And now we are left to walk simply with the Lord alone. John's testimony, blessed servant as he was, is over,-confirmed indeed as to man's state by the word. and deed of Him by whom came grace and truth. And more solemnly confirmed it could not be. " Grace" itself could not trust man. " Truth" had to say, " Ye must be born again." Through His disciples He had even taken up John's work, and baptized with the " baptism of repentance." Thus the revealer of the love and grace of God had borne true witness to the state and condition of man; Sinai's thunder, and the veil which it was death to pass, not more.
And this must needs have been. For all God's attributes commend each other, and it is the blending of them all, like the colors of the prism, however various they may seem, which alone makes the ray of perfect " light." The flames of Sinai did not indeed reveal God's love, and yet it was there unseen amid the flames of Sinai. Take the law which says, you cannot draw near to God, and the voice of Him who says, " I am the way," how surely they tell the same tale of man as an outcast naturally from the glory of God. And when the law says, " there is none righteous, no, not one," does grace reverse that sentence, when it speaks of One of God made unto us righteousness?"
Only, as I have said, grace speaks of this far more solemnly, and there is a persuasiveness in its accents I find not in the other. I look at the cross, and how can I escape the conviction-the overwhelming conviction -of sin? Can that be by any possibility an overdrawn picture, that lone figure hanging between earth and heaven,- there are others, but I think of no other, for which heaven has no help, and earth no pity? Can that be an exaggerated tale which love tells me of what I am, in that cry of forsaken sorrow, the outburst of the broken heart of the Lord of life and glory, given for me?
But thus grace, while it does substantiate the law's verdict, has a thing to speak of peculiar to itself, still righteousness, aye, " righteousness of God," wondrous to tell, for the sinner and just as a sinner. This the Baptist's lips could not declare. He could point to the " Lamb of God that taketh away the sin of the world," and could say, "He that cometh from heaven is above all," not knowing how much lay hid in the words he uttered. And the Lord, on the other hand, could and did confirm the testimony of one who, " in the way of righteousness," called men to repentance. But even so, this was not in the line of Christ's peculiar testimony. Thus He Himself " baptized not." It is perfectly beautiful, that sanction given by disciples' hands, to that to which yet He could not put His own. It was meet and right to sanction it, and He does. But in passing as it were only. After resurrection, when the glory shines out through those opened heavens into which He has gone, even baptism itself, the declaration of death, has to take new shape, and John's disciples are baptized afresh. If it be death still, there shines even there too the track of His footsteps who has now passed through it. And the new truth is, if dead, we are " dead with Christ."
And now we pass with the Lord from Judea to Samaria. Solemn to say, yet sweet, the new truth can be more fittingly and freely told out in that land of outcasts than among them of whom, in the Lord's testimony, salvation comes. Itself an outcast, it has come to dwell with outcasts. " Say we not well that thou art a Samaritan?" was the reproach of another time, answered by that tale of Samaritan pity, where priest and Levite had no help. And now grace would stoop lower still, and be more wondrous, however they might cavil. A weary man, not so much with His journey as with the unbelief of His own to whom Fie had come, would seek that refreshment at the wells of Samaria, which Israel's streams had failed to give. Think of it, beloved. Think of Him, who made the worlds, Him for whom all streams ran, Himself the fountain of gladness in a poor barren world that had departed from Him, and that knew Him not when He was there, and that cared not for Him when it knew-now content to be debtor to a Samaritan sinner for that which shall relieve His thirst. And was it Christ, the Man, thirsted only? or was it Christ, the All-sufficient, thirsted-thirsted for a weary heart into which to pour out of His own fullness, to fill and gladden it, and to find Himself refreshment in so filling it? Surely, with this before us, we have the key to the apostle's declaration, that as " God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself," and we now "in Christ's stead"-Himself gone up on high,-carry this " word of reconciliation "-it is " as though God did beseech by us." For did not Christ " beseech"? Content to expose Himself even to rebuff and scorn at the hands of a poor wretched creature, herself the scorn, and worthy of the scorn of others, that He might win but one soul, one uncared for and careless soul to God, that He might cause to spring up in it that " living water" of which He spake, of which whosoever drank, thirsted no more forever!
