Total Savior to the End
John 13:1-11,
Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him, 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist. 5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.” 8 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.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
Last Sunday, we saw that the gospel of John is a book comprised of two sections. The first section, chapters 1-12, has been called the book of signs, in which: Jesus’ location frequently changes. For three years he’s traveling, back-and-forth, between Galilee and Jerusalem with stops in Samaria and Bethany in between. During this time, he’s also gathering crowds. Such large crowds, in fact, that he’s at one point in danger of being trampled by them. And he’s working miracles — so definitive and comprehensive that no realm of reality, whether Satan and demons, forces of nature, or even the human body could claim to have remained outside his jurisdiction. And he’s teaching — in sermons, in conversations, in questions, in parables — all with such unparalleled authority that he renders his audience speechless, stunned.
That’s the first section of John’s gospel, chapters 1-12.
Today, our sermon text begins the second section of John’s gospel, what’s rightly been called, the book of glory. Here, unlike section one: Jesus’ location will not change — he’ll remain in Jerusalem till his death. The crowds will no longer be involved, at least not throughout the next five chapters. Jesus will not be working miracles. He will not be teaching in parables. Rather, Jesus will mainly be speaking — plainly and deliberately — to his small, rag-tag group of men he called his 12, soon-to-be 11, disciples.
All the while, we are those who are invited in, brought in, by John to this most private, intimate and pivotal of settings — the final moments of the Savior prior to the cross.
This morning, we’ll aim to set the scene for this book of glory by taking a look at four things: the Identity of Jesus, the Love of Jesus, and two Warnings from Jesus.
First, the Identity of Jesus.
Identity
It’s a fitting thing to begin with. After all, Jesus’ identity is the very thing that’s been most doubted, debated, and called into question up to this point in the story. We’ve heard statements like:
1:46, “Can anything good come out of Nazareth?”
4:12, “Are you greater than our father Jacob?”
6:30, “Then what sign do you do, that we may see and believe you?”
6:42, “Is not this Jesus, the son of Joseph, whose father and mother we know?”
8:48, “Are we not right in saying that you are a Samaritan and have a demon?”
10:20, “He has a demon, and is insane; why listen to him?”
It’s quite the chorus of animosity, yes? And yet, chapter 13 is quick to show us that despite the many reproaches, Jesus remains unshaken.
Verse 1,
“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father…”
You see it? No doubts. No questions. No confusion here.
All along, Jesus has known his hour was coming. He has known his hour was the very thing he came here for. He has known his hour would be a time when he’d be glorified (John 12:23). And now, he knows his hour has come.
A major aspect of Jesus’ identity, of course, relates to this hour. And yet, even more basic to his identity, is what we see in verse three. Look down with me at verse 3:
“Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God…”
Picture this with me for a moment. Like, put yourself there, in that very room, in this very moment:
Here stands Jesus — a plainly clothed Jewish carpenter from Galilee. He’s in a borrowed space — an upper room of someone else’s home. He’s flanked by fishermen, a tax collector, and a host of other unimpressive men. By the looks of it, he has little money, or perhaps even no money, to his name. And yet, here stands the man who rules the world. The one before whom every knee will one day fall. The supreme object of the Father’s eternal smile.
Jesus, in that moment, knew all that. He knew he’d ultimately come from God. That he, though headed to the grave, was ultimately headed back to God in Heaven. That despite appearances, his Father had placed all things in his hand.
His is an unrivaled identity — the only Son from the Father. That’s point one: the identity of Jesus.
Point two: the Love of Jesus.
Amazingly, these two marks appear side-by-side in the narrative. Following the report of Jesus’ high and exalted identity, we find his love for his own people.
Love
Look back with me to verse 1:
“Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.”
For anyone in the room this morning wondering: “Now, why did Jesus, on his very last night, choose to move away from the crowds? Like, up to this point, Jesus has regularly welcomed the masses. Not all the time, to be sure, but much of the time. So, why then, in his final hours, did Jesus choose to “lock himself up in a room,” so-to-speak, with only this small, hand-selected group of men?”
Answer: Because he loved them.
And you might think: “Well, yeah, of course he loved them. Jesus loves the world.” That’s not wrong. Jesus, like his Father, loves the world, hence, John 3:16.
It would be a mistake, however, to equate Jesus’ love for the world with Jesus’ love for his own. The two are not identical, but distinct. And, in fact, you can see that distinction, right here in verse one:
“[Jesus] having loved his own who were in the world.”
