Then follows a bit of explanation.[107] But the chief thing had already been done.  The acting was more than the speech.  Three things the Master was doing.  The teaching about humility lies on the surface, within easy reach.  It was acted, then spoken; done, then said.  It was sorely needed, and is.  In it was the key to Jesus’ great victory within the twenty-four hours following,[108] and would have been for them had they used it.  Humility is the foundation of all strength and victory.  Only the strong can stoop.  It takes the strongest to stoop lowest.  He who so stoops is revealing strength.

Humility is not thinking meanly of yourself; it is merely getting into correct personal relation with God, and so with men.  It is our true normal attitude, as dependent creatures, as those who have sinned, as those who have been bought with blood.  Everything we have is from Another, originally and continuously; we are utterly dependent.  All rights have been forfeited by our wilful conduct; we retain nothing in our own right.  And all we have now has been secured for us at the cost of blood; we are being carried at enormous expense.  Not much room there for self-satisfaction, is there?

Humility is simply recognizing our utter dependence upon Another, and living it.  And this controls our touch with our fellows.  In this lies the secret of all strength,—­mental keenness and vigour, sympathetic touch with others, and power of action in life and in service.  All this touches the weakest spot in these men, and in—­us.

But there’s more here.  The humility teaching is out on the surface.  There’s a bit under the surface, that they would soon be needing and needing badly.  It’s this:  the thing in you that’s wrong must be made right; and it can be.  Every sin done by the man who is trusting Christ as his Saviour, every such sin must be cleansed away.  And it can be.  The feet-washing told this bit of tremendous truth.

These men trusted Christ.  But their moral feet would get badly messed that night, mired and slimed by passionate betrayal and blasphemous denial and cowardly flight.  The man going to the bath-house was clean on returning home except where his sandalled feet had gathered some soil from the road.  These men were cleansed in heart through Christ.  But the foot-soilings must be cleansed.  These two things ring out.  Sin must be reckoned with and cleansed out. And, blessed truth! it can be.  This is the second bit.  It would be brought to their remembrance that same night when the road they took dirtied them up so badly, and afterwards.

But there’s a deeper, a tenderer bit yet here.  There is the love touch.  Jesus was giving them the tenderest touch yet of His love, to hold them.  The personal touch is the tenderest.  Man yearns for the personal touch, of presence, of lips, of hands.  Something seems to go through the personal touch from heart to heart.  The spirit-currents find their connection so.  Jesus gave the tender personal touch that evening, the closest yet.  His hands touched their feet, but He was not thinking most about their feet.  He was reaching higher up.  His hands reached past their feet for their hearts.