“After washing their feet, he put on his robe again and sat down and asked, ‘Do you understand what I was doing? You call me ‘Teacher’ and ‘Lord,’ and you are right, because it is true. And since I, the Lord and Teacher, have washed your feet, you ought to wash each other’s feet. I have given you an example to follow. Do as I have done to you.’”
St. John 13:12-15 (NLT)
We Christians tend to have selective hearing. This condition is the results of contracting the anti-christ virus known as “the dictates of one’s heart.” This virus arrived among us just after the Great Awakening of the 1730s. It germinated in the bosom of 18th century, political thought. In the 1730s, the American colonists were already very unhappy with the tyranny of London’s directives. The political ideas of personal and national liberty permeated the whole of colonial society. One of the foundational tracks on which the Awakening traveled was the reaction against central church governments prescribing what the individual would believe. As the Great Awakening blossomed across the 13 colonies, this concept of interpreting the Scripture, according to the dictates of one’s own heart, became firmly established in North American Christianity.
It is a great political concept but it won’t wash as a Christian concept of biblical interpretation because it sanctifies selective hearing. It allows us to decide what we want to believe and practice without limitations or interpreting parameters.
Please understand that I do not believe you or I will miss heaven if we do not wash feet. Having clearly affirmed that, however, does not erase the fact that Jesus said his washing of his disciples’ feet was an example, which his disciples ought to follow.
The point is not to preach a doctrine of feet washing. Rather, it is to challenge our selective hearing. We need to clearly hear the whole counsel of God, not just the parts which we like and easily accept.
Dear Father, thank you for your grace and mercy. Thank you for your Word . . . all of it. Grant to us that we may truly realize that our hearts are deceptive. Enable us to remember that our ways are only right in our own thinking. Empower us to search the Scripture so that we may truly find your truths. This I pray in Jesus’ name. AMEN
Let us praise God for his example and live to follow it faithfully,
Pastor Smith