John 13:12-17

“ When therefore he had washed their feet and taken his garments again, having resumed his seat at table, he said to them, Know you what I have done to you? 13. You call me Master and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. 14. If I then, the Lord and the Master, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. 15. For I have given you an example, that, as I have done to you, you also may do. 16. Verily, verily, I say unto you that the servant is not greater than his lord, nor he that is sent greater than he that sent him. 17. If you know these things, happy are you, if you do them. ”

Jesus feared nothing for His Church so much as hierarchical pretensions. The disciples knew that their Master was establishing a kingdom. This single word was fitted to awaken in them ideas of dominion in the earthly sense; for this reason He shows them that, in this kingdom, the means of mounting higher is to descend, and the way to the first place is to put oneself without hesitation in the last. In John 13:13, ye call me properly means: You designate me thus when you address to me the word: thee, Master. Hence the two substantives in the nominative. The title of Master refers to teaching; that of Lord, to dominion over the entire life. It is the reproducing of the titles Rabbi and Mar which Jewish pupils gave to their masters. The most exalted title, that of Lord, is placed second, agreeably to the natural gradation.

The T. R. accords here with the Alexandrian authorities. It is from the words: For so I am, that John has properly derived the εἰδώς, knowing, of John 13:3. Since the fourth century, the Church has discovered in John 13:14-15, the institution of a rite; and it is well known what this ceremony has become where it is still practised in a literal sense. But neither the term ὐπόδειγμα, example, nor the plural, these things (John 13:17), suits the idea of an institution; and, in John 13:15, Jesus would have been obliged to say ὅ, that which, instead of καθώς, as.

To humble oneself in order to serve, and to serve in order to save: such is the moral essence of this act, its permanent element. The form was accidental and, as we have seen, borrowed from the given situation, consequently a passing thing. The washing of the feet which is mentioned in 1 Timothy 5:10 is a duty of hospitality and is only in a moral relation with what is prescribed in John 13:14-15. The meaning of the sentence in John 13:16, which is also found in the Synoptics, but with a different application (Luke 6:40; Matthew 10:24-25; comp. John 15:20) is here, as in Matthew 10, that the subordinate should not consider unworthy of him that which his superior has consented to do. But the Lord knows that it is easier to approve and admire humility than to practise it; for this reason He adds the words of John 13:17. Εἰ, if, “if truly;” as is really the case; it is the general supposition; ἐάν, in case that; it is the more particular condition. The happiness of which Jesus speaks is not merely that of knowing the duty of voluntary humility (Westcott), nor the inward delight which the disciple enjoys in performing it (Weiss); it is an actual superiority of position before God henceforth and in the future economy. A man is so much greater in the view of Jesus and so much nearer to Him in proportion as he consents to humble himself the more, as He did, in order to serve his brethren (Matthew 18:4).