CHAPTER 4 In Spirit and in Truth

The message of Christ rebukes both the self-righteousness of a Pharisee and the lascivious 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.

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 essential elements of the gospel message? Certainly not.

The woman was uniquely prepared by the Holy Spirit for this moment. Unlike Nicodemus, she was no theologian, but her heart was ready to acknowledge her sin and embrace Christ. His message to her was 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.

So we must be careful to realize that this passage alone is not an appropriate foundation upon which to build a complete understanding of all vital gospel truth. 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 idolatry were deemed evils 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 Jews and 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, he might have missed this 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, 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 said to her, “Give Me a drink” (v. 7). 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. Nobody-not this woman, not a Pharisee like Nicodemus, not even the most loathsome leper-was beyond the reach of His divine love.

The Lesson of the Water: Everyone Who Thirsts May Come

“Jesus answered and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, “Give Me a drink,” you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water” “ (John 4:10). Suddenly He turned the situation around. At first He was thirsty and she had the water. Now He was speaking to her as if she were the thirsty one and He had the water. Instead of asking for a drink, He declared that she needed a drink from His fountain. The issue was no longer His physical thirst, but her spiritual need. Though she apparently did not understand yet, He was offering living water for her dry soul.

The living water He held out to her was the gift of salvation including all that is inherent in the reality of redemption-freedom from sin, the commitment to follow Jesus, the ability to obey God’s law, and the power and desire to live a life that glorifies Him.

But she still seemed to be thinking in terms of literal water. “She said to Him, ‘Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do you get that living water? You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well, and drank of it himself and his sons and his cattle?”” (John 4:11-12).

If only she knew—He was incomparably greater than Jacob and His water infinitely better than Jacob’s water. He tried to explain more about the unique properties of His living water: “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life” (vv. 13-14). This was water to quench a parched soul. Her response was immediate: “Sir, give me this water, so I will not be thirsty nor come all the way here to draw” (v. 15). Apparently she still was somewhat confused about whether He meant literal water or something spiritual. Either way, she wanted this living water!

Notice, however, that at this juncture, even though she did ask for it, Jesus did not simply give her the Water of Life. She asked for it and presumably would have accepted it had He given it outright. But Jesus was not looking for a cheap pseudo-conversion. He knew she was not yet ready for living water. There were two issues that needed to be addressed first: her sin and His true identity.

Jesus never sanctioned any form of cheap grace. He was not offering eternal life as an add-on to a life cluttered with unconfessed sin. It is inconceivable that He would pour someone a drink of living water without challenging and altering that individual’s sinful lifestyle. He came to save His people from their sin (cf. Matt. 1:21), not to confer immortality on people in bondage to wickedness (cf. Gen. 3:22-24).

The Lord went right to the heart of the issue by letting her know she could not cloak her sin: “Go, call your husband and come here” (John 4:16). It was a loaded remark. The web of this woman’s adulteries was so complex and her sin so great that she did not even try to explain. “I have no husband” (v. 17) was all she replied.

Jesus knew the full truth anyway: “You have correctly said, ‘I have no husband’; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly” (vv. 17-18). Imagine her shame when she realized He knew all about her sin! Certainly she would have preferred to keep it hidden. She had not lied to Him, but she hadn’t told the whole truth, either. It is as if Jesus said, “All right, if you’re not going to confess your own sin, I’m going to confront you by telling you what it is.”

Then she did confess her sin. By saying, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet” (v. 19), she was, in effect, saying, “You are right. That’s me. That’s my sinful life. What you said about me is true.”

Jesus had peeled back the camouflage from all her sin. And yet, even with full knowledge of her depravity, He was offering her the Water of Life! If she had known the Scriptures well, Isaiah 55:1 might have come to mind: “Ho! Every one who thirsts, come to the waters.” The offer of living water is not just to religious people like Nicodemus-everyone who thirsts is invited to drink deeply of the living water-even an adulterous woman whose life is fraught with sin.

