How Can We Love Like Jesus

He Loved Them to the End – Six Sermons

Part 4: “A Love that Claims Us”

(John 13:12-17, Preaching: Pastor Stephen Magee, September 20, 2009)

¹² When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, "Do you understand what I have done to you? ¹³ You call me Teacher and Lord, and you are right, for so I am. ¹⁴ If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. ¹⁵ For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you. ¹⁶ Truly, truly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master, nor is a messenger greater than the one who sent him. ¹⁷ If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.

What did Jesus tell His disciples after washing their feet?

A: “You also ought to wash one another’s feet.” (John 13:14)

Your Lord and Teacher (12-13)

We have been spending some time considering what it might mean that Jesus, prior to His betrayal, washed the feet of the men who would be sent out as His apostles or messengers. There was something symbolic happening here which can be easily summarized in a few words. The One who was in every way conceivable the greatest among them, willingly took the spot that would have customarily gone to the lowest servant. This was a shocking thing for Him to do. It still speaks powerfully to us of the love of God even today.

Why did Jesus do such a thing? There are two important reasons for this symbolic action. There is the prophetic purpose, but there is also what I will call the imperative purpose. The prophetic purpose becomes obvious after Jesus goes to the cross. The foot-washing was an acted-out prophesy that Jesus, the Son of God would lower Himself in love in order to serve us. I am not referring to washing anyone’s feet now; I am speaking of the cross. The prophetic purpose of the foot-washing was to point to the imminence of His death, a death where the greatest of all men took the lowest spot for our cleansing. That is a beautiful fact.

But there is a second purpose, what I am calling the imperative purpose. The word imperative is a word that speaks of a command. Jesus is using the picture of foot-washing to give a command to His disciples. It is this imperative purpose that we need to explore today, and it is the subject of the six verses that are before us now. We want to understand what precisely Jesus is commanding the men who would be His apostles, but even beyond that, we would like to understand what Jesus is telling us as those who would call Him our Lord.

One thing that we notice immediately is that Jesus did not stay on His hands and feet all night. We are told that He resumed His place. What does this mean? He put on His outer garment again. He took His former place at the meal. He began to instruct His friends again as the One who was above them as their Teacher and their Lord. Jesus is not setting up a new social order of radical egalitarianism. His purpose in washing the feet of His disciples is not to abandon His leadership role or to deny that there will be leaders in the kingdom. He is not running away from being our Lord and King. He is defining what it will mean to be the King or to be a leader who follows Him.

When Jesus was finished with the foot-washing, He took His rightful place again. What is the right place of Jesus? Is it the place of the great Son of Man from Daniel 7:13-14, coming on the clouds of glory, or is it the place of the righteous suffering servant of Psalm 22:16, which reads, “They have pierced my hands and my feet.” We understand, in a way, the second of these references, the low one. Hundreds of years before Jesus was born in Bethlehem, David wrote a song that was part of the Psalms, and that song told the story of the cross. It actually contained the words, “They have pierced my hands and my feet.” The place of Jesus was that low, in a sense. His place was as low as necessary to suffer the death that our sins against God demanded.

It is the reference to His high position that we have not considered enough. Consider these two verses from the prophet Daniel. When God’s people were under the control of a foreign power in Babylon, God gave the prophet Daniel a vision of the glory of the Messiah, again hundreds of years before Jesus was born. Daniel 7:13-14: “I saw in the night visions, and behold, with the clouds of heaven there came one like a son of man, and he came to the Ancient of Days and was presented before him. And to him was given dominion and glory and a kingdom, that all peoples, nations, and languages should serve him; his dominion is an everlasting dominion, which shall not pass away, and his kingdom one that shall not be destroyed.”

So what is the rightful place of Jesus? Is it the amazingly high place Of Daniel 7 or the amazingly low place of Psalm 22? The answer has to be that both the high and the low places are the right place for Him. That is the secret of Jesus, and if we can understand that, then we have begun to grasp the secret of the Christian Imperative. Jesus is our Lord. He is our Teacher. He is by His nature and His accomplishments the Lord Most High. Yet He is by His willing heart of love, the Servant most low. He has taken our eternal wound, so that we could be whole.

