Thinking on our recent gathering while reading John 13, helped me see a couple of truths more clearly.
1. Feet washing can seem awkward, intimidating, and even silly to some (John 13:5-8);
2. Participating is a privilege through Christ (John 13:13-15); and
3. It creates a joy that is hard to imagine until you take an active part (John 13:16-17).
The Lord would not ask us to participate in these things, if they did not add value to our Christian walk.
Let your faith wash away any fear you may have, then come and allow Jesus to reveal deeper truths.
The following is an excerpt written on the ordinance of feet washing:
Washing the Saints feet…
To symbolize meaningfully and completely the redemptive significance of the life, death, and resurrection of Christ and thus not exclude its radical, life-changing efficacy in our subjective experience, the church must observe two regular ritual ordinances. The Lord’s supper, by itself, will not do it.
Thus I propose that it is no coincidence that Christ commanded the washing of the saints’ feet in connection with His holy supper, because only by having the supper and the feet washing together can we pictorially symbolize our wondrous redemption in the corporate life of the church.
Thus, as I have said before, Free Will Baptists believe in a “two-pronged communion.”
In the first prong of communion the Lord’s supper, we celebrate what God in Christ has done:
• Christ’s death
• our death in Him
• justification
• the objective
• the vertical (our relationship upward, to God)
In the second prong, feet washing, we celebrate the effects in our everyday lives of what God in Christ has done for us:
• Christ’s resurrection
• our resurrection to newness of life
• sanctification
• the subjective
• the horizontal (our relationship outward, to others)
The Lord’s supper and feet washing are thus complementary.
Christ underscored the objective and subjective, vertical and horizontal aspects of the gospel in Matthew 22:37-40. He said there that the first and great commandment was “Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind.” Yet he did not stop there. He referred to a second commandment that was integrally linked to the first: “Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.” He then underscored His point by declaring: “On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets.” As I said in another place, this is the “two-pronged gospel: a right relationship with God which radically changes our attitudes toward ourselves and others. If the second commandment is not kept, . . . then the first is also broken.
~ Matthew Pinson