John 13:8 Peter said to Him, “Never shall You wash my feet!” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no part with Me.”
1John 1:9 If we confess our sins, He is faithful and righteous to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness.
John The Beloved has such an awesome perspective of the character, and the ways of Christ. He had such an intimate apprehension of the love of God, that began while laying his head on the breast of Jesus. No one else communicates the beauty of The Lord, except maybe David, like John.
Jesus has made provision for us to walk in daily victory over the power of sin, and in our circumstances of life. In our quest to live as Overcomers in the power of His indwelling life, there will be those occasions when we will yield to sins deception, and when that happens it is so imperative that we know what to do, or the enemy can use a failure to discourage us from getting up and going on, to once again fight the good fight of faith. The glorious truth is that just as we walk in freedom, by faith, resting in Christ as our victory, we can get up when we fail, knowing that Christ is our victory, in our sin.
Those two verses make it clear that our sin, that is our dirty feet, don’t keep us from fellowship with our conquering Lord; it’s our unwillingness to confess our sins, and to allow Him to wash our dirty feet that keeps us separated in defeat and despair. Obviously, God assumes we will sin in our quest for holiness, for He has already made provision for forgiveness and cleansing. He has even put His faithfulness on the line as His guarantee. Do you see it? Even when we fail, He has already provided victory. We just have to own our sin, and allow Him to provide the victory of His shed blood, so that we can get up and start walking, with renewed zeal to avoid that sin, in freedom once again.
If we refuse to confess and repent, then of course the unconfessed sin keeps us from experiencing our inheritance. But it is only because we won’t acknowledge our dirty feet and appropriate the solution already provided for us at the Cross. Even in our failure there is a victory, already won, just waiting for us to, by faith claim as our own.