Jesus and the Samaritan Woman
13 Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, 14 but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
A book of wisdom written by a believer between the time of the Old and New Testaments says, “Come to me, you who desire me, and eat your fill of my (wisdom’s) fruits… Those who eat of me will hunger for more, and those who drink of me will thirst for more” (Sirach 24:19, 21). Jesus says the exact opposite here. Whoever drinks the water (by which he means faith and eternal life) will never be thirsty again. The refreshment given by the forgiveness of sins quenches everything. Any other way around sin will only leave a person parched and empty. The desire for relief is completely satisfied by Christ.
15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and have to keep coming here to draw water.” 16 He told her, “Go, call your husband and come back.” 17 “I have no husband,” she replied. Jesus said to her, “You are right when you say you have no husband. 18 The fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.” (NIV)
Having caught her interest, Jesus now points her directly to the sin in her life. She was a woman who struggled with sexual sins. Perhaps her willingness to talk with Jesus at all shows this. The Hebrew Talmud was compiled centuries after the time of Jesus, but without a doubt some of the statements in the Talmud reflect popular teaching going back to New Testament and even Old Testament times. One such statement is this: “Scholars should not talk to women in the streets.” (Berakoth 43b). Although this woman knew that men and women (who were strangers) did not normally speak in public, she was fine with what was happening.1 In fact, her moral senses had become so numbed to what was permitted and what was not that she was losing her grip on God’s law altogether. Jesus was here to show her sins to her before it was too late for her to recognize them as sins at all. His timing was perfect.
By bringing up her marriage situation—she was living with a man who wasn’t her husband—Jesus showed her that she was living in a sin. She had put herself outside God’s law. God’s will is that marriage will be the life-long union of one man and one woman, as Jesus said, “The two will become one flesh. So they are no longer two, but one” (Mark 10:8, quoting God the Father in Genesis 2:24). That simple statement shows us that marriage is not only to be heterosexual (Lot, looking at the smoking ruins of Sodom, could attest to that) but also to be monogamous.
Her sins were spread out in the open for her to see, but what was happening inside her heart? Would her heart be broken by Jesus’ words, or would her heart be hardened to Jesus’ words? God’s word always does something; it never falls flat. That’s what God was talking about in Isaiah, when he said “My word…will not return to me empty, but will accomplish what I desire and achieve the purpose for which I sent it? (Isaiah 55:11).
How has God’s word worked in you? Has it broken your heart by exposing sin in your life? It also brings you the message of forgiveness, “a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
1 This social rule would not apply when Jesus was openly teaching in public or performing miracles, as when the woman with the flow of blood was questioned by Jesus (Luke 8:47), or when Jesus spoke with the widow at her son’s funeral (Luke 7:11-17). It also would not rule our Jesus speaking with women, especially family, friends and disciples, in private, such as his conversations with Martha (Luke 10:40-42) or Mary Magdalene (John 20:10-17).
Something extra:
Psalm 20:3
3 May he remember all your sacrifices
and accept your burnt offerings. Selah
In this psalm, there is only one “selah.” Selah is a Hebrew word meaning “lift up,” but just what it means when it occurs in the Psalms is something of a mystery. It might have had a musical significance (key change? interlude? coda?) or a metrical significance. However, whatever its original use, it always seems to put a special emphasis on the verse or cola (poetic lines) it augments. Here, it focuses on God’s acceptance of offerings and sacrifices. We need to remember the difference between our offerings and Old Testament sacrifices. For us, an offering is a gift given in love for God’s grace. In the Old Testament—when this Psalm was written—a burnt offering was restitution for a committed sin; it was atonement to restore the person into God’s grace and into God’s family.
Such offerings depended on God completely, not on man at all. God accepted them because God is gracious. We could make the same application with Christ. God accepted Christ as our substitute because of the perfection of Christ’s offering, the eternal value of Christ’s offering, and God’s own grace. It had nothing to do with us, with our sincerity, with the depth of our repentance, or anything else. It was solely because of God’s grace.
The blessing of this verse still falls upon us, with the joyful knowledge that God has indeed accepted our One Sacrifice, Jesus Christ, who gave himself to atone for all of our sins. That good news is a spring of water welling up to eternal life.
Pastor Smith serves St. Paul’s Lutheran Church in New Ulm, Minnesota. His wife, Kathryn, attended Chapel from 1987-1990 while studying Secondary Education (Theater and Math) at UW-Madison. Kathryn’s father, John Meyer, was also the first man to serve as a Vicar at Chapel.
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