Who will wash these dirty feet?

The task of washing anybody’s feet was seen by the Jews as peculiarly demeaning; it was one of the few things which the Law stated a Jewish slave should not be asked to do—it should be left to a Gentile slave. Jesus and his disciple group had been invited to use the Upper Room for this occasion. It would have been carpeted, and custom demanded that they wash filthy dusty feet before they occupied the room. 

But there was no Gentile slave, and none of the disciples were prepared to do such a thing, and so they did nothing about it. Jesus therefore took the opportunity of teaching the disciples a lesson in humility: What they were not prepared to do for one another he, their “Lord and Master,” did (v 14).

WASH THOSE DIRTY FEET, ANYBODY?

It is clear, however, that there are profounder dimensions to this narrative than what lies on the surface. Peter, protesting at Jesus washing his feet, is told first that only later will he be able to understand what Jesus is doing and, secondly, that if Jesus does not wash his feet he will have no part in him.


Something extraordinarily important is entailed in this action of Jesus. The clue to its meaning is given in verse 10: “He who has bathed does not need to wash … but is clean all over.” That is the statement in the earliest manuscripts of the Gospel of John; later manuscripts have the addition after “wash”—“except the feet.” This is quite certainly due to a scribe, who thought that the washing of the feet by Jesus assumes an earlier bath.

It then came to be commonly believed that the earlier bath was baptism, and the washing of the feet represented the Lord’s Supper! In reality Jesus was telling Peter that what he was now doing had the meaning of a complete cleansing that is gained by a bath. 

A GREATER BATH

His washing of the feet of the disciples, accordingly, is a sign of the greater cleansing that Jesus is about to achieve by his sacrificial self-giving. So he is able to say later (v 10), “you are clean,” i.e., through the Word he had spoken and the action that points to the death he is about to die. 

That entails a deeper understanding of the example of humility that Jesus gave; it was not simply his stripping off his robe and stooping to wash disciples’ feet, but his stripping off his glory with the Father and stooping to the humiliation and pain of the cross; this is, indeed, “love to the limit,” and such he would have his disciples show to all.

After the foot washing, Jesus “became agitated in spirit” (v 21), clearly due to what he was about to make known to the group. “One of you will betray me.” The news shocked them. Now occurs the first mention of “the disciple whom Jesus loved.”

The identity of the betrayer was revealed to this disciple by Jesus handing to Judas a piece of bread dipped into the central dish on the table (cf. v 18). The action is to be interpreted as a sign of favor. Jesus offered Judas a sign of friendship, and then commanded him to do at once what he intended to do. 

That compelled Judas to make up his mind whether to turn from his evil plan or to reject the offer of Jesus and carry it out. Never has anyone been so completely put on the spot as Judas in that moment. He chose to open his heart to the devil and shut out the Christ of God. And so he went out. The evangelist added “and it was night,” although the paschal moon shone almost as brightly as the day. The night was in the heart of Judas. It always is when his kind of bargain is made.




Author: Beasley-Murray, G. R. (1989). John. (R. P. Martin & D. A. Hubbard, Eds.) (pp. 89–90). Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan Academic.