Dimensions of Baptism Biblical and Theological Studies

MICHAELS By Water and Blood 151

or as purification from sin in this Gospel? The reason, I suggest, is that

in the Gospel of John, sin is a characteristic of 'the world', not of the

believer. Those who are 'of this world' are those who will 'die in their

sins' (see 8.23-24). The only reference to Jesus 'taking away sin' has to do

with the sin of 'the world' (xou KOGIJOU, 1.29), simply because 'the world'

is where sin is. John's Gospel is much less interested in the sin (or sins) of

believers, whether before or after their conversion, or in how these sins are

'purified' or forgiven. The accent is on salvation positively as the imparta-

tion of life, not negatively as cleansing or forgiveness. 'Purification'

(KCC0apiG|j6s), both in Jn 2.6 and 3.25, presupposes water as the cleansing

agent, yet water is more often something to drink in this Gospel than

something in which to wash (see 4.7-15; 6.35; 7.37-39). Itis, accordingly,

a metaphor for life or the Holy Spirit more than for purification or clean-

sing. When Jesus mentions blood, it too appears not as something

sprinkled for purification, but (quite unexpectedly) as something to drink

(four times in 6.53-56). Water is an agent of cleansing only in ch. 9, where

the former blind man washes the mud from his eyes in the pool of Siloam

(see 9.7, 11, 15), and in ch. 13, where Jesus washes the disciples' feet.

In the blind man's case, as we have seen, sin is not an issue. When the

Pharisees dismiss him as one 'born entirely in sin' (9.34), the reader

already knows that they are mistaken (see v. 3). The accent is still on new

birth and eternal life, not on purification or forgiveness. Chapter 13 is

different. Here alone in John's Gospel we have Christian 'purification', or

KOC0apiG|j6s, yet the candidates for cleansing are precisely not 'sinners'.

They are Jesus' 'own who were in the world', whom he 'loved to the end'

(13.1). Jesus washes their feet, yet with the insistence that 'The person

who has bathed does not need to wash, except for the feet, but is clean all

over' (KaSapos oXos), and that consequently they themselves (except for

Judas Iscariot) 'are clean' (upeis Ka9apoi EGTE, 13.10). But the pronounce-

ment leaves us with a question. Are the disciples 'clean' because Jesus has

just washed their feet, or were they clean already?^5

5. Some ancient textual witnesses (N, the Vulgate, and one old Latin version)
   omit the phrase 'except for the feet' (that is, 'The person who has bathed does not need
   to wash, but is clean all over'). This could imply that the footwashing is itself the
   cleansing Jesus has in mind, in that washing part of the body represents and accom-
   plishes the cleansing of the whole body. But the longer reading (retaining 'except for
   the feet') is almost certainly to be preferred; see B.M. Metzger,^4 Textual Commentary
   on the Greek New Testament (London/New York: United Bible Societies, 1971),
   p. 240. And on this reading a previous cleansing is quite clearly assumed; see J.C.