¹⁰ Jesus answered, “Those who have had a bath need only to wash their feet; their whole body is clean. And you are clean, though not every one of you.”

Contrasting most other NT documents, this Gospel writer spoke in picturesque story form with much dialogue. Simple language and vocabulary characterize his communication, but don’t be fooled into thinking that his thoughts and ideas are simple. Interestingly, only John’s account of the gospel does not include Jesus’ comments about becoming like a child in relationship to the kingdom of God (Matt 18:14, Mark 10:15, Luke 18:17). To be sure, as a result of faith, we become the “children of God” (John 1:12) but in John’s focus, simple language was not an effort to reduce the message to its simplest form. Rather, the ideas are not dependent on erudite wording; God used John’s language to convey profound, powerful truths.

Inspired as he was by the Holy Spirit, John now speaks of a different shade of meaning to the feet washing incident. It was more than an example of humility about which he will speak in verse 14. Obvious to every resident of Palestine, dinner guests would have needed some freshening up after arriving in sandal-clad feet; that is even if they had bathed before arriving. But Jesus added what might have seemed odd to the disciples, “You are clean, though not every one of you.” He subtly moved from talking about the feet not being clean, to not everyone present being “clean.”

The next verse makes it clear that Jesus was referring to His betrayer, but the disciples did not know that yet. In fact, much of what He had to say caused a great deal of consternation and self-reflection, as the story unfolds. Here, though, it probably stirred up at most a slight raise of the eye-brow.

Religious people, those with little study of the Scripture, often completely miss the levels of meaning in the teaching of Christ. He was a master at teaching clearly, and at the same time infusing His communications with shades and depth that take a life time of study to plumb. In the disciples’ case, it took the death and resurrection of Christ for them to fully realize that their number had been compromised and they as a group needed to be “cleansed.” That took place in Acts 1:15-26, when awaiting the Pentecostal coming of the Holy Spirit, they brought their number back up to twelve, identifying Matthias as the replacement for Judas who had committed suicide. At that time, they all recognized the prophetic nature of Judas’ betrayal and replacement; they were not prepared or capable of understanding it before them.

Lord, help me to see the “odd” or difficult things in Your word as gateways into deeper understanding of Your ways.