You see it? It’s not: having loved his own just as he loved the world, but “having loved his own who were in the world.”
Jesus’ love here, in other words, is specific: He’s talking about the love he has for this particular people — “his own.”
And, Jesus’ love is persistent: He will love his own to the end — all through and well beyond the nails, the thorns, and the spear.
Jesus’ love, in this text, is the unique love he has for his sheep… The ones who hear his voice, and believe in his name. The ones for whom, in his hour of glory, he will lay his life down for.
How About You?
And how about you? Are you his this morning? Have you heard his voice? Have you come to see that this Jewish carpenter from Galilee is in fact God in the flesh and Savior of your soul? Then this very love that we’re talking about here is the love he has for you.
It’s December 28th, yes? Christmas Sunday. Much of the holidays are now behind you. Even more of the year 2025 is now behind you. As you look back, you may see evidences of Jesus’ love for you — popping up in your memory, your calendar, the images on your phone. If you see these evidences, boy, savor those things. Ask God to impress them deep into your soul that you may not forget them in days ahead.
But for those of you who, as you look back, think: “You know, I feel like I just got kicked in the teeth this Christmas. In fact, really this entire year. In fact, life has been tasting bitter now for quite a number of years. I look out for evidences of Jesus’ love for me, and, if I’m honest, I’m just not seeing them.” ….
If that’s you, then allow me to invite you this morning to turn your focus to these words instead. To set your perception of the events of life to the side. To instead, humbly before the Lord, hear him say to you, “I have loved you, and am loving you, and will continue to love you to the end.” Jesus’ love for you if you are his, brother or sister, is a particular and persistent love — active today just as it was on the cross and just as it will be in the age to come.
What’s the identity of Jesus? He’s from God, going to God, having all things in his hand.
What’s the love of Jesus? It’s the particular, persistent love he has for his own.
What about the two warnings from Jesus? Well, they’re going to come in just a moment, but not before the scene shifts.
Jesus the Servant
Jesus, knowing the love he has for his disciples, is now going to demonstrate that love through what was, at that time, one of the lowest forms of human service imaginable.
It is a jolting transition to say the least. Jesus, verse 4, rises from supper. He takes off his outer garments. He grabs a servant’s towel. Then, after pouring some water into a basin, he begins to “wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.”
Now, consider how absolutely soiled his disciples’ feet would’ve been at this time — having just been walking for miles, without shoes, on roads made up of packed-down dirt and animal manure. And consider how filthy that water, as Jesus went from washing one of his disciples’ feet to another, would’ve been getting. And the towel! The very towel that Jesus had around his body, pressing against his skin — how soaked with filth it would’ve appeared.
So it’s no wonder that by the time Jesus gets to Peter and sets down the basin before him, Peter just can’t take it anymore. It’s as if the shock of seeing a man so superior to himself stooped down to such degrees of humiliation just finally became too much for him to bear. Verse 6 reads:
“He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?”
Jesus says to Peter, I believe, sympathetically, assuringly, verse 7:
“What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will understand.”
Nevertheless, Peter continues his resistance. He cannot understand what Jesus is doing. Cannot fathom ever being able to understand what Jesus is doing. And so he declares, verse 8:
“You shall never wash my feet.”
First Warning
What a terrifying thing to say to a Savior. What an eternity-threatening response. And Jesus treats it as such, responding to it with one of the most sobering, consequential warnings in all the Bible. In verse 8, Jesus warns,
“If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
Just think over those words for a moment: No share with Jesus. None. Peter’s response, in other words, has got him teetering on the brink of complete dislocation from Jesus. But why is that? I mean, wasn’t Peter just trying to be respectful of Jesus? Honoring, even? I mean, “Jesus, you walk on water. You calm storms. I’m not going to have you wash my feet.” …No? Well then, Peter, who are you going to have wash your feet?
It’s true. Peter’s resistance may well have been his attempt at honoring Jesus, but what it did was threaten to demote Jesus instead. Demote him. Downgrade Jesus from the rank of Total, Absolute Savior to the level of partial, limited Savior.
The kind of savior who serves his people this far, but no further. The kind who cleanses these sins, but not those sins. The kind who is received by his people not on his terms, but on theirs. The kind who may provide bread, bring healing, and even calm storms, but certainly won’t wash feet.
