12. JESUS ON HIGH; BUT CONSCIENCE AND HEART CARED FOR ON EARTH.
(John 13)
SUPREME grace bringing light divine and eternal life to the world in the person of the Son revealing the Father has been the subject of the previous chapters. But the Light had been rejected, and Jesus had hid Himself from them. In the five following chapters (13-17), a special character attaching to chapter 17, the Saviour leaves the world to its darkness and unbelief, and occupies Himself exclusively with His disciples in view of His approaching departure.
The Last Supper was the occasion of these final communications of His love. Rejected here, the time had come that He should depart out of this world to the Father; for otherwise there must be judgment. But His loved ones were still to remain. His love nevertheless delighted uninterruptedly to serve them, and would do so.
It was a moment of imminent importance. The spirit of evil had fully matured his plans, and had found a suitable instrument to use for his purpose. The Father’s purpose to put all things into the hands of Jesus had also ripened to its accomplishment; and Jesus knew it, as well as the divine character and certainty of His path. The sordid agent of the enemy and the lowly dignity as well as moral grandeur and devotedness of the Man who was Son of the Father and Heir of all things stood strongly contrasted.
Jesus rises from supper and lays aside His garments as one about to serve; then girding Himself with a towel and pouring water into a basin, He begins to wash His disciples’ feet. For though He can no longer be with them, His love devised means to fit them for having part with Him on high in the day of His absence.
He comes to Simon Peter. Unconscious of how entirely he was dependent upon his Master’s gracious service, he repels Him. But his strong-willed, independent spirit must submit, as a little child, to that of which he did not and could not know the import until afterward. The heavenly place of Jesus would shed such a searching light upon the conscience that, except for His unceasing ministry of divine and spiritual things, the defilement incidental to walking in this evil world would quite unfit the soul to enjoy part with Him where He is gone. This Peter did not know; but not to have part with Jesus was a thought unbearable to him. Not only feet, but hands and head he would have washed.
Ardent in his love, but himself the same headstrong independent man whose self-confidence, ever rushing to extremes, would need breaking down in order to be will-less and trustful in his Master’s hands. Washed all over by virtue of the new birth through the Word, only the cleansing of what comes in contact with this world is needed. Peter might fully trust his Lord to perfectly perform this service, for He was as unwearied in His love as all-wise in its ministrations.
Meanwhile the disciples could fully understand and appreciate their Lord’s lowly grace in stooping to wash their feet as an example for them to imitate. But that He would still be the servant of their needs even in heavenly exaltation was not possible to be understood until He was there. In either case the principle of Christ’s service was the same — surrender in the humility of love. But nothing of His pre-eminence and greatness will He surrender if it adds importance and effect to His example.
Blessed as well as needed would His service be to every tender conscience and seeking heart; but among the disciples was one who in spite of grace was wholly outside of it. Few men, of all the myriads of the human race, have been suffered to fill up the sum and possibility of wickedness, as foreshadowed in the Scripture. Judas was one of them. Sordid, and subservient to evil, many had been like him; but in none had treachery and ingratitude, calculating craft and selfishness so rankly grown in spite of such confiding grace and tender consideration. None had so counted on divine power to serve selfish ends. He had eaten bread with Him, and had lifted up the heel against Him. But even this, the summit of Satanic ambition and success, should be food for faith; and, so far from extinguishing the divine testimony, should kindle the light of it in a multitude of souls whom Jesus would send.
The thought that such a man should arise from among His loved and called disciples troubled the Saviour’s heart. It was as though a link which His love had cherished had been snapped. This was a man whose moral state made void all the activities of grace towards him. Hardened in conscience and in heart, the service and transparency of love only afforded occasion for the perpetration of a baseness without parallel.
One of them should deliver Jesus up. They doubt of whom He speaks. Now at the table there was one of His disciples in the bosom of Jesus — a sweet picture of the soul that, on the contrary, benefits by His service. A tender trusting soul, he had received the feet washing at his Master’s hand as an invite to lean upon His breast — such is the boldness that grace gives. It is no longer an exercised conscience and an earnest seeking heart saying, Master, where dwellest Thou? but a restful conscience and a satisfied heart which has found repose in leaning upon Jesus’ breast. John, not Andrew, gives the revelation of light and life and love in the truth of Christ.
Amid the bewilderment of the disciples he alone is near enough to say, Lord, who is it? and to hear that it is he who can receive the highest privilege unmoved. The morsel dipped and given to Judas is but the prelude of Satan’s entering into him.
Nothing remains but to reap the results of a plot conceived and consummated with such subtle skill. Every chord of evil in the human heart had been harped upon by a cunning master. Harmonious in evil, if such can be, all worked together to destroy the only perfect Good this world has ever seen. No element was wanting; pride and envy in the priests and Pharisees, love of place and power in Pilate, avarice in Judas, and a crowd wayward and willful, careless of truth and righteousness. No longer does the Father’s hand in providence withhold, and Jesus Himself gives the word, imposing but one condition only: “That thou doest, do quickly.”
Special honor or humblest service leave Judas’ heart and conscience alike untouched, steeled as they are by Satan’s presence in him; and, dismissed by Jesus, he, unfettered for the premeditated evil, immediately goes out, and it was night. He had eaten the bread of friendship, and received the ministry of truth, but remained unclean in spite of all.
While Judas was still among them the thoughts of Jesus had turned to the needs of His disciples, if they were to have part with Himself. In the loved disciple we see a foreshadowing of the effect of His heavenly ministry on their behalf. Jesus now is free to speak of the Son of man, the Man after God’s own heart, of Him in whom the thoughts of God as to the Man of His purposes should have their glorious fulfillment. He has in view the moral glory of the Son of man, in whom all that God Himself is should be glorified. Man glorified and God glorified, at the cross; not so, indeed, that the natural eye must perforce perceive it, but still manifested spiritually and for faith. Obedience, devotedness, perfect confidence and trust even when support was wholly withdrawn, dependent though forsaken; excusing His disciples in their weakness, vindicating God in His holiness, thinking of and providing for the natural claims of others though surrendering everything Himself; claiming not His regal earthly rights, yet confessing His kingship when charged against Him; bearing witness to the truth and its authority before man’s judgment-seat become apostate; unflinchingly upholding all that was divine, yet in utter self-abasement pleading for the persecutors in a world whose power was in the hand of the evil one and the usurper. But feebly can we estimate the moral glories of the Son of man; they were infinite. Love of righteousness and hatred of iniquity, but therewith perfect love to the sinner and love to God took Him to the cross. How divinely mingled in Him was every element in man that could be precious to God as answering to His nature!
At the cross, too, God was glorified in all that He is — holiness, righteousness that repels and judges sin even if He who knew it not was made it; indignation and wrath against evil, while in the same act and moment sovereign grace and love to those who had been guilty of it; the curse executed, and at the same time forgiveness for the transgressors; divine majesty and authority that upholds and executes its decrees and the word that pronounced them — a God of truth and without iniquity dealing with all contrary to Himself, but in a sacrifice of propitiation and according to all that He is who is love and light.
But the One at whose cost and in whose person this was done, God shall glorify in Himself straightway, a just and right recognition, as well as proof of the divine excellency of the person and work of Jesus.
Meanwhile He must leave His disciples, nor could they follow Him until the heavenly place was prepared for them by His presence there. But they were to love one another, and thus prove themselves His disciples. Intimacy of heart with the Master on high, and love to one another below forms the character of a confiding and dependent Christian.