Each of us must learn how to love the brothers and sisters by ministering the spiritual foot-washing to them. Sometimes when I come to visit you, you can minister some sort of foot-washing to me by showing your love toward me, and I have to show the same love toward you so that some foot-washing will be ministered to you to cleanse you from the earthly touch. We must do this, otherwise the fellowship between us could not be maintained. Fellowship can be maintained between one another only when love ministers such a foot-washing. Many times I have enjoyed the spiritual foot-washing from quite a number of brothers and sisters. It is impossible to tell you how many times I have experienced this kind of foot-washing. More than twenty-five years ago when I was working with the leading co-workers such as Brother Watchman Nee and others, I received much help by this kind of foot-washing from them. Every time I contacted them, I sensed some sort of foot-washing to keep me clean from the earthly touch. They loved me and showed their love to me by ministering the spiritual foot-washing to cleanse me from the earthly touch.
By putting these principles into practice, we shall see how real they are. You can simply apply them in your home life and in your church life from this very hour. Immediately, you will then minister some sort of foot-washing and wiping to your brothers and sisters. This is what we need. This is the real love that maintains the fellowship among us. It is by this kind of foot-washing and wiping that the spiritual fellowship can maintain the church life. Without it, the church life cannot be maintained, because the fellowship will have been damaged by the earthly touch. We need the spiritual foot-washing to cleanse us from the earthly touch and to keep our spiritual fellowship in a good condition. Then it is possible to realize the church life. If the church life is to be kept fresh, new, pleasant, and living, we continually need this foot-washing. Every local church needs this. In the churches on the West Coast, the Lord has been very gracious to us. Although we have not used the term foot-washing, the Lord has continually kept the church life here fresh and new by the foot-washing with the living water of life. We do not talk about it and we do not use this term, but there has been the reality of foot-washing in the water of life constantly. So, we can boast of His grace that the churches here are ever new, ever fresh, and ever living. In the matter of fellowship, there is no frustration among the saints. Every church needs to pray for this. Then the church will be preserved in newness and freshness.
The Lord came to bring God into us and He went to bring us into God. Now there is the real mingling of the divine Spirit with our human spirit. Humanity is mingled with divinity, and divinity is mingled with humanity. This is the church, the Body of Christ. In their spirit the Christians are heavenly, eternal, and spiritual, but in their physical body they are still on this earth and in the old creation. Hence, there is the need for them to be kept clean from all the earthly touch in order that the fellowship of the Body and the fellowship with the Lord might be maintained. This fellowship is maintained by foot-washing. Foot-washing is very, very important because the fellowship with the Lord and with one another can never be maintained without it. Without it, the church life cannot be realized. In fact, the reality of the church life would be gone. Therefore, the daily foot-washing definitely needs to be exercised by the Lord Himself on the one hand and by all the saints on the other. Then we shall be able to maintain an excellent fellowship with which we shall have the real church life.
Though the foot-washing is for fellowship in life, it was not so with Judas. He was washed, but he was never in the fellowship, because he was a false one (vv. 18-31a). Before the Lord washed the disciples’ feet, the devil had already put into Judas’s heart that he should betray the Lord (v. 2). After the Lord’s washing, Satan even entered into him (v. 27). After that, Judas left, and it was night (v. 30). He surely had entered into the dark night for his eternity. From the very beginning, he was not in the fellowship with the Lord and he could never have been in it regardless of how much he was washed (vv. 10-11). This warns us that the real foot-washing is only for the people who are genuinely in the fellowship with the Lord.
After the foot-washing, the Lord was about to die. So He said, “Now is the Son of Man glorified” (v. 31). For Him to be glorified was to have His divine element released from within His humanity through death and resurrection. His death broke the shell of His humanity and released His divine life. This is what it meant for Him to be glorified.
Here the Lord also said, “God is glorified in Him” (v. 31). This means that God the Father was to be glorified in the Son’s glorification, that is, He had His divine element released in the Son. What the Lord released in His death and resurrection was the divine life-element of God the Father. God the Father was to be glorified in the Son in this way, and He would also glorify the Son in Himself and He would do it immediately (v. 32).
At that time, the Lord was ready to suffer the death of the cross, but His disciples were not yet equipped to follow Him in His suffering. So the Lord told Peter that he could not follow Him then (vv. 36-37), because Peter had not yet received Him as the resurrection life. But Peter would follow Him (v. 36; 21:18-19) after He imparted Himself into him as resurrection life through His resurrection.
Peter was in the genuine fellowship with the Lord, and the Lord’s washing did keep him in this fellowship. He was willing to remain in this fellowship with the Lord, but he failed by denying the Lord three times when the Lord was being tried. Peter had the desire to remain in the fellowship, but he did not have the strength to do it, because, before the Lord’s resurrection, His resurrection life had not been imparted into him. To remain in the fellowship of the Lord maintained by the foot-washing requires the strength of resurrection life. We can never do it by our natural man.