Why did Jesus wash the disciples’ feet?

The scene in John 13

Only John tells this story, and he sets it up with care. It is the evening before Passover. Judas has already decided to betray him. And Jesus knows “that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he came from God and was going to God” (John 13:3). Then the one with all things in his hands picks up a towel.

arose from supper, and laid aside his outer garments. He took a towel and wrapped a towel around his waist. Then he poured water into the basin, and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around him.

A servant’s job

People walked dusty roads in sandals, and at a festive meal guests lay on cushions with their feet behind them (how they reclined). A good host offered water so guests could wash their own feet: Abraham did for his three visitors (Genesis 18:4), and Jesus once complained to a Pharisee, “you gave me no water for my feet” (Luke 7:44). Washing someone else’s feet was a servant’s work. When David asks Abigail to marry him, she answers that she is ready to be “a servant to wash the feet of the servants of my lord” (1 Samuel 25:41).

So the teacher takes the lowest place. Luke reports the same lesson in words at the same supper: the disciples argue about which of them is greatest, and Jesus answers, “I am among you as one who serves” (Luke 22:24–27). John shows it in a gesture.

Peter says no

Peter cannot accept it. “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus tells him he will understand later (13:6–7).

Peter said to him, “You will never wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I don’t wash you, you have no part with me.”

Peter swings to the other extreme: then wash my hands and my head too. Someone who has bathed, Jesus replies, needs only his feet washed. “You are clean, but not all of you,” he adds, and John explains that he knew who would betray him (13:9–11). So this is more than good manners. Many readers see in it a picture of the cross. John says Jesus “laid aside” his garments and later took them again, using the same Greek verbs as Jesus’s words about his life: “I lay down my life, that I may take it again” (John 10:17).

“Do as I have done”

Back in his place, Jesus explains: “For I have given you an example, that you should also do as I have done to you” (13:15). A servant is not greater than his master, and “if you know these things, blessed are you if you do them” (13:17). Later that night comes the command that gave Maundy Thursday its name: love one another, “just as I have loved you.” Leviticus had long said, “love your neighbor as yourself” (Leviticus 19:18). What is new is the measure: the towel and the basin.

By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another.

Around AD 197 the Christian writer Tertullian reported what pagans said about believers: “See how they love one another” (Apology 39).

Washing feet today

The first Christians took it literally. A letter to Timothy counts among a widow’s good works that she “has washed the saints’ feet” (1 Timothy 5:10). Catholics wash feet at the evening Mass of Holy Thursday, and many Anglican and Lutheran churches do the same that night. Mennonites, the Church of the Brethren, some Baptist churches and the Seventh-day Adventists keep it as an ordinance, often just before communion. Other churches read it as a call to serve rather than a rite to repeat.