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Joh_13:10-11. Jesus sets the disciple right, and that by proceeding to speak of the washing in question according to the spiritual sense of which it is to be taken as the symbol, in order thereby to lead the disciple, who had misunderstood Him, to the true comprehension of the matter. According to the mere verbal sense, He says: “He who has bathed needs nothing further than to wash his feet (which have been soiled again by the road); rather is he (except as to this necessary cleansing of the feet) clean in his entire body.” But this statement, derived from experience of the sensuous province of life, serves as a symbolical wrapping of the ethical thought which Jesus desires to set forth: “He who has already experienced moral purification in general and on the whole in fellowship with me, like him who has cleansed his whole body in the bath, requires only to be freed from the sinful defilement in individual things which has been again contracted in the intercourse of life; as one who has bathed only requires again the washing of his feet, but in other respects he is clean as to his whole moral personality.” This necessity of individual purification demanding daily penitence, which Jesus here sets forth in the λελουμένος by τοὺς πόδας νίψασθαι , how manifest it became in the very case of Peter! E.g., after he denied his Lord, and after the hypocrisy exhibited at Antioch, Galatians 2. To illustrate the entire spiritual purification[127] by Ὁ ΛΕΛΟΥΜΈΝΟς , however, suggested itself so very naturally through the very feet-washing, which was just about to be undertaken as its correlate, that an allusion to baptism (Theodore of Mopsuestia, Augustine, Ruperti, Erasmus, Jansen, Zeger, Cornelius a Lapide, Schoettgen, Wetstein, and many others, including Olshausen, B. Crusius, Ewald, Hengstenberg, Godet), perhaps after 1Co_6:11, cannot be made good, while it is not even requisite to assume a reference to the by no means universal custom of bathing before meals. The word is to be thought of as the purifying element represented in ὁ λελουμένος ; as also in the simile of the vine, which is analogous in regard to the matter of fact depicted, the ΚΑΘΑΡΟΊ ἘΣΤΕ , Joh_15:3, is referred back only to the word of Christ as the ground thereof. But the notion of ethical purification must, in the connection of the entire symbolism of the passage, be also strictly and firmly maintained in οὐ χρείαν … νίψασθαι ; so that the latter is not, as Linder, in the Stud. u. Krit. 1867, p. 512 ff., thinks, intended to suggest that the clean man even may undergo the feet-washing,—not, however, for the object of purification, but as a token of love or humble subjection.
καὶ ὑμεῖς καθαραί ἐστε ] Hereby Jesus now makes the application to Peter and his fellow-disciples of what was previously said in the form of a general proposition: “Ye also are clean,” as I, namely, have just expressed it of the λελουμένος ; you also have attained in your living fellowship with me through my word to this moral purity of your entire personality; but—so He subjoins with deep grief, having Judas Iscariot in view—but not all! One there is amongst you who has frustrated in his own case the purifying influence of this union with me! Had Peter hitherto not yet seized the symbolical significance of the discourse of Jesus, yet now, on this application καὶ ὑμεῖς , κ . τ . λ ., and on this tragical addition ἈΛΛʼ ΟὐΧῚ ΠΆΝΤΕς , its meaning must have dawned upon his understanding.
Ἤ ] gives a comparative reference to the absolute expression ΟὐΚ ἜΧΕΙ ΧΡ .: has no need (further) than. Comp. Xen. Mem. iv. 3. 9; Herod. vi. 52: οὐ δυναμένους δὲ γνῶναι ἢ καὶ πρὸ τούτου (better than even formerly); Soph. Trach. 1016; Winer, p. 473 [E. T. p. 638].
τὸν παραδίδ . αὐτόν ] His betrayer, Mat_26:48; Joh_18:2.
Further, what has been said of an anti-Petrine aim in this passage, in spite of Joh_1:43, Joh_6:68-69 (Strauss, Schwegler, Baur, Hilgenfeld), by which the desire for an Ebionitic lavation of the whole body has actually been ascribed to Peter (Hilgenfeld), is altogether imaginary.
[127] Calvin well remarks: “Non quod omni ex parte puri sint, ut nulla in illis macula amplius haereat, sed quoniam praecipua sui parte mundati sunt, dum scilicet ablatum est regnum peccato ut justitia Dei superior sit.”