"13 Now before the Feast of the Passover, when Jesus knew that his hour had come to depart out of this world to the Father, having loved his own who were in the world, he loved them to the end. 2 During supper, when the devil had already put it into the heart of Judas Iscariot, Simon's son, to betray him, 3 Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into his hands, and that he had come from God and was going back to God, 4 rose from supper. He laid aside his outer garments, and taking a towel, tied it round his waist.5 Then he poured water into a basin and began to wash the disciples' feet and to wipe them with the towel that was wrapped round him. 6 He came to Simon Peter, who said to him, “Lord, do you wash my feet?” 7 Jesus answered him, “What I am doing you do not understand now, but afterwards you will understand.” 8 Peter said to him, “You shall never wash my feet.” Jesus answered him, “If I do not wash you, you have no share with me.”9 Simon Peter said to him, “Lord, not my feet only but also my hands and my head!” 10 Jesus said to him, “The one who has bathed does not need to wash, except for his feet, but is completely clean. And you are clean, but not every one of you.” 11 For he knew who was to betray him; that was why he said, “Not all of you are clean.”
12 When he had washed their feet and put on his outer garments and resumed his place, he said to them, “Do you understand what I have done to you?"
John 13:1-12
With this chapter we come to the second division of John's gospel. Chapters 1-12 have expounded, as we have seen, the first part of 1:11, 12, 'He came unto His own, and His own received Him not', and now John turns his attention to the second, 'As many as received Him, to them gave He power to become the sons of God, even to them that believe on His Name'. What follows, therefore, in the remainder of the gospel may be said to deal with disciples entering their sonship in Christ. It is pre-eminently our Lord's ministry to believers, and the emphasis is on fellowship with Christ and the gift of the Spirit. To anticipate a little, it will be useful to look at the pattern of teaching that is to be unfolded. In 12:24, a word that has already been spoken to the disciples, Jesus has unfolded the law of spiritual harvest, 'Except a corn of wheat fall into the ground and die...'. Then here, in the feet-washing incident, Christ speaks of an example given to His disciples that of 'coming down, dying to live', and this is the secret of spiritual authority. Then comes the teaching of the Upper Room in chapters 14-16, as if to underline the source of power for this kind of living - the Holy Spirit, and Abiding in Christ. Such is the pattern that this second division of the gospel unfolds.
Some commentators suggest - and with some justification - that the first verse of the chapter is introductory to the whole section, not merely to the story of the feet-washing, and that it should be detached from the latter.