{"id":16239,"date":"2026-04-06T05:17:45","date_gmt":"2026-04-06T11:17:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/?p=16239"},"modified":"2026-04-06T05:17:47","modified_gmt":"2026-04-06T11:17:47","slug":"why-does-jesus-wash-the-disciples-feet-in-john-13","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/why-does-jesus-wash-the-disciples-feet-in-john-13\/","title":{"rendered":"Why does Jesus wash the disciples&#8217; feet in John 13?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">This is the transcript of Mark Goodacre&#8217;s short where he gives his answer to the question. He also points out how this story shows a synoptic type of relationship between all four gospels.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-embed is-type-video is-provider-youtube wp-block-embed-youtube wp-embed-aspect-9-16 wp-has-aspect-ratio\"><div class=\"wp-block-embed__wrapper\">\n<iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Why does Jesus wash the disciples&#039; feet in John 13? #ntpodshorts #gospelofjohn\" width=\"540\" height=\"960\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/tRsBkgMP6T8?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe>\n<\/div><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<h4 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Transcript of the video<\/h4>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I&#8217;m Mark Goodacre, I&#8217;m at the Chinese University of Hong Kong at the moment and at Choong Chee Theological College where I&#8217;m lecturing today. There&#8217;s this beautiful statue behind me, it&#8217;s by Hu Ke and it depicts Jesus washing Peter&#8217;s feet. It&#8217;s one of those iconic scenes in John&#8217;s Gospel and since I&#8217;m lecturing on John today it&#8217;s particularly joyous that they have this statue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">So John 13, you have this story where it&#8217;s Jesus&#8217; last evening with the disciples and he decides that he&#8217;s going to wash all of his disciples&#8217; feet in this act of ultimate submission, service, ministry. He does the menial thing, he behaves like a slave with a towel around his body doing this menial work. And a lot of people will say, well why does John do this rather than have the institution of the Eucharist like you have in Matthew, Mark and Luke? And a lot of people think that John is independent of the synoptics and doesn&#8217;t know of that story, the institution of the Eucharist.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-red-color\">My own take is that John is actually presupposing the story of the Eucharist from the synoptics. He keeps mentioning the supper and I think he&#8217;s evoking the story from the synoptics but he doesn&#8217;t need to tell that story because it&#8217;s already familiar to the readers. And we know it&#8217;s familiar to the readers because when you look at John chapter six, the story of the feeding of the five thousand, you get lots of Eucharistic themes in that setting.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">But why does John do this story here? Why does John talk about washing the disciples&#8217; feet and especially Peter&#8217;s feet? Well Peter is prominent already in the synoptic narrative of the institution of the Eucharist. It&#8217;s when Jesus prophesies that Peter is going to deny him and we have that as well in John chapter 13, alongside <mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-red-color\">the prediction of Judas&#8217;s betrayal, which also comes in the synoptics and here in John 13. <strong>In fact it&#8217;s the longest verbatim link between the synoptic Gospels and John.<\/strong><\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">There&#8217;s a lengthy verbatim link. <em>Amen, I say to you, one of you will betray me.<\/em> But I think the reason why we get this story here in John is it&#8217;s basically establishing Jesus as servant, <mark style=\"background-color:rgba(0, 0, 0, 0)\" class=\"has-inline-color has-vivid-red-color\">Jesus as servant of the disciples and this is a theme that you get all the way through the synoptic Gospels that&#8217;s picked up now in John&#8217;s Gospel.<\/mark><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">And is there any synoptic inspiration for this story? Well, I think there is because if you look at Luke 22, his story of the institution of the Eucharist, you get material all about Jesus as their servant. It&#8217;s material that&#8217;s moved from elsewhere in Matthew and Mark, and I think that setting has inspired the fourth evangelist to set this story of the foot washing here in this iconic place in his Gospel. It&#8217;s one of those stories that you can return to again and again and again.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">It&#8217;s a mark of how memorable that last evening with the disciples is in John&#8217;s Gospel.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This is the transcript of Mark Goodacre&#8217;s short where he gives his answer to the question. He also points out how this story shows a synoptic type of relationship between all four gospels.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[131,89,139],"tags":[94,97,64],"class_list":["post-16239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-biblescholarship","category-jesus","category-peter","tag-bible-devl","tag-jesus","tag-synopticgospels"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16239"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16240,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16239\/revisions\/16240"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theway.davisinterests.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}