Jesus Still Wants to Wash Your Feet

"If I then, your Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet." John 13:14

The night before the crucifixion, Jesus had a lot He could have done.

He could have spent the final hours in prayer alone. He could have delivered one last, comprehensive theological teaching. He could have used the time to prepare His disciples for the horror of what was about to happen and the glory of what would follow.

Instead, He picked up a basin and a towel, knelt, and washed their feet.

The King of Kings, hours from the cross, knelt on the dust.

Peter didn't understand it. Lord, he said, you will never wash my feet. And Jesus said: if I don't wash you, you have no part with me. This wasn't a lesson in servant leadership, though it was that too. This was Jesus saying something specific and personal to each person in that room. You are going to keep needing this. The world is going to keep getting on your feet. And I am willing to keep kneeling.

Asa's story ends with diseased feet that were never washed, never healed, never brought to the One who could have cleansed them. For three years, as the infection spread, he sought physicians and remedies and sorcerers. He tried everything except the thing that would have actually worked.

He never let Jesus wash his feet.

There is a tenderness in John 13 that is easy to read past because we are so familiar with the image. But stop and picture it for a moment. Twelve disciples, who had been walking the dusty roads of Galilee for three years, with all the accumulated grime of a journey that had included failure and doubt and arguments about who was the greatest, sitting while the Son of God moves from one set of feet to the next.

He washed Judas's feet. The man who was about to betray Him. He washed Peter's feet, the man who would deny Him three times before sunrise. He washed the feet of men who were about to run in every direction the moment the soldiers arrived.

He knew all of it. He knelt anyway.

This is the picture of what God is still offering today. Not a one-time transaction at the beginning of your faith that covers everything from that point forward, and then you're on your own to keep yourself clean. An ongoing, humble, gracious cleansing available to everyone who is willing to let Him do it.

The question Asa's story raises is not whether God was willing to heal him. The question is whether Asa ever knelt down and let Him. Whether he ever stopped trying to fix it himself long enough to say, Lord, I have something in my walk that I cannot get out on my own.

That is all it takes. Just that. Stop managing it. Stop trying to remedy it with everything except the One who actually heals. Come to Him with the honest acknowledgment that there is dust on your feet and some of it has been there long enough to become something more serious.

He still has the basin. He still has the towel. And He is not too dignified to kneel for you.

Reflection

What do you need Jesus to wash from your walk today? Name it specifically, honestly, without softening it. Then come to Him with it in prayer and let Him do what He has always been willing to do.

Today's Prayer

Lord, I have been trying to manage some things on my own that I should have brought to You a long time ago. Today I am stopping. I am kneeling. I am asking You to do what You did for the disciples on the night before the cross. Wash my feet. Clean what has gotten into my walk. I don't want to carry this anymore. Amen.

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