There had been, from the beginning, a secret with God beyond and behind all the revealed requisitions and order of righteousness which had been established in Judea. There was “grace, and the gift by grace.” The Jew might have had committed to him a testimony to righteousness against the world, but the Son of God was the gift of God to the world, entrusted with life for it. “The law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ;” and in the blessed consciousness that he carried with him this secret of grace for sinners, he says to the woman, “Give me to drink.” She wonders, as well she might, that he did not keep his distance as a Jew. But she did not yet know that the secret of God was with him. This, however, was soon to be disclosed. The glory that excelleth was about to fill this unclean place. The Lord God is now taking his stand, not on the burning mount in righteousness, but at the head of the river of life, as its Lord, ready to dispense its waters.
What blessing is thus preparing for this poor outcast none other than an outcast could know it. But such must also know that the source of this blessing is not in themselves. And this the Samaritan learns. She is made to know herself, to look well around on all things that ever she did, arid to see that it left her only a wilderness and land of darkness. Her conscience is dismayed. “He whom thou hast is mot thy husband.” But wilderness and land of darkness as it was, the Son of God was there with her. This was blessing, such blessing as an outcast in a wilderness could know. It was to outcast Jacob, who had only the stones of the place for his pillow, that heaven was opened, and God in fullest grace and glory was revealed. So here with this daughter of Jacob. The Lord was again opening the rock in the desert. The ark of God was now again planted with the camp in the midst of the wilderness. The unclean Samaritan is spoken to by the Lord of the well of life; and this was joy and the power of love to her. It separates her from her pitcher, and fills her spirit and her lips with a testimony to his name. Beloved, this is Divine! A poor Samaritan, whom righteousness had bidden to stand by in an unclean place, is made the pattern of the workmanship of Jesus, and taken into the secrets and intimacies of the Son of God. It was her very place and character of sinner which throws her in his way. It is only the sinner that lies in the Savior’s path. And, brethren, whatever of sorrow or of trial the entrance of sin may have caused us, or may have still to cause us, yet without it we could not have had our God, as we now have him, opening his own bosom, the treasure—house of love, and from thence giving us forth the Son.
The disciples, on their return, wonder, like the woman, that Jesus had not kept his Jewish distance. But still they are conscious of the presence of a glory that was above them; for “no man said, What seekest thou? or, Why talkest thou with her?” They did not as yet know the secret which the Son of God carried; and he then shows them, as white already for harvest, fields which their faith had never surveyed. They knew of no fields, but such as of old had been parted among the tribes. In their esteem, God’s husbandry must be confined to that sacred enclosure; and Samaria, they judged, was now outside that, and but an unclean place. But there was, as we have already seen, a secret with God. It was the Son of God, the Savior of sinners, who had now gone forth with seed, and his toil had prepared a harvest for the reapers in the defiled plains of Samaria.
He shows his disciples a company just coming out from Sychar, who were soon to say, “This is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.” And thus were they ready for the sickle. The harvest in Judea was plenteous (Matthew 9:3737Then saith he unto his disciples, The harvest truly is plenteous, but the laborers are few; (Matthew 9:37)); but in Samaria it was ripe for the reapers. The Lord had borne the toil of the sower; had talked, weary and faint, with the woman; but he would now share with his disciples the joy of the harvest; and in pledge of this, he abides for two days with this little gathering out of Sychar, believed on and owned as the Savior of the world.
The nearness to himself to which the Lord invites the soul, the intimacy with which he seeks to invest the heart of a believing sinner, it is most blessed to know. He does not deal with us in the style of patron or benefactor. The world is full of that principle. “They that exercise authority upon them are called benefactors.” (Luke 22: 25.) Man will be ready enough to confer benefits in the character of a patron, occupying all the while the distant place of both conscious and confessed superiority. But this is not Jesus. He can say, “Not as the world giveth give I unto you.” He brings his dependent one very near to him. He lets him know and feel that he is dealing with him as a kinsman rather than as a patron. But that makes all the difference. I am bold to say, that heaven depends on this difference. The expected heaven of the soul, and which in spirit it tastes now, depends on the Lord Jesus not acting with us on the principle of a patron. Heaven would then be only a well-ordered world of human principles and benevolences. And what a thing that would be! Is it the condescending of a great one that we see in Christ? “I am among you as one that serveth,” says he. Every case, I may say, tells me so. His was never the style of a mere benefactor—the distance and elevation of a patron. “He bore our sicknesses, and carried our sorrows.”
Just look at him at this well, with this Samaritan. She had, at that moment, the most exalted thoughts of him “I know that Messias cometh, which is called Christ: when he is come, he will tell us all things.” This was her high and just sense of the Messiah, not knowing that he to whom she was then speaking face to face could say immediately in answer to her, “I that speak unto thee am he.”
But where was he, the exalted Christ, all this time? Sitting on the well, talking with her, as they had—met together, by the side of a well, where (in order to give her ease in his presence) he had asked her for a drink of water was this patronage after the manner of men? Was this the distance and condescension of a superior? Was this heaven or the world, man or God? Condescension or the world will confer what favor you please, but will have the elevation of a superior and the reserve of a dependent kept and honored. But heaven or love acts not thus. Blessed, blessed be God! Jesus, “God manifest in the flesh,” was kinsman, to them he befriended. And as a kinsman he acted, not as a patron. He seeks to bring us near, to invest our hearts with ease and confidence. He visits us nay, he comes to us upon our invitation—as he went and dwelt two days with the Samaritans who came out and sought his company on the report of the woman. He asks for a favor at our hand, that we may take a favor from his without reserve. He will drink out of our pitcher, to encourage us to drink of his fountains, and eat of our kid at the tent door, while revealing eternal secrets to us. (Genesis 18; John 4.)
