“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.