Christ engaged His disciples in a foot washing ceremony to teach them a few things about how they were to serve each other and to lay a foundation for them to better understand the purpose for His coming. When He prepared to wash the feet of Simon Peter, Peter reacted saying, “You will never wash my feet.” Peter’s reaction reflects a religious mind set based on a lack of understanding. In that moment, Peter was just like the Sadducees and Pharisees of that day who resisted the person and workings of the Savior. Today there are many followers of Christ, just like Peter, which still resist the washing of the Savior. This resistance is due to a lack of understanding and a religious mind set instead of the presence of a relationship with Christ based on trust and intimacy.
YESHUA’s desire to wash His disciple’s feet was a call to a more intimate relationship. Surrendering yourself to include the dirt of your past shows trust and creates intimacy. The resistance to entering the level of intimacy which the Creator is calling us to, creates a barrier between us and the many benefits of His mercy and grace. YESHUA responded to Peter saying, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with me.” So, Peter allowed the washing, but the understanding of what was happening came much later. YESHUA told Peter, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.” We must let Him take away the shame of our dirty past. We must allow Him to take our dirty feet into His pure hands and wash them clean. We must allow the weightiness of His love to break our pride and free us from our independence. We can never clean our own feet because all we have in our possession are filthy rags. The work of Christ is to clean us up and furnish us with white raiment; to empower us to walk in the Spirit, down clean paths. An understanding of His grace assures us, that if we should stumble, He will cleanse us yet again.
YESHUA taught that those who understood the abundance of grace which they had been given through His forgiveness would love Him greatly. In loving Him greatly, they would also forgive one another’s sins, or in other words, wash one another’s feet. Today they call it, “Paying it forward”. The bible calls it “letting grace abound.” However, if we hold on to our own sins, through not understanding how He cleanses us, we will not be able to minister this love correctly to others.
Today the Church still struggles to understand the washing by the Savior. When YESHUA washed Peter’s feet, He was in effect erasing the traces of the earthy places Peter had been before. Symbolic of cleansing him from his past sins. YESHUA also wiped Peter’s feet with His own covering. This symbolizes the extension of His righteousness in place of the removed dirt. Today many saints are still living soiled in the past, because they fail to grasp the understanding of the Savior’s washing. Christians all around the world celebrate the resurrection of Christ and His redeeming blood, but still have not excepted resurrection power into their own lives. Our resurrection to new life becomes possible when we believe He can cleanse and heal our souls. We can be transformed when we believe He can change us from the sinful people we have been in the past into the righteous children of the Father.
It is written in 2nd Corinthians 5:17, “If any man be in Christ he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new.” This teaching is in direct conflict with the consensus I often hear among the confessing Christians of today. I have heard Christians saying of the Church that all have wicked hearts, all continue to be bound by sin, and that there are none righteous, as if Christ failed in His mission to set at liberty the captives, to heal the broken hearted, to give us beauty for ashes, to make us trees of righteousness, to turn us into the plantings of YAHWEH, that He might be glorified. These are things YESHUA said He was anointed to do as in Isaiah chapter 61. YESHUA read this prophecy while standing in a synagogue and then said, “This day is this scripture fulfilled in your ears.” (Luke 4:21 KJV) We cannot let the evil one convince us otherwise with his lies and accusations. We cannot fail to lay hold on these blessings through doubt and unbelief.
Don’t confuse old testament references to the children of Israel with the resurrected Church of Christ. We must enter our calling of being the holy and righteous people of GOD. The ones who show forth the righteousness of YAHWEH, by manifesting His good and perfect will through our obedience. YAHWEH sowed a Son that He might get a harvest of righteous children. We are the planting of GOD and should be bringing forth righteous fruit. Now, in this present life! We are the evidence of the Savior’s resurrected life. We are not just sinners that have been forgiven. We are the redeemed of the Lord who have been cleansed from our sins and endowed with power by His spirit to walk in newness of life. We are just two feet away from new life. Let Him take away your shame and give you a glorious new life. Remember what He told Simon Peter, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” (John 13:8 NKJV)
