One hand washes the other.what does this mean?
Ask anyone who has had one hand hurt or badly damaged! He will tell you it mean, one hand needs the other. The whole body is better when both hands are working together.
If hands could talk, only a foolish hand would say to the other: I don't need you!.
Men and women need each other. Members of a family need each other. The whole family is better and happier when its members are ready to help each other. Even the weak members of a family- the little children- can be so helpful. So it is in the family of God. When men learn to know God as their father, and are able to live and work together as helpful brothers,the world will be a better and happier place.
Christians are people who believe God is their father. They believe that Jesus, who lives as a member of a human family in Nazareth long ago,is the son of God. They know his life on earth shows the love of God more clearly than it has ever been shown.
The life of Jesus, as a man on earth,ended after 33years. Men put him to death. Jesus,by accepting death as a sacrifice he could make for all mankind,turned this terrible 'happening' into a great victory.
His friends at first were troubled and frightened by what had happened to him. Then they learned that jesus was alive again. He had not simply been 'brought back to life',as an almost drowned man might be. He was now alive for evermore: more 'alive' than a human being had ever been!
The first messagers to bring the good news- that jesus was alive- were women. The other friends of jesus could not believe this good news. One old record says (mark 16:9, 10) 'After jesus rose from death,early in the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalen.....she went and told it to his companions. They were mourning And crying; and when they heard her say that jesus was alive and that she had seen him, they did not believe her.
Another record (Luke 24:11, 12) says that the men thought that what the women said was nonsense, and did not believe them.but peter got up and ran to the grave; he bent down and saw the grave cloths and nothing else. Then he went back home wandering at what had happened. 'Where was the body of jesus?
Later jesus was seen by men also. Peter was one of them. During these appearances jesus talked to his friends and made it clear to their minds that his death was not some accidental 'happening'. It had a meaning for all mankind: God was ready to forgive people the wrong things that had done. The suffering of jesus, on their behalf, had made this possible.
Jesus wanted his friends to take this wonderful message to all people. They had seen the suffering; they had seen the risen Savior. Their message would be convincing. Jesus taught his followers that many of the scared writings, or scriptures,which had been carefully kept by their own people- the jews- were about him. 'This is what is written (he explained): that the messiah must suffer and be raised from death on the third day, and that in his name the message about repentance and the forgiveness of sins must be preached to all nations, begining in Jerusalem. You are witnesses of these things' (Luke 24:46-48).
The first group,trained by jesus and sent out by him with his message to the world,were later called 'apostles' or sent ones.
Jesus promised that God would send them special help for their task. Jesus himself would have to leave them. He had told them earlier: 'I will ask the father, and he will give you another helper, the spirit of truth, to stay with you for ever' (john14:16). If jesus had stayed on earth as a man he could have been in only one place at a time. But now his spirit could come to all his friends and live in them. They could act as the 'hands and 'feet' of Jesus himself. The whole company of believers could be his body.
This work of spreading the good news, or gospel,was to be a wonderful task in which all could share- even the weak and small, the men and the women, the boys and girls, do not leave Jerusalem, jesus told his frei D's, but wait for the gift my father promised, that I told you about (acts 1:4). I myself will send upon you what my father has promised. But you must wait in the city until the power from above comes down upon you (Luke 24:49).