Peter’s resistance did not honor, but demote Jesus, or at least threaten to. And it is something we all have a tendency to do.
Think about it: when you sin — like when you catch yourself saying something unkind, having a thought that’s unclean, doing something you know is wrong, and then realize your guilt — do you always go immediately to Jesus asking to be forgiven? Like, the moment you sin, do you always go right away to Jesus, totally empty-handed, saying: Jesus, cleanse me again?
Or, do you sometimes wait a bit… To let your guilt subside first. Or to rack up a few good works first. Or to wallow in greater degrees of misery first? I mean, you’re not just going to go to Jesus just like that, with your unadulterated sin so fresh out of the oven, are you?
If not, then what you’re attempting to do instead is take the edge off your sin. Take it from a boil, down to a simmer. Get it to a point where it is, at least, slightly less abhorrent than it was originally before handing it over to Jesus. And the reason we do that — Note: The reason we do that — is because in our pride, we don’t actually want a Total, Absolute Savior to help us with our sin. We don’t. Rather, what we want is to demote Jesus to the level of partial Savior, because when we do, guess who gets promoted to the level of partial Savior right alongside him?
You see it? Peter’s resistance, as well as ours, is not really about Jesus’ honor at all. It’s about human pride, and our desire to have a claim on our salvation.
Here’s the thing: Jesus doesn’t respond to Peter with gratitude. “Oh, thank goodness, I was hoping I’d not have to wash your feet.” He responds to Peter with a warning:
“If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”
Said another way: To be saved by me, Peter, you must also be served by me — and that at your very worst. Your very lowest. Your very ugliest. You must place even your feet into my hands.
Jesus is as an Absolute, Total Savior. He will be received as such or he will not be received at all. That’s our first warning. The second is much quicker. In fact, it’s not even technically a warning, but I would like us to hear it as such this morning.
Second Warning
In verse 9, Peter responds to Jesus with his usual, over-the-top vigor:
“‘Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!’ 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.”
Again, this is not technically a warning. It’s a judgment. Judas, one of the twelve, was not clean. To use language from the first warning: Judas “had no share” with Jesus, for his heart had been given over to Satan. Just as we read in verse 2:
“During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon’s son, to betray him.”
So Judas has got Satan motivating him. It’s Satan’s will he’s submitted to, not God’s.
But the reason I’d like us to heed all this as a warning is because Judas gave off no outward impression that he was in rebellion to Jesus. In fact, we have no biblical evidence suggesting any one of his fellow disciples ever suspected Judas was the one who would betray Jesus. Judas had looked the part. Had done all the things. He’d been present for the many conversations, sermons, and miracles throughout the past three years of his public ministry. In fact, Judas, just as all the other disciples, had just finished getting his feet washed by Jesus in that upper room.
But despite outward appearance, when it came to who Judas was inwardly — what Judas really loved, to what Judas really treasured — it was not Jesus. His treasure may have been money, power, praise — regardless, the fact of the matter is that despite all Judas had seen, heard, and experienced, there was still something in the world Judas valued more than Jesus. So, when finally given the opportunity to gain it by losing Jesus, he took it. He agreed to betray Jesus.
Brothers and sisters, beware of increasing in Jesus-oriented things, and Jesus-oriented practices, apart from a Jesus-oriented heart. We don’t want to be known as the people who merely do things for Jesus, but the people who value Jesus above all things. We want, as the Apostle Paul, to be the kind of people, the kind of disciples, who increasingly count Christ as gain, and all other things as loss in comparison to him.
So, the identity of Jesus: He’s from God, going to God, having all things in his hand.
The love of Jesus: It’s the particular, persistent love he has for his own.
The warnings from Jesus: You cannot have him as partial Savior. You cannot have him unless your heart treasures him to the end.
Table
Now, what brings us to the table this morning is the fact that the footwashing we see here in John 13 — counter-intuitive and challenging to human pride as it may have been — was really just a preview. A foreshadowing, of the even greater ignominy still to come. In a mere matter of hours…
Jesus’ outer garments are not going to be set down by him, but stripped off by Roman soldiers. Jesus’ hands are not going to be wet with water, but his own blood. Jesus’ skin is not going to be dirtied by his disciples’ feet, but pierced for his disciples’ sin. Jesus is going to hang on a cross, loving his own people to the very end.