I do not intend to go at length into what follows, though indeed there is a freshness in it that never tires. But my object is rather to trace the doctrine that is developed here and its connection with that which precedes: the place of this blessed chapter, in the general line of truth running through the gospel. Yet a few thoughts that strike one may fitly find place first.
Notice then the Divine style of reaching a sinner's conscience.
You might say, she had none practically. At least, that callousness had come upon it, the natural result of a bad life which the world knew, and after its manner scorned and pointed at. She was alone and she was weary indeed, and felt, no doubt, the world's reproach. She came by herself, not at the time when women draw water. The grossness that could scarce see anything beyond her water-pot, it may be was just the weariness of a heart which had been saying " Who will show us any good?" until by degrees had come utter despair of good, and the little petty wants of every day life had become the only certainties-" let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." A lesson of the world's vanity, which brought no deliverance with it, but shut up hopelessly to what seemed contentment with vanity itself.
However it was, she was dull enough, indifferent enough, callous enough, to excite wonder. You would have said, a soul so dead, a conscience so dull and seared, would have needed some rousing appeal, some startling denunciation of the sin which had seared and deadened it. You expect to hear such, it may be, from the Lord's lips. You think that very love itself would need to speak in thunder, as at Sinai.
But it is not so, but the very contrary. No gentle dropping of the rain, no distilling of the dew, no " small rain on the tender herb," is gentler. And though it seem at first as vain as showers on desert sand, no repulse repels. " If thou hadst known the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink," is the only rebuke;-a word of pity and sorrow which does the work, reproach would never do, and the wonder of His presence steals in upon her heart, " Art thou greater than our father Jacob? "
Still she has no thought but of bodily want supplied. Conscience must be roused as well as wonder, ere she can know this man and his strange sayings; but the way has been so far prepared that, rouse it now, she- will not start away as at first she would have done, nor resent it as she might at first; cloak her sin, if she can, she will. But even so, at least she cannot brazen it out as she might with another. And, uncloaked and exposed, still she does not turn away, nor resent it. Cover it up again she cannot: " Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." The thing is out; she knows it, and He knows it. Is she not already glad He does?
He has told her her sin; but told it, surely as never did man before. He has told her what conscience had accused her of; but He has not accused her. He has shown her her guilt; but not condemned her. He is on the side of her conscience, and yet not against her as her conscience is. And He knew it too from the first, when He forgot His weariness to think of' hers, and His thirst to think of hers. What was that living water He had told her of?
From thence, it is not far to know. Yet a little while, and He is revealed to her heart who is thenceforth to fill it. She can go away with her new found joy, to speak of Him to others,-to tell of her shame, heedless if it speak His glory-and in words which show where she has got her understanding of Him: " Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?"
But I pause somewhat more upon the doctrine which is developed here. It is plain that we have something in advance of the last chapter. There it was new-birth; here it is what many a new-born soul for some time knows nothing of-a heart satisfied. " He that drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him, a well of water, springing up into eternal life." A comparison with the words at chap. vii. 38, 39, demonstrates this "living water" to be the Spirit of God. Hence we have in these 3rd and 4th chapters the two great characteristics of the Christian, the two things that lie at the threshold of all progress,-new birth and the indwelling Spirit. Few who may read these pages will need reminding as to the separateness of the two. That there were children of God-new-born, therefore, of the Spirit -who had not the Spirit, is plain from the very form of the question which Paul puts, in Acts 19, to the twelve at Ephesus. And that that was the necessary condition of believers, in a past economy, is equally plain from the commencing verses of Gal. 4, Heirs, though those old saints were, yet in what was a childhood state, and under the tutelage of the law, they differed nothing (in their own experience) from servants, though lords of all. Christ had to come, made of a woman, made under the law, to redeem them that were under the law, that they might receive the adoption of sons; and only as sons, given the right to take openly that place. Did God " send forth the. Spirit of His Son into their hearts, crying, Abba, Father?" " At that day," says the Lord in this gospel, speaking of' it to those who were already disciples, " ye shall know that I am in the Father, and ye in me, and I in you."
