There is another way in which we could divide this gospel. 

In the first twelve chapters the subject is light. 

They tell of His public ministry and that He is the Light. 

The division which we call the Upper Room Discourse is about the subject of love. 

Our Lord Jesus loves His own. 

The last part of the gospel, from chapters 18 to 21, is about life. 

He came to bring us life, and that life is in Himself. 

Our life comes through His death.

Our Lord Jesus gave four major discourses. 

Three of these are in the Gospel of Matthew: 

the Sermon on the Mount  (Matthew 5–7); 

the Mystery Parables Discourse (Matthew 13),

telling us about the kingdom of heaven;

Then the Olivet Discourse (Matthew 24; 25). 

We come now to the the Upper Room Discourse recorded in John 13–17.

This discourse is one of the greatest that our Lord ever gave. It is the longest, and it is meaningful for us today because He took His own into the Upper Room and revealed new truths to them. 

It is still brand new and fresh for us today.

There is nothing quite like it.

Our Lord's public ministry had ended

and He had been rejected. 

He now talks about His great love for us and how we are to live the Christian life.

He tells us of the provision He has made for us, and of the relationships between Him and those who are His own. 

As He is on His way to the cross, He has no message for the Pharisees or the religious rulers or the Roman government. This message is for His own.

Lord Jesus Washes His Disciples feet.

There is a threefold reason given to us to explain why our Lord Jesus washed His disciples feet.

Our Lord washed their feet because He knew He would 

"depart out of this world."

His ministry would continue after He went back to the Father in heaven. 

Our Lord Jesus identified Himself with His people, and He still washes the feet of His disciples, today.

Here our Lord tells them that He is going to depart out of this "world" (kosmos), meaning the world system. It is man’s world, a world of sin. It is a civilization that is anti-God and anti-Christ, and it is under judgment.

Because He is leaving this world, He washes their feet.

The 2nd reason He did this was that He loved His own. 

He loved them 

"unto the end." 

He was going to the Father because He loved His own. 

He died to save His own, and He lives to keep them.

We have a wonderful Savior, and He loves us right on through to the very end.

God loves us with an everlasting love; 

we cannot keep Him from loving us.

The 3rd reason is that another person had entered into the room. There was an uninvited guest present. 

His name was Satan.

Satan put into the heart of Judas Iscariot to betray Him. 

Wherever Satan gets into Christian work, others are affected and our Lord Jesus Christ must wash them. 

He must wash us if we are to have true fellowship with Him.

Notice that this took place at the Feast of the Passover.

"Supper being ended"  is literally "supper being in progress." 

This is not the Lord’s Supper. 

Apostle John does not even record the Lord’s Supper. 

There is a great danger in putting importance on a ritual rather than on the person of our Lord Jesus Christ. It is more important for us to know the Word of God than it is to partake of Communion. 

There is no blessing in Communion apart from a knowledge of the Word of God.

The bread in your tummy won’t be there for very long; 

Christ in our hearts is the essential. 

I believe this is why John omits telling about the Lord’s Supper.

Our Lord was doing is because He was returning to the Father. 

He took the place of a servant. 

He girded Himself with the towel of service, and He got Himself ready to wash His disciples feet.

In  Exodus 21, we learn of a law regarding slaves. A Hebrew slave served his master six years, and he could go free on the seventh year. If, during that time, he had taken a wife and had had children, the master would free him but not his family. However, the slave could choose to stay. If he loved his master and his family, he could stay with them. Then the master would back him up to a door post and bore his ear with an awl which would identify him as a voluntary slave forever. Although he could have gone out free, he stayed because of love. 

Our Lord Jesus came down to this earth, took upon Himself our humanity, and was made in the likeness of a servant. He did all this because He loved us. He could have gone out free, but He died on the cross to provide salvation for us. 

He established a glorious relationship for us and He made it possible for us to have fellowship with Him. 

He has become a slave because He loves us.

John 13:6-7   "Then cometh he to Simon Peter: and Peter saith unto him, Lord, dost Thou wash my feet? Jesus answered and said unto him, What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter."

Some people say that this is a sacrament and that we should practice foot washing. But this has a spiritual meaning. Some say that this is a lesson in humility and is an example to us.

Peter could see this was an example of humility; yet 

our Lord Jesus Christ said,

"What I do thou knowest not now; but thou shalt know hereafter."

John 13:8   "Peter saith unto him, Thou shalt never wash my feet. Jesus answered him, If I wash thee not, thou hast no part with Me."

Without this washing there could be no fellowship with Him. 

This was the Passover Feast which speaks of His death. He arose from the Passover Feast which speaks of His rising in resurrection and going back to heaven. 

Our Lord girded Himself with the towel of service and He says to us 

"If I do not wash you, you will have no part with Me." 

We cannot have fellowship with Him, service with Him, without the washing.

How does He wash us today? 

"Wherewithal shall a young man cleanse his way? by taking heed thereto according to Thy Word" (Psalm 119:9). 

"Now ye are clean through the Word which I have spoken unto you" (John 15:3). 

"… even as Christ also loved the church, and gave Himself for it; That He might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the Word" (Ephesians 5:25–26).

It is the Word of God that will keep the believer clean. 

And when we sin, 

"If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins, and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness" (1 John 1:9). 

Too many people treat sin as a light matter. 

Our feet speak of our walk, and when we are disobedient, we are not 

walking in His way. 

That is sin, and it is to be confessed.

John 13:9   "Simon Peter saith unto Him, Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head."