Isaiah adds a charge to sinners, along with a wonderful promise that would have gladdened the Samaritan woman’s heart:

Let the wicked forsake his way,
And the unrighteous man his thoughts;
And let him return to the,
And He will have compassion on him,
And to our God,
For He will abundantly pardon.

– ISAIAH 55:7

The Lesson of True Worship: Now Is the Acceptable Time

Having recognized Him as more than a mere traveling man, the woman asked the first spiritual question that came to mind: “Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship” (John 4:20). Since He was a genuine prophet, He ought to know which group was right!

Jesus’ response, like His answer to Nicodemus, cut through the woman’s misplaced interest and confronted her with her real need-forgiveness. “Woman, believe Me,” He told her, “an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father” (v. 21). Then, almost incidentally, He told her that the Jews were right and the Samaritans were wrong: “You worship that which you do not know; we worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews” (v. 22). If only she had known it, the Jew she was speaking to was the One who came to bring salvation!

The where of worship is not really the issue; it is who, when, and how that really count. Jesus said, “An hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth” (vv. 23-24). True worship occurs not on a mountain or in a temple, but in the inner person.

The phrase “an hour is coming and now is” gave Jesus’ words a sense of immediacy and personal meaning to this woman. It was as if He were saying, “You don’t have to go up to the mountain or down to Jerusalem to worship. You can worship here and now.” Having brought her to the threshold of eternal life, He was affirming the urgency of salvation: “Behold, now is ‘the acceptable time,’ behold, now is ‘the day of salvation’” (2 Cor. 6:2). The Messiah was present; the day of salvation had arrived; and this was not only the Messiah’s time, but her time too.

It is significant that Jesus used the expression “true worshipers” to refer to the body of redeemed people. All who are saved are true worshipers. There is no possibility of being saved and yet not worshiping God in Spirit and truth. God’s objective in salvation is to create a true worshiper (cf. Phil. 3:3). Our Lord had come into the world to seek and to save the lost. He revealed to a Samaritan woman that His objective in seeking and redeeming sinners is to fulfill God’s will in making them true worshipers. Then He invited her to become one.

When Jesus said the Father was seeking true worshipers, it was more than a statement of fact. It was a personal invitation to the Samaritan woman. Do not miss the importance of that invitation. It debunks the notion that Jesus was offering eternal life without making any demand for a spiritual commitment. The Lord of glory does not say “come to the waters” apart from the command, “let the wicked forsake his way” (cf. Isa. 55:1, 7). The call to worship the Father in spirit and in truth was a clear summons to the deepest and most comprehensive kind of spiritual submission.

But the woman was still confused, and one can hardly blame her. She had come to the well to get a simple pot of water, and in a brief conversation, her sin had been exposed and she was challenged to become a true worshiper of the living God. Her heart longed for someone who could take her tangled thoughts and emotions and make some sense out of everything. So she told Jesus, “I know that Messiah is coming…; when that One comes, He will declare all things to us” (John 4:25).

Jesus’ reply must have shaken her to the core: “I who speak to you am He” (v. 26). What a dynamic confrontation! This Man who had asked her for a simple cup of water was now standing there, claiming to be the true Messiah, holding forth living water and promising to forgive her sin and transform her into a true worshiper of the living God!

Although the text does not specifically tell us she became a believer, it seems obvious she did. I believe she embraced Him as Messiah and Savior, somewhere in the white space between verses 26 and 27. The hour of salvation had come for her. She would willingly become a true worshiper. She would drink of the Water of Life. The irresistible grace of the Messiah had penetrated her heart. Step by step He had opened her sinful heart and disclosed Himself to her; and apparently she responded with saving faith.

The Lesson of the Witness: This Man Receives Sinners

The disciples had been in the village buying food, and John tells us they returned “at this point” (John 4:27). The Greek expression means “precisely at this moment.” Apparently they came back just when the Lord said, “I who speak to you am He.” Had they arrived any later, they would not have heard the declaration of His messiahship. It must have shocked them to hear Him telling this outcast Samaritan woman that He was the Messiah, since He had never previously told anyone that. John says, “They were amazed that He had been speaking with a woman, yet no one said, ‘What do you seek?’ or, ‘Why do you speak with her?’” (v. 27).

