Do You Know What I Have Done To You?

  

“Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you…If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.” John 13:12b – 15, 17.

 

Did the apostles know, in that moment, what Jesus had done? Do we understand what Jesus did and why He did it? What do we see in feet washing and how do we wash the feet of our brothers and sisters? Do we see into and through and beyond the water, the basin, and the towel? Are we touching Jesus the Christ and is the Christ touching us?

 

“If I then…you also.” What do these words mean? What heavenly portal do they open?

 

O dear, dear friends, this is about so much more than taking physical water and washing physical feet – this is about our life in Christ and the life of Christ in us, this is about life with one another in Christ.

 

“If I then…you also.”

 

Consider what Jesus says in His follow up:

 

“A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another, even as I have loved you, that you also love one another. By this all men will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another.” John 13:34 – 35.

 

Can we see the call, the reality, of “If I then…you also”?

 

We are to wash feet as Jesus washes feet, cleansing one another with the Word, and we are to love just as Jesus loves.

 

Consider: “This is My commandment, that you love one another, just as I have loved you. Greater love has no one than this, that one lay down his life for his friends.” (John 15:12 – 13). The Apostle John later writes, “We know love by this, that He laid down His life for us; and we ought to lay down our lives for the brethren.” (1 John 3:16).

 

May I ask, what would our churches look like if we loved as Jesus loves? What would they look like if we saw and understood and obeyed, “If I then…you also”?

 

One of the first things Jesus teaches us is that we are to forgive others as God forgives us. “And forgive us our debts, as we have forgiven our debtors” (Matt. 6:12).

 

Paul incorporates “If I then…you also” in Ephesians 4:32 – 5:2:

 

“Be kind to one another, tender-hearted, forgiving each other, just as God in Christ also has forgiven you. Therefore be imitators of God, as beloved children, and walk in love, just as Christ also loved you and gave Himself up for us, an offering and as a sacrifice to God as a fragrant aroma.”

 

Here we have both love and forgiveness incorporated into “If I then…you also.”

 

We are to wash one another’s feet with love and forgiveness. We are to live barefoot in the church, barefoot with one another in Christ.

 

When Jesus, in the Upper Room, teaches us that He is the Vine and we are the branches, and that “apart from Me you can do nothing” (Jn. 15:5), He is saying to us, “If I then…you also.” We are to love as Jesus loves, forgive as Jesus forgives, live as Jesus lives, for Jesus is our Life. We are to be Christ to one another for we are, in Him, Christ to one another.

 

And so Paul writes that, “…nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives within me…” (Gal. 2:20).

 

Jesus says to the Father, “As You sent Me into the world, I also have sent them into the world.” (John 17:18). Later, after the Resurrection, Jesus says, “Peace be with you; as the Father has sent Me, I also send you.” (Jn. 20:21). Can we see, once again, “If I then…you also”?

 

We are to go as Jesus goes.

 

How are we responding to Jesus’s question, “Do you know what I have done to you?”?

 

Do we really know?

 

Do our lives manifest that we know?

 

The lives of our congregations?