Those who are born again, ie those that have made a conscious decision to turn to Christ and receive him as Saviour, are now part of the Royal priesthood made HOLY through Jesus's blood.
True.
So we don't need ordained priests to give us absolution from sin as Jesus himself has already done that.
False.
We are now saints not sinners and have the right to approach God's throne directly.
We are now saints, that's true, we have the right to approach God's throne directly, that is also true. But according to scripture, that right does not exclude the need for the New Testament Priesthood, otherwise Jesus would not have instituted the ministerial priesthood..., He would have had 120* with Him when He instituted the ...Eucharist, not 12. (*alluding to Pentecost) Let's connect the dots.
John records the story of Jesus washing the feet of His disciples.
1 John 1:8-10 The footwashing recorded in St. John's Gospel is in fact a veiled allusion to the Sacrament of Holy Orders, and that the washing of the disciples' feet symbolically marks their transition from being mere disciples to being priests of the New Covenant.
The text itself lends several clues that lead us to this conclusion. Although St. John does not record the typical details of the Last Supper (as the Synoptics do), having exported the substance of those words and actions into the "Bread of Life" discourse in John 6,
still the narrative of John 13 contains several links to the Passion/Eucharist content of the Last Supper.
John 13:1
The Beloved Disciple makes the feast of Passover the liturgical backdrop for this account, just as he did for the multiplication of the loaves and the Bread of Life Discourse in John 6. He also makes mention of the "hour" of Jesus, which in St. John is a shorthand way of referring to the Passion of Christ (c.f. John 12:23-26).
Thus it can be said that the Passover and the Passion are the underlying theme of this narrative.
The narrative details are also given a more immediate context in time when St. John says next, John 13:2
The footwashing event, then, takes place "during supper" — the Last Supper — and at a point in time "when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas … to betray him." This harkens back to John 6:70-71 again.
The scene is familiar then: the "hour" of the Passion has come, Our Lord and His disciples are in the Upper Room at "supper," and the devil has provoked Judas to the betrayal of Christ. Adding to this overall picture, the text next says: John 13:3-5
The word translated as "laid aside [his garments]" is
tithemin, a word which is used repeatedly in St. John's Gospel with one particular meaning:
to lay down one's life (see John 10:11, 15, 17, 18; 13:37, 38; 15:13). That Jesus is here "laying aside" His garments is a
cryptic allusion to His act of laying down His mortal body in sacrifice. The Eucharist is still very much close at hand in this narrative, even though the outward action is one of ritual washing, not distributing bread and wine.
As He begins to wash the feet of the disciples, Jesus meets some resistance from St. Peter: John 13:6-11
St. Peter's resistance here mirrors his resistance to Jesus' prediction of His Passion in Matthew 16:21-13. He cannot come to grips (yet) with a Messiah who humbles Himself in such a way as this, performing the menial task of the lowliest servant.
But Jesus' words are clear: if St. Peter is not "washed," then he can have "
no part" in Jesus. St. Peter's response is typically overstated and melodramatic: "not my feet only but also my hands and my head!" Jesus' answer to this is curious in itself: "He who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but he is clean all over; and you are clean, but not every one of you."
What does all of this mean? The easy interpretive option here, and the one chosen by most commentators, is to see the footwashing almost entirely as a social gesture – something humanitarian. Jesus humbles Himself and serves the needs of others, and this is the moral/social lesson He wishes us to learn from His good example.
I do not deny that this kind of interpretation can be extracted from the text, if it is the moral sense of Scripture that is being looked for. But this is almost too simplistic an understanding to find a proper place in St. John's Gospel. St. John is mystical and sacramental, and there is often more going on underneath the textual surface than is obvious at first. It would be unlike him to relate a narrative like this simply for the purpose of communicating to future Christians
a platitudinous message, such as, "be servants to one another."
The words of Our Lord, in fact, seem to point beyond this meaning:
"What I am doing you do not know now, but afterward you will understand." (vs. 7) After what? As R. Brown points out, most likely this refers to the same thing as it did in the previous chapter:
Literally, "after these things [tauta]." In itself the phrase is vague … but the meaning is probably the same as in John 12:16 (Raymond Brown, The Gospel According to John, Anchor Bible Vol. 29A [Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, 1970], p. 552)
Jesus hints that what He has done in
the footwashing will not be understood by the disciples until after His glorification, a mysterious statement that tends to make one think that the true meaning of the footwashing is somewhat deeper than simply, "love one another and serve one another." The disciples could have figured that out, it would seem, apart from any extra grace given after Jesus' glorification. No,
there is something about the aftermath of His Passion, Death, and Resurrection that will shed light on this footwashing ritual.....
The footwashing was actually a "status transformation ritual." (
source) He rightly points out that the weighty words passed between Our Lord and St. Peter point to a meaning that goes beyond mere meal etiquette — this is not just an act wherein Jesus cleanses some dirt from the feet of the disciples so that they can properly eat the meal.
Rather, this is something of great importance, so much so that, Jesus says, if St. Peter refuses to be a participant in the ritual, he can have "no part" in Jesus.
Neyrey also points out a significant fact about the words used by Jesus to communicate this ultimatum to St. Peter: the presence of the keyword "
unless," a
presentation of the Divine "if/then."
This kind of ultimatum has been used in St. John's Gospel before, in similar "
status transformation" situations. In John 3:3-5,
unless a man is born again of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter heaven. The reception of the ritual changes his status from that of "outsider" to "insider." Likewise, in John 6,
unless a man eats the flesh of Christ and drinks His blood, he has no life in him. Again, participation in the ritual brings about a change of status — the one who once had "no life" in him now has eternal life.
Similar uses of the word can be found in John 8:24 and John 15:4 In this light, consider again what Our Lord says to St. Peter:
John 13:8
In the Greek, the words are exactly the same in all cases:
ean me, a conjunction that means "
unless" or "except." This suggests to us, given the way the word has been used by St. John thus far, that what is taking place in the footwashing ceremony is some kind of status transformation ritual —
a ritual that will find the disciples at their current status, but will elevate them to a new status.
At this point, it is worth going on a brief excursion to examine the meaning of foot washing in the Old Testament. Although the washing of one's feet in the Old Testament is normally done for practical purposes (i.e., cleanliness), there is one striking example where foot washing is a metaphor for something quite different...