The woman’s actions at this point strongly indicate that she had become a believer. She “left her waterpot, and went into the city and said to the men, ‘Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?’” (vv. 28-29). She evidenced all the characteristics of genuine conversion. She had sensed her need, she had confessed her guilt, she recognized Jesus as Messiah, and now she was showing the fruit of her transformed life by bringing other people to Him.

It is significant that her first impulse as a new believer was to go and tell others about Christ. The desire to proclaim one’s faith is a common experience of new believers. In fact, some of the most zealous witnesses for Christ are brand-new believers. That is because their minds are fresh with the memory of the weight of their guilt and the exhilaration of being loosed from it. That was the case with this woman. The first thing she declared to the men of the town was that Jesus had told her everything she ever did. He had held her sin up to the light and compelled her to face who she really was. Then He had released her from the shame. That she talked so freely about it shows she had been liberated from the bondage of her guilt.

Jesus had given her a drink of the Water of Life, and she had begun to worship God in spirit and truth. She didn’t need to conceal her guilt anymore; she was forgiven.

The way the woman phrased her question seems to imply a negative answer: “This is not the Christ, is it?” But it was not an expression of doubt. If she had come into town and said, “Men, I’ve found the Messiah,” the men would have either ignored her or laughed her out of town. She, an outcast adulteress, was not the most qualified person in town to identify the Messiah. Besides, women didn’t tell men anything in that society. So she put it in the form of a question-really a discreet challenge to them. That way they would meet Him with an open mind. She knew Christ would do the rest.

The woman’s testimony had a profound impact on the village. Scripture tells us, “From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all the things that I have done’” (John 4:39). It was the news of how He had uncovered her sin that made such a deep impression. Others, too, responded to Him with zeal (vv. 40-42).

The reason for such a passionate reaction was that the people were Samaritans. In a sense, they all were in the same boat as the woman. They knew the Messiah was coming to set things right, and most of them probably anticipated His coming with fear. Their perspective was the exact opposite of the Pharisees’. The Jewish leaders were looking for a conquering victor who would take up their cause and destroy their enemies. The Samaritans had no such expectation. If the Jews were right, they would be the targets of Messiah’s wrath.

So when this woman came and announced to the people of Sychar that One claiming to be the Messiah had dealt mercifully with her although He knew all her sin, their hearts embraced Him enthusiastically.

Contrast their reaction with that of the Pharisees, described in Luke 15:2: “Both the Pharisees and the scribes began to grumble, saying, ‘This man receives sinners.’” In essence, that is precisely what the Samaritan woman told the men of Sychar: “He is the Messiah, but He receives sinners!” What was repugnant to the scribes and Pharisees was good news to these Samaritans, because they were willing to admit they were sinners.

It was Jesus Himself who said, “I did not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Matt. 9:13). Those who refused to acknowledge their sin found Him to be a Judge, not a Savior. He never gave such people any encouragement, any comfort, or any reason to hope. The Water of Life He held forth was given only to those who acknowledged the hopelessness of their sinful state.

God seeks people who will submit themselves to worship Him in spirit and in truth. That kind of worship is impossible for those sheltering sin in their lives. Those who confess and forsake their sin, on the other hand, will find a Savior eager to receive them, forgive them, and liberate them from their sin. Like the woman at the well, they will find a source of living water that will quench forever even the strongest spiritual thirst.

The final chapter of the Bible closes with this invitation, which evokes a picture of the Samaritan woman: “Let the one who is thirsty come; let the one who wishes take the water of life without cost” (Rev. 22:17). While it is free, it is not cheap; the Savior Himself paid the ultimate price so that thirsty, repentant seekers can drink as deeply as they like.