John 13:4, “He laid aside His outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it around his waist.”
When Jesus dresses Himself for service in the upper room, He is re-enacting the incarnation by revealing the same inclination of God’s heart that moved the Son to lay aside the outer garments of manifest glory and instead to wrap Himself in the garments of a servant—becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on the cross (Philippians 2:6-9).
To anyone and everyone who would confess Jesus as your Lord and God—this is how we have been loved….God the Eternal Son, knowing Himself to be fully God and to possess all that God possesses, rose from the place of manifest glory that He had occupied from before the foundation of the world. He laid aside the outer garment of His glory and bound to His own person the servant’s-towel of human nature.
And, then, wrapped in that towel, He knelt down at the feet of the undeserving and washed their soiled souls clean with the water of His Spirit and blood of His love, and with the flesh He had taken to Himself, He bore away the sin that clung so closely to His beloved ones.
And because He has done, He stands now in glory—still clothed in the servant’s robe of love-pierced humanity, now glorified to the throne of the universe—and offers Himself as food and drink, life and light, peace and joy to any and all who would submit to be served by their God. Hallowed be the Father, in the Son, by the Spirit.
