CONTENTS
The Lord washeth his Disciples' Feet. He intimates to the Twelve, that One of them is a Traitor. The Sorrow of the Eleven at the Account. Peter is admonished of his Denial.
(John 13:1) Now before the feast of the passover, when Jesus knew that his hour was come that he should depart out of this world unto the Father, having loved his own which were in the world, he loved them unto the end.
Of the Passover much hath been already noticed in this Commentary on Matthew 26:1-2 and Mark 14:1-2 to which I refer. I beg the Reader to remark with me, what is here said of the unalterable love of Jesus to his own. And I beg the Reader to attend to the sense of the words, his own. The words differ very widely from the same words, his own. John 1:11. For though they appear to an English Reader as one and the same, yet they are not so in the original. By his own, as it is rendered, John 1:11 is meant his own nation, the Jews. But here in this place, by his own is meant, his own Church, his own people, his own children, whom his Father gave to him before the foundation of the world. Ephesians 1:4. And the original words in the two passages make all this difference. The former means such as we are used to say of a person in relation to his own place of birth, it is his own country, his own town or people there dwelling. But the latter carries with it an idea of relationship and property, such as we should say of a man's wife or children, yea, his own flesh. So that the one implies no more, than that Christ and the nation to which he came, were countrymen. The other bespeaks his own house and family, his spouse the Church. Reader! do not fail to mark the vast difference, wherever you meet it. And never forget also, that Christ's love to his own is an everlasting love, or as the words themselves express, to the end; which end is eternity, unchangeable like Christ himself, the same yesterday, and today, and forever. Hebrews 13:8; Isaiah 54:10.