If it means fellowship, Peter wants all he can get.

John 13:10   "Jesus saith to him, He that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit: and ye are clean, but not all."

Our Lord Jesus Christ says,

"He that’s washed needeth not to be washed."

Our Lord used two different words here and, unfortunately, the translators didn’t make that distinction (nor do our more recent translations make the distinction), but they are absolutely two different words. He says, "He that is louoµ." Louoµ means "bathed." Niptoµ is the word translated "wash." 

"He that is bathed needeth not except to wash his feet."

In those days they went to the public bath for their bathing. Then a man would put on his sandals to come home. In his home was a basin of water for him to wash his feet because they had gotten dirty walking through the streets. So even though he had just come from a bath, he had to wash his feet when he entered the house.

Our Lord is teaching that when we came to the cross, when we came to Jesus, we were washed all over. That is the bath, louoµ, regeneration. 

When we walk through this world, we are defiled and we get dirty. 

We become disobedient, and sin gets into our lives.

I do not believe that any believer can get through a day without getting a little dirty. 

Our Lord says that we cannot have fellowship with Him if we are dirty. 

So the washing of the feet, nipto, is the cleansing in order to restore us to fellowship.

"If we say that we have fellowship with Him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth: But if we walk in the light, as He is in the light, we have fellowship one with another, and the blood of Jesus Christ His Son cleanseth us (keeps on cleaning us) from all sin" (1 John 1:6–7).

In order to have our feet washed we must first confess our sin. 

To confess means to agree with God. 

It means to say the same thing that God says about our sin. One of the hardest things in the world is to get a saint to admit he has sinned. 

Coldness, indifference, lack of love, are all seen by God as sin. 

If we confess, 

He is faithful and just to forgive. 

If we are going to have our feet washed, we must put them into the hands of the Savior. 

That is obedience. 

We can’t just say, "God forgive me, I did wrong," and then go out and do the same thing all over again. That is not getting our feet into the hands of the Savior.

That is the repentance that is in the world.

"For godly sorrow worketh repentance to salvation not to be repented of: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed after a godly sort, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter" (2 Corinthians 7:10-11).

Our Lord Jesus knows exactly those who are washed.

John 13:11   "For He knew who should betray Him; therefore said He, Ye are not all clean."

Jesus knew that Judas would betray Him. He knew that Judas had not taken a bath. In other words, Judas had never been regenerated. 

That is why our Lord Jesus Christ said that they were not all clean.

John 13:12-17   "So after He had washed their feet, and had taken His garments, and was set down again, He said unto them, Know ye what I have done to you? Ye call Me Master and Lord: and ye say well; for so I am. If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet; ye also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you.  Verily, verily, I say unto you, The servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him. If ye know these things, happy are ye if ye do them."

If we want true joy in our lives today, we should go to Him and confess our sin, get our dirty feet washed. This is one of the big  problems in our Christian congregations. We may have our heads full of doctrine, but our feet smell and there is nothing that smells as bad as stinky feet!

That is the reason some church services don’t smell so good.

That is the reason we don’t reach people for Christ.

There is no fellowship with Christ if our feet are not washed, without the confession of our sin.

Apostle Paul tells us in Galatians how we are to do that.

"Brethren, if a man be overtaken in a fault, ye which are spiritual, restore such an one in the spirit of meekness; considering thyself, lest thou also be tempted" (Gal. 6:1).

To restore him means to wash his feet.

In the church we have all sorts of talent - excellent speakers and beautiful music - but there is no revival. We need foot washing; we need to be cleansed. Before we can wash the feet of a brother, we need first to have the Lord of glory wash our feet. We should come to Him every time that we get dirty and be cleansed by Him.

The psalmist says,

"Search me, O God, and know my heart: try me, and know my thoughts: And see if there be any wicked way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting" (Psalm 139:23–24).

We need to confess our sin to the Lord and be cleansed.

We are washed by the Word of God.

We put our feet into His hands, which means that we are completely yielded to Him. 

This places us in fellowship with the Him.

Dear reader, do not let a single day go by without this fellowship.

Do not let sin come in to break this fellowship with Him.

The disciples were like a group of children in that Upper Room.

They were frightened, and rightly so.

The shadow of the cross had fallen upon that little group.

Tomorrow, if our Gracious Lord Jesus Christ spares my life and it is in accordance with His will and His purpose in my life I want to continue with John 13:12  Our Lord knows those whom He has chosen.

Church of God, beloved and chosen,
Church of Christ, for whom He died,
Claim thy gifts and praise thy Giver,
Ye are washed and sanctified.
Sanctified by God the Father,
And by Jesus Christ His Son,
And by God the Holy Spirit,
Holy, Holy Three in One.

By His will He sanctifieth,
By the Spirit's pow'r within;
By the loving hand that chast'neth,
Fruits of righteousness to win;
By His truth and by His promise,
By the Word, His gift unpriced,
By His blood and by our union
With the risen life of Christ.

Holiness by faith in Jesus,
Not by effort of thine own;
Sin's dominion crushed and broken
By the pow'r of grace alone;
God's own holiness within thee,
His own beauty on thy brow—
This shall be thy pilgrim brightness,
This thy blessed portion now.

He will sanctify thee wholly;
Body, spirit, soul shall be
Blameless till thy Saviour's coming
In His glorious majesty!
He hath perfected forever
Those whom He hath sanctified;
Spotless, glorious and holy
Is the Church, His chosen bride.