John 4:1-26
Jesus crossed multiple cultural barriers when he talked with the Samaritan woman at the well near Sychar. She was a Samaritan, and the Jews despised the Samaritans as unclean traitors, with Jewish descent, but who had intermarried with the pagan nations. Secondly, she was an adultress, something Jesus knew by divine revelation, but perhaps also evident because she came to the well alone in the middle of the day, instead of in the morning or evening when the other women would have been drawing water. This would have indicated that even her own people rejected her. Thirdly, drinking from her water jar would have made him ceremonially unclean because she was a foreigner. Even the woman was surprised that Jesus would ask her for a drink, knowing the cultural prejudice the Jews had for her people.
But Jesus wasn’t concerned about cultural practices, or even about breaking ceremonial practices. He was concerned about her spiritual condition, and directed the conversation toward her core need: living water (later revealed as the Holy Spirit living in a believer – John 7:39). Asking for a drink from her opened the opportunity to offer living water to the woman. When she asked him to give her the living water, he throws another unexpected twist into the interaction, “Go call your husband and come here”(v16) Why does he introduce that here, and not simply continue to lead her to faith in himself? Was it to expose her sinful lifestyle? Or was it to expand the offer of life to her family, not just herself?
Whatever the reason, Jesus used it to take the conversation deeper into her life and to the things that she needed to repent of and surrender to him. It seems that her response is a smokescreen to get the attention off her sinful lifestyle, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet”(v19), then raising a question about where the right place to worship was. Jesus even used her diversion to focus on truth and to lead her toward living water.
(to be continued…)
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