You Don’t Need to Understand Now
by Jon Bloom
Jesus spoke many profound and important words to his disciples the
night before his crucifixion. But there’s one statement we might
easily pass over, because of the context in which he made it. Yet
it is loaded with personal meaning for each of us who follows him:
What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterward you will
understand. (John 13:7)
In that one sentence, Jesus captures a profound reality that is
our frequent, and to some extent continual, experience as
Christians: not understanding what God is doing (or not doing) and
why. It’s crucial that we grasp the wider implications of what
Jesus said here, for if we do, it will help each of us immensely
during the times we wonder why our Good Shepherd is leading us
down such confusing and painful paths.
We often do not know what God is doing now. And the crucial truth
is, we don’t need to know what God is doing now to follow him in
faith.
You Do Not Understand Now
During that Last Supper, Jesus did something strange. He removed
his outer garments, tied a towel around his waist, grabbed a basin
of water, and proceeded to wash each disciple’s feet. I doubt this
hits any of us with the force it did the disciples since the
cultural mores of that region and time are so distant and foreign
to us. But to the disciples, it felt more than strange; it felt
disorientingly inappropriate.
“We are never on more dangerous ground than when we believe we
understand better than God.”TweetShare on Facebook
It sure did to Peter. All his life, he had understood that washing
someone else’s feet was about as demeaning a task as anyone could
perform — a task fit only for slaves, or, if lacking those, for
children. It would have been disgraceful for men of honor. So, as
he watched Jesus, the most honored Person in the world, humbling
himself by taking the form of a common slave, washing off with his
own holy hands God only knew what uncleanness clung to those feet,
he felt indignant. This was completely backward! If anything,
Peter should be on his knees washing his Lord’s feet.
When Jesus got to Peter, the earnest disciple pulled his feet back
and asked, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” Jesus looked at Peter and
with patient kindness replied, “What I am doing you do not
understand now, but afterward you will understand” (John 13:7).
And there it is: a massive principle for every Christian’s life of
faith, indeed a summary of a motif woven throughout Scripture from
beginning to end, captured in a simple reply to a confused
disciple’s question.
Legacy of Little Understanding
Peter, in not understanding why Jesus was doing what he was doing
at that moment, was in very good company. Redemptive history
recounts story after story of saints finding themselves in this
perplexing position, being forced to trust God to make sense of it
later. Think of:
Abraham, having waited so long for Isaac, only to be instructed by
God to offer the boy as a sacrifice (Genesis 22);
Jacob wrestling with God, and being lamed in the hip, just before
he was to meet Esau (Genesis 32);
Joseph wondering what God was doing as his young adulthood wasted
away in an Egyptian prison (Genesis 37–41);
Moses not understanding why God would choose him to lead Israel
out of Egypt (Exodus 3–4);
Gideon being given far more than he could possibly handle (Judges
7);
Jehoshaphat being instructed to send a choir as his military
vanguard against an overwhelming foe (2 Chronicles 20);
Nehemiah having to deal with so many seemingly unnecessary
adversities, obstacles, and inefficiencies that slowed down the
work in rebuilding Jerusalem’s walls (Nehemiah 4);
Joseph trying to navigate so many unforeseen, confusing detours in
the first few years of Jesus’s life (Matthew 1–2);
The man born blind, who didn’t know until midlife what purposes
God could possibly have in his suffering (John 9);
And Martha’s and Mary’s grief-laced bewilderment over why Jesus
didn’t come to heal Lazarus (John 11).
Of course, that’s just a small sample. Not understanding what God
is doing now (and having to wait till later to understand) is the
experience, to greater or lesser degrees, of every saint in every
age — whether “later” means within a few minutes, as it did for
Peter during the Last Supper, or in the age to come, as it did for
his fellow disciple James, who wasn’t delivered from execution
(Acts 12:1–2). It is a necessary, humbling part of what it means
for us to “walk by faith, not by sight” (2 Corinthians 5:7).
You Must Trust Me
Being content to not understand now doesn’t come naturally to us.
It surely didn’t for Peter. He found Jesus’s reply perplexing. And
patience not being one of his strong suits, he didn’t wish to wait
till later to understand. So, he declared, “You shall never wash
my feet” (John 13:8).
It seems to me that Peter simply didn’t want to dishonor his Lord.
This may have been well-intended, but it was wrongheaded. In
responding this way, Peter actually became guilty of what he was
trying to avoid: dishonoring Jesus. For the great dishonor wasn’t
Peter allowing Jesus to wash his feet; it was Peter’s not trusting
what Jesus said. And this is a crucial point for us to note: We
are never on more dangerous ground than when we believe we
understand better than God.
“We don’t need to understand God’s purposes now; what we need to
do is trust God’s purposes now.”TweetShare on Facebook
I think Jesus fully discerned Peter’s well-intended motive. But he
also discerned the danger of Peter’s wrongheaded, overly self-
confident tendency to trust his own understanding. Which is why
Jesus’s response was so serious. It shocked Peter to his core. “If
I do not wash you, you have no share with me” (John 13:8). No
share with me. Distrust in this meant exclusion. Peter got the
point immediately and repented by exclaiming, “Lord, not my feet
only but also my hands and my head!” (John 13:9).
And what was Jesus’s point? Peter, you must trust me. You must
live by the ancient proverb, and trust what I say with all your
heart, and not lean on your own understanding (Proverbs 3:5). The
only way you as a branch will abide and be fruitful in this Vine
is if you believe my word (John 15:1–5, 7). If you insist that you
must understand now before you will trust me, you will be like a
branch broken off, and you will spiritually wither and die (John
15:6).
You Don’t Need to Understand Now
Many of the experiences that confound us as we follow Jesus feel
far more painful and confusing than foot-washing. Peter would
sympathize; most of his confounding experiences were far more
painful and confusing than that too. Just think of what desolation
was approaching for Peter in the hours following this brief
mealtime interchange. Sometimes it’s lessons we learn in less
extreme moments that stand in clearest relief and help steady us
during more extreme ones.
The plain fact is, we often do not know what God is doing now. And
the crucial truth is, we don’t need to know what God is doing now
to follow him in faith. God has his reasons for concealing his
purposes. Sometimes it has to do with his timing, as it did for
Peter. And sometimes, because God’s ways and thoughts are so
beyond ours (Isaiah 55:8–9), it’s simply God’s mercy toward us to
withhold knowledge too heavy for us to bear.
We don’t need to understand God’s purposes now; what we need to do
is trust God’s purposes now. For it is through our trust, not our
own understanding, that God will direct us along our confusing
paths (Proverbs 3:6). And we can trust him that later, when the
time is right in the near or distant future, he will give us all
the understanding we need.
|