Doing and Blessing

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” John 13:17

Jesus says this to His disciples the night He is betrayed.

What is He saying?

Is He saying, “Here are my commandments. Know them. Then, discipline yourself! Do them! Show that you have the ability and the gumption and the wherewithal to be My disciple! Once you have done that, I will bless you”?

Jesus has just acted like a menial servant, washing His disciples’ feet. He then says, “You also ought to wash one another’s feet. For I have given you an example, that you also should do just as I have done to you” (John 13:14b-15).

Taken by itself, this sounds as if Jesus is laying a burden on His disciples, assigning them a task to do. So is the interpretation above correct?

No. Indeed, later this evening Jesus will tell these same men, “Apart from Me you can do nothing” (John 15:5).

In addition, John 13 itself shows that Jesus must be saying something different.

Consider His interaction with Peter, who protests, saying Jesus will never wash his feet. Our Lord replies: “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me” (John 13:8).

So once Jesus pays the penalty for Peter’s sins (as pictured by washing his feet), he has a share with Jesus! He is “completely clean” (John 13:10). He is already identified with Jesus! He is an insider!

Peter does not need to obey Jesus’ commands to earn His favor – He already has that favor! He needs to obey Jesus’ commands to display Jesus, to represent Jesus as one sent by Him, to proclaim the message entrusted to him. Then he is so identified with Jesus that the one who receives Peter receives Jesus (John 13:20).

But a question remains: What is the blessing Jesus speaks of in verse 17? If it is not His acceptance, His favor – what is it?

The blessing is being like Jesus! The blessing is displaying the image of God! The blessing is fulfilling the purpose of our creation, becoming what we were created to be!

Can we – sinners that we are, dead in those trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1) – become like Jesus through self-discipline? The answer should be obvious. The only way we can become like Jesus is through His working in us.

Our task then is to actively depend on Him, on His Spirit. Yes, we then obey Jesus’ commands. But we obey as beloved children who know their Daddy and depend on him, not as slaves trying to avoid a whipping from an evil master, nor as employees striving to earn a raise from a tough boss.

We must always remember: Obedience to a set of rules is not our objective. If it were, we rightly could think that we could reach that objective with a little more effort, a little more discipline, a little more practice, or a little more accountability.

Our objective is to be like Jesus, to display Jesus, to be conformed to His image (Romans 8:29). Jesus demands such conformity – and Scripture promises that God will bring it about (Philippians 1:6).

So if we are in Jesus, the work is as good as done. Saved by His grace, we can bask in His love and delight in His grace, knowing we are “completely clean” – even when we sin. But we hate that sin. We hate that lack of conformity to Jesus’ character. Knowing that our greatest joy comes from being like Him, we turn to Him once again in repentance, confessing the sin, knowing that Jesus is the propitiation for our sin (1 John 2:2). God thus continues as our loving Father, delighting in us, as he uses even such failures to complete the good work in us He has begun.

“If you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.” Know Jesus commands. Know Jesus’ character. Know the grace and mercy and power of the Gospel. Then step out in confidence, in confession, in repentance, showing Jesus to those you love and to the wider world. This is the path of blessing. This is the path of joy.

Do You Know Jesus?

Do you know Jesus? Listen to what John tells those of us who make such a claim:

Whoever says “I know him” but does not keep his commandments is a liar, and the truth is not in him, but whoever keeps his word, in him truly the love of God is perfected. By this we may know that we are in him: whoever says he abides in him ought to walk in the same way in which he walked (1 John 2:4-6).

God saves us from the condemnation we deserve by Jesus’ sacrificial death in order that we might know Him, in order that we might be like Christ, in order that we might be “conformed to the image of His Son” (Romans 8:29). Indeed, Jesus commands us to be like Him! For He tells us that all of the Law and the Prophets can be summarized in two commands: “You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind…. You shall love your neighbor as yourself” (from Matthew 22:37-39).  And Jesus fulfilled these commands every minute of every day – loving God the Father, loving each person He encountered – whether He was gentle with them, as He was with the woman in Simon the Pharisee’s house(Luke 7:36-50), or He was harsh with them, as He was with the scribes and Pharisees (Matthew 23). He told each person exactly what he or she most needed to hear.

Note that our obedience is the result of being saved, not the means by which we are saved. We are saved by His grace as a gift, not as a result of anything that we do, so that no one has a reason to boast (Ephesians 2:8-9).

But when God opens our eyes and for the first time we know Jesus – when we see Him as our precious Savior, as our continual intercessor, as our rightful King, as our greatest Treasure – then we want to be like Him. We see Him as the perfection of all that humans should be. We see Him as displaying completely the image of God placed in mankind in the beginning (Genesis 1:27). And we see Him, yes, as loving God and loving man – and so the love of God is perfected in Him.

In verse 5 above, John then tells us an amazing truth: When God works in us to fulfill that desire to be like Jesus, we ourselves complete/perfect the love of God. Not that there was anything lacking in God’s love apart from the existence of mankind. But God always intended His love to be displayed in millions of redeemed humanity. He gives us the privilege of living this out, of loving with His love, and thus fulfilling the purpose of mankind’s creation – displaying the image of God.

So if we claim to know Him, but hate others; if we claim to know Him, but mock and degrade others; if we claim to know Him but harass or harm others; if we claim to know Him and consider others beneath us, then, says John, we are liars. The truth is not in us. We cannot know that we are in Him if we live like that.

For to know Him is to love Him, to desire to be like Him, to love others with His love. When we love others like that, we complete His love.

In this life, we will never do this perfectly – John has just said if we say we don’t sin, we lie, and that when we sin Jesus is our advocate, our propitiation (1 John 1:10-2:2). But those who know Jesus will fight the fight to love – they will fight the fight to be like Him – for that is their great desire and joy.

So do you know Him? Don’t depend on having gone through some religious ritual, or having signed some decision card, or having an experience a long time ago you consider saving faith. Are you walking today as Jesus walked? Is God’s love being completed in your life? If yes – rejoice in Him, and love! If not – confess your sins to the One who is faithful and just to forgive you for all unrighteousness by the sacrifice of His Son – and then, know Him, love Him, follow Him, and, like Him, love others.