There was no settled peace with God then, no consciousness of the child's place with God, no abiding satisfaction of the heart, short of the cross and resurrection of Christ, and the sending of the Holy Ghost, the witness of His place in ascension glory. In this 4th chapter of John, anticipative in its character, as I have said before the whole gospel is, we have the germ at least, and more than the shadow of it. It is not a question of how far it was apprehended then. The doctrine of it is here, if not the apprehension, a doctrine with which all the features of this touching scene are, by the Spirit of God Himself, most plainly connected. After this manner, therefore, and with this justification, We use them here.
The features thus sketched for us are, a Gentile scene: -Christ the "Savior of the world" (ver. 42),-the living water springing up, type of the ever freshness of the abiding Spirit; and the Father seeking " worshippers in spirit and truth." It is not hard to trace the connection of these different elements, nor unprofitable to seek to follow that connection out.
The first points are plain enough, and simple enough in their significance.. If the " middle wall of partition" be not down, we have at least nothing to remind us of it, nay the contrast is suggested here. " 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." Here, if we take the two chapters, the middle wall is up for the self-righteous Jew rather. " Ye must be born again " was said to such, and though the thing itself was as much needed surely by Samaritan sinners, yet it was not as suited an utterance for such. With Nicodemus it was self-righteous confidence that needed shaking; with the woman it was the weariness of one that had lost belief in good. Hence the different treatment of the two cases, where the same love and wisdom dealt with each. Beloved reader, how have you heard the Lord's voice for yourself? Does it say, " ye must be born again," or " if thou knewest the gift of God?" and from hence read your character.
A door shut for self-righteousness is surely in perfect keeping with a door open for the sinner. Nay, there is something more in the way of contrast in the Lord's dealing with these two cases, for Nicodemus comes to Jesus, to find apparently (and yet in Divine love to him) a shut door, while the woman (sinner as she is, however weary,) is sought and gone after, and besought to know the grace that is brought to her. Oh if the eye of only one in such a condition should ever rest upon these pages,-lonely, weary, with no right sense of sin either, and occupied with a host of petty cares, or the daily routine of an aimless, unsatisfying life,-how I would pray that there might be for such an one in the history of another like one, full and Divine blessing, and that He who took up the denier of His master, Peter, and Saul, the manslayer, as suited messengers to proclaim His grace, may make this Samaritan woman a preacher to you now. Poor, weary one, whoever you are, the appeal is to your heart and conscience, what say you of Him, who told her " all things that ever she did," and so told them as to send her away full of the joy of His having told them her,-did ever man speak as this man to a sinner? "Is not THIS the Christ?"
I would notice here, moreover, that it is not the joy of pardon merely that we have before us in this blessed scene. It is the joy of the discovery of Christ rather. In the knowledge of salvation only we have not the abiding freshness of the living Spirit. Salvation (looked at, I should say, as my salvation simply) is a negative thing as it were, I am saved from something. It is very blessed, and, in the first sense of it, full of a power we think can never fail. Yet how often and how soon sometimes it does fail. We want to know, not merely what we have escaped from, but what we are brought to -" to see," not our salvation simply, but " the salvation of God:" Himself displayed in it, and Himself our God; the former loneliness of our being filled up with a new presence. " We joy in God through our Lord Jesus Christ, by whom we have now received the reconciliation."
This is very plainly what we have here. There is no such word even throughout, as " thy sins be forgiven thee "—no similar word to that. "Is not this the Christ?" is the question which shows where her own heart is. And as connected with that, the truth of what worship is, and how produced, is brought before us. "The hour cometh, when ye shall neither in this mountain, nor yet at Jerusalem, worship the Father.... But the hour cometh, and now is, when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth; for the Father seeketh such to worship Him."
