John 13 - CSB Spurgeon Study Bible

13:1 “Before the Passover Festival, Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart from this world to the Father. Having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end.” Here is a beautiful description of Christ’s death—“to depart from this world to the Father,” just as though he was merely going on a journey, leaving one land for another. And if this is a fair description of such a stormy passage as that of our Lord Jesus, it must with equal truth describe the death of any of the children of God. The loosing of the cable, the spreading of the sail, the crossing over the narrow sea, the coming to the eternal haven and abiding there—what Christian heart needs to dread this?

Then consider the abiding love of Christ—“having loved his own”—his by election, his by redemption, for he regarded that as already done which was about to be accomplished. And “he loved them to the end,” or “to the perfection” as it might be rendered. The alpha of his love that we find in eternity bids us believe we will find the omega of it nowhere but there.

13:3-4 “Jesus knew that the Father had given everything into his hands, that he had come from God, and that he was going back to God. So he got up from supper, laid aside his outer clothing, took a towel, and tied it around himself.” While Jesus had a more than ordinary consciousness of his own dignified nature and position, he condescended to wash his disciples feet! And though many years elapsed between the event and the time John recorded it, all the details were pressed in his memory so that he distinctly mentions each separate act—Jesus “got up from supper, laid aside his outer clothing, took a towel, and tied it around himself.”

13:6 “He came to Simon Peter, who asked him, ‘Lord, are you going to wash my feet?’” We have often noticed Peter’s fault. Let us notice Peter’s excellence. I admire his humility in thinking it too inferior an office for Christ to wash his feet. It is a most proper feeling. It seemed an overwhelming condescension of love that he could scarcely permit. Although he spoke rashly when he said, “You will never wash my feet,” his motive was a good one. It was because he could not allow his Lord to stoop so low—to wash the feet of such a poor fisherman.

13:34-35 “I give you a new command: Love one another. Just as I have loved you, you are also to love one another. By this everyone will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another.” The love Christ commands his followers to have toward one another is not the ordinary love of person to person as such but the love of the new person in Christ to the new person in Christ. We are to love one another fervently in that sense. This love arises out of a totally new union. A person who is a Christian belongs to a special family. That family circle does not include the whole human race; it is a family inside the larger human family yet separated from it by an inner spiritual life. The moment a person is born again, he or she enters that inner circle and becomes a member of a new family. Within that sacred circle of electing love we are “all one in Christ Jesus” (Gl 3:28). We are brothers and sisters in Christ and are called to a new kind of love, a love that is like the love of natural siblings, only more sublime and with better reasons lying at the bottom than even the love of family members.

What’s more, we who believe in Jesus are going to live together in heaven forever and ever, so we may as well be good friends while we are here. We will see one another there in one common glory and be occupied forever in one common employment—the adoration of our Lord and Savior. The remembrance of this truth of God ought to break down many of the barriers that separate us.