It was now just before the Passover Feast, and Jesus knew that His hour had come to leave this world and return to the Father. Having loved His own who were in the world, He loved them to the very end.
In this chapter is recorded the history of our Saviour's washing his disciples' feet, an action full of humility and condescension, and propounded to his followers imitation. The circumstance of the time is here noted, when this act was done; namely, at the feast of the passover, when the time of our Saviour's departure was at hand; and having constantly and immutably loved his own...
1. Before the feast of the passover. John intentionally passes by many things which, he knew, had been related by Matthew and others. He undertakes to explain those circumstances which they had left out, one of which was the narrative of the washing of feet.
It has generally been taken for granted by commentators that Christ's washing his disciples' feet, and the discourse that followed it, were the same night in which he was betrayed, and at the same sitting wherein he ate the passover and instituted the Lord's supper; but whether before the solemnity began, or after it was all over, or between the eating of the passover and...
Commenting on John 13:1-17