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1. We have already, beloved, as the Lord was pleased to enable
us, expounded to you those words of the Gospel, where the Lord, in
washing His disciples' feet, says, "He that is once washed needeth
not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit." Let us now look
at what follows. "And ye," He says, "are clean, but not all."
And to remove the need of inquiry on our part, the evangelist has
himself explained its meaning, by adding: "For He knew who it was
that should betray Him; therefore said He, Ye are not all clean."
Can anything be clearer? Let us therefore pass to what follows.
2. "So, after He had washed their feet, and had taken His
garments, and was set down again, He said unto them, Know ye what
I have done to you?" Now it is that the blessed Peter gets that
promise fulfilled: for he had been put off when, in the midst of his
trembling and asserting, "Thou shalt never wash my feet," he
received the answer, "What I do, thou knowest not now, but thou
shall know hereafter" (vers. 7, 8). Here, then, is that very
hereafter; it is now time to tell what was a little ago deferred.
Accordingly, the Lord, mindful of His foregoing promise to make him
understand an act of His so unexpected, so wonderful, so
frightening, and, but for His own still more terrifying rejoinder,
impossible to be permitted, that the Master not only of themselves,
but of angels, and the Lord not only of them, but of all things,
should wash the feet of His own disciples and servants: having then
promised to let him know the meaning of so important an act, when He
said, "Thou shalt know afterwards," begins now to show them what it
was that He did.
3. "Ye call me," He says, "Master and Lord: and ye say
well; for so I am." "Ye say well," for ye only say the truth;
I am indeed what ye say. There is a precept laid on man: "Let not
thine own mouth praise thee, but the mouth of thy neighbor." For
self-pleasing is a perilous thing for one who has to be on his guard
against falling into pride. But He who is over all things, however
much He commend Himself, cannot exalt Himself above His actual
dignity: nor can God be rightly termed arrogant. For it is to our
advantage to know Him, not to His; nor can any one know Him,
unless that self-knowing One make Himself known. If He, then, by
abstaining from self-commendation, wish, as it were, to avoid
arrogance, He will deny us the power of knowing Him. And no one
surely would blame Him for calling Himself Master, even though
believing Him to be nothing more than a man; seeing He only makes
profession of what even men themselves in the various arts profess to
such an extent, without any charge of arrogance, that they are termed
professors. But to call Himself also the Lord of His disciples, of
men who, in an earthly sense, were themselves also free-born, who
would tolerate it in a man? But it is God that speaks. Here no
elation is possible to loftiness so great, no lie to the truth: the
profit is ours to be the subjects of such loftiness, the servants of
the truth. That He calls Himself Lord is no imperfection on His
side, but a benefit on ours. The words of a certain profane author
are commended, when he says, "All arrogance is hateful, and
specially disagreeable is that of talent and eloquence;" and yet,
when the same person was speaking of his own eloquence, he said, "I
would call it perfect, were I to pronounce judgment; nor, in truth,
would I greatly fear the charge of arrogance." If, then, that most
eloquent man had in truth no fear of being charged with arrogance, how
can the truth itself have such a fear? Let Him call Himself Lord
who is the Lord, let Him say what is true who is the Truth; so that
I may not fail to learn that which is profitable, by His being silent
about that which is. The most blessed Paul certainly not himself the
only-begotten Son of God, but the servant and apostle of that Son;
not the Truth, but a partaker of the truth declares with freedom and
consistency, "And though I would desire to glory, I shall not be a
fool; for I say the truth." For it would not be in himself, but in
the truth, which is superior to himself, that he was glorying both
humbly and truly: for it is he also who has given the charge, that he
that glorieth should glory in the Lord. Could thus the lover of
wisdom have no fear of being chargeable with foolishness, though he
desired to glory? and would wisdom itself, in its glorying, have any
fear of such a charge? He had no fear of arrogance who said, "My
soul shall make her boast in the Lord;" and could the power of the
Lord have any such fear in commending itself, in which His servant's
soul is making her boast? "Ye call me," He says, "Master and
Lord: and ye say well; for so I am." Therefore ye say well, that
I am so: for if I were not what ye say, ye would be wrong to say
so, even with the purpose of praising me. How, then, could the
Truth deny what the disciples of the Truth affirm? How could that
which was said by the learners be denied by the very Truth that gave
them their learning? How can the fountain deny what the drinker
asserts? how can the light hide what the beholder declares?
4. "If I, then," He says, "your Lord and Master, have
washed your feet, ye also ought to wash one another's feet. For I
have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to you."
This, blessed Peter, is what thou didst not know when thou wert not
allowing it to be done. This is what He promised to let thee know
afterwards, when thy Master and thy Lord terrified thee into
submission, and washed thy feet. We have learned, brethren,
humility from the Highest; let us, as humble, do to one another what
He, the Highest, did in His humility. Great is the commendation
we have here of humility: and brethren do this to one another in turn,
even in the visible act itself, when they treat one another with
hospitality; for the practice of such humility is generally prevalent,
and finds expression in the very deed that makes it discernible.
And hence the apostle, when he would commend the well-deserving
widow, says, "If she is hospitable, if she has washed the saints'
feet." And wherever Such is not the practice among the saints, what
they do not with the hand they do in heart, if they are of the number
of those who are addressed in the hymn of the three blessed men, "O
ye holy and humble of heart, bless ye the Lord." But it is far
better, and beyond all dispute more accordant with the truth, that it
should also be done with the hands; nor should the Christian think it
beneath him to do what was done by Christ. For when the body is bent
at a brother's feet, the feeling of such humility is either awakened
in the heart itself, or is strengthened if already present.
5. But apart from this moral understanding of the passage, we
remember that the way in which we commended to your attention the
grandeur of this act of the Lord's, was that, in washing the feet of
disciples who were already washed and clean, the Lord instituted a
sign, to the end that, on account of the human feelings that occupy us
on earth, however far we may have advanced in our apprehension of
righteousness, we might know that we are not exempt from sin; which
He thereafter washes away by interceding for us, when we pray the
Father, who is in heaven, to forgive us our debts, as we also
forgive our debtors. What connection, then, can such an
understanding of the passage have with that which He afterwards gave
Himself, when He explained the reason of His act in the words,
"If I then, your Lord and Master, have washed your feet, ye also
ought to wash one another's feet. For I have given you an example,
that ye should do as I have done to you"? Can we say that even a
brother may cleanse a brother from the contracted stain of wrongdoing?
Yea, verily, we know that of this also we were admonished in the
profound significance of this work of the Lord's, that we should
confess our faults one to another, and pray for one another, even as
Christ also maketh intercession for us. Let us listen to the Apostle
James, who states this precept with the greatest clearness when he
says, "Confess your faults one to another, and pray one for
another." For of this also the Lord gave us the example. For if
He who neither has, nor had, nor will have any sin, prays for our
sins, how much more ought we to pray for one another's in turn! And
if He forgives us, whom we have nothing to forgive; how much more
ought we, who are unable to live here without sin, to forgive one
another! For what else does the Lord apparently intimate in the
profound significance of this sacramental sign, when He says, "For
I have given you an example, that ye should do as I have done to
you;" but what the apostle declares in the plainest terms,
"Forgiving one another, if any man have a quarrel against any: even
as Christ forgave you, so also do ye"? Let us therefore forgive one
another his faults, and pray for one another's faults, and thus in a
manner be washing one another's feet. It is our part, by His
grace, to be supplying the service of love and humility: it is His to
hear us, and to cleanse us from all the pollution of our sins through
Christ, and in Christ; so that what we forgive even to others, that
is, loose on earth, may be loosed in heaven.
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