Why did Jesus wash the disciples' feet?

It is the night before the cross, and Jesus gets up from the table to wash feet.

Not the feet of a king. Not the feet of someone above Him. The feet of the men who have followed Him for three years, men who still, on this very night, are arguing about which of them is the greatest.

Why would He do that?

He riseth from supper, and laid aside his garments; and took a towel, and girded himself. After that he poureth water into a bason, and began to wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel wherewith he was girded.

John tells us why before he tells us what. Jesus knew His hour had come. He knew He was going to the Father. And knowing all of that, He did not spend His last hours being served. He served.

Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.

What was Jesus really doing with the towel and the basin?

Foot washing was a real task in that world. Roads were dust and dung. A household with a servant put the servant on that job, not the master.

So when the Master takes the towel, everyone in that room feels the wrongness of it before they hear a single word.

Peter says it out loud.

Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost thou wash my feet?

That is not rudeness. That is a man who knows exactly who is kneeling in front of him and cannot stand it.

Why did Peter refuse, and why did Jesus not let him?

Peter refuses twice in the space of two verses.

Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with me.

That answer is not about hygiene. Jesus is not threatening to send Peter home over dirty feet. He is telling Peter something about what it means to belong to Him at all.

There is no part with Christ that does not begin with letting Him do for you what you cannot do for yourself. Peter wants to keep his dignity and his Lord both. Jesus will not allow it. You either let Him wash you, or you have no part with Him.

Peter swings the other way at once.

Simon Peter saith unto him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head.

And Jesus corrects that too.

Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all.

The disciples were already clean. This washing was not the washing that saves a man. It was the washing a saved man needs again and again, walking through a dusty world, picking up dirt he did not have when he set out that morning.

What did Jesus mean by leaving them an example?

Once He has finished, Jesus sits back down and asks the question Himself.

So after he had washed their feet, and had taken his garments, and was set down again, he said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you?

Then He tells them.

Ye call me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.

He is not starting a new religious ritual. He is settling, once and for all, an argument that these same men were having at that very table.

And there was also a strife among them, which of them should be accounted the greatest.

Jesus answers that argument with a basin instead of a lecture.

The kings of the Gentiles exercise lordship over them; and they that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors. But ye shall not be so: but he that is greatest among you, let him be as the younger; and he that is chief, as he that doth serve.

The world measures greatness by who is served. Jesus measures it by who serves.

For whether is greater, he that sitteth at meat, or he that serveth? is not he that sitteth at meat? but I am among you as he that serveth.

He does not merely teach that. That same night, He gets up from the table and proves it with His hands.

Why was the Lord willing to take the lowest place at all?

Paul, writing to the church at Philippi, tells us what made that basin possible in the first place. It was not a trick of humility. It was who Jesus already was, choosing what He would become.

Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: Who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: But made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men.

The One with every right to be served took the form of a servant. The towel in the upper room is that truth acted out in front of twelve men who would spend the rest of their lives remembering it.

And being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross.

The basin was a preview. The cross was the thing itself. Both moved in the same direction: down, toward people who needed what only He could give.

So why did Jesus wash the disciples' feet?

Because He loved them to the end, not just to the point of comfort.

Because He wanted them to know that being clean before God is something He does for us, not something we manage ourselves.

Because greatness in His kingdom is not measured by who sits and is served, but by who kneels and serves.

Because words were not going to settle an argument that pride kept restarting. A towel and a basin did.

Because He had already decided, long before that room, that the form of a servant was the shape He would take, all the way to a cross.

He gave them an example, and He is still asking us to follow it.

You have been washed once, for good, by the blood of Christ. Now walk through this dusty world, and when you see feet that need washing, remember whose towel you are holding.