Anyone who has ever kept the passover has asked “what does footwashing represent?”. We drink the wine and eat the bread, and those symbols are well defined. But footwashing? It isn’t mentioned in Matthew, Mark or Luke, and John doesn’t tell us a lot about it, just the command to do it; so true Christians everywhere wash each other’s feet and either don’t know what it means, or make up something. And if you must obey God in ignorance of why you’re doing what you’re doing, then by all means obey Him in ignorance; but if we can KNOW what it symbolizes, why we go through this ritual year by year, then we certainly should.
John 13:2 And supper being ended, the devil having now put into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him;
First let’s set the stage; this happened after the “supper”. We know from harmonizing this with the other gospels that the old testament lamb had already been prepared and eaten this night to fulfill the old testament passover first. The old testament passover was to be killed and eaten between the two evenings, the period of twilight between sundown and complete darkness. So since supper was finished the sun’s light was probably about completely gone; most likely the footwashing took place about an hour and a half after sundown when supper was finished.
After that ceremony Jesus set into place the new symbols which would, from now on, be the new passover service. But before He did that, in the space between the old and new testament passovers that night, Jesus washed the disciples feet.
Before going into that further, let’s make a few facts clear:
- No one washed Jesus’ feet that night
- The disciples did not wash one another’s feet that night
- Peter was not the first one washed
- Jesus specifically changed his clothes for this ceremony, then changed back when it was finished before going on with the passover service
Those facts tend to challenge what we’ve always believed, but read through John 13 and no mention is made of anyone washing anyone except Jesus washing the disciples. This is important, so remember it… Read the rest of this entry »