Surely our hearts may rejoice over this. The heart of the Lord rejoices in this his own way of love. For these two days at Sychar were to him a little of the joy of harvest. They were some of the most refreshing which the wearied Son of God ever tasted on this earth of ours. For he found here some of the brightest faith he ever met with; and it was only the faith of sinners that could ever have refreshed him here. Nothing in man could ever have done this—nothing but that faith which takes man out of himself.
But this joy was only for two days. He is quickly called down to a lower region; for after these two days he goes on to Galilee, thus getting into Jewish connection again: but he goes with this sad foreboding, “A prophet has no honor in his own country.” And with increased trial of heart must he feel this now, from the liberty which he had just been knowing among the poor sinners in Samaria. And his foreboding was found to be true. He finds faith in Galilee, it is true, but faith of an inferior order. The Galileans receive him, but it is “because they had seen all things that he did at Jerusalem.” The nobleman and his house believed, but not until they had carefully verified him by their own witnesses. The gathering at Sychar had believed himself, the Galileans now believe him for his works’ sake (see 14: 11); the Samaritans knew him as in himself, the Jews were now, as it were, asking a sign again. The one accordingly came into communion with the Son of God, the other receive health from the Physician of Israel. Defiled Samaria is, in blessing, before righteous Judah.
Here the first section of our Gospel closes. It has led us in the paths of the Son of God, the Son of the Father, along this evil world of ours. At the opening of it we saw his glory, and found that the moment it shone out upon the world, it proved the darkness of the world. It met no answer from man. The world that was made by him knew him not.
But he carried with him a secret, the secret of the grace of God to sinners, deeper than all the thoughts of men. A stranger he was on the earth; but the revealing of his secret to poor sinners had virtue to make them strangers with him.
(Continued from page 27.)
Part 2.
CHAPTERS 5.-12.
Having followed our Lord through chapters 1-4 of this Gospel, I desire now, in God’s grace, to track his further way; —and may he, through the Spirit, make this work the occasion of holy and thankful delight!
In chapters 5-10 we see our Lord in intercourse with the Jews. But to exhibit his public life and ministry is not the great purpose of the Spirit in this Gospel. He is not seen here, as in the other Gospels, going about the cities and villages of Israel preaching the kingdom, if haply they would repent; but the departure from God of that world through which he was passing seems to be ever on his mind, and he is seen coining forth only at times to act in power or in grace on all around him, as Son of God—the Stranger from heaven.
And so towards his disciples. They are not the companions of his ministry in this Gospel, as they are in the others. He does not appoint the twelve, and then the seventy; but ministry is left in his own hand the apostles are seen but little with, him till the 13th chapter, when his public ministry has closed. And when they are with him, it is with some reserve. (See 4: 32; 6: 5; 11: 9.)
But, on the other hand, in no Gospel is he seen so near the sinner. He is alone with the Samaritan, alone with the adulteress, alone with the outcast beggar. And this gives its highest interest to this precious portion of the word of God. The joy and security of being alone with the Son of God, as is here exhibited, is beyond everything to the soul. The sinner thus learns his title to the Savior, and ON THE discovers the blessed truth that they were made for one another. The moment we learn that we are sinners, we may look in the face of the Son of God, and claim him as our own. And what a moment in the very days of heaven that is! He came to seek and to save sinners: and he walked as a solitary man on the earth, save when he met a poor sinner. Such alone had title, or even power, to interrupt the solitudes of this heavenly Stranger. The world knew him not His paths were lonely among us, save when he and the sinner found their way to each other. The leper outside the camp met him, but none else.
And let me say, this being alone with Jesus is the sinner’s first position. It is the beginning of his joy; and no one has a right to meddle with it. That which has called itself the Church, in every age of Christendom, has sought to break in upon the privacy of the Savior and the sinner, and to make itself a party in the settlement of the question that there is between them. But in this it has been an intruder. Sin casts us upon God alone.
And indeed, beloved, in the variety of judgment now a days, it is needful to our peace to know this. Others may require of us to join them in particular lines of service, or in particular forms and order of worship; and may count us disobedient if we do not. But however, we may listen to them in those things, we dare not give up, in fear of them, God’s prerogative to deal with us as sinners himself alone. We must not surrender to any the right of God to talk with us alone about our sins. Nor should our anxiety on a thousand questions which may arise, righteous as that anxiety may be, be allowed to lead us for a moment to forget, that as sinners we have been already alone with Jesus; and that he has once and forever, in the riches of his grace, pardoned and accepted us.
This solitude of Christ and the sinner our Gospel most comfortingly presents to us. But as to all others Jesus is here, but at a distance, and in reserve. And so as to places as well as persons. The Son of God had nothing to do specially with any place; —the wide wilderness of the world, where sinners were to be found, was the only scene for him.
But I will continue now to follow the chapters in order.
(To be continued)