John 13:11Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

That is, for the present you are clean only in this respect. You have already received the light. You have already been freed from Jewish errors.

So also the prophet says: "Wash yourselves, make yourselves clean; remove your evil deeds from before My eyes" (Isa 1:16). Therefore such a man has already been washed and is clean.

Since the apostles had cast every wickedness from their souls and lived with Christ in a pure conscience, He says, in accordance with the prophet's words, that "he who is washed is already clean."

By washing here He does not mean the Jewish washing with water, but the cleansing of conscience.

Therefore let us also be clean. Let us learn to do good. But what is good? "Defend the orphan, plead for the widow. Then come, and let us reason together, says the Lord" (Isa 1:17-18).

Scripture often speaks in this way about widows and orphans, yet we do not think of it.

Meanwhile, consider what reward there is. "Though your sins are like scarlet," it says, "I will make them white as snow; though they are red like crimson, I will make them white as wool" (Isa 1:18).

Widows are defenseless, and therefore the Lord has great care for them. They could, of course, enter a second marriage, but out of fear of God they endure the sorrows of widowhood.

Let all of us, men and women, give them a helping hand. Then we ourselves may not someday fall into the heavy lot of widowhood, or, if we do, may have full right to expect mercy for ourselves.

The tears of a widow have no small power. They can open heaven itself.

Let us not wrong them, nor increase their misfortune, but let us give them every possible help.

If we act in this way, we shall provide ourselves complete security both in the present life and in the age to come.

Not only here, but also there, they will serve as our defense. For the good deeds shown to them, they will deliver us from the greater part of our sins.

They will enable us to stand with boldness before the judgment seat of Christ. May we all be counted worthy of this by the grace and love for mankind of our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory unto the ages of ages. Amen.

They were clean at least in this respect, that they had already received the Light and had already been freed from Jewish error.

For hear how Isaiah teaches us to wash: "Wash yourselves and be clean; remove wickedness from your souls" (Isa 1:16).

Therefore the Lord rightly calls His disciples washed and clean, for they remained with Christ in all innocence and simplicity.

But in that other one, the guilt of insatiable avarice and the weakness of his disposition toward our Lord Jesus Christ implant an indelible stain. They produce the impurity of incomparable ill will.

Therefore, when Christ says, "You are already clean, but not all," He makes a hidden yet profitable rebuke to the betrayer.

For although He did not speak clearly, as we have just noted, there was in each man a conscience that judges and pierces the sinner. It almost necessarily directed the force of the words spoken toward the guilty one.

Understand how full this act is of good providence and divine long-suffering.

If He had said clearly who would betray Him, He would have made the others enemies of the betrayer. Something irreparable might perhaps have happened.

He might have suffered premature punishment, if someone had been inflamed with zeal for piety and resolved to kill the Lord's betrayer before the time.

Therefore, by using veiled speech and leaving the sharp rebuke to conscience, He showed the incomparable greatness of the long-suffering present in Him.

Although He knew that He had an evil and ill-minded disciple, suffering from the poison of diabolical bitterness and thinking only how to betray Him, He nevertheless honored him equally with the others.

He even washed his feet, preserving His love to the furthest limit and not imposing His wrath before the guilt reached its end.

Here too you can see the dignity proper to His divine nature. For although God knows the future, He does not for that reason impose premature punishment on anyone.

Rather, He is long-suffering for the appointed time. When He sees that nothing helps them any longer and that they remain in the vices they have chosen, then at last He punishes.

He shows this punishment to be the work of their evil will, not of His own will or desire.

For this reason Ezekiel says: "As I live, says the Lord, I do not desire the death of the dying, but that he turn from his evil way and live" (Ezek 18:32; 33:11).

Thus our Lord Jesus Christ, with long-suffering and mercy, still allowed the betrayer to remain in fellowship with His other disciples.

Although "the devil had already put it into his heart to betray Him" (Jn 13:2), and the Evangelist considered it necessary to point this out at the beginning, He nevertheless washed even his feet.

He made his impiety inexcusable, so that his apostasy might appear as the fruit of the evil present within him.

In one in whom the chief and essential thing has already been cleansed, his heart by faith and full devotion to the word of truth, there is no need for a new cleansing from sinful impurities.

So you also are clean. But since this could not be said of Judas, He added, "but not all."

If, further, the supposition is correct that the dispute about the disciples' primacy mentioned by the Evangelist Luke was the occasion for Jesus Christ to wash their feet, then here we shall have the following distinction between Luke and John.

