(CHAP. 4.)
WE see in Nicodemus a man who, in spite of every advantage and privilege possible for a man in the flesh to enjoy, is nevertheless a lost soul, helplessly wandering on the verge of eternal ruin. A person of quite a different character comes now into view (chap. 4), one outside of every privilege; far from the place of earthly blessing and destitute of every advantage — a specimen of the mischief and ruin wrought by human will.
The Lord had left Judea because a report had reached the Pharisees that He was making and baptizing more disciples than John. He did not Himself baptize, for He had not come to make a following on earth, nor to recall Israel’s allegiance to a legal and earthly responsibility. His mission was grace; and for Israel it is grace that gathers the poor of the flock first in Galilee. To Galilee therefore He goes; but on His way He must needs pass through this poor world in all the plenitude of His grace — a world which has been the scene of every wicked act that lust, treachery, and violence could be guilty of.
Of this, Sychar was a notable example. Jacob’s well was there, and the portion which he gave to his son Joseph, that which he “took out of the hand of the Amorite” with his sword and with his bow. He had purchased it with money, but his sons possessed it by the sword (Gen. 34). Wearied with His journey, Jesus sits at the fountain. Thither, to draw water, comes the Samaritan woman, alone, as He was alone who sat there, and like Him wearied, but how unlike Him in her way of willfulness and toil — a willful scion of a reprobate race and of a city stained of old with rapine and bloodshed.
Jesus addresses her, saying, “Give me to drink.” She hesitates and raises difficulties. Such is man, a prey to suspicion, and ungracious. But in that Man, so far from pride and prejudice, God was there in grace and lowliness; and had she known it and had asked of Him, He would have given her living water.
He would have given her blessing, which must needs take a threefold form, namely, Life, Light, and Liberty. Rebellion against the words of God, and contempt of the counsel of the Most High, had brought her into darkness and the shadow of death, and bonds of affliction and iron. She had lived to the flesh, and of the flesh she had reaped moral corruption and an ever-deepening degradation. Unable to rise above the thoughts of flesh, she knew not the free-giving of God, nor who that lowly One was, nor the gift He would have bestowed. Had He waited for her to ask, never would she have received the blessing.
The water He gave becomes, in him who drinks of it, a fountain of water springing up into eternal life. It is divine life in the soul returning, in the power of the Spirit, to the divine and heavenly source in Christ from whence it comes. It is life received as the gift of Christ and answering by the Spirit to the divine Object with which it is in relationship. The Saviour speaks of what He would then have given to this poor woman, captive to sin; but speaks of it according to the fullness of it as known in Himself.
Light, she has no capacity to receive. Life must be graciously given if she is to have it. She is conscious only that her selfish, self-willed life has left her unsatisfied and weary, a slave of the flesh she had sought to gratify, To be free she must find outside of self another and a divine Object.
As yet, however, her thoughts rise no higher than “our father Jacob” — a worthy sire of a soul so wayward; and she longs for nothing better than satisfaction and rest for the flesh. The light must enter her conscience, if not to convert, at least to convict; for it was no welcome necessity that made her say, “I have not a husband.” Were it merely light, no soul would be saved; yet light is necessary if souls are to be saved. Still more convincingly, by the words of Jesus does light stream upon her soul. She says, “Sir, I see that thou art a prophet.”
He knew and had told her all things she had ever done; yet He had freely and graciously conversed with her, prophet as He was. He through whom grace and truth had come was there; and the grace came first, however much misunderstood. But by it He had won her confidence, Jew though He was; and she will ask Him about the true place of worship, Jerusalem or Gerizim, around which were centered their mutual antipathies.
But this fully raises in the heart of Jesus the thought of the children’s liberty in the Father’s presence, and the worship in spirit and truth which it becomes them to offer Him. Neither “this mountain” nor Jerusalem was to be the place of it, though salvation was of the Jews, and earthly privilege, for worshippers in the flesh, centered in Jerusalem. But this was to be a spiritual worship according to the nature of God who is a Spirit, not merely suited to the natural man.
Now, however, a Person dimly rises before the soul of this poor captive of sin and Satan, even Messias, who is called Christ. She says, “When He comes He will tell us all things.” Already she had been moved by the grace and truth which acted from without upon her; but at last, within her, living faith, however feeble, clung to an object, One who “will tell us all things.” But Jesus had already told her the “all things” of her own life’s history, and He now says to her, “I who speak to thee am He.” And she repeats, “Is not He the Christ?”
