What does First B Jackson teach about foot washing?
Drawn from the messages where it was actually addressed: the words said from the front, the passages taught, and where to hear the whole thing.
At First B Jackson, the teaching on foot washing starts with the scene John sets in chapter 13: Jesus knows his hour has come, knows betrayal is coming, knows his disciples have been competing for position, and yet he gets up from the table, wraps a towel around his waist, and washes their feet one by one. Every teacher who has brought this passage here has pressed on the same plain fact: the God who made everything came down and cleaned dirty feet for people who were about to deny and abandon him. That is where the teaching begins, because everything Jesus asks of his followers grows out of what he first did himself.
The foot washing reveals something about identity before it reveals anything about duty. Eric Basie, visiting from his work in Billings, Montana, made the point that Jesus was free to stoop precisely because he knew exactly who he was and where he was going. His identity was settled, so he had nothing to prove and nothing to protect. Pastor Ray returned to the same ground in a Monday night study, noting that Peter's refusal looked like humility but was actually pride dressed as deference. Real humility, the room concluded that evening, means being willing not only to serve but to be served, to accept that we are the ones who need our feet washed.
The act Jesus performed became a direct instruction. He asked whether the disciples understood what he had done, and told them that since he, their Lord and Teacher, had washed their feet, they ought to wash one another's. Mahendra, who leads Crossroads Ministries in Durban, South Africa and has spent thirty-two years in street-level ministry, carried that instruction into the present by asking the congregation what their own bucket and towel might be: a phone call, a conversation, a prayer for a neighbor. The common becomes something else entirely, he said, when God is drawn into it. And Pastor Ryan, teaching through Holy Week, brought it down to one sentence: if you knew you had one day left, Jesus washed feet.
Taught from John 13:1-5, 12-17 · John 13:1-20 · John 13:17 · John 13:34-35 · Philippians 2:13
The passage taught · Isaiah 53
1 Who has believed our message? To whom has the arm of Yahweh been revealed?
2 For he grew up before him as a tender plant, and as a root out of dry ground. He has no good looks or majesty. When we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him.
3 He was despised, and rejected by men; a man of suffering, and acquainted with disease. He was despised as one from whom men hide their face; and we didn’t respect him.
4 Surely he has borne our sickness, and carried our suffering; yet we considered him plagued, struck by God, and afflicted.
World English Bible
The messages that teach on it
- August 10, 2025 How Low You Stoop A South African minister shares what 32 years of grassroots ministry taught him about servant leadership, love as a daily practice, and John 13.
- August 10, 2025 Love Is Our Superpower Missionary Mahindra from Durban, South Africa shares how John 13 calls every believer to servant-hearted love, the kind that transforms communities one ordinary moment at a time.
- November 23, 2021 To Love Is to Serve Jesus washes his disciples' feet and shows that real love looks like humble service. A study of John 13:1-20 from a Monday night gathering at First Baptist Jackson.
- February 17, 2013 John 13, Morning Praise John 13 shows Jesus washing His disciples' feet. See what His humility, sacrifice, and servant love mean for how we live and treat the people around us.
Mentioned along the way
- March 10, 2024 Surely Not I, Lord A Wyoming pastor walks through Holy Week, tracing the betrayal of Jesus across Matthew, Mark, Luke and John, and asking what his followers have purposed in their own hearts.