John 13:9

Vv. 9 presents to us, in the case of Peter, one of those sudden changes of impression which we frequently observe in him, in the Synoptic narrative. Here is the same Peter who rushes upon the water and a moment afterward cries “I perish!” who strikes with the sword and who takes to flight, who enters into the house of the high-priest and yet denies his Master. The perfect accordance between these scattered features, and the image full of life which results from them, admirably prove in this case as in all the others, as Luthardt has so well set forth, the complete reality of the Gospel history. The whole meaning of the act of Jesus was in the fact of washing the feet.

The nature of the act changed absolutely as soon as it concerned the head, for in that case it was no longer an act of humiliation. Jesus follows Peter on this new ground and this is what introduces the different meaning given to the act in His answer. At the foundation, what Peter asked for, without being conscious of it, was, instead of the removal of a stain, a complete renovation and, as it were, a second baptism; he implicitly denied the work already done in him (John 15:3). This is what gives the key to the answer of Jesus. This answer has of course a double meaning. Jesus rises immediately, as in the conversation with the Samaritan woman, from the material to the spiritual domain. As after having bathed in the morning a man regards himself as clean for the whole day and contents himself with washing his feet when he returns from without, that he may remove the accidental soiling which they have contracted in walking, so he who, by earnestly attaching himself to Christ, has broken with sin once for all, has no need at each particular defilement to begin anew this general consecration; he has only to cleanse himself from this stain by confession and recourse to Christ.

We must recall here what Jesus says to His disciples, John 15:3: “You are already clean through the word which I have declared to you.” In receiving His word, they had received in principle the perfect holiness of which it is the standard in the life in Him. There is nothing more except to change the law into act by ever placing oneself anew on the foundation which has been laid. Weiss thinks that all notion of pardon in the symbol of washing is foreign to this context. But the fundamental rupture with sin which Jesus compares to the complete bath implies a general pardon and reconciliation with God, and each act of destroying a particular sin, represented by the washing of the feet, implies the particular pardon of that sin. Reuss objects that the answer of Jesus, thus explained, would turn aside the symbol from its primitive sense. We have seen that the sense of the symbol was altogether different from that of the disposition towards kindness to one's neighbor; that Jesus desired to eradicate a bad propensity from the hearts of the disciples. This is what gives occasion to the new turn which the explanation of the symbol takes in consequence of the demand of Peter. I believe with Reuss, that, whatever Weiss may say, Jesus is here thinking of the baptism of water, the symbol of general purification, and means that it is no more necessary to renew this act (that which Peter asked) than that of faith itself whose symbol it is. The reading εἰ μή, if it is not, in a few Alexandrian documents, is a correction of the ἤ, in the T. R., which is slightly irregular; ἤ, than, for οὐδενὸς ἄλλου ἤ, nothing else than. The rejection of the words ἢ τοὺς πόδας, in the Sinaitic MS., completely changes the meaning: “He who is bathed has no need to wash himself; but he is all clean.” This reading is a correction occasioned by the difficulty of distinguishing between the total bath and the partial washing. The last words: “ but he is clean altogether,” are to be explained thus: “ But, far from having to bathe entirely a second time, as thou dost demand, his body is in general clean. It is enough to cleanse the local defilement which the feet have contracted.”

But is this state of reconciliation and consecration indeed the state of all? No; there is a disciple who has broken the bond connecting him with Jesus or in whose heart this bond has never existed. He it is who would really have need of the inward act of which Peter had just asked for the symbol. Here is the first revelation of the treachery of Judas, in the course of the supper. By expressing in this way the grief which the thought of this crime causes Him to feel, Jesus makes a last effort to bring Judas to repentance. And if He does not succeed, He will, at least, have shown to His disciples that He was not the dupe of his hypocrisy (John 13:19).