She is thus brought out of darkness and the shadow of death and her bands are broken asunder. Leaving her water-pot, emblem of her weary toil and soul unsatisfied, and in the freedom and power of a truth that filled her heart to overflowing, she bore testimony to the men of the city of the dignity and blessedness of that lowly One who had indeed given her light, but not without first bestowing the life to enjoy it.
Remark the most gracious way in which the Saviour wins this poor soul. Dark as she was and dead towards God in every way, He first expresses the fullest grace towards her, in spite of her incapacity to understand it. Then pouring light upon her conscience, unwelcome to her as it was, He makes her sensible of an omniscience that took account of all her actions, yet in grace, not condemnation. Convinced of His prophetic spirit she, as a last resource, opposes to it that great rampart of a false and counterfeit religion which the world, the flesh, and Satan had raised against the truth. But the Saviour in divine wisdom carries on the work from the point which it had reached.
A prophet, as she said, He had told her “all things;” but, life now trembling in her soul, her faith owns a Christ who should tell us “all things.” This then must be He; and His own words are divine authority for her faith that He is the Christ.
Small as was her apprehension, the Father had been revealed in the Son and by His words to her. This, moreover, is eternal life in its full character, when known in the soul. To her apprehension the light had revealed her sin; but it was in grace, and by Him who, to her faith, was the Christ. We are saved by grace through faith; it is eternal life. Life she had, having drunk of the living water; her measure of light was the condition in which she enjoyed it, but was not the measure of the life itself. How often is this so even Yet! The soul may have eternal life, but the enjoyment of it is often limited practically by the limited measure of light received. Nevertheless the life is not the same thing as its conditions. The Spirit is not given by measure (3:34, 35). Light, on the contrary, may be received in various and different measures.
Ignorant as the disciples were of the Son’s mission and of the Father’s work, they refrained instinctively from questioning the woman or Jesus. A heavenly atmosphere pervaded that scene, strange to them and imposing on them silence, a joy of heart with which they could not intermeddle. But to the Saviour’s vision the arid field of this poor world was already ripe with its soul-harvest, and the servant who labored in it should gather not for a restored earth and a millennial kingdom, but fruit unto eternal life. His wages, too, should be a present satisfaction in the accomplishment of the Father’s will, and in the salvation of the souls of men. For it is man alone who is the servant. He it is who sows and reaps, while God alone gives the increase. One man sows and another reaps; both shall rejoice together when dispensations are forever passed. Thus all the holy prophets which have been since time began, shall mingle their praises and joys with all whom the Lord sends now to gather fruit immediately for eternal life. For those, indeed, it was sowing work during all the long course of dispensations, which, according to divine wisdom and patience have followed in succession, until the accomplishment of God’s eternal purpose. Now, the servant reaps in view of what is beyond dispensation.
How strange a fact, but constantly true in principle, that long before the thought had entered the mind of any of the privileged Jewish people, these Samaritans had apprehended the divine and eternal truth that Jesus was the Saviour of the world. Yet their state and position, especially that of the woman herself, were the fullest possible outcome of human will, both religiously and nationally, and in her case above all socially. Jesus remains there two days, and then continues His journey to Galilee, and comes again to Cana.
The great hindering cause in the Jewish mind was the demand for signs and wonders to satisfy and convince the flesh. The Lord would and did give signs to confirm feeble faith, to accomplish the promises, to fulfill the word of God, to express the nature and love of God in a suffering world, to relieve the needs of man, and as proof of His power to exercise grace and judgment, but never to satisfy the flesh or to convince unbelief.
In Nicodemus we learn the necessity of divine power and instruction in lieu of the natural thoughts of men.
The point in the narrative of the Samaritan woman is the necessity of faith, and the following incident of the courtier of Capernaum is given to impress this lesson.
God-given faith is the faith that rests on God’s testimony because He gives it, and requires no sign or sight to accredit it. So imminent was the case in question, that the courtier could but feel it a fatal delay perhaps to ask Him for sign or aught else, but only to heal his son. Jesus says to Him, “Go; thy son lives.” And the man believed the word which Jesus said to him. Nor he alone, but his whole house believed.
This was a second sign which Jesus did, being come out of Judaea into Galilee. The first sign was done in Cana also, and His disciples then believed on Him. The present case affirms the same principle of faith; and now, more precisely, faith in His Word, as the only means of blessing for the proud because privileged nation. The despised and outcast Samaritans had already learned it in perhaps a much more simple and blessed way.