John 13:20

Ver. 20. “ Verily, verily, I say unto you: He that receives him whom I shall send, receives me, and he that receives me, receives him that sent me. ”

The relation between this saying and those which precede is so far from clear that Kuinoel and Lucke proposed to consider this verse as a gloss derived from Matthew 10:40. Meyer and Hengstenberg think that, in the presence of the treachery of Judas, Jesus wished to encourage His apostles by reminding them of the greatness of their mission. Baumlein says: “A fragment from a larger whole, to which perhaps the institution of the Holy Supper belonged.” Luthardt and Keil place this saying in connection with the washing of the feet; the disciples must learn from Jesus to render the same service to those whom He shall send to them. But, as we have seen, the meaning of the act of washing was altogether different, and this saying is too far separated from that Acts Vv18, 19, are a simple digression occasioned by the contrast between the fate of Judas and the happiness of the faithful disciples (John 13:17). John 13:20 is immediately connected with the idea of this happiness declared in John 13:16-17. The one sent by Jesus, humble and faithful, who serves like Him, bears with him his Master, and, in His Master, God Himself. Jesus had just said: “ The servant is not greater than the Master; ” He now seems to say: “And he is not less great than He.” To receive him is, consequently, to receive in him Jesus, and in Jesus God Himself; comp. Matthew 18:4-5, and the parallels. In Luke 22:29-30, Jesus, after having said: “Behold, I am among you as he that serves,” adds: “ I give you the kingdom as my Father has given it to me. ” To give the kingdom, in its true spiritual form is it not to bear God in oneself and communicate Him to the one who receives you? This saying, therefore, accords perfectly, as to its meaning, with our John 13:20.

Bretschneider and Strauss regarded this story of the washing of the feet as a legendary creation which emanated from the consciousness of the Church. But, as Baur observed with respect to the resurrection of Lazarus, if such a fictitious story had been the product of the Christian consciousness and had been circulated in the Church, it could not have failed to appear also in the Synoptics. Baur therefore regards this incident as consciously invented by the evangelist to serve the moral idea. But it is difficult to explain in this way the production of so simple and life-like a scene, and especially the composition of the inimitable conversation between Jesus and Peter. Even Schweizer has admirably brought out the stamp of historical truthfulness impressed upon this whole story. Keim thinks that Jesus would not on this evening have come so directly into collision with the feeling of the disciples. But it was a matter of inculcating upon them ineffaceably the spirit of His work and of their future mission; and this was the last moment for doing this. The omission of this incident in the Synoptics is made an objection.

Probably the institution of the Lord's Supper, that fact of capital importance for the Church, eclipsed this one in the oral tradition relative to this last meal. Hilgenfeld surmises that the evangelist meant to substitute this narrative, imagined by him, for that of the institution of the Lord's Supper which he designedly omitted (Einl., p. 711), as too distinctly recalling the Jewish Paschal supper. But what result could be attained by this means in the second century, when the Lord's Supper was celebrated throughout the whole Church, unless that of rendering his Gospel liable to suspicion? The discourse directed against false greatness, which is added by Luke to the narrative of the supper, naturally implies a fact of this kind. There was nothing to prevent the author from placing the two stories in juxtaposition. The better known story would have confirmed the one which was less known. It is very evident that John desired to rescue from oblivion what the tradition had neglected, and that he omitted what was sufficiently well known and what had no particular connection with the principal aim of his work.