If we read the Bible, we discover there is no instruction to perform this action. Unlike "do this in remembrance of me" for the bread and the wine, there is no such instruction for the foot washing. Why then is it so important?

John 13:5 echoes John 12:3

".. he poured water into a basin and began to wash his disciples' feet"

"Then Mary took about a pint of pure nard, an expensive perfume; she poured it on Jesus' feet and wiped his feet with her hair"

Jesus explains that washing the feet symbolises washing the whole person - the baptism by immersion in which the body is buried to rise again. So by entering God we flood the world and enter heaven - his Spirit opens as a rainbow in our soul. We sink into the ocean of God but do not drown. This immersion is also symbolised by fire - we stand in the flames but are not consumed.

The highest form of obedience is to obey the commands not written down, but the commands of the Spirit which lives in us. When Mary washed Jesus' feet she was not commanded to do so - there was no law to do this.

Obedience is to carry out the command we have never been asked to perform.

The Ordinance of Humility is performed as part of Holy Communion. This is to reveal the nature of the symbolism. Jesus says "this is my body", "this is my blood" yet Adventism has always insisted the bread and wine do not partake in the nature of Christ, instead they are one reality which symbolises another. It seems the bread and wine are the reality, but we obey what we have not been asked to obey, and understand that Christ is the reality and the bread and wine the illusion. This is the true nature of obedience.

Adventism's Health Message also continues this truth of Obedience. The Bible makes clear meat can be eaten - Peter is shown all foods and told to eat. Similarly wine is regularly drunk in the Bible, and the New Testament even recommends it for health reasons. But pure obedience goes beyond the command, and the Health Message shows the higher nature of Christian obedience by insisting no meat should be eaten, no wine drunk.

We obey when we listen to the Spirit within, when we live in the vision of God. The Testemony of Moses was the Ten Commandments. The Testemony of Jesus is the Spirit.

All this follows from the nature of obedience as revealed by the Ordinance of Humility.