The former intends to convey only the teaching of Jesus Christ on humility. Therefore he briefly points to the disciples' dispute about primacy as the occasion for this teaching, without explaining in detail how the dispute began and without recounting the washing of the feet.

The Evangelist John directs his chief attention to this: in washing the disciples' feet, besides the lesson of humility, the highest manifestation of Jesus Christ's love for "His own," who were to remain after Him in the world, was accomplished.

There was an enemy-disciple among His disciples, one who had already definitively resolved in his heart to betray his Lord. He Himself fully knew His divine authority and dignity.

Yet, wishing to teach the disciples self-denying love and humility by His own example, He takes upon Himself the task of a servant.

He washes the feet of His disciples, not excluding even His betrayer, and thereby shows His love for them to the end (1-3).

The reading γενομενου favors this supposition even more.

He must not say that he has, as it were, washed himself from his sins. Having been freed from former sins, he still remains capable of sin.

If he does not commit grave sins, still minor sins soil his soul, as dust soils his bare feet.

Just as one who has washed cannot avoid the constant washing of his feet, so one who has abandoned a sinful life cannot do without constant repentance for sins committed daily.

As He washed Peter's feet, Jesus turned to the rest of the apostles and said to them: "And you are clean, but not all."

In transmitting these words, the Evangelist explains that Jesus knew His betrayer, and therefore said, "You are not all clean."

It is this: whoever among you, the apostles, has already attained moral cleansing of spirit in communion with Me, like one who has cleansed his body by washing, needs only cleansing from the particular sinful stains unavoidable in life.

This is like the washing of the feet only in one who has bathed. In general he is clean in his moral person. He needs not an entire washing, but a particular washing, a cleansing.

This is frequent repentance before God for one's sins.

"And you are clean," the Lord continues, applying the general truth just stated to His small community. You are clean in the sense in which I spoke about one who has been washed.

You have acquired this moral purity in general through communion with Me (cf. Jn 13:10). You need only a particular cleansing, as one who has washed needs only the washing of his feet.

"But not all of you are such," the Lord concludes. There is one among you who has not drawn from communion with Me this moral purity of spirit, and he remains unclean.

Thus the Evangelist himself explains the saying, "You are clean, but not all," for, he says, He knew His betrayer (cf. Jn 6:64 and note).

Yet his head is lifted toward heaven, his spirit and mind are directed to the things above, and his heart beats with heavenly feelings.

"Who can understand his falls into sin? Cleanse me from my secret faults," David prayed (Ps 19:12).

Thus, after rebirth in the font of baptism, everyone needs washing by the grace of repentance. This must especially be repeated before the Holy Eucharist, as the Savior washed the disciples' feet before this mystery.

They had already been enlightened by the great light. They had already been freed from Jewish errors. They had cast out of their souls every wickedness. Thus Chrysostom, Homily 70.

This was the rebirth of which Isaiah prophesied, saying, "Wash yourselves and be clean; remove wickedness from your souls" (Isa 1:16, Slavonic translation).

The souls of the apostles had already been washed by the Word. The sin common to mankind had already been taken upon the shoulders of the divine Sacrifice.

Only that particular stain remained on them which no man avoids while passing through the dust of life's road.

A man's feet touch the earth and its dust, although his head and hands stretch upward toward the Most High.

A man, though "washed" by grace, still cannot be completely clean, like a traveler walking along a dusty road.

The Lord washes away this final dust, bending as a servant over the disciples' feet.

Such, it seems, is the meaning of the Lord's words with respect to each individual faithful disciple whose feet He washed.

But in the following verse, verse 11, the meaning of the Lord's words seems to embrace the whole Church. This Church is represented by Peter and all the apostles, including the betrayer.

Within the pure Church the betrayer represents a stain: "For this reason He said, 'You are not all clean.'"

Apart from the individual person, one must consider the purity of the Church. It cannot be shaken or defiled because one of its members proves defiled and unworthy to remain in its bosom.

The infected member is cut off precisely because in soul he does not belong to the Church. In the Church, the bonds uniting the members are spiritual bonds, not bonds of coercion.

He leaves the Church because he was not her son. Otherwise he would have remained in her: "They went out from us, but they were not of us; for if they had been of us, they would have remained with us. But it was made manifest that they are not all of us" (1 Jn 2:19).

Such was the position of Judas the betrayer, leaving Christ's supper in order to rush into the abyss.