Your feet are disgusting!

John 12 and 13 both have foot-washing stories. Mary of Bethany anoints Jesus’s feet with ointment and wipes them with her hair, and Jesus washes the disciples’ feet. These stories might be related, don’t you think?

Mary, who delighted to sit at Jesus’s feet, seemed to be one of the few followers who believed in the crucifixion and resurrection. Perhaps because of her understanding and as a sign of gratitude, love, and humility, she anointed him with oil and washed his feet with her tears. To her, Jesus was to be worshipped, and even his feet were beautiful. The disciples, however, felt this was unseemly and extravagant. But Jesus defended Mary and established her as a model to be remembered wherever the gospel would be preached (Mark 14:9).

We who know more than Mary about Jesus’s saving work should love him at least as much. Jesus is the spotless Son of God and is worthy to have his feet washed with our tears and anointed with precious ointment. His entire being is glorious, and every facet of his nature is perfect. No sacrifice is too great for him. He is the unending spring of all our joy and blessings. There is nothing shameful about him. And he is the one who later washed the disciples’ feet. Peter expressed his discomfort at this: “Peter said to him, ‘You shall never wash my feet.’ Jesus answered him, ‘If I do not wash you, you have no share with me’” (John 13:8 ESV).

To have the holy Son of God wash his feet made him ashamed. But Jesus insisted, using the symbolism of this cleansing to show that there was no salvation for Peter without Jesus’s sacrifice. This foot washing was symbolic of his death on the cross by which our sins are washed away. Christians have always spoken about being washed in the blood of the Lamb. Exactly so! This is the true significance of the foot washing in John 13. Jesus cleansed our guilt and shame by dying for our sins.

What is shame?

Shame can be defined as a feeling of intense discomfort at being ugly, dirty, sinful, or lacking in something important. We read of it first in the Garden of Eden. In Genesis 3:7 we read that Adam and Eve felt shame, because they had sinned and were naked. So their shame was directly caused by their guilt. We read of shame at the general resurrection: “And many of those who sleep in the dust of the earth shall awake, some to everlasting life, and some to shame and everlasting contempt” (Dan. 12:2). Here, too, the connection with guilt is obvious. On Judgement Day, unforgiven sinners without Christ will be fully exposed to the anger of God in its full horror. What shame!

Between these two events in this present age, we feel shame for a range of minor things, for example, “I have caused a scandal,” “my nose is too big,” “my shirt is dirty,” “I failed my exam,” “I’m 25 and still unmarried,” “I’m different,” etc. You can decide if shame in these cases is appropriate, but these are undeniably minor issues compared to our guilt before God. If you understand that and receive forgiveness through the gospel of Jesus Christ, all other minor causes of shame will fall into their proper perspective.

Ashamed of Jesus?

Sometimes our shame is plainly wrong. The New Testament has many warnings not to be ashamed of Jesus: “For God gave us a spirit not of fear but of power and love and self-control. Therefore do not be ashamed of the testimony about our Lord, nor of me his prisoner, but share in suffering for the gospel by the power of God” (2 Tim. 1:7–8).

This fear is in all of us. We are afraid of people and by nature ashamed of the gospel. What is this cowardice? It is the fear of man. Some brave men who are unafraid of dangerous adventure sports or even modern warfare do not have the moral courage to stand up to wrongdoing and criminal behaviour. And some who do have the moral courage to stand up for some good cause in the world entirely lack gospel boldness. In short, we do not tell the gospel. Why? Because we are afraid of people.

Now Paul tells us that God did not give us this fear of man. It is emphatically not from God. Yet how often we excuse our fear of man by calling it spiritual names like “wisdom” or “tact” or “love”. Paul tells us that this fear is induced by shame.

Paul warns Timothy not to be “ashamed of the testimony about our Lord”. In other words, do not be ashamed of preaching Jesus as Saviour and Lord. To be ashamed of Jesus Christ is shockingly inappropriate. It’s the same as saying that our beautiful Saviour and victorious Lord is ugly, sinful, and a failure. If we do this we call good evil, white black, and night day. No wonder the Lord so absolutely condemns it (Luke 9:26). Instead, the Holy Spirit teaches us to glory in the gospel and to boast in the cross (Gal. 6:14).

False shame

Paul also warns Timothy not to be ashamed of him in prison and in general to share in the suffering for the gospel. Why would Timothy be ashamed of Paul in prison? Because prison is for bad people, and so in most people’s judgement, Paul must be bad (see 2 Tim. 2:9—“for which I am suffering, bound with chains as a criminal”). An extension of this is shame of suffering in general. It is human nature to despise those who suffer as bad people suffering the judgement of God. Job experienced this from his three friends and eloquently expressed it (see Job 12:5, 16:20, 30:10). The disciples assumed the man born blind must have had sinful parents or sinned himself (John 9:2). The crowd assumed that disasters strike those who are more sinful than others (Luke 13:2, 4).

When we lose sight of the cross and forget that Jesus suffered mocking and shame for us, our value system becomes distorted and worldly. So let us glory in Jesus Christ, and as we teach the gospel in this land, let us pray that God will transform us and those who hear us to be like him. May we share his values and sit at his feet like Mary.