Humility’s Serving Eclipses Pride’s Protection

David W Palmer

(John 13:4–6 NLT) So he got up from the table, took off his robe, wrapped a towel around his waist, {5} and poured water into a basin. Then he began to wash the disciples' feet, drying them with the towel he had around him. {6} When Jesus came to Simon Peter, Peter said to him, “Lord, are you going to wash my feet?”

When assured of having all authority, Jesus immediately demonstrated the culture and values of his kingdom; his first act was to serve his apprentice leaders by washing their feet. The supreme and only King of the entire universe commenced his reign by taking on the role of the lowliest of servants. This humble act must have been a moment of the purest love and bonding imaginable between a king and his subjects.

However, when Peter’s turn came for Jesus to wash his feet, he questioned it. His residual pride—in an act of pseudo humility—balked at receiving such love and service from Jesus—the very person that he had previously declared by revelation to be: “The Christ the Son of the Living God” (Mat. 16:16 NKJV). Without true humility and an understanding of God’s loving character, we all find it difficult to receive God’s undeserved love and his willingness to serve us. So, Jesus explained:

(John 13:7–8 NKJV) Jesus answered and said to him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but you will know after this.” {8} Peter said to Him, “You shall never wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.”

In the late 1980s, Rosanna and I pioneered a church in Melbourne’s red-light district of St.Kilda. Street people, drug-users, and many with mental illness attended our services. I knew that—apart from the obvious reasons of evangelism and ministry—one reason for this call was for me to learn how to walk in unconditional love towards the unlovely. Moreover, I felt that it was important for me to exemplify the true Christian life and character in front of them.

The attendees may not have realized at the time what I was doing; but by serving them unconditionally, I knew I was setting an example that some of them would follow—albeit in a subsequent season of their lives. I had to believe that what I sowed by loving and serving them in Jesus’s name, would one day produce a harvest—not only for me, but also in them.

I believe that this is what Jesus was doing when he washed his disciples’ feet. However, Peter’s pride tried to prevent him from allowing such a humble act of loving service into his heart; he said, “You shall never wash my feet!” Perhaps he didn’t know the old saying: “never say never!” Pride goes for the extremes, and it always wants to take the initiative away from the one offering the loving service by deciding what the service should be.

Jesus’s answer to Peter’s objection reveals the powerful significance of receiving or refusing God’s amazing love and humble service: “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.” To our natural thinking, that outcome—from merely stopping someone stooping to do what seems like our own personal responsibility—is far too severe. Surely, refusing to have someone wash your feet—especially someone that you know is your Lord—is not a serious sin; surely, it is an act of taking on our own personal responsibility. Yet Jesus said that if Peter refused, he was disqualifying himself from any part with Jesus.

Why is this the case? I believe that if we don’t allow Jesus’s amazing example, his love, and his humble serving into our hearts by opening them to receive it; we will not be able to emulate it. The antithesis of God’s loving humility is self-focused pride; it resists allowing Jesus’s example in; it doesn’t want to acknowledge that such humble serving is the right way to act.

The reason for this is because pride doesn’t want Jesus and his example to take over any control of our lives. If we allow Jesus’s example in by receiving it, we are in effect agreeing that it is the right way for God—who is love—to act. If we agree to that, then we are confessing that it is also the right way for us to act. It’s much safer to refuse entry than to commit our hearts to agreeing that such unconditional and humble love and intimacy is right—especially when it is towards those that pride looks on as inferior, unlovable, and undeserving.

Freshly challenged with the prospect of being excluded, Peter’s pride swung to the opposite extreme:

(John 13:9 NKJV) Simon Peter said to Him, “Lord, not my feet only, but also my hands and my head!”

Jesus gently brought him back from pride’s extremes to humility’s acceptance of truth and love:

(John 13:10 NKJV) Jesus said to him, “He who is bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you.”

Jesus had invested more than three years fulfilling his side of the learning covenant that he had originally made with his apprentices: “You follow me, and I will make you competent at catching men” (See: Mat. 4:19). The Master had trained, discipled, coached, corrected, and taught them; he had encouraged them, prophesied to them, built close relationships with them, and “loved them to the end.” In effect; he had completely “washed” them with the water of his living words:

(Ephesians 5:25–27 NKJV) … Christ also loved the church and gave Himself for her, {26} that He might sanctify and cleanse her with the washing of water by the word, {27} that He might present her to Himself a glorious church, not having spot or wrinkle or any such thing, but that she should be holy and without blemish.

After the complete washing, Jesus said that their feet were now the only part of them that needed regular washing in this way. This is because, metaphorically speaking, our feet contact the world as we walk in it. In other words, we need to wash off the world’s influence after we contact it in our everyday lives, our work, and our witness.

(John 13:12–17 NKJV) So when He had washed their feet, taken His garments, and sat down again, He said to them, “Do you know what I have done to you? {13} You call Me Teacher and Lord, and you say well, for so I am. {14} If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another’s feet. {15} For I have given you an example, that you should do as I have done to you. {16} Most assuredly, I say to you, a servant is not greater than his master; nor is he who is sent greater than he who sent him. {17} If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.”

Today, I believe Jesus wants you simply to receive his amazing love and allow him to serve you. Open your heart to the loving acts of service he initiates towards you. Allow his love, humility, and washing to penetrate the depths of your heart. When you receive from him what he loves to do for you, his grace and love will pour into your heart. These will then overflow in benevolence and humble loving service of others. Love him, enjoy his love, and don’t yield to pride’s warped attempts at self-protection by staying in control through pseudo humility and extreme responses. Remember ...

(1 John 4:19 NKJV) We love Him because He first loved us.

Jesus’s foot washing was a clear demonstration of God’s humble heart and love for us. However, even this amazing act was surpassed the next day when the indescribable depth of his love and service was demonstrated undeniably and eternally through his substitutionary death, burial, and resurrection:

(1 John 4:8–11 NKJV) He who does not love does not know God, for God is love. {9} In this the love of God was manifested toward us, that God has sent His only begotten Son into the world, that we might live through Him. {10} In this is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins. {11} Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another.

Open your heart today to receive his love and humble service for you.