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

By John Foll, written 3/25/2018
© Copyright 2018 John Foll

“Peter said to Him, ‘Never shall You wash my feet!’ Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.’” John 13:8 NASB.

At the last supper, which was part of the Jewish Passover, the Jews had customs of washings, especially before religious events. Apparently servants sometimes washed the feet of those at these events, like the Passover, but since none of the disciples offered to take up this menial role, Jesus rose up and did the part of the servant. But when He came to Peter, Peter said, ‘never shall You wash my feet!’ He didn’t think that Jesus should be washing anyone’s feet, since He was the Son of God. Why would a king wash someone else’s feet? Whether or not we are right that the disciples expected someone else to wash their feet, i.e. a servant, it is clear that none of them got up to do the job. And so Jesus did. But we think that this is true, based on Jesus’ comment below in Luke 22:23-27 and in John 13:12-17.

“And they began to discuss among themselves which one of them it might be who was going to do this thing.­ [Betray Jesus.] And there arose also a dispute among them as to which one of them was regarded to be greatest. And He said to them, "The kings of the Gentiles lord it over them; and those who have authority over them are called 'Benefactors.' But it is not this way with you, but the one who is the greatest among you must become like the youngest, and the leader like the servant. For who is greater, the one who reclines at the table or the one who serves? Is it not the one who reclines at the table? But I am among you as the one who serves."” Luke 22:23-27 NASB.

The disciples were bickering about who was the greatest among them, and did not think who would take the servant’s role of washing feet, or serve those at the table. Maybe this was why none of them got up to serve the others? But Jesus explained that the greater one is the one who serves.

“Simon Peter said to Him, ‘Lord, then wash not only my feet, but also my hands and my head.’ Jesus said to him, "He who has bathed needs only to wash his feet, but is completely clean; and you are clean, but not all of you. For He knew the one who was betraying Him; for this reason He said, ‘Not all of you are clean.’” John 13:9-11 NASB.

The disciples, except for Judas, were clean. But they needed help and needed to make some changes. Each of them needed to stop bickering and seeking the first place for themselves, and they needed to be the servant of others. They had lessons to learn on pride and self-seeking. In the same way in our day, those who are Christian, who should love Jesus and want to be His servant, sometimes argue and bicker with each other. But unfortunately not all who claim to be Christian, who should be Jesus’ disciple, are clean, and not all are truly His servant – some serve themselves during the week, and then come to Church. But some are clean, and just need to learn this lesson of humility, to wash one another’s feet.

“So when He had washed their feet, and taken His garments and reclined at the table again, He said to them, ‘Do you know what I have done to you? You call Me Teacher and Lord; and you are right, for so I am. If I then, the Lord and the Teacher, washed your feet, you also ought to wash one another's feet. For I gave you an example that you also should do as I did to you. Truly, truly, I say to you, a slave is not greater than his master, nor is one who is sent greater than the one who sent him. If you know these things, you are blessed if you do them.’” John 13:12-17 NASB.  

What things are you blessed if you do them? Wash one another’s feet, or to bear one another’s burdens; being the servant of the brethren and others. Is Jesus your Master? Yes? Then do as He did and serve others, washing their feet and helping them. Blessed are you if you do these things, following in your Master’s footsteps. Do you know what Jesus has done for you? Then walk in His footsteps.

Dear reader, are you Jesus’ disciple? Are you His servant? Are you clean before Him? Have you let the Spotless Lamb of God take away your sins and make you clean? If you do not let Jesus wash you, you have no part with Him! You must let Him forgive you and cleanse you from all unrighteousness. 1 John 1:9. Then you will be His disciple. If you appreciate His love for you, which took the guilt and burdens of your sins away from you and gave you peace, you should greatly love Him. If you love Him, you can’t help but want to be His servant. If you are His servant, you will want to bear one another’s burdens and wash the brethren’s feet. If you are His servant you will want to tell others about God’s love for you and how He saved you and took all your sins and burdens away! If He has done all of this for you, how could you not be His servant? How could you not love Him all the way, and be filled with His love, joy, and wonderful peace? Something to think about… Blessed are you if you do these things – wash one another’s feet and be Jesus’ servant and disciple.