You also should do just as I have done to you. (14-15)

The Christian Imperative has come to us in the form of a powerful example, first in the towel and the basin, but finally in the cross. The point of the example is obvious. “You also ought to wash one another's feet…. You also should do just as I have done to you.”

The Christian Imperative is Christ-like love. But what is Christ-like love? The answer involves a double challenge. The first and most obvious requirement for us is to do – to do the activities of lowly service. The second and much more difficult challenge is to do those things with a willing heart. Washing one another’s feet, really doing as Jesus has done, actually following Him in this lowliness of love, involves something wonderful in the soul of the doer.

Jesus washed feet. Jesus died on the cross. Does anyone believe that we could have called it the truest and best love if He did this by a grudging compulsion, and not willingly. It is the fullness of the spiritual willingness of Jesus to love us through His death that makes His love so great. That’s why Psalm 110 talks about the true followers of Jesus in terms of their willingness: “A willing people in thy day of power shall come to thee.” But there is our problem. We need more than the self-discipline of doing acts of Christian service. To follow Christ’s example of love, we need the heart of Christ, a truly willing heart. This is not something that you can earn, like a merit badge. This is something that must be given to you. The way that it is given to you is by Jesus getting down on His own hands and feet, and washing your feet.

This quality of a God-given love is especially important for the leaders in the church. The way that the new disciples receive the gift of love themselves is through the willing service of the leaders in the church who know what it feels like to receive God’s love from a willing God. This is what the Apostle Peter writes about:

1 Peter 5:1-4 So I exhort the elders among you, as a fellow elder and a witness of the sufferings of Christ, as well as a partaker in the glory that is going to be revealed: 2 shepherd the flock of God that is among you, exercising oversight, not under compulsion, but willingly, as God would have you; not for shameful gain, but eagerly; 3 not domineering over those in your charge, but being examples to the flock. 4 And when the chief Shepherd appears, you will receive the unfading crown of glory.

The Master who sends us out (16-17)

There is a Master in the Christian church, and there are servants of the Master. The Master was willing to be a servant. There is a King who sends out His messengers of love, and there are messengers who are sent out. The King was willing to be sent out.

You know these things. Blessed are you if you do them! Blessed are you if you do them the way that Jesus did them. This is why Jesus spent three years with these men before He washed their feet and died on a cross for them. That must have been very powerful. They had been with Him. They knew He loved them. He had been sent by God. Now they would be the sent ones, which is what the word “apostle” means. They would spend time with others, and those others would receive the love of God, and then they would be sent out, and so on.

To those of you who truly feel that you have this gift of willing love for your Christian family here, I have only one instruction. Use the gift that you have. That is the way that others will see and receive that gift from God. They will begin to sense the truth that there is something from God that can be theirs, and that something is love.

To those of you who wonder whether you have the willingness of love that comes from God, I want to help you. You believe that Jesus loved you. You believe in the cross. You believe in the towel and the basin, and you are moved by it. How can I help you this morning to receive the gift of willing love that is such a great blessing of God? Try this: Treat someone in need as if you were there with Jesus. That will help you to be willing to love and serve that person.

What would it mean for you to love someone like you love Jesus? If Jesus came here today, and he was hungry, would you take him home and feed him? If Jesus was new here, and he wanted to learn, would you be willing to be his friend and to teach him? Does that sound like a strange way of thinking? I don’t think that it is. Let me close by reading to you from the end of Luke 2. (Read Luke 2:41-52) (1 John 4:7-21 for the Lord’s Supper)

Jesus washed your feet. Love Him. Love His beloved church. This is the Christian Imperative. This is the blessedness of those who know and do the love of God with a willing heart.

1. What is the meaning of Jesus resuming His place?

2. In what sense is Jesus our Lord and Teacher?

3. What are the implications of the example of Jesus for the life of His church?

4. In what sense will the apostles be sent out by the Master? What about us?