“Jesus saith to him, he that is washed needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit, and ye are clean, but not all.” John 13:10. In reading through John 13, only the day after writing my “timing of justification” post, and not looking for anything in particular, but Christ, John 5:39, I couldn’t help but pause at the 10th verse, where the Lord speaks about being clean. “Ye are clean,” are his exact words, and as I thought about them, other scriptures came to mind, like I Corinthians 6:11 & Jude 24.
I was struck with how these words could perhaps relate to the matter of justification, especially the thought that God has never looked upon His people apart from Christ, but ever as comprehended in Christ their Surety, when they were chosen in Him before the world began. (“According as he hath chosen us in him before the foundation of the world, that we should be holy and without blame before him in love.” Ephesians 1:4.) Had they been viewed in themselves, apart from their Head, they must have perished with Adam in his transgression; but being comprehended in Christ their Representative, they were never separated from Him in the divine mind. “For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive.” I Corinthians 15:22. (Highlights the two representative heads: Adam bringing death – Christ bringing life.) Hence their sins could be justly imputed to Him, and His righteousness as justly imputed to them. II Corinthians 5:21.
With those thoughts in mind, when Christ said to His disciples, “ye are clean,” we know that He was not pointing to some outward ceremony of washing, but to that inward purging which only His blood could accomplish. From the standpoint of the gospel, they stood clean even before the cross was lifted up, for in the eternal counsel of God they were already comprehended in Christ their Surety. The cleansing was not uncertain, nor depended upon the unfolding of time, but upon the finished certainty of Christ’s sacrifice, settled in the purpose of God, secured in the covenant of grace, and therefore as sure before it was offered as after it was shed.
This is why the Old Testament saints were no less clean than the apostles gathered in that upper room. Though the blood had not yet been shed in time, it was already accounted as shed in God’s decree and covenant. Their sins were not merely passed over in suspense but put away in Christ, whose death would in due time ratify the eternal counsel of God. Thus Abraham, Moses, David, and all the elect before Calvary were justified the same way as Peter, John, and all believers today, through the one offering of Christ, once for all. Hebrews 10:14.
Everything consummated at the cross, reconciliation, redemption, justification, was not the beginning of salvation but its public fulfillment in history. Christ, the eternal Surety, carried the guilt of His people before they ever believed, before they were ever born, before time itself. And for that very reason, Christ was able to say with authority to His own, “ye are clean.”
What a statement! “Ye are clean.” Whatever else may be said about this text, I absolutely love these definitive declarations of Christ that define the believer’s standing in Him. Such words are not left to our feelings, nor to our wavering experiences, but rest entirely upon His authority and His finished work. Additionally, in these words, “ye are clean” we see that even in our weakest moments, Christ does not re-apply His blood as though our standing depended on repeated cleansing. Rather, He reminds us that in Him we are already clean every whit, and then, in condescending grace, He stoops to wash the “dust” from our feet, not to make us His, but because we are His. “Unto him that loved us, and washed us from our sins in his own blood.” Revelation 1:5. MPJ. Additional Thought: I do not say this to exclude other interpretations that may be faithfully drawn from the text, but to unfold the gospel truth that seemed to shine out here, that the disciples were already accounted clean in Christ, even before the cross, but never apart from the cross.