(with Matthew 10:24; Luke 6:40; John 13:19)
I. "The disciple is not above his master, nor the servant above his lord," etc. This saying is used for the purpose of preparing Christ's followers for the world's enmity. In this application it has a double aspect. You may not, or you may, be persecuted. If you are not, there is room for inquiry. If you are, there is ground of comfort and strength.
II. The maxim or proverb of the text is applied, further, to the mission or function of the Lord's followers as witnesses and prophets to the world. You are now addressed, not as the Lord's disciples and servants, but as yourselves invested with the character, and called to discharge the office, of masters and teachers. The Lord is here speaking of the duty which, as being yourselves enlightened, you owe to your fellowmen; and of the necessity of your being duly qualified and fully prepared for the performance of that duty. And the particular qualification, the special preparation, on which He insists is this, that you make sure of your own possession of the attainment or endowment, whatever it be, which you wish to be instrumental in conveying or imparting to your brother.
III. "Verily, verily, I say unto you, the servant is not greater than his lord; neither he that is sent greater than he that sent him" (John 13:16). This third use or application of the maxim should be very precious to us. It binds us more closely than the other two in living and loving union of the tenderest sort with Christ. It is as one with Jesus that I must wash the feet of my brother. It must be because I am of one mind with Jesus in caring, not merely generally, for my brother's deliverance from eternal death, and his ultimate attainment of eternal life, but in the least and lowest of the incidents that may affect his comfortable ability to realise on the one hand, his present standing, or to press on to his future hope. We must apprehend and feel the washing of the feet to be inseparably connected with the atoning death symbolised, and the self-sacrificing life foreshadowed; and as implying, in that connection, the tenderest concern about a brother's most susceptible point, his weakest part.
R. S. Candlish, The Gospel of Forgiveness,p. 82.
References: John 15:22. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. iv., No. 194; Clergyman's Magazine,vol. i., p. 215; J. Keble, Sermons for Sundays after Trinity,part ii., p. 385.John 15:25. Spurgeon, Sermons,vol. ii., No. 89.