13:1-17 Our Lord Jesus has a people in the world that are his own; he has purchased them, and paid dear for them, and he has set them apart for himself; they devote themselves to him as a peculiar people. Those whom Christ loves, he loves to the end. Nothing can separate a true believer from the love of Christ. We know not when our hour will come, therefore what we have to do in constant preparation for it, ought never to be undone. What way of access the devil has to men's hearts we cannot tell. But some sins are so exceedingly sinful, and there is so little temptation to them from the world and the flesh, that it is plain they are directly from Satan. Jesus washed his disciples' feet, that he might teach us to think nothing below us, wherein we may promote God's glory, and the good of our brethren. We must address ourselves to duty, and must lay aside every thing that would hinder us in what we have to do. Christ washed his disciples' feet, that he might signify to them the value of spiritual washing, and the cleansing of the soul from the pollutions of sin. Our Lord Jesus does many things of which even his own disciples do not for the present know the meaning, but they shall know afterward. We see in the end what was the kindness from events which seemed most cross. And it is not humility, but unbelief, to put away the offers of the gospel, as if too rich to be made to us, or too good news to be true. All those, and those only, who are spiritually washed by Christ, have a part in Christ. All whom Christ owns and saves, he justifies and sanctifies. Peter more than submits; he begs to be washed by Christ. How earnest he is for the purifying grace of the Lord Jesus, and the full effect of it, even upon his hands and head! Those who truly desire to be sanctified, desire to be sanctified throughout, to have the whole man, with all its parts and powers, made pure. The true believer is thus washed when he receives Christ for his salvation. See then what ought to be the daily care of those who through grace are in a justified state, and that is, to wash their feet; to cleanse themselves from daily guilt, and to watch against everything defiling. This should make us the more cautious. From yesterday's pardon, we should be strengthened against this day's temptation. And when hypocrites are discovered, it should be no surprise or cause of stumbling to us. Observe the lesson Christ here taught. Duties are mutual; we must both accept help from our brethren, and afford help to our brethren. When we see our Master serving, we cannot but see how ill it becomes us to domineer. And the same love which led Christ to ransom and reconcile his disciples when enemies, still influences him.

Verses 14, 15. - If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, have washed your feet; ye ought also to wash one another's feet: for I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you. Καθώς, "as," "like as," was used by our Lord rather than ὅ, "that which." The ὑπόδειγμα shows that he had set before his disciples a parallel, an example, a symbolic type of the service they were to render to one another, and was not establishing a custom or exact ordinance. The washing of the feet was an Oriental custom of great antiquity as a mark of hospitality (Genesis 18:4; Genesis 19:2; Abigail, 1 Samuel 25:41; see also Luke 7:38, 44). In 1 Timothy 5:10 there is trace of such a custom of Christian hospitality. Considering the ease with which the Church has established a ceremonial from an isolated text, it is remarkable that no more literal use has been made of this injunction. However, Maundy Thursday, a name derived from Dies mandati, was celebrated as the day on which this great command, or that contained in ver. 34, was given - Mandatum novum do vobis - and the feet of the newly baptized were washed. The endeavor to make Augustine the authority for this religious practice is doubtful; but the Council of Toledo (A.D. 694) mentions this particular day as that on which it was appropriate. In the early Gallican Church there was such a ritual, and the forms of pedilavium observed are to be read in early Gothic and Galliean missals. Bernard of Clairvaux tried to convert the ceremony into a sacrament, but without success. And it would seem that some effort was made to introduce it into Spain. "In 1530, Wolsey washed, wiped, and kissed the feet of fifty-nine poor men at Peterborough. The practice was continued by English sovereigns till the reign of James II." (Westcott). No traces of it are to be found in the Ambrosian ritual, but the preservation of the custom is found now in the Russian imperial palace, in the ceremonies of the holy week at Rome, and in the palaces of Vienna, Madrid,Munich. The practice was for a time retained by the United Brethren and Mennonites, and the Tunkers of Philadelphia (see 'Dictionary of Christian Antiquities,' vol. 1. arts. "Baptism," §§ 34, 67, and "Maundy Thursday;" Herzog., 'Encyc.,' art. "Fusswaschung," by H. Merz; and Schaff's 'Herzog.,' art. "Tunkers"). The Church has for the most part looked below the mere form to the real substance of the Lord's teaching, and only thus can we appreciate it adequately. The very injunction would be an inadequate, burdensome one where the feet are covered, and would become impossible and valueless in the Northern and Western world. The service demanded is the self-forgetting ministry of love, which places the interests of self behind and below those of others. Nothing is more theoretically easy and acceptable than this principle, but nothing more difficult of accomplishment. This sentence of our Lord is a noble illustration of the method in which a great principle is made by him the basis of a small duly (cf. Paul's vindication of his own truthfulness and freedom from ἐλάφρια, 2 Corinthians 1:17-20; he based it on God's own faithfulness to promise).

If I then your Lord and Master,.... Christ argues from these titles and characters, which his disciples rightly gave him, and from what he had done to them, though he stood in such a superior relation to them, to their duty one towards another; that since, says he, I

have washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet: by which he does not mean barely, that they should perform this single action; but as this was an instance of humility and condescension, and doing a good office to strangers and travellers, and was afterwards an expression of love to the saints, see 1 Timothy 5:10, so he would teach them hereby, to behave in a spirit of humility and condescension to one another, to do every kind and good office, and by love to serve one another in all things.

14. If I then—the Lord.

have washed your feet—the servants'.

ye—but fellow servants.

ought to wash one another's feet—not in the narrow sense of a literal washing, profanely caricatured by popes and emperors, but by the very humblest real services one to another.

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