COMMENTS
This would signify that the disciples of Christ should have a mutual watch-care over one another's welfare; to keep each other clean, holy, pure, and to assist one another in overcoming the trials and temptations and besetments of this present evil world, arising from the three sources of temptation, "the world, the flesh and the devil." Only as we cultivate the various graces of the Spirit—meekness, patience, gentleness, brotherly kindness, love—can we hope to be specially helpful to others in putting on these adornments of character and purities of life, and to get rid of defilements of the world and the flesh.
Certainly in exhorting us to wash one another's feet, the Lord did not mean our literal feet, for this under present conditions would be the reverse of the spirit He manifested in washing His disciples' feet. As the washing of their feet by Jesus made them comfortable and thus served them, so His exhortation to us to wash one another's feet would signify to serve one another in love, even in the humblest ways.
Matt. 4:19; 10:16-24; 20:25-28; 23:8-11; John 4:36-38; Luke 10:1, 2; Acts 6:3, 4; 13:1-3; 20:24; Rom. 10:14, 15; 1 Cor. 9:16-20; 2 Cor. 5:18-20; Eph. 4:11, 12; Heb. 5:4; Isa. 32:20; 52:11; Jer. 20:9; Mal 2:6, 7; John 13:13-17; 1 Cor. 3:7-10.
