significance in the fact that "Jesus . . . said nothing to [the Samaritan woman] about the repair of her life
He Demands True Worship
he message of Christ rebukes both the self-righ teous ness of a Pharisee and the sultry lifestyle of a wanton adulterer. Christ's ministry in John 3 and 4 covered both ends of the moral spectrum. John 4 contains one of the most familiar and beautiful conversations in all Scripture. Here our Lord offers salvation to an outcast woman as if He were handing her a drink of water. But do not mistake His straightforward offer for a shallow message.
Those who oppose lordship salvation often point to this account as proof that salvation is a gift apart from any demand for commitment of the sinner's life.1 But we dare not base our theology of salvation only on information gleaned from this account — or worse, label crucial elements of the gospel as nonessential because they are omitted in John 4. Remember first of all that Jesus, knowing the woman's heart, understood exactly what message she needed to hear to be brought to faith. He made no mention of sin's wages, repentance, faith, atonement, His death for sin, or His resurrection. Are we to conclude that those are not indispensable elements of the gospel message? Certainly not.
The woman was uniquely prepared by the Holy Spirit for this moment. There is no use speculating about how much spiritual truth she had acquired prior to this exchange. Unlike Nicodemus, she was no theologian, but her heart was ready to acknowledge her sin and embrace Christ. His message to her was
1. Cf. Zane C. Hodges, Th e Hungry Inherit (Portland, Ore.: Multnomah, 1980). Hodges sees great signifi cance in the fact that "Jesus . . . said nothing to [the Samaritan woman] about the repair of her life which, plainly, was so urgently needed" (p. 25). Th at dismisses the obvious truths that Jesus' words to her did confront her with the reality of her sin (John 4:7 – 19), that He challenged her to worship God in Spirit and in truth (vv. 23 – 24), and that the apparent response of her heart was repentance (v. 29). Hodges concludes rather that "He had said nothing to her of her obligations to God's will for a very simple reason: He was there to off er her a gift " (ibid.). "She could not have comprehended the dazzling splendor of that gift , its sublime and total freeness, had He encumbered His off er with a call to reform her life" (p. 26). Hodges views this passage as the key to understanding the gospel and thus refers to it frequently to support his view that the gospel makes no moral demands on the life of a sinner.
He Demands True Worship
meant to draw her to Himself, not to provide a comprehensive gospel outline intended to be normative for every episode of personal evangelism. We must learn from our Lord's methods, but we cannot isolate this passage and try to draft a model for a universal gospel presentation from it.
All we know about the woman's background is that her life was a tangle of adulteries and broken marriages. In her society, that would have made her a spurned outcast, with no more social status than a common prostitute. She seemed anything but a prime target for conversion. To call her to Himself, Jesus had to force her to face her indifference, lust, self-centeredness, immorality, and religious prejudice.
The woman makes a vivid contrast to Nicodemus. They were virtual opposites. Nicodemus was a Jew; she was a Samaritan. He was a man; she was a woman. He was a religious leader; she was an adulteress. He was learned; she was ignorant. He was a member of the highest class; she of the lowest — lower even than an outcast of Israel, for she was a Samaritan outcast. He was wealthy; she was poor. He recognized Jesus as a teacher from God; she didn't have a clue who He was. The two of them could hardly have been more dissimilar.
But it was the same powerful and omniscient Christ who revealed Himself to her. Take note; this is not primarily the tale of a Samaritan woman. Rather, this is the account of Jesus' self-revelation as Messiah. Of all occasions for Jesus to disclose who He was, He chose to tell this unknown woman of Samaria first. We might wonder why He didn't go to downtown Jerusalem, walk into the temple, and there announce to the assembled leaders that He was the Messiah. Why would He reveal it first to an obscure, adulterous woman?
Certainly He intended to demonstrate that the gospel was for the whole world, not just the Hebrew race, and that His ministry was to poor outcasts as well as the religious elite. It was a rebuke to the Jewish leaders that their Messiah ignored them and disclosed Himself to a Samaritan adulteress. When He finally did unveil the truth to Israel's leaders, they didn't believe it anyway.
We are told only the barest essentials of the Lord's conversation with the woman. Scripture reveals nothing specific about her thoughts or emotions. We are given no insight into how much she understood — or if she understood at all — about the Lord's offer to give her living water. It is not clear when she realized He was actually speaking about spiritual life. The only insight we have into the response of her heart is what we infer from her words and actions.
In fact, although we assume she embraced Christ as Messiah and became a believer, even that is not explicitly stated in the text. We make that judgment on the basis of her behavior — specifically the fact that she ran to tell others about Him, and they believed.