It is striking how the woman had introduced the question. With her, as with so many now, worship was the fruit of an uneasy conscience, not of a heart at rest. It was a thing of place and duty and decent form, which had descended to her from pious ancestors.
Her mind naturally reverts to it, the moment her conscience is alive; still with a certain weariness, as conscious that it had never done much to relieve her disquiet at all events. She has no better authority for it than that her fathers did so. What it was she worshipped, she did not know. Would a weary heart find rest at Jerusalem, which Samaria's altars would not give?
Let me vary the question for souls around me now. Shall I find, if I look closely at all at what men call worship in the present day, a much truer idea of it, or much more rest of heart, in general, than this Samaritan enjoyed in hers?
I see the signs of weariness, of emptiness, of want everywhere. I am not deceived certainly by the joyousness of the melody of trained voices, or by the skill of artistic performances, so essential a part now of Christian services. It does not take a very deep plummet to sound the depth of this. Nay, some would say that it all betokened anything but the abundance of joy in the Lord, and that it was the fruit of anything rather than the knowledge and the worship of One, who, being a spirit, " must be worshipped in spirit and in truth." Nay, it might be argued, they do not themselves believe it has that character, as they never question the world's right to take part in it as well as they. And, indeed, beyond even that, confess that they have no skill to distinguish " true worshippers" from those that are not.
Yet " we are the circumcision, who worship God in the spirit," is Paul's characteristic Of Christians. And here we are told, it is what the Father seeketh, in opposition to the Jewish form, which men have got back to. And sweet it is to know that the only " coming together " of the Church as such, which the word speaks of, is for worship. " In the midst of the Church will I sing praise unto Thee," is the Lord's own expression, prophetically, as the one risen from the dead, telling where His heart is, who is anointed with the oil of gladness above His fellows:-alone in the sorrow, first in the joy which has sprung out of that sorrow.
Oh, what it tells of the place we have been brought into, a place where the heart of Him who could not rest till He could " rest in His love," can rest and be satisfied, and pour out itself in joy and thanksgiving. unto God:-a place which He expects us to be so consciously in, that our attitude, no less than His, is to be that of worshippers-worshippers with Him. I would that the saints of God did always remember it, and that when they speak, and rightly speak, of "Jesus in the midst," they did always remember what is His spirit who is in the midst of them. Whatever consequences of blessing flow from it, and surely from all true approach to God blessing must flow, yet if we " come together" to seek that, we should remember that we are bringing the testimony, of want and neediness where we should be found, rather, giving Him the glory of. a full and accomplished blessing; can we be in sympathy with the spirit of Jesus else? And which of us, beloved, would willingly rob Him of His part in that united joy the fruit of His own accepted work of travail and sorrow?
We are set in full blessing. We " who worship God in the spirit, and rejoice in Christ Jesus," is part of the -very definition of Christians. And God knows that our practical strength, and power for walk and service are inseparably connected with it. " The joy of the Lord is your strength." If we have only emptiness to bring to God, be sure we shall have only emptiness to tell of before men. Service is only the man-ward side of worship. We " teach and admonish one another " then, only effectually, when, " with psalms and hymns, and spiritual songs," we " sing with grace in our hearts unto the Lord."
" The Father seeketh such to worship Him." There is no veil here which shuts out God. It is the Father in the activity of love coming out, all veil removed, to put His arms round the neck of the sinner, and to bid him know Him now indeed. The joy in this, above all, His who has sought and saved,-the witness of it in this chapter. He whom, having left weary and hungered, they find refreshed. "My meat is to do the will of Him that sent me, and to finish His work." But it would be a terrible reproach to us, beloved, if He had to say to us now, " I have meat to eat that ye know not of."
And beyond He sees fruit of His own labor, into which disciples may as reapers enter, reaping where others have sown-the blessed harvest-time, when sower and reaper shall rejoice together. What a joy, when the full result manifested, freed from all mixture and from all reproach which man has cast upon it; He who has wrought it all shall see of the fruit of the travail of His soul, and be satisfied! F. W. G.