Do not seek to be first. Do not seek your own way. Do not bicker with one another, or beat up on God’s other servants. Be clean from all your sins, allowing Jesus to take them all away, and have wonderful peace! Let the kindness and love of God fill your heart, may His wonderful Spirit fill you, and make you His loving servant, sacrificing all on the altar of your heart, counting all things but rubbish, but for the excellency of knowing and serving Him. God forbid that we should glory in anything but the cross! “But God forbid that I should glory, save in the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom the world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Galatians 6:14 KJV.

May the grace of God be with you. May you decide to follow Jesus, be clean and wash one another’s feet. Amen.

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He who is not with Me is against Me

Jesus said, “He who is not with Me is against Me; and he who does not gather with Me, scatters.” Luke 11:23 NASB. 

This message is very important!

What does it mean to be ‘for Jesus?’

It means to be His disciple, to bear much fruit for Him and His Father; this is to tell the wonderful news of salvation to those who don’t know. If you are ‘for Jesus’ you will be unable to help yourself from doing something for Him, whom you love. Jesus said, “My Father is glorified by this, that you bear much fruit, and so prove to be My disciples.” John 15:8 NASB. To be for Jesus is to cast all on the altar to Him, to love and obey Him in all things. To be for Jesus is to be for Him all the way. But there are those who long for something better who haven’t discovered how good Jesus is yet, and do not know how much He and His Father love them. They try to be a better Christian, but sometimes struggle against Him, sometimes getting proud, and sometimes drifting away from Him. This was me before I had the change that I now have. I don’t want to go back to the old me, before I discovered how much God loved and loves me, and wanted me to have a better life with Him. But He knew that I was searching for a better life, and that I wasn’t satisfied with what I had and wanted something better. It is no real sacrifice to give all for Jesus and His Father when you know the value of what they offer you, and the sweet peace, love, joy and faith they will bring you when you yield fully to their love. It only seems like a sacrifice when you are unsure how good God is, or whether you want to completely surrender to Him or not. It only seems like a sacrifice before you have fallen completely in love with Him! Once you learn to love Him like this, then it will be an easy thing to surrender completely to Him, it will be no real sacrifice, because you get more than you lose - you get oh so much more! And you will lose your desire for the things of this world that you once thought you needed that God wants you to give up.

What does it mean to be ‘against Him?’

This is the status quo. All who are not fully His or those living their life for themselves, who look to have their own way will sometimes or always be against Him, whether they are in the Church or in the world. For those in the Church like this, this is a halfway conversion to Christianity: one foot in the Church and one foot in the world. The advantage to being in ‘the Church’ is to know the truth of the plan of salvation; to know how to be forgiven and to know how to be free from the slavery of sin. Unfortunately we believe that many people do not know how to become free, even though they are a Christian, to not be a servant to sin anymore. They are not being taught this, perhaps because their teachers do not know about how to be free themselves or do not care to know how to be free. But whether you are in the Church or not the real question is whether you are a servant of sin or not. “Then said Jesus to those Jews which believed on him, If ye continue in my word, then are ye my disciples indeed; and ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free. They answered him, We be Abraham's seed, and were never in bondage to any man: how sayest thou, Ye shall be made free? Jesus answered them, Verily, verily, I say unto you, Whosoever committeth sin is the servant of sin. And the servant abideth not in the house for ever: but the Son abideth ever. If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.” John 8:31-36 KJV. Has the Son made you free yet? He wants to. If He has made you free, you will no longer be a servant or a slave to sin. Please let Jesus free you from being a servant of sin. Then you will be Jesus’ disciple and be ‘for Him.’ If Jesus has freed you from the bondage of sin, you will be ‘for him’, and not scatter from Him.