Jesus Heralds His Gospel
So we must be careful to realize that this passage in and of itself is not an appropriate foundation upon which to base an understanding of what constitutes the gospel. Unlike us, Jesus knew the woman's heart. As He spoke to her, He could judge her response and know exactly how much she understood and believed. He was able to bear down on precisely the truth she needed to hear; He used no canned presentation or four-point outline of gospel facts.
Nevertheless, Jesus' discourse with the Samaritan woman establishes some clear guidelines for personal evangelism. As the master evangelist seeks to win her, He expertly directs the conversation, taking her from a simple comment about drinking water to a revelation that He is the Messiah. Along the way, He skillfully avoids her attempts to control the conversation, change the subject, and ask irrelevant questions. Five lessons in particular stand out as critical truths to be emphasized in presenting the way of salvation.
The Lesson of the Well: Christ Came to Seek and Save the Lost
Notice the events that led to this encounter. Jesus had left Judea and was on His way to Galilee (John 4:3). Verse 1 tells us that the word was out about His success. Masses of people were flocking to see Him. That created a severe problem. The Jewish leaders hated John the Baptist because he taught the truth and thus condemned them, so you can imagine what they thought of Jesus Christ. The more people came to see Jesus, the more uncomfortable the religious leaders grew. In fact, from this point on in the ministry of Christ, His running battle with the Pharisees is a constant theme. It finally culminated in their putting Him to death.
Jesus left Judea, not because He was afraid of the Pharisees, but because it was not God's time for a confrontation. He also had a positive reason for leaving: "He had to pass through Samaria" (John 4:4). This was not a geographical necessity. In fact, traveling through Samaria was not normal for a Jew. The Samaritans were so offensive to them that they wanted nothing less than to set foot in Samaria. Although the most direct route went straight through Samaria, the Jews never went that way. They had their own trail, which went to the north of Judea, east of the Jordan, then back into Galilee. Jesus could have followed that well-traveled route from Judea to Galilee.
But by journeying instead through Samaria, our Lord was displaying His love for sinners. The Samaritans were hybrid Jews who had married into the surrounding nations when Israel was taken into captivity in 722 BC (cf. 2 Kings 17:23 – 25). They rejected Jerusalem as the center of worship and built their own temple on Mount Gerizim in Samaria. Their intermarriage and
He Demands True Worship
idolatry were crimes so gross that orthodox Jewish people ordinarily had no dealings with them (John 4:9). Samaria had essentially become a separate nation, viewed by the Jews as more abhorrent than the Gentiles. This hatred and bitterness between the Jews and the Samaritans had gone on for centuries. Merely by traveling through Samaria, our Lord was shattering age-old barriers.
The reason He had to go that way was to fulfill a divine appointment at Jacob's well. He had come to seek and to save the lost (Luke 19:10), and even if it meant a serious breach of cultural protocol, He would be there when the time was right. And His timing was critical. Had He arrived at that well ten minutes early or late, there may have been no woman. But His schedule was perfect; He wrote the script Himself even before the foundation of the world.
Christ arrived at the appointed place, a plot of ground Jacob had purchased and given to Joseph. John 4:6 says, "Jesus therefore, being wearied from His journey, was sitting thus by the well. It was about the sixth hour." Here we get a glimpse of the humanity of Christ. Because He was a man in every sense, He was weary. The writer of Hebrews says He was touched with the feelings of our infirmities (Heb. 4:15).
John probably used the Roman system of marking time. Roman time began at noon, so the sixth hour would be six o'clock. The people in Sychar would be finished with their work, and the women would be doing the daily chore of drawing water. Our Lord had reached the end of a long, hot journey under the sun, and He was tired and thirsty. He was at the appointed place, in God's timing, determined to do God's will. He was there to seek and to save a single pathetic, wretched woman.
The Lesson of the Woman: God Is No Respecter of Persons
"There came a woman of Samaria to draw water" (John 4:7). This woman was a moral outcast, ostracized from society. Imagine her shock when Jesus, who didn't have a utensil to draw water with, said to her, "Give Me a drink" (v. 7). She was surely startled. Not only was she used to being shunned by everyone, but in that culture, men did not speak publicly with women — even their wives. Furthermore, Jesus had shattered the racial barrier. She was startled that Jesus had spoken to her and even more shocked that He would ask for a drink from her "unclean" vessel. She asked, "How is it that You, being a Jew, ask me for a drink since I am a Samaritan woman?" (v. 9).
God is no respecter of persons (Acts 10:34), and Jesus was not ashamed to take a drink from the vessel of a woman for whom He had come to die.