Simon Peter was incensed. How could He ever think about doing such a thing? Jesus had just confounded everyone saying that one of them would betray Him, and nobody seemed to understand. Eventually everyone moved on with dinner conversation and then the argument rose. It was an argument they had hashed repeatedly since they had began following Jesus: Who would be the greatest? They knew Jesus was the Messiah, and that He was truly their King. They had asked Him to be His right-hand man, and even their families have asked Him to remember their children in the kingdom. They had been through many trials and tribulations suffering with Him throughout all the persecution and had seen and performed many miracles. There had to be a hierarchy, but Jesus was doing something that did not make any sense. How could He do such a thing as their King? He laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around His waist. Then He poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples’ feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped around Him (John 13:4b-5).
While it was true that Jesus was the King, and that He was deserving of all things for all things belong to Him as God, Jesus did not come to be served. There were a few times in His life where He allowed others to honor Him, but His mission was one of service to us, and to be an example of service to each other. Matthew 20:25b-28 says, “You know that the rulers of the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. It shall not be so among you. But whoever would be great among you must be your servant, and whoever would be first among you must be your slave, even as the Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many.”
Jesus taught to be a servant to one another, doing right by one another. Acts 20:35 reads, “In all things I have shown you that by working hard in this way we must help the weak and remember the words of the Lord Jesus, how he himself said, ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’”
Was this radical teaching of Jesus new to the order of God? Even if you go back to the first written laws of God, six of the ten commandments were about how to treat fellow men. God cares so deeply about how we relate to each other that God tells us, in Matthew 5:23-24, to abandon having a relationship with God until we mend relations with our fellow man.
God wants us to work together in this life. The first interaction between humans was when Adam and Eve were created for the express purpose of being a helpmeet. They were to help each other; to not be alone, and in a relationship with one another which is in such harmony that they were, proverbially, two sides of the same coin.
In doing this, we also must learn discipline. The girding of one’s own desire for the sake of helping others is a mission of Christians. Hebrews 12 describes how God treats us as His children in the way that parents teach discipline to their children. A child will choose the desires of the flesh, not because they are evil but because God has made them to learn. It is the job of parents to discipline their children, not to give into their desires but to give them what is good. It is the discipline within oneself to understand that “sparing the rod” is a form of hatred, not pushing the child to discipline but into destruction, a life of lawlessness (Proverbs 13:24). Jesus was the ultimate example of this discipline as we see His desire not to go to the cross: “My father, if it be possible, let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as you will” (Matthew 26:39b).
The humanity of Jesus is recorded in this verse. The will of the flesh is to continue to exist. The will of the flesh is to not be harmed. The will of the flesh is to find comfort and safety. The will of the flesh is to try and bend the will of the spirit to its will even though that will find its end one day while the spirit will continue. Jesus knew that He came to serve men. His body was screaming at Him wanting to live, and Jesus knew that the most important thing was to serve these people in the way that only He could. This is how He showed us that He loved us. It might be said that He showed love by feeding those crowds by the sea, or by healing the masses, or by raising the dead. It might be said that to continue love, we should find a way to continue those things, but the fact is that those things just tell us the same message God had given us from the very beginning: We must help each other; lifting each other up, laughing, crying, and loving together in discipline toward knowing the will of God.
Lance Byers