Our Lord seems to make a pointed segue. He turns from addressing Peter to speaking to the whole gathering. He also applies His comments related to cleansing not to all the twelve but to only eleven. Jesus said to Peter, “He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you” (John 13:10, italics added).
Jesus shifts gears to shine the spotlight on Judas as His betrayer, as John narrates. “For He knew who would betray Him; therefore He said, “You are not all clean’” (John 13:11). Later in the chapter the betrayer will be explicitly and dramatically identified. Again, Jesus will pick up the thread that one of the twelve will betray Him (13:21) and in answer to the question, “Who is it?” Jesus will point the finger directly at Judas Iscariot (13:26).
What is striking is that Christ’s identification of Judas as the willful instrument of His betrayal and catalyst for His crucifixion brackets His washing of the feet of His disciples. Prior to the washing, Jesus speaks of His betrayer. Following the washing, Jesus speaks again of His betrayer and then proceeds to name him.
That means that Judas is among the disciples whose feet Jesus washes, even though He knows full well that Judas is about to betray him. What are we to understand? What lesson is Jesus imparting? Is it a simple lesson to love our enemies?
Certainly, there is that lesson but there is more. All those gathered with Jesus in the upper room were His enemies (Rom. 5:6-8). None could stake a claim for being worthy or more deserving of Christ’s sacrificial love. All had sinned. All had rebelled. All would desert Him.
The broader lesson relates to the plan and purpose of God in salvation. In a moment He will say: “I do not speak concerning all of you. I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled, ‘He who eats bread with Me has lifted up his heel against Me’” (John 13:18). Jesus had just said not all of them are clean; not all will be washed (13:10, 11). Now He puts it in terms of those chosen by God.
Throughout John’s Gospel we feel the gravitational pull to Christ through faith. In the prologue John lays it out, juxtaposing the decision of man with the working of God’s Spirit. “But as many as received Him, to them He gave the right to become children of God, to those who believe in His name: who were born, not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God” (John 1:12–13). Human responsibility and divine sovereignty appear side by side on the pages of Scripture without blushing.
Jesus washing the feet of His disciples, all twelve of them, points them all to Jesus in whom full cleansing is found. But for those washed to be clean, they must embrace Christ by faith, as those given Him by the Father (Jn. 6:37-40).
To what do we owe our salvation?