What does it mean to ‘scatter?’

You don’t have to try too hard to scatter; your human nature will take care of this for you. The unrenewed heart, when it manifests itself, turns others away from the kingdom of Heaven. The biggest threat to Christianity are Christians who are not fully on God’s side. If you are not for Him all the way you will be working against His plan in some way at some point, in His plan to help other sinners repent and want to be saved. If you have given your heart to God, and have the Holy Spirit in your heart, you can’t help but be with Jesus and work with Him to help Him gather souls for His kingdom in Heaven. But if your love for Him is not paramount, you will be scattering to some extent, depending on how far you are from Him.

To be ‘for Jesus’:

“Then Peter said to Him, "Behold, we have left everything and followed You; what then will there be for us?" And Jesus said to them, "Truly I say to you, that you who have followed Me, in the regeneration when the Son of Man will sit on His glorious throne, you also shall sit upon twelve thrones, judging the twelve tribes of Israel.” Matthew 19:27-28 NASB. For those who have given up all to serve Jesus what will there be for them in Heaven? They will get the special honor in assisting God in Heaven and provided with thrones to sit on. They will be given the responsibility of assisting God in the judgement of ‘Israel’ like it says above. [The details on how this is part of the judgement is outside the scope of this article.] Jesus also says in Matthew 22:30 that the eternally saved will be like the angels in Heaven. Why? To serve God like the Angels do! What a joy! What an honor! Ransomed sinners allowed to act as messengers of God for the universe! That is what an angel is, a messenger of God. Do you want to be a messenger of God? Jesus then goes on to say in our Matthew 19 passage, “And everyone who has left houses or brothers or sisters or father or mother or children or farms for My name's sake, will receive many times as much, and will inherit eternal life.” Matthew 19:29 NASB. Whatever sacrifice you make for your Jesus, whom you love, will be more than amply repaid out of the eternal riches of Heaven! And whenever you help someone on their way to Heaven, you will accrue joy and happiness throughout eternity as they thank you over and over again for inviting them to Heaven or helping them get there, and you will be so happy as you see their peace, happiness and joy! And you will also have the most wonderful joy of knowing that your loving Heavenly Father is pleased with you, because He loves everyone so much! ‘For God so loved the world…’ John 3:16. You make Him happy when you help others know of His Love and help them to Heaven. What kind of price tag can you put on this? You can not. Whatever you give up for God or sacrifice for Him is small and paltry compared with your reward. But if you have God’s love in your heart, you will not be doing it for the reward of the pearly gates and your mansion and crown of Gold you will receive, because love and joy is the reward of those who serve Him, love is the true reward of the righteous. Your mansion and crown of gold is just icing on the cake, to use a common expression! And if you decide to yield all the way now to God and serve Him, you will start to get your reward now! Are you ready to get your reward?

Jesus declared, “But love ye your enemies, and do good, and lend, hoping for nothing again; and your reward shall be great, and ye shall be the children of the Highest: for He is kind unto the unthankful and to the evil. Be ye therefore merciful, as your Father also is merciful.” Luke 6:35-36 KJV. If you want the promised great reward, you must also love and obey God and love your neighbor as yourself, and teach others to do so too.

Study more of the importance of loving and obeying God, and loving your neighbor as yourself in Matthew 5:19; 22:36-40; Psalms 19:7-11; 1 John 4:8; John 13:34-35; Romans 13:8-10; 1 John 2:7-10; John 14:15, 21, 23, 24. (We have also written much on this in other blogs and in some of our books which you can read as well. We recommend that you read all of our blogs.)

