‘A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet, his whole body is clean. And you are clean though not every one of you.’

What a strange statement! Is the Bible really telling us that we need to have a bath? Or is this verse teaching us bigger, spiritual lessons?

In those days, in Israel, when you arrived at a friend’s house for a meal your feet would be washed by the household servant because the climate was hot, roads were dusty and open sandles were worn. Jesus and his disciples had just walked from Bethany to the Upper Room in Jerusalem in order (verse 1) to celebrate the Passover Feast. In the absence of a servant, you would have thought that one of the disciples would have undertaken the job of washing the others’ feet but not one of them was willing. So our Lord himself laid aside his outer robe and did it.

• It was an expression of his deep humility, that he the Lord of all, who was soon going to leave this world and return to heaven, should do this most menial chore.
• It was also an expression of his great love for his disciples. He had always loved them (verse 1) but knowing that the time had almost come for him to leave this world and go back to God, he was going to show them the full extent of his love. And the first step in demonstrating the full extent of his love for them was to wash their feet.

• It was a picture of how he had laid aside the splendour of heaven, humbled himself and taken on the form of a servant in order to cleanse away our sin (Philippians 2:6-8).

When Jesus came to wash Peter’s feet, he protested, ‘You shall never wash my feet’ (verse 8). Jesus replied, ‘Unless I wash you, you have no part me with.’ Upon hearing that, Peter cried out ‘Lord not just my feet but my hands and my head as well’ (verse 9). And it was then that Jesus spoke these strange but amazing words ‘A person who has had a bath needs only to wash his feet; his whole body is clean. And you are clean though not every one of you.’

A. Jesus reminds us that if we are true Christians we are clean in the sight of God.
All our guilt has been washed away. We are like a person who has just had a bath (verse 10, see also John 15:3). There was a time when we were guilty in God’s sight, like people who hadn’t had a bath for years, but now all our guilt has been washed away.

This is not so much a matter of what we feel, but what God has done (Isaiah 44:22, Jeremiah 31;34, Hebrews 8:12). This is not because of anything we have done, but because of what Jesus was about to do upon the cross, when he showed the full extent of his love and died for us.

It’s a total cleansing and it means that we can have fellowship with God here and now, and that we will be able to enter heaven when we die.

B. He also reminds us that as we journey through this life we sometimes get dirty and need regular cleansing.
We are justified; we have ‘had a bath’ but we are all weak people and sometimes we drag our feet spiritually and pick up some of the dust and dirt. ‘No Christian reaches heaven with clean feet all the way.’ (Martin Luther)

But when the Christian fails and gets his feet dirty, so to speak, he doesn’t become guilty again in the sight of God. He doesn’t become ‘unjustified’ again. He doesn’t need another bath. Like the man on the journey, whose feet get soiled, but not his whole body. All is not lost. That’s what the devil tries to tell us when we fall into sin.

But that does not mean that we can be blaze and careless about our sins as Christians. The man in Israel who had a bath before he left home did not need to have another bath when he arrived at his friends house, but he did need to wash his feet. And when we sin as Christians we don’t need to be saved all over again, but we do need confess those sins we have committed, to the Lord and ask him to cleanse them away. Why?

• For the sake of our peace and joy.
• We also need to confess our sins for the sake of our usefulness.
• For the sake of our Lord

C. Jesus reminds us to follow his example (verse 12).
If Jesus, our Lord and Master humbled himself, left his seat at the table and laid aside his outer robe to wash his disciples feet: and if that is a picture of how he humbled himself, left the heavenly realm and laid aside his heavenly robe to give us total cleansing. And if he, our Lord and Master regular cleanses us from the sin and defilement that we pick up in this world then we ought to reflect that in our dealing with our fellow Christians. That does not mean that we should have regular feet-washing ceremonies here at Carey! We don’t live in a hot, dusty country. Jesus is telling us that we should treat our fellow disciples in a humble lowly way. We should humble ourselves for them as he humbled himself for us. We should serve them as Christ has served us. We should forgive them as Christ has forgiven us. There should be nothing proud or pompous or superior about the way we treat our fellow believers. These disciples needed that lesson (Luke 22:24).

D. Jesus reminds us to give ourselves a check.
Are we true Christians? Have we had a spiritual bath? Has all our guilt been washed away? In the Upper Room that night there was a man whose guilt was not cleansed away, namely Judas, who everyone thought was OK, but Jesus knew that he was not clean (verses 10-11).