“You are clean”

The adjective “pure” appears three times in the passage on washing the feet. Evangelist John thus reaches one by one. Of the key concepts of the religious tradition of the Old Testament and world religions in general. So, that man can appear before God to have fellowship with him must be “pure.” But the more he enters the light, the more he feels unclean and realizes the need for cleansing. Therefore, individual religions have created systems of “purification” to allow man access to God.
In the cult precepts of all religions, the precepts concerning purification play a vital role. They give a man an idea of ​​God’s holiness
and of one’s own darkness, from which one must be freed from man could draw closer to God. In practicing com Judaism the time of Jesus involved a ritual purification system of all aspects of human life. In the 7th chapter of Mark’s Gospel, we read about Jesus’ confrontation with understanding ritual purity achieved through ceremonial acts. Paul repeatedly disputed the question of “purity” before God in his letters.
At Mark, we are witnessing a radical turnaround, which Jesus brought into the understanding of purity before God. Purification does not come from ritual acts. A stage of purity or impurity is the human heart, and man’s purity depends on his heart’s state (cf. Mark 7: 14-23). However, the question immediately arises: If the heart can happen clean? Who are these pure-hearted people who can look at God (cf. Mt 5: 8)?

Liberal exegesis expressed the view that Jesus had replaced the ritual understanding of purity with its moral understanding. To the place of the cult and its morality has entered the world. In that case, Christianity would be a purely moral matter, a kind of moral outfit. However, this ignores the novelty of the New his law. This novelty is heard at a time when in the Acts of the Apostles, Peter takes a stand on the proposal in Christ of more creditworthy Pharisees who demanded that Christians out of pagan they underwent circumcision and “kept the law of Moses.” Peter then declared: “God has chosen me from the first days …
That the Gentiles might hear the word of the gospel out of my mouth, and believe … And he made no distinction between them and us when
by faith, he has purified their hearts. “(Acts 15: 5-n). The heart is purified by faith. Faith is the result of God’s inclination toward man. It is just a simple decision of man himself. Faith is possible because God has touched people from within the spirit that opened their hearts and cleansed him. On the subject of purification, which is mentioned only briefly in Peter’s speech, the evangelist John in his report on foot washing and the concept of “sanctification,” deepens in the High Priest’s prayer. In speaking of the vineyard, Jesus assures his disciples, “You are already clean because of the word that I have told you.” (John 15: 3) Jesus’ word permeates their thinking and will, transforms their “hearts,” and opens them to see.
As we consider the great priestly prayer, we come across the same, albeit slightly different, view. It contains Jesus’ request: “Sanctify them the truth. “(John 17:17)” Sanctify “in priestly terminology means: to prepare, to be able to the cult. By this word were called ritual acts that the priest had to perform before appearing to God. “Sanctify them by the truth” – Jesus reminds us of that bath which man preparing for contact with God is true. Into it, man must immerse himself to get rid of the filth that separates him from God. At the same time, we must not forget that John does not mean an abstract concept of truth but realizes that the personified Truth is Jesus himself.

In the 13th chapter of John’s Gospel, the washing of Jesus’ feet appears as a way of purification. The same thing is said, only from a different perspective. The bath that cleanses us is Jesus’ love, which extends to death. Jesus’ word now is ordinary; he himself is the Word. And his word is Truth and Love. It’s basically the same idea as in the apostle Paul’s form that made it harder for us to understand when he said, “His blood justifies us” (Romans 5: 9; cf. Romans 3.25; Ephesians 1: 7, etc.) And the same idea also appears in the great vision of Jesus’ great priesthood in the Letter to the Hebrews. The place of ritual purity was not simply taken by morality but by the gift of meeting God in Jesus Christ. Again, a comparison with Platonic philosophers from the period of late antiquity comes to mind. They also focused on the topic of purification, and the most striking of it is
again at Plótin. According to them, cleansing on one, on the one hand, he achieves through rituals and, on the other hand, and above all, through the gradual ascent of man to the heights of God. At the same time, man is purified of matter; he becomes spiritual and thus also clean.
On the contrary, according to the Christian faith, it is purifying us
incarnate God. It is he who brings all creation together with God. Nineteenth-century spirituality once again understood purity one-sidedly and narrowed it more and more on the area of ​​order in sexual life. That’s right; he rediscovered contempt for matter and corporeality. The wide space of human desire for purity gives us a way
to show the Gospel of John – Jesus himself shows it to us: On, the God-Man, makes us able to meet God. It is essential to become a part of his body, to let penetrate his presence. At this point, it might be appropriate to point out that the transformation of the notion of purification in Jesus’ message is further confirmation of what we spoke in Chapter 2 about the end of animal sacrifice, the cult, and the new temple. If the sacrifices were just an eager stretch after what was to come, and his light and dignity received from this future to which they were to head, similarly, the ritual purification that was part of this cult, it was only as the Church Fathers would say, a transitional stage in the history of the relationship between God and men, a stage that should have taken place open to the future and retreat as soon as it comes what is new.