Walking With Christ

John 13:8-10 Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.” (9)Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” (10)Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.”(ESV)

In a word, sanctification. We are saved but we need to be sanctified. What is sanctification? To understand the truth of this passage, we have to understand how life was different at that time. There was no such thing as indoor plumbing in most places. Most houses would be built near a well. When a person wanted to take a bath they would have to draw water from the well then wash. After they washed they would walk back to their house all clean. The problem was that the walk back to the house would get the feet dirty. To solve that problem, there would be a bowl of water next to the house just for washing the feet so that dirt would not get tracked in after a bath.

In this passage, Jesus is saying that we do not need to wash what is clean (once we are saved, we are bathed in His blood and therefore perfectly clean), but our travels of the day will pick up dirt from where we have walked. This is true physically as well as spiritually. We get saved and are cleaned. We stay clean unless we do something to make us unclean again. Just living in this world means that we will pick up small bits here and there that will need to be washed off. It is in our very nature.

Jesus washed the feet of the disciples. This wasn’t because they were not capable of washing their own feet. This was symbolic of the spiritual daily rinse that each of us need. Now that, we cannot do on our own. That is the daily refreshing of our minds by meeting together and confessing our sins to one another. Through this regular meeting and relationship building with each other and, more importantly, Christ, we are cleansed again. We are sanctified.

The act of sanctification is meant to be a renewing of our relationship with Jesus. It is also a pattern that we are to follow in our relationships with others. We have to meet with God on a regular basis to keep the relationship strong. We also have to meet with each other often enough for the same reason.