Why are we making such a big deal about being completely ‘for Jesus’ and doing what Jesus and His Father want you to do? Because being in the middle and not being for Him all the way is not the way of peace, joy, and happiness. If you want God to be pleased with you do what He asks willingly. Give up all of your problems and indecisiveness to Him, and let Him help you be for Him all the way. It is not hard to do what God asks you to do, if you will just learn to love Him and let yourself yield to Him. God will help you, if you desire a better life and you cooperate with Him. But it is impossible to make these changes by yourself. If you will yield to God all the way you will be at your happiest, and have all the peace, love and joy you were meant to have! And you will have the promised great reward! But if you do not yield to Him all the way, you will eventually incur His displeasure, because you will work to scatter Jesus’ flock. If you are not for Jesus all the way you will scatter from Him, or teach others that it is OK to not love Him with all their heart, mind and soul, or to not love their neighbor as themselves, or you will teach them that God is not powerful enough to save those who turn to Him for help. Or if you are not for Jesus, you will work in some way to prevent someone else from being saved. If you are not ‘for Jesus’ you will not go into Heaven yourself, and will try to prevent others from going in there. Note here what Jesus said to a class of ‘God’s people’ who were doing this very thing: “But woe to you, scribes and Pharisees, hypocrites, because you shut off the kingdom of heaven from people; for you do not enter in yourselves, nor do you allow those who are entering to go in.” Matthew 23:13 NASB.

Sadly, many who call themselves Christian are not really for Jesus; they are only part time followers of Him. When it requires bearing a cross or separating from the world or worldly practices, they are not there yet. Mark 8:34; 10:21; John 12:25-26; Luke 14:26-27, 33. Unfortunately there are many preachers who tell them they are OK the way they are, since they are under grace (the implication is that they don’t need to consecrate themselves fully to Jesus and His Father since they are under grace). But to those who truly love Him, half-way service to Him will never be enough. They are so happy for the grace that they have received they can’t wait to tell or show it to others. Or to help others who are not as fortunate as they, the poor, the sick or to visit those who are in prison.

If you have God’s love in your heart, you will be completely for Jesus and the Father. But if you haven’t yielded your heart completely to them, you will not be completely for them, which means as Jesus said that you are against Him. There is no middle ground. Whoever is not totally on Jesus’ side will work against Him in some way or scatter in some way at some point. You are either for Jesus or you are against Him. Let this sink in. If anyone does not have the Spirit of Christ he is none of His. Romans 8:9. This is very serious. Do you want to belong to Christ? Do you want His Spirit? He who doesn’t have His Spirit is against Him, scatters, and does not belong to Him.

Do you want to belong to Christ and to be ‘for Him’?

It is so sweet to belong to Him and to be ‘for Him!’ It has to be experienced to be understood. When you belong to Him like this, you will love Him with all of your heart, mind and soul, and long to serve Him, helping Him gather in the harvest for the end of the world. And you would do anything for Him! Then you are for Him all the way, and not scattering or leading souls astray. God can forgive you if you do not fully belong to Him yet, or if you have ever scattered from Him. There is still time to repent! But it is much better and much sweeter to belong to God all the way now, so you can enjoy the sweetness in life you were meant to have, and enjoy serving Him and loving others!

When you belong to Christ, you will be given ‘the Spirit of Christ’ and will be given all the help you need to serve Him with, and those unclean spirits of unkindness, ungratefulness, unforgiveness, no mercy, evil surmising, complaining, bitterness, and criticism of others will be gone and you will have sweet love in your heart for your brother or sister who has wronged you or gone against your beliefs, and not living right as some would say. “Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.” Matthew 5:7 KJV. Then you will help the sick and dying in this world from sin, and thus you will prove to be Jesus’ disciple, and will bear much fruit for the kingdom of God, and God will be pleased with you. John 15:8.

Dear reader are you with Jesus or are you against Him? Do you gather with Him or scatter?

We hope and pray that the grace of God will be with you as you ponder this message. And He will be with you if you will listen to His voice. Please study and restudy this message, with much prayer and believe that God loves you and will help you, if you will seek after Him with all your heart. Amen. Jeremiah 29:11-13.

By John Foll, finished writing 11/04/2017 and 11/05/2017
© Copyright 2017 John Foll

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