"...He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel with which He was girded. Then He came to Simon Peter. And Peter said to Him, "Lord, are You washing my feet?" Jesus answered and said to him, "What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this." Peter said to Him, "You shall never wash my feet!" Jesus answered him, "If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me." Simon Peter said to him, "Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!" Jesus said to him, "He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you."
This passage really stuck out to me because of what boldness Peter showed (yet again) whenever Jesus went to wash his feet. Every time you read a passage where Peter says his ignorant things and makes his bold assertions, you just want to say, "Peter, shut up!"
But as with all situations that you come across such as these in the Bible, instead of thinking, "I wouldn't have done that." I think you need to look deeper into the text to see what you can learn from that person and what God teaches through them.
First of all, it was reasonable for Peter to ask Jesus the first time why he was washing his feet, to which Jesus replied, "What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will after this."
But then Peter, out of his ignorance once again says, "You shall never wash my feet!" Using terms in Greek of the strongest negation.
At this point, you would expect anyone to get very impatient with the ignorance of Peter, but Jesus wanted to teach a very important spiritual truth. He replies, "If I do not wash you, you have no part with me."
Here, Jesus was revealing a spiritual truth about the cleansing of our souls from sin. If He does not wash us, we have no part with him.
I think from what Peter said next, he caught onto the fact that Jesus was talking in spiritual terms, but he didn't catch the whole idea. He wanted Jesus to cleanse all of him, and so he goes onto say, "Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!"
It amazes me how patient Jesus was with Peter still at this point. Jesus had some truths that He was going to express through Peter's ignorance.
"He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you."
Here Jesus was using the illustration of a man in this time period who gets his whole body clean in the morning, and throughout the day when he would go from house to house, he would have to dust off only his feet.
Once we have been totally cleansed by Christ, he has to daily dust off our feet. We don't need to be cleaned from head to toe again, because we only need to be washed through the blood of Christ once. Afterward, as we walk through this world and get our feet dirty, he only needs to dust off our feet.
The last part when he says, "You are clean, but not all of you." He was referring to Judas Iscariot. The disciple who was not cleansed by Christ.
Peter has been one of those characters in the Bible that I'm sure every believer has said they would never be like, but pay attention whenever there comes dialogue with Jesus and Peter, because Jesus has revealed some amazing truths through Peter's ignorance.
4 comments:
Wow. I seriously didn't know you had a blog, and for so long too. This post made an awesome devotional for me today. I certainly know many times when I have been far too bold and ignorant or arrogant towards Christ and what He wants for me. I think I know better than Him in some weird fairly indirect way. Thanks for posting.
ignorance. humanities covenant with time strikes again. the great chronos has set a balance between good and bad. on the one hand, we have grown simple, arrogant and ignorant because of our adamic curse. while on the other, god whispered a slow promise; memory. memory holds onto the things time has claimed and forgets those things that shouldnt be remembered. how i earn for the promises of god to finally give me "life without end at last." then my covenant will have been fulfilled and subsequently, my mind will have forever to remember the unyielding good of perfect harmony with god. what a hope.
A VISION:
for all the girls brought to lustful altars,
Led by hands that never falter
to sacrifice them like lambs in a slaughter
To finally be seen as their fathers daughters.
I live for the day when those idols of sex, pleasure, money and hate
will be torn down with a righteous distaste.
For that day someone can tell me when,
The perfecting quality: love, becomes the only religion.
When will we have enough foresight
to dispose of the menacing fences,
God made as consequences
by stepping into the light of doing whats right?
Until then we all stay a little lost,
Full of losing and hardly winning,
Trying desperately to just keep on swimming.
Im waiting for my world to go past this finding Nemo,
And for the reality to resound
that im not finding but found.
A VISION: for true freedom to be real,
Beyond the high of drugs or the other ways we steal,
Beyond the many short lived escapes,
From the simple car to a futuristic avatar,
Beyond the ways we pillage and rape.
Im waiting for freedom to fill the soul,
And the simple profoundness of goodness
to be the only goal.
Im tired of a world built to immorally corrupt,
where wars constantly errupt,
Where security always goes bankrupt.
I want purity beyond confession,
Peace beyond oppression,
And life without fear of recession.
I want it with a restless frustration,
A frustration that defines my generation.
This is really good. It's interesting that though Jesus is talking about sanctification (the cleansing of sin in the believer's life), He says that without it, "You have no part with Me." Holiness and godliness are the fruits of true conversion. Without them, there can be no assurance of salvation.
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