IN the early part of John’s Gospel the Lord uses water as a figure of the possession and enjoyment of eternal life. You will find this notably so in chapter 3, 4., and 7. It is a wonderful thing in a world of death to have eternal life. That is what the soul gets, who conies into contact with Christ.
This gospel is divided into three sections. I might call them the Life section (ch. 1 to 7); the Light section (ch. 8 and 9); and the Love section (ch. 10 and onwards).
The Light section is in ch. 8 and 9. In ch. 8, the Lord says, “I am the light of the world,” and in ch. 9 He says in effect, “I will give you eyes to see.” Then when you come to ch. 10. you begin a very wondrous tale, which is all about love. That is the Love section. I say this in passing, because it will help you in reading the gospel, but I am chiefly concerned with the portion which is before us.
Now the woman mentioned in ch. 4. came into contact with the Lord in a very remarkable way. She was not brought to the Lord through the exercises of a guilty conscience to begin with. In ch. 3, in sharp contrast with this, you have got the exercises of a very religious, but, mark well, unconverted man. My friend, you may be as religious as possible. There are plenty of varieties and styles turned out nowadays, and all the while unconverted. Here is a man, Nicodemus, who got to the very top of the theological tree. I have no doubt that if he had lived in our days he would have been a D.D. Yes, but with all his religion, what Christ had to tell him was that he was not a B.A. Not a B.A., what is that? you ask. “Born Again,” I reply. Have you been born again? If you have not been born again you have not got life, except your natural life, and that you have forfeited through sin.
Scripture lets you know plainly what will happen to a man who passes out of this scene not born again. If a man be not born twice he will die twice, but the man who is born twice, most certainly will not die twice, and thank God! he need not even die once, because if the Lord were to come, He would be taken up from the earth with His beloved people the apostle Paul says, “We shall not all sleep,” and by sleep he does not mean unconscious existence. The body is in the grave. It goes to dust, but where is the spirit of the believer? With the Lord.
That is the result of having been born a second time. Now the conscience of the man in the third chapter was not easy, and if you have not been born of God, I can well believe that there are moments in your history when you are uneasy as to the real state of your soul. You would not go and tell anybody about it, because you have got a reputation, and you want to live up to it. What is the reputation? You have got the reputation of being a Christian, and the whole thing is a falsehood, because you have never been born again.
Nicodemus with all his religion was uneasy. The Lord put an arrow into his conscience. He unfolded to him the glorious thought of God in the gospel, the communication of eternal life in the Son of God, and the imparting of that life by faith in the Person of the Son of God. “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish but have everlasting life” (vers. 14,15). Christ lifted up on the cross is the source of life to men, long dead in sins as far as God is concerned, and alive in sins as far as their life is concerned. Then He adds that wonderful verse, the 16th “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”
There God is seen loving and giving, and man believing and having. That is the way eternal life is had. You cannot earn it. We do not deserve it. We may have it, as a gift, as the Lord says in chapter 4, “If thou knewest the gift of God.” Do you know that God is a Giver? Most people have an idea that God is demanding. No, He is not. He is a Giver.
In the third chapter we get the figure of water and the Spirit. You will find that the three chapter 3, 4, and 7, where the figure of water is introduced, present the truth in different ways. In chapter the water comes down from God; in chapter 4 it goes up to God in worship; in chapter 7 it goes out in testimony. The water comes down from God to us, and we receive it. In chapter 4; we find the next thing, that the living, water rises upward in praise and worship and blessing to God. Then it travels out in testimony in chapter 7, as we read, “In the last day, that great day of the feast, Jesus stood and cried, saying, If any man thirst, let him come unto Me and drink. He that believeth on Me as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water” (vers. 37:38). It will flow out in service and refreshing testimony.
