\u201cIf you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.\u201d John 13:17<\/p>\n
Jesus says this to His disciples the night He is betrayed.<\/p>\n
What is He saying?<\/p>\n
Is He saying, \u201cHere 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\u201d?<\/p>\n
Jesus has just acted like a menial servant, washing His disciples\u2019 feet. He then says, \u201cYou 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\u201d (John 13:14b-15).<\/p>\n
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?<\/p>\n
No. Indeed, later this evening Jesus will tell these same men, \u201cApart from Me you can do nothing\u201d (John 15:5).<\/p>\n
In addition, John 13 itself shows that Jesus must be saying something different.<\/p>\n
Consider His interaction with Peter, who protests, saying Jesus will never wash his feet. Our Lord replies: \u201cIf I do not wash you, you have no share with me” (John 13:8).<\/p>\n
So once Jesus pays the penalty for Peter\u2019s sins (as pictured by washing his feet), he has a share with Jesus! He is \u201ccompletely clean\u201d (John 13:10). He is already identified with Jesus! He is an insider!<\/p>\n
Peter does not need to obey Jesus\u2019 commands to earn His favor \u2013 He already has that favor! He needs to obey Jesus\u2019 commands to display Jesus<\/em>, to represent Jesus<\/em> as one sent by Him, to proclaim the message entrusted to him. <\/em>Then he is so identified with Jesus that the one who receives Peter receives Jesus (John 13:20).<\/p>\n But a question remains: What is the blessing Jesus speaks of in verse 17? If it is not His acceptance, His favor \u2013 what is it?<\/p>\n The blessing is being like Jesus! <\/em>The blessing is displaying the image of God! <\/em>The blessing is fulfilling the purpose of our creation, becoming what we were created to be!<\/em><\/p>\n Can we \u2013 sinners that we are, dead in those trespasses and sins (Ephesians 2:1) \u2013 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.<\/p>\n Our task then is to actively depend on Him, on His Spirit. Yes, we then obey Jesus\u2019 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.<\/p>\n 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.<\/p>\n Our objective is to be like Jesus<\/em>, to display Jesus, to be conformed to His image (Romans 8:29). Jesus demands such conformity \u2013 and Scripture promises that God will bring it about (Philippians 1:6).<\/p>\n 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 \u201ccompletely clean\u201d \u2013 even when we sin. But we hate that sin. We hate that lack of conformity to Jesus\u2019 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.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.\u201d Know Jesus commands. Know Jesus\u2019 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.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cIf you know these things, blessed are you if you do them.\u201d John 13:17 Jesus says this to His disciples the night He is betrayed. What is He saying? Is…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[11,15],"tags":[93,2761,2762,2759,329,335,2758,1901,2534,2760,2532,2461,1159,2113],"class_list":["post-3456","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-blog","category-devotions","tag-active-dependence","tag-antinomianism","tag-blessed-are-you-if-you-do-them","tag-completely-clean","tag-condemnation","tag-conformed-to-the-image-of-his-son","tag-john-1317","tag-john-155","tag-legalism","tag-license","tag-morality","tag-perfection","tag-philippians-16","tag-striving"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3456","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3456"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3456\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3457,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3456\/revisions\/3457"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3456"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3456"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.desiringgodchurch.org\/web\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3456"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}