I’ll never forget the occasion
when, as a teenager, I walked
into church for the first time in
my life. The little country congregation
was in the middle of
a special service. At the front of the
worship area, small goblets of dark
grape juice and several plates holding
pieces of unleavened bread were
arranged on a beautifully carved
wooden table. But before these
emblems were distributed to those
present, the minister invited his
congregation into an adjacent room
where basins of warm water were
neatly placed on the floor in front
of a circle of chairs. Each chair was
also draped with a small towel.
An elderly man, perhaps 80 years
of age, approached me and said,
“Son, can I serve you by washing
your feet?”
I was dumbfounded. Nobody had
ever washed my feet—except for my
mother, when I got them dirty as a
youngster.
Hesitantly, I sat on a chair and
took off my shoes and socks. As the
elderly man tenderly washed my feet
and dried them with the towel, he
looked up into my eyes and said,
“Young man, I pray that these feet
of yours will walk clear through into
the kingdom of God when Jesus
comes back.”
I’ve never forgotten his words. It
was a very emotional time for me,
and those words became an anchor
deep down inside my inner being
through many difficult times.
Most Christian faiths celebrate
the Lord’s Supper in their unique
ways, but only a few observe the
preliminary ordinance of footwashing
or “humility,” as it’s come to be
called.
And yet, just as Jesus said of the
Communion meal, “ ‘Do this in
remembrance of me’ ” (Luke 22:19),
so He also said of this service of
humility, “ ‘Now that I, your Lord
and Teacher, have washed your feet,
you also should wash one another’s
feet. I have set you an example that
you should do as I have done for
you. . . . Now that you know these
things, you will be blessed if you do
them’ ” (John 13:14–17).
Jesus models servanthood
What I find most unusual is that
Jesus, who rightly calls Himself the
Lord of the universe and Lord of
our lives (see John 1:1–3) and who is our great Teacher in all aspects of
life, took off His outer garments and
began to wash the feet of His followers.
And this at a time when they
were embroiled in a power struggle
and full of negative feelings toward
each other.
The mother of James and John
had asked Jesus to appoint her sons
as leaders in what they anticipated
was an emerging political kingdom,
and this request had made the ten
other disciples angry (see Matthew
20:20–28). Now, just hours before
Jesus knew He was about to die,
they were all gathered in a second-floor
room to initiate a solemn ceremony
to commemorate His death.
As Jesus gathered His disciples
together, it seemed that everything
was conspiring against His hopes
for a new spiritual community. Ugly
human pride and ambition had surfaced
in the hearts of the disciples
He was training to administer His
coming kingdom.
It was customary for a servant to
wash the feet of guests when they
arrived from a hot, dusty journey,
so for one of the disciples to do this
now would, in their eyes, make them
unfit for leadership.
Jesus struck at the heart of their
human pride by modeling a spirit of
humility and service. He took the
servant’s role and did what a servant
normally does. The Creator washed
His creatures’ feet!
Peter’s reaction to Jesus’ action is
typical of the proud human heart.
He said, “You shall never wash my
feet”—a response that echoes the
reaction of most people when unsavory
parts of their inner being are
exposed before God’s discerning eye.
We fight tooth and nail to appear
respectable when it is plain to see
we are not.
humility an impossibility
It’s hard for us to be humble. In
fact, in our natural human state, it’s
impossible. The unconverted heart
does not have the capacity to transcend
its self-centeredness. Our constant
preoccupation with our image
before others strikes a mortal blow
at humility before we even begin the
journey in its pursuit. It’s safe to say
that only people who are unaware of
their humility are truly humble.
Yet Jesus said, “ ‘Learn from
me, for I am gentle and humble in
heart’ ” (Matthew 11:29). From a
human point of view, this sounds
like an enormously arrogant statement,
but when we stack it up
against the reality of the humility
Jesus manifested in His life, death,
and ministry for our salvation, we
discover that He was simply stating
a self-evident truth.
To learn humility from Jesus is not
just striving to imitate His behavior.
His servant heart needs to somehow
become our heart. We need to look at other human beings through His
compassionate eyes. We need to
have the simple attitude of a child
who, in the days of Jesus, was only
slightly “higher” than a servant in
the ancient Hebrew household.
developing a servant heart
The first step toward this is, like
Peter, to receive a revelation of our
lack of humility. Jesus gently but
firmly leads us to face every negative
aspect of our unconverted human
nature and to acknowledge them
before Him as things for which we
need forgiveness. There is no pathway
to humility without being broken
inwardly in some tangible way.
The next step is to accept by faith
that Christ Jesus “has become for
us wisdom from God—that is, our
righteousness, holiness and redemption”
(1 Corinthians 1:30). Everything
we lack is part of an inheritance
we can claim from Him as
our rightful possession (see Ephesians
1:17–23).
Then as the days, months, and
years pass, we will, largely without
being aware of it, find ourselves with
a servant’s heart. Our attitudes to our
family members, our fellow workers,
and the disadvantaged in society will
all have changed. The inverse laws
of Jesus’ life will have become ours.
The “poor” will become “rich,” the
“weak” will become “strong,” and
the “proud,” “humble.”
