John 13:7

John 13:7. Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt learn hereafter. The Great Teacher now takes in hand the task of instructing the warmhearted but impulsive disciple in the true nature of the act performed by Him, and His reference to the future prepares the way for the revelation to be given. ‘Hereafter' certainly does not refer either to Pentecost or the eternal world. The remarkable transition in this verse from ‘knowest' to ‘learn,' and the fact that the last of these two words is again taken up in John 13:12 (where we translate ‘perceive'), afford ground for the supposition that the ‘hereafter' spoken of begins with the light there thrown by Jesus Himself upon what He does. Even then, however, it can hardly be confined to that moment. It is in the trying circumstances of the future, in the zealous discharge of the task that shall be his, and in the ripening of Christian experience, that Peter shall ‘learn,' shall ‘perceive,' the full meaning of what he at present feels to be so incomprehensible. He will not fully know what it is to have had his own feet washed by Jesus, until he shall have felt the need of constantly turning to Him in faith; and until, in the love ever renewed in the exercise of that faith, he too shall have washed the feet of others.