Reading: Eph. 2:4;
John 13:1-17.
"Jesus...
having loved his own that were in the world, he loved
them unto the end... he... riseth from supper, and layeth
aside his garments; and he took a towel, and girded
himself. Then he poureth water into a basin, and began to
wash the disciples' feet, and to wipe them with the towel
wherewith he was girded."
THE
DISCIPLES - PERSONAL INTERESTS DOMINATING
Here is
the great object lesson of Divine love. We must get the
setting of this scene in order to obtain something of its
real effect. The atmosphere at this time was a
high-tension atmosphere. It was charged with a sense of
pending crisis. It was full of expectation mingled with
wonder - wonder as to exactly what was going to happen.
The kingdom was in everybody's thoughts; Jesus was being
hailed by the multitudes as the Messiah, palm branches
were being waved, people were shouting "Hosanna:
Blessed is he that cometh in the name of the Lord" (John
12:13). All the Messianic thoughts and expectations now
for many centred in Him, and especially so in the case of
His disciples. Some great event in relation to the
kingdom was on the point of taking place, and this had
given a great impetus to their personal expectations.
They were, of course, very much in the grip of the Jewish
expectations of the kingdom on this earth, the ousting of
the Roman power, and the setting up of the Kingdom of the
Messiah. All that was in the air and in their minds, and
they were beginning to see their respective places in
this kingdom. The mother of Zebedee's children had come
to Jesus and, worshipping Him, had said, in reply to His
interrogation of her, "Command that these my two
sons may sit, one on thy right hand, and one on thy left
hand, in thy kingdom" (Matt. 20:20). You see the
expectation: and the two sons were not ignorant of the
ambition and request of their mother: they were parties
to it. The other disciples were terribly provoked that
this thing should have taken place, and as they went on
in the way, they talked about this and discussed who
should be greatest in the kingdom.
Now that is a
statement, but we cannot leave it with just the thought
that they were saying to one another "I will be
greater than you." They were clearly going into more
detail than that, and saying, "In the kingdom, I am
going to be so-and-so;" all thinking in terms of
place and position, and vying with one another, each
trying to go one better than the others. This is
indicated in what is recorded as having taken place. It
is also recorded that Jesus knew their thoughts, and
understood what was going on. So in this wrangle about
place, position, personal importance and advantage in
this kingdom that was about to come, they were all
jangled and on edge with one another, and out of temper.
Such was the atmosphere.
So they come to the
upper room which Jesus had taken. In every
nicely-appointed guest house or guest chamber in
Jerusalem, just inside the door was a little table, and
upon it a basin, with a jug of scented water and an apron
and a towel. If it were the house of a wealthy or
well-to-do person, there would be a servant in
attendance. But when Jesus took the room He did
not employ a servant, and only the things were there. And
the disciples arrive in this spirit, with this mentality,
in the upper room - annoyed, irritated, eyeing one
another; and they pass in through the door. They look up
at the ceiling, or somewhere else, but none of them sees
the basin! They are not in a mood for that sort of thing
at all. The supper is ready, and they sit down to supper
with unwashen feet. Now when I was a young man, there
were two cities which were said to be at that time the
two dirtiest cities in the world, and one of them was
Jerusalem; but even that had a semblance of sanitation.
But there was no such thing in the days when the Lord was
there. All the garbage and refuse was pitched out into
the street. Think of a hot day in the east, the dust and
the mess and the smell! They had come through that and
gone in. That basin was not a thing that you could just
pass by as though it did not mean anything - some quite
unnecessary thing. There was a real need for it and for
that scented water. But no, they had carefully not seen
it!
That is the very strong
setting of the whole scene. It is not exaggerated, it is
only bringing out the details that are here, a matter of
reading between the lines. They had all passed by and sat
down to supper.
THE
SERVANT SPIRIT LACKING
Now, let us look at
these men themselves. Their feelings had been irritated
and accentuated; and you know, when we get like that,
what excuses we make and how we argue and bring up all we
can to support our position. Is that not human nature?
There was
Matthew. Now Matthew had taken on service with the alien
government in occupation and had made a lot of money out
of it, so much so that when Jesus called him to
discipleship, he made a great feast for all his friends.
He could not have made a great feast without having
money, and he could not have had an expensive feast
without having servants. So Matthew was doubtless a man
who had always someone to wash his feet, and who thought
of himself as the big man. No servant, he!
There were
James and John. They were friends of the High Priest and
had access to the High Priest's court; so they were
somebody in the social world, in the world of public
influence and importance.
And there
was Peter; and Peter could, under these conditions, argue
like this - "I am one of the inner three; I have
always been privileged above the rest; I have been
recognized as something more than the others. Whenever
the Lord has wanted something special, I have been one of
the three with Him; so it is not my place to wait on the
others."
