How Loss Life is Saved and Kept.

“Without humility, we keep all our defects;

and they are only crusted over by pride,

which conceals them from others,

and often from ourselves!”

-Francois de La Rochefoucauld-

The Price of a Common Slave

The Master was alone with His first chosen disciples, just before His last earthly Passover feast on earth. His mind was ever-so-preoccupied at the heightened realization that His hour had finally come, in that within hours, His prophetically ordained appointed time to depart out of this world, and return back to The Father in heaven was paramount.

Throughout Jesus from Nazareth’s public ministry, He constantly reminded those whom He loved, of His impending death, which rightly so, frightened, disillusioned, and saddened His disciples.

This is so in part due to perhaps their struggles with their limited understanding of The Coming Kingdom of Heaven upon the earth, as well as other very real and important factors such as spiritual immaturity that they faced in their short calling as His disciples.

None was more disillusioned and later distraught than Judas who excluded himself from the group, in order to betray his Lord. As a matter of record, it was in Matthew that he writes the actions of Judas as he had gone to the authorities before this final Seder of The Messiah, in an effort to ask what they would pay him to betray his Master. They offered the price of a common slave, thirty pieces of silver which Judas accepted!

Nevertheless, in somewhat a very mystical yet spiritual riff, The Master communicated to the other eleven disciples, that ‘verily, verily I say to you, a grain of wheat remains a single grain, but if dropped into the earth, the laws of nature will multiply it’.

For only as single grains are buried in the earth can life-germs within burst forth producing the blade, stalk, an ear of corn. The Master applies this same natural law of life out of death to the spiritual and moral world in an effort at further educating His disciples about His life, death, resurrection and eventual coming Kingdom upon the earth.

Below are two profound and most difficult spiritual truths, principles, and disciplines for all followers of The Master to embrace for the initial disciples of antiquity, as well as disciples of modernity:

“If life is loved simply for itself, it is lost. But if it is lost in the well-being of others, then by such a loss life is saved and kept.”

“The life of self is death, The death of self is Life.”

Self-life dies very hard, thus the very concept of martyrdom is an impossible commission for those who live a carnal or materialistic lifestyle. Self-seeking and self-loving will never result in a harvest of any divine blessing.

The more that The Master proclaimed concerning His Kingdom to His disciples, the record states that there was increased warring strife among them. For their minds and hearts were focused on those things physically, worldly and individualistically.

As is the case with us today, whether we are disciples of The Master or not, we too strive for pre-eminence, power, and importance within the construct and trends of this current age, at the very risk of being blind to the fact that within the Kingdom of God:

“Humility is the very Pathway to Honor” within the Household of God!

The Master brilliantly enforced this very difficult truth to His disciples by taking the lowly position of the slave, whose multiple tasks was to wash the feet of those who entered the house.

Mind you that this Man Jesus is not just any man, He is the unique incarnation of God in the earth who has “Laid” aside from the garment of His eternal glory, and wrapped Himself around with the garment of our humanity! He is Emmanuel, God with us for the House of David [Matthew 1:1; Roman 1:1-3].

In only a few days after this very above-mentioned last Passover Celebration that He is sharing with His disciples, this same Jesus from Nazareth would neatly “Lie” His graves clothes in the sepulcher where He was laid to rest after being crucified as the Lamb of God. Mary Magdalene, Peter, and John were the eyewitness of this as recorded in John 20:6-8.

see Lamb of God link:https://www.biblestudytools.com/bible-study/topical-studies/what-does-it-mean-that-jesus-is-the-lamb-of-god.html

In the above setting taken from John, He as the Son of Man, “Laid” aside His outer garments, which would impede the action of washing His disciple’s feet. He then took a towel, and pouring water into a basin, washed the disciples’ feet, and then dried them with the long towel He had knotted around His waist.

Perhaps it was the beloved John who was the nearest to The Master, had his feet washed first, and then Peter who took offense to this act by saying, “Lord, dost Thou wash my feet?”

Reflective thought and real-life analysis of Peter’s response [mine as well, Lord continue to help us in our limited understanding].

“What sorrow awaits those who argue with their Creator. Does a clay pot argue with its maker? Does the clay dispute with the one who shapes it, saying, ‘Stop, you’re doing it wrong!’ Does the pot exclaim, ‘How clumsy can you be?’ Isaiah 45:9

In Brother Peter’s mindset, such an act of humility was incomprehensible to Peter so The Master responded, “What I do thou knowest not now, but thou shalt know hereafter.”

In time, both Peter and John came to know and declare the symbolic significance of their Master’s self-emptying action. Peter reminds them that the towel was the “Badge of Slavery,” urged the saints to be girded with humility, [1 Peter 5:5].

Brother John too came to see that The Master’s humiliation led to His glorious exaltation; that the badge of slavery became the girdle of kingship. In the revelation of His glory, John saw Him “girt about the breasts with a golden girdle.”

The old sackcloth of the slave was transmuted into the Glory and Purple of Sovereignty!

Humility empowers Forgiveness

As The Master demonstrated self-humiliation so is it with his faithful followers. The Master was not concerned with the physical dirt or uncleanliness of the outer man, He was commissioned by His Father to cleansed and spiritually make alive the inner man for the Kingdom.

The Master knew that even those who are spiritually reborn will still have to contend with their old sin nature as they continue to walk through this fallen world as His called-out, and commissioned ones, forgiven and then empowered by His Holy Spirit, to do the work of the Kingdom of God.

All is not lost in that now, as a follower, we now only need to confess sins to be entirely clean again! “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.” 1 John: 9

The key word and or spiritual practice that is illustrated by The Master foot washing is forgiveness.

The physical washing of the disciple’s feet was an illustration of how now each disciple of The Messiah is called to practice meekness and lowliness of heart toward one another as it was taught and then practiced by The Master toward us.

“Spiritual feet-washing” is what Paul communicates to the believers in Galatia, “Brethren, even if a man be overtaken in any trespass, ye which is spiritual, restore such a one in the spirit of meekness, lest ye also be tempted.” [Galatians 6:1]

In closing,

How is the loss of life saved and kept?

Seek to be like the One who initiated the “Order of the Towel.” Become spiritual regenerated in order to receive His forgiveness of our sins while learning to practice meekness and lowliness of heart toward others, while being clothed with the apron of humility in order to produce a great yield of Good Works for the Kingdom of God.

Prayer

I thank my Lord for His willingness to be buried in the earth for each living soul in order to provide lost humanity a means toward truth and life in this very present age, and the eventual coming of Your eternal Kingdom.

I thank you, Master, that only You have been raised from the dead, now and forevermore, and You are the First Fruits of those who are asleep. Thank You that in your death, burial, and resurrection, we who know You and follow You are rescued and are heirs to The Household of God.

You now grant forgiveness of sin to all who faithfully receive Your spiritual blessings. It is by learning and following your example, that each of us may becoming benefactors of Kingdom related spiritual truth while we now live.

None more important that Your teaching and demonstrating the transfiguration of the service of the lowest to the sovereignty at the highest. Only at present, can I now embrace my own cross daily, while learning to die to self, in order to Live for Christ in this life, and the life to come! Amen.

This blog post was inspired by my reflective, analysis biblical interpretation of The Parable of the Grain of Wheat [John 12:20-26] and The Parable of Feet-Washing [John 13:1-11]. Both of which were gleaned from the book, All the Parables of the Bible, by Herbert Lockyer.