Wet Feet and Life in All its Fullness

We worship a God who acts like a slave. Jesus even said that he “did not come to be served, but to serve”.

This is not the sort of God we would expect. Not the sort of God we could make up. We would imagine that a masterful Creator, an all-powerful King would act a bit like a master, or a King. But he doesn’t – instead of demanding everything from us, he sacrifices his all for us. He comes not to be served, but to serve.

He gets up in the middle of a meal with his disciples, takes off his outer clothing, wraps a towel round his waist and gets down on his knees to wash the muck off their feet.

Think what that must have felt like for the disciples: the feeling of the Master, the Messiah, the Son of God, washing the muck off your feet. Think of him doing that for you.

Are you comfortable with that?

You shouldn’t be.

Peter wasn’t – he told Jesus to stop. And Jesus told them that they too should humble themselves and wash each other’s feet, because “no servant is greater than his master”.  In fact when Jesus said that he “did not come to be served, but to serve”, he was teaching his disciples that “whoever wants to become great among you must be your servant, and whoever wants to be first must be the slave of all.”

In fact what I said earlier isn’t quite true – he sacrifices everything for us, and then demands everything from us. He says, “I have come that they may have life, and have it to the full”, and he says “If anyone wants to come with me, he must deny himself, pick up his cross, and follow me” – and they are the same offer. “For whoever wants to save his life will lose it, but whoever loses his life for me will find it.” The abundant life that Jesus offers us is a life of complete and utter surrender to him and to others. Paul says he is “a slave of God” - the same word as when he says that Jesus himself “took the form of a slave”. The word is ‘doulos’, and it means a slave that ‘was owned, was bought for a price, received no wages, and could not quit.’ That is what we are. Or at least what we should be.

In the post-modern all-you-can-eat buffet of consumer spirituality even we Christians have been fooled into thinking that Jesus is something we can add to our lives to make them better. He is not. He is the true King, who showed us by example that we must be slaves, he is the “Lamb, looking as if it had been slaughtered” who sits on the throne of the eternal God, and calls us to imitate his sacrifice.

So when we talk to our friends about Him, we shouldn’t make it sound like He’s a hobby, or a personal preference in range of valid life choices. We should say that we would be willing to die for him, and in fact, we already have. We should say, with Paul, “I have been crucified with Christ and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.”

And that’s exactly the point – when we give ourselves to Him Christ will live in us. We get to be “living sacrifices”. So I don’t want to guilt-trip anyone who is serving God joyfully – God gives us love, joy and peace lavishly. But He “does not give as the world gives”. He doesn’t offer us ‘a peaceful life’ of the sort our friends might envy – instead his Spirit gives a supernatural peace, a peace that “transcends all understanding”. Charles Spurgeon once prayed, “O Lord, give to your servants that peace which the world cannot give, and the world cannot take away.”

So maybe, if instead of offering our friends Jesus like we’re recommending a nice book, we lived lives saturated with self-sacrifice, that make them ask us ‘are you crazy?’, the world might sit up and take notice. And we might just stumble upon the abundant life that Jesus has been offering us all along.