THE
LORD - PROMPTED BY LOVE TO LOWLY SERVICE
I am not
saying all this merely to draw an entertaining or vivid
picture. It is by way of getting the right setting for
our Lord. In that atmosphere, in the presence of that
mentality, that attitude: false, artificial, unworthy,
and oh, so petty, so mean, so contemptible: "He...
riseth from supper" - to perform Himself the
task they all avoided. What a significance there is in
John's statement in that connection! - "knowing
that the Father had given all things into his hands, and
that he came forth from God, and goeth unto
God." This One it is who rises from
supper, and (following, no doubt, what was the usual
custom) goes quietly over to the door and takes off His
outer robe and lays it down, takes the apron (the
servant's apron) and puts it on, ties the towel round His
waist, pours water into the basin, and comes to wash His
disciples' feet. "Having loved his own that were
in the world (and just now, at any rate, so very much
of the world), he loved them unto the end (unto
the uttermost)."
The question
immediately arises, and is answered here, What is love to
the uttermost? What is the love of Christ? What is the
love of God? It is not in sentimental words. No, this is
it. It is not love for the lovely and the lovable only,
for those whom you cannot help loving. This is the love
to the uttermost.
OUR
CLEANSING THE OUTCOME OF SELFLESS LOVE
The rest
of His explanation, His comment, His message founded upon
what He had done, does bring us all up short for He said,
"What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt
understand afterward" And what did they know
afterward? They came to know that the world itself was a
filthy place, deep-dyed in sin's degradation, with all
the muck and refuse of hell spread over it - worse than
the streets of Jerusalem - and men had to be saved from
that degradation, cleansed from all that filthiness; and
it was going to be done, not by a haughty Matthew nor a
self-important Peter, but by the Lamb of God becoming "obedient
unto death, yea, the death of the Cross" (Phil.
2:8). It was going to be done by stripping, by humbling,
by emptying, by the spirit of uttermost service - service
of this kind, Christ's service to us. Oh, what
humiliation, what emptying, lies behind our cleansing!
What it has cost! That is what He calls love - not the
finding of a place for ourselves in the Kingdom, being
something important, giving ourselves airs. Moffat
translates that fragment in 1 Cor. 13 - "Love...
doth not behave itself unseemly," - as
"Love giveth itself no airs." We look at the
Lord Jesus, and there we see love. To think for a moment
of what any given thing is going to mean to our pride, to
our influence, to our position, to our prestige, never
comes in with love. Love, this love, never leaves room
for such a thing as standing up for our rights, for
saying they are not being recognized, that we are not
being given our place. Oh no, there is none of that here.
If the Lord Jesus had taken that position, He certainly
would never have enacted this object lesson of love, and
would never have gone to the Cross at all; and we should
never have been cleansed and saved from this world. It is
a sad picture, from one standpoint.
THE
CALL TO FELLOWSHIP WITH HIM IN SERVANTHOOD
I do not know how you
feel about it. I confess to you that, as I have been
thinking about this, I have wondered whether I ought to
pass it on to anyone else. I know by long experience that
it is possible to turn the edge of something the Lord
says to one's own heart by giving it out as a message.
Have you found that, those of you that minister? The Lord
brings some thing strongly to you and you give it as a
message, and it has gone from you. I take this to my
heart. And as I see that my salvation and yours, in the
infinite love of God, was through the spirit of lowliest
service, servanthood, I have to say, Is there any other
kind of service? Can we hope to see anything done by any
other kind of movement of the Spirit? Oh, this is more an
appeal than a profound message! It all centres in this - "having
loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto
the uttermost" - such men as they were, and as
we are. I do not see them objectively, I see them
subjectively. I can see a Peter, a Matthew, a Judas, in
my own heart. Thank God, He loves unto the uttermost, and
His love unto the uttermost is of this kind, that He does
not stand on His rights and dignity and position and
demand that I come down in an abject slavery to
acknowledge His lordship. He comes to serve you and me.
He is Lord, but for the time being a serving Lord. As He
is seen in the glory, mark you, He is still girded. He is
Lord, but still the great heavenly Servant, serving us,
washing away our sin, delivering us from this present
evil world. All He does is in the spirit of the servant.
Oh, how the spirit of service and servanthood is despised
today! Everywhere you hear it. No one wants to be a
servant today. That word "servant" is hated.
The spirit of service has almost gone from the earth. The
spirit of Christ is a rare thing, but, when it is found,
it is a heaven-blessed thing, a mighty power. Oh, do not
despise the servant position! Be not ambitious for place,
for recognition, for name, for reputation. Be not
ambitious to have your rights recognized. God fill us
with this spirit, that we are not all the time waiting
for others to do something for us, but looking to see
what we can do for them in Christ's name - being busy in
the right sense to find out how much we can do for the
Lord's people because they are the Lord's people, and for
the unsaved because He died to save them, and for the
unclean because He died to cleanse them. The Lord fill us
with this spirit!