Well now, let us look at chapter 4. The Lord must needs go through Samaria. Why? He was taking a long journey into Galilee, and He might have gone a different way. But the real truth is that He must needs go through Samaria, because He knew there was a poor wretched sinner in that city, with a very needy heart. He wanted to meet her, and I think I shall not go beyond the truth if I say He wants to meet you, if that be your condition. “He must needs go through Samaria.” That was the necessity of love. It was just the necessity of love that brought Him down, as we sing sometimes―
“My Saviour came down from His glory and throne,
What wonderful love! What wonderful love!”
Do you know it? Does your soul repose in the sunshine of that love? If not, your life is a huge mistake.
Let us follow the narrative a little further. The Lord comes to a city of Samaria, called Sychar. We read, “Now, Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being wearied with His journey, sat thus on the well: and it was about the sixth hour” (vs. 6).
Although Jesus was God, yet He never allowed that which was divine in His being to preserve Him from the vicissitudes connected with human life down here. Here was this blessed One, the God-man, “the Word made flesh.” That wearied Man was the One who made the well, and the water that was in the well, too. Oh, the blessedness of perceiving the reality of the humanity, as well as the Deity of the Lord Jesus Christ.
At the sixth hour a woman of Samaria comes to draw water. I take it that it was noon, not the time when women usually went to draw water, which was in the cool of the early morning or late evening, but in the burning glare of the midday sun. I know very well what that is like. It recalls to my mind when I passed through the Red Sea, and our steamer took us along the coast of the desert.
Why does this poor woman come out then? I think the reason is not very far to seek. She wanted to get her water pot filled at a time when nobody would see her. I am pretty certain that by the grace of God you have not sunk to the same depths of moral degradation to which this woman had sunk. She did not want to face other women. She felt her sin. Forget not this. Sin is a bad master. Sin is a very defiling thing.
True, but blessed be God, the Saviour who met her, is anxious to meet you. She came, and what did she find? She met God, “manifest in the flesh.”
What she saw first of all was a weary man. She could understand that. The blessed Lord had had a long walk, and was weary, as He sat on the well. He says to her, “Give me to drink.”
Now make no mistake. I have heard preachers say He asked her for water. No, He did not. It was the command of the Sovereign. She might not know it. So He said, “Give me to drink.” What is her answer? An immediate offering of the cup of water? We are not told so.
She says, “How is it that thou, being a Jew, askest drink of me, which am a woman of Samaria? for the Jews have no dealings with the Samaritans.” The Samaritans were a mongrel race. They had some of the Jews’ religion, but it was mixed up with idolatry.
Naturally, man has got no dealings with God. If God draw near to you and me, and speak to us, the first thing we will do is to say, “No, no,” sad testimony as to where man is in the moral springs of his being.
She says, in effect, I never thought a Jew would so lower himself as to ask drink of a woman of Samaria. Mark the Lord’s answer. “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink; thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water” (vs. 10).
Beloved friend, do you know Him? Eternal life consists in the knowledge of God thus revealed, and if you do not know Him, what have you got? Nothing! Listen to this, “Thou wouldst have asked of Him, and He would have given thee living water” (vs. 10). That is God’s way. Take your place as a needy sinner at the Saviour’s feet, and what will you find? He will meet your soul’s deep need. He will fill your heart to the very brim with His love, with His grace, and with the living water, which will overflow and rise up in worship.
Now what the Lord said evidently touched this woman. I have no doubt that, first of all, He spoke to her in this way to gain her confidence, because the effect of the temptation of the devil with Eve in the first instance, and ever since, is that in the heart of man there is distrust Godward. Now the Lord Jesus came to restore her confidence, and white, so to speak, she said I am surprised, and I do not mean to give you a drink, He said, as it were, If you only knew who I was, you would have asked something from Me, and you would have got it without question or delay. That is the way of God when He deals with sinners.
Observe that when the Lord spoke of the living water the woman does not rise in thought above the mouth of the well. “Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with.” There is water, but you cannot touch it, “and the well is deep.” I think there is deep meaning in those four words, “the well is deep.”
W. T. P. W.
(To be continued.)