiracy to betray and execute his Lord. In that way, Judas remains one of Scripture’s most harrowing figures since his proximity to the Savior seemingly did nothing to his heart but harden it. Though Jesus knew all of that, even still, he sat at the table with him, shared a meal with him, and even stooped to wash his feet.
Christ’s unflinching resolve.
Despite all the “unsettling knowledge” and troubling background that fills this scene, Jesus doesn’t flinch from expressing his love for “his own.” “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” (John 13:1). This insight gives us a profound glimpse into Jesus’s heart. Even though this bumbling motley crew of fishermen and tradesmen had misunderstood him or ignored him; even though they were not fully aware of what he had come to accomplish; even though they would soon desert him in his hour of need, Jesus’s love for them remained undeterred. He loved them to the end, that is, “to the uttermost.” There was nothing those twelve disciples could have done to cause the Lord to shy away from his resolve to showcase his love for them (and the world), which is what the ensuing scene demonstrates:
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, rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 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. (John 13:3–5)
This is, perhaps, the most somber scene the disciples had ever witnessed up to that point. Foot-washing, of course, was a cultural necessity in those days. The dusty streets of first-century Jewish neighborhoods made for some dirty, stinky feet. As was the custom, then, folks would wash their feet whenever they entered a home. If the homeowner was wealthy enough, they would have a hired servant carry out this task. But, apparently, this didn’t happen on the evening in question, setting the stage for Jesus’s unprecedented display of humility.
None of the disciples had volunteered to offer this service to their constituents, meaning that all twelve of them were reclining around that table with feet that were covered with dirt. Lining up this scene as best we can with the other Gospels puts the disciples’ dispute over who was the greatest just prior to Jesus getting up and tying a servant’s towel around his waist (Luke 22:24–27). But as they were jockeying for “position” and “status” in the heavenly kingdom, the King himself proceeded to put his words into action. On a previous occasion, Jesus had lovingly reprimanded the “Sons of Thunder,” James and John, for their mistaken idea of greatness by telling them that the measure of true “greatness” is willing service (Matt. 20:26–28). Ever a man of his word, Jesus illustrates this powerfully as he stoops to do what the rest of them did not want to do.
The way in which John records this moment lets us know we are reading the words of an eyewitness (John 13:3–5). Jesus’s movements are conveyed matter-of-factly. But as he approaches Peter’s feet, he is met with resistance (John 13:6). Peter is gobsmacked and, perhaps, somewhat offended at the humility that is on display. This service was unbecoming of his Lord; it was too menial and too lowly for him. “What are you doing, Jesus? Why are you washing my feet?” Peter protests. But with unflinching patience, Jesus carries on, letting everyone know that even though they don’t understand everything now, they will later (John 13:7). What Jesus was doing was meant to demonstrate his ultimate mission — namely, to make men clean. Lutheran pastor and scholar R. C. H. Lenski put it like this:
He who shares omnipotence with God in essential oneness with him now performs an act in which the very opposite of this divine majesty is brought to view, an act in which divine majesty makes itself the most lowly servant. (913)
Christ stooped to wash his disciples clean because he knew they could never do that themselves. The dirt that he was resolved to wash away didn’t just cover feet, though, it was caked onto their hearts. It wasn’t just outward cleansing that Jesus came to accomplish. Rather, he came down from heaven to clean the dirty hearts of every despicable sinner. He didn’t come to wash clean people but to cleanse filthy people. He didn’t come for the “healthy,” he came for the sick (Luke 5:31–32). And just as feet are cleaned by someone unafraid of the dirt and undaunted by the smell, so, too, are sinners made “completely clean” because the Christ of God was undaunted by their sin.
In what was surely a moment that was burned in their minds, the disciples watched as their Teacher and Lord calmly got up, took off his robes, and tied a servant’s towel around his waist. Peter seems to vividly recall this scene when he writes, “Clothe yourselves, all of you, with humility toward one another” (1 Pet. 5:5). To clothe oneself with humility can be quite literally translated as “put on a servant’s apron,” which is precisely what his Lord did. Only later would Peter understand that this is what occurred on the cross. It was Jesus who “emptied himself,” who put on flesh and blood and took “the form of a servant” to serve the ones he loved to the bitter end and “to the point of death, even death on a cross” (Phil 2:6–9). “He loves us unto ‘the end’ of our miserable failures,” notes Arthur Pink, “unto the ‘end’ of our wanderings and backslidings, unto the ‘end’ of our unworthiness, unto the ‘end’ of our deep need” (2.296). Nothing and no one could cause him to flinch from that.
Christ’s unquestionable triumph.
Despite how unnerving this scene might have been, Jesus was resolved to complete the task for which he had been sent. Even as the whispers of collusion and conspiracy grew more deafening, he was confident that his mission would be successful, which is why he was eagerly anticipating his imminent return to his Father’s side (John 13:1, 3). Christ had been sent from heaven on a mission to rescue and redeem the world, and “to seek and to save the lost” (Luke 19:10). Although he was filled with grief knowing that “his hour had come,” even still, Christ was occupied with the glory of knowing that his return to heaven would signal the fulfillment of his ministry. Indeed, even then, he knew what Satan was up to; he knew that his adversary had Judas in a stranglehold (John 13:2).
As the devil’s horde marshaled against him and began making preparations to revel in his demise, Jesus knew something the devil didn’t — namely that he could never be “held” or subdued by death or the devil (Acts 2:24). Try as he might, Satan’s scheme to arrest God’s Son with the shackles of death was a fool’s errand. Although it is impossible to know what Satan knew when it comes to God’s plan of redemption, we do know that he is not omniscient. All of his scheming, therefore, would be reduced to nothing through Christ’s passion and resurrection. This is what the 4th-century church father Augustine of Hippo refers to as “the devil’s mousetrap”:
The devil exulted when Christ died, but by this very death of Christ the devil is vanquished, as if he had swallowed the bait in the mousetrap. He rejoiced in Christ’s death, like a bailiff of death. What he rejoiced in was then his own undoing. The cross of the Lord was the devil’s mousetrap; the bait by which he was caught was the Lord’s death. (182)
As the Lord sat around that table with his closest followers, it wouldn’t be too long before he would surrender to “the suffering of death” so that “through death, he might destroy the one who has the power of death, that is, the devil” (Heb. 2:14). In the ultimate “twist of fate,” Jesus would embarrass Satan by subjecting himself to the embarrassment and defeat of the cross. He would disarm the devil by wielding the very weapon the devil thinks is his — namely, death — putting his nasty adversary to an “open shame” (Col. 2:14–15). Therefore, even though his soul was “troubled” in light of his looming death on the cross, Jesus approached it knowing that his conquest was inevitable (1 John 3:8). “The machinations of hell,” Lenski goes on to say, “cannot interfere with the love which Jesus shows to the very last” (910–11). Thus even as those last hours ticked away, the Savior’s love was unhurried and undeterred because he knew he would be victorious. For us, then, the good news announces that the towel-girded Christ stands triumphant over sin, death, and darkness. Through his victory, the promise of eternal life and complete cleansing is accompanied by assurance that no darkness can overcome the light of his love.
Works cited:
Augustine, quoted in Meyer Schapiro, “‘Muscipula Diaboli,’ The Symbolism of the Mérode Altarpiece,” The Art Bulletin 27:3 (September 1945).
R. C. H. Lenski, The Interpretation of St. John’s Gospel (Minneapolis, MN: Augsburg, 1961).
Arthur W. Pink, Exposition of the Gospel of John, Vols. 1–3 (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1975).