To remain in the fellowship of the Lord maintained by the foot-washing requires the strength of resurrection life. We can never do it by our natural man.

Glorified simply means manifested.

This warns us that the real foot-washing is only for the people who are genuinely in the fellowship with the Lord.

For us to maintain pleasant fellowship with the Lord and with one another we need spiritual foot-washing.

The Lord told us to wash one another’s feet.

On the one hand, we are the new creation, we are in God, and we are in the heavenlies.

In the Scriptures a garment signifies what we do and how we act.

三节指明主为门徒洗脚的原因

主应付了我们一切的需要。在这一切之后，我们还有洗脚的需要。

我们若要认识主作生命的细节，就必须领会约翰福音。

The death and resurrection of the Lord glorified God the Father because His death and resurrection released God’s divine element from within Him. 

If people will receive this light, they will have God. He is the manifestation of God as light, and if you receive Him as light, you will have God. If a man believes in Him, he will not remain in darkness.

When the Lord Jesus as the Son of Man was lifted up in the form of a serpent, He not only removed our sins and dealt with our serpentine nature but also destroyed Satan and the satanic world system that hangs upon him. Now, by His death, we are redeemed, delivered, have the divine life, and are overcoming the world.

The Lord as a grain of wheat falling into the ground lost His soul-life through death that He might release His eternal life to the “many grains” in resurrection. We as the many grains must lose our soul-life through death that we may enjoy the eternal life in resurrection. This is to follow Him that we might serve Him, as mentioned in verse 26.

What is the way for a grain of wheat to multiply? It is not by being welcomed or honored, but by falling into the ground to die. This is absolutely contrary to the human concept. Nevertheless, we must remember that this is the only way to bring the church into being and to increase it in life.

At this point, according to the worldly view, Jesus was in His golden time. The raising up of Lazarus from the dead was such a miracle that it shook all the people.

The living testimony of the church always causes people to believe in the Lord and brings people into the church life. The increase of the church must depend upon the church’s living testimony, not only upon the preaching of the gospel. The best preaching of the gospel that makes the church to increase is our living testimony of experiencing the Lord as our life.

The Jewish priests took counsel that they might kill Lazarus (12:10) who testified to the resurrection power of the Lord. He was an evident and strong testimony of the Lord’s resurrection power.

It is not simply that Mary loved the Lord, but that she poured out her best upon the Lord, and this becomes a sign of the proper church life. In the proper church life we all must love the Lord to such an extent.

Hallelujah, the Lord has raised us from the dead and cleansed us from our leprosy, our sins! Now where we are becomes the meeting place of the church.

The Spirit and the Word will bring us into the principle of life in resurrection. If we take Him in the Spirit and through the Word, we shall then be satisfied, enlightened, freed, and resurrected.

It simply means that the resurrection life will raise up a situation through which God’s scattered people may be gathered together in order to be built up for God’s dwelling on earth.

Lord never comes to improve you or to regulate your behavior. He always comes to enliven you. The Lord’s only intention is to impart Himself to you as the enlivening life.

The Lord has the resurrection life, the resurrection power, but it needs our cooperation. It needs our submission. What is our submission? It is simply the giving up of our opinion. You must forsake your opinion and allow the Lord to speak.

He did not groan over the death of Lazarus, but over the fact that not one of the sorrowful ones knew that He was the present resurrection, and He was troubled by this.  At this juncture, the Lord wept in sympathy with their sorrow over Lazarus’s death.

One day, though we all may die, we will all be resurrected. Throughout the whole universe this will be the greatest victory, the victory that will testify that the Lord is the resurrection. However, even in our daily life we may have the foretaste of the ultimate victory of that resurrection.

When the Lord came, Martha was the first one to meet Him (11:20). But before the Lord could say anything, Martha opened her mouth and gave forth another opinion: