Notes on John 4
© David H. Linden Action International Ministries
John
4 is the only Scripture that tells us of this woman and of the amazing happening
in that Samaritan village. What happened there was a brief moment not typical
of Jesus’ ministry. (See Matthew 10:5,6
and Luke 9:52,53.) It was a foretaste of
salvation that would soon break out of the limits of the Jewish people to the
whole world. (One English translation has the word world in
this Gospel 58 times.) In their new
faith in the real Messiah, it was the Samaritans who said and rejoiced that
Jesus is the Savior of the world.
They were an early example of how fitting that title is for Christ. His own did
not receive Him (1:11), so let the Jews read of this amazing response in
This section is an example of an evangelistic
conversation with an individual. It joins the message of new life to repentance
from sin. It deals with worship in spirit and truth. It affirms Who Christ is, since
John constantly connects Who He is to the needed response of faith. He did not
separate faith as accepting the truth of facts from faith as trust. Jesus tells
of His own cheerful motivation to do the will of His Father. Further, He linked
His obedience to ours, as disciples are called to the same service of bringing
in a harvest. Missionary work is presented here in terms of delight and success,
because harvest is the happiest time of the year. In
4:1-4 See the notes on
John 3 for comments on vv.1-4 about Jesus not baptizing. The Apostle does not
say why it was necessary for Jesus to go through
4:5,6 When Jacob
was dying he gave a specific piece of land to Joseph (Genesis 48:21,22; Joshua
24:32). That plot was in clear view of
The connection with Joseph
helps understand the Samaritans. They were the result of the inter-marriage of
Assyrians and those Israelites left in the land after the Assyrian defeat of
4:6-9 The sixth hour
is noon, six hours after sunrise. At
that odd time the woman came alone for water.
Usually women would come as a group when it was cooler, such as early
morning, but not in the full sun of day. (We do not know the weather that day,
but it may have been December when likely it was not very hot.) The entire village
knew this woman’s reputation, so she might have felt ostracized. The well was
deep; Jesus had no equipment to draw water and he asked the Samaritan woman for
a drink.
It was not Jewish custom for
a man to speak to a Samaritan woman. She was quite surprised. Jesus’ request
meant that he would receive water from her, probably using a dish she had drunk
from. Jews would rather go thirsty than do that. John showed the social
situation: “Jews have no dealings with
Samaritans.” The disciples were in the town to buy food. This was a one on
one meeting. With no other Jews around to show their discomfort with her, Jesus
could speak to her by Himself. His request of her revealed that He did not
despise her. He asked for a drink, and I am quite sure He drank from her
utensil in front of her. This was so unusual it prompted her to ask how He
could do such a thing.
4:10 The
Lord does not explain why He does not share the prejudices of His fellow Jews.
We must also remember that all of the narratives in the Gospels and the Acts
are given to us in very condensed form. Nicodemus did not stay only enough minutes
in his visit in John 3 for the few words recorded there to be said and then
there were no more. What is highlighted here is Jesus response, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is
that is saying to you, 'Give me a drink,' you would have asked him, and he
would have given you living water.” The Apostle
John wrote of what is important.
This is John proclaiming the
gospel! He loved to report Jesus using
the verb give 6:27,32,33,63. Here too,
salvation is emphasized as the gift to be given. But at the same time, Jesus claimed
to be the giver of this gift. The gospel is a message of grace, and if salvation
is to be by grace, then it must be a gift (Romans 4:2-4,16). This is consistent
with John’s emphasis that he wrote this Gospel so his readers would believe Who
Jesus is and trust Him for the life He gives (20:31). Christ is still doing it.
The Lord moved from one kind
of drink, the kind in that deep well, to living water, the kind that sustains
spiritual life. Bread in John 6 sustains life, making it an excellent metaphor
for salvation and likewise water.
4:11,12 Her questions made sense. She was puzzled by
the living water. The best quality water flows from a spring, which they
sometimes called “living water”. She
also noted His words about “Who it is
that is saying to you.” So she asked if He was greater than Jacob. Later she
asked if He might be the Christ (v.29)! This should show us that the Lord may
not open the minds of those receiving the message all at once. Her response was
not suspicion of deceit. He had no equipment to draw with, and the well really
was deep, yet she sensed that He was serious. She too was serious to know what
He meant. If He is greater than Jacob, He must be a very great man. Note her
sense of history. There was a real Jacob who used that very well. He had left
it for Joseph, and Samaritans considered themselves to be descendents of
Joseph. She looked on that well as a gift to her people. Jesus offered to give
living water. Centuries earlier Jacob had given a lasting gift to them. She
wondered if Jesus spoke of a gift exceeding that. He really did.
4:13,14 Patiently the Lord showed He had in mind a
different kind of water. In various chapters John records Jesus speaking in
these analogies: a different temple (chapter 2), different bread (6), a
different resurrection (11), a different kind of hearing (8), a different kind
of shepherd (10), the true vine (15), and a
king of a different kind of kingdom (19), etc.
Water: Water is so common and so necessary! Note how often in this Gospel the Lord uses
water as an analogy. It is in John’s baptism (chapter 1) and the change of
water to wine (2), thus revealing His glory.
It represents the onetime cleansing of a new birth (3), permanent
satisfaction from emptiness (4), the Spirit living in those who come to Christ
(7), and frequent cleansing from sin (13).
It is not as a reward but as
a gift that the Lord gives sinners the satisfaction they cannot have in any
other way. It is the opposite of temporary pleasure of the kind Moses rejected
in Hebrews 11:25. The water from Christ enters the person and becomes so much a
part of the one He saves that it remains and overflows. This indicates that joy
in the Lord is not in short supply. “Living water” was a way people in Jesus’
day might refer to a constant flowing spring rather than a pool of still water.
(Note Jeremiah 2:13.) The spring describes better the life of a Christian, a life
continually sustained by the Lord. In fact, it is eternal. John makes no
mention right here of the Holy Spirit, but this will appear in 7:37-39. The new
life is the promised benefit, caused by the Spirit.
4:15 Not knowing what He meant, the woman asked for
this water. He had asked for something from her, now she asked for something
from Him. There is already an element of trust in her words, yet with so little
understanding. Christ was gentle with her.
4:16-19 Christ has
been speaking only of eternal life. That life is not just unending existence,
or even eternal happiness. It is life from God and God is holy. The life being
offered clashed with the kind she has been living. She had been filling her
life with what could never satisfy. The Lord gives a life that cannot fit in
with its opposite, a life of sin. To have the water of genuine eternal life,
she must turn from the false source of life. Thus Jesus brought up the subject
of her husband.
Her reply is evasive, and yet
painfully true. She had no husband, no one committed to her; the other men she
had before were not true husbands either. We can only wonder what kinds of
promises had been made and broken. Certainly her life was one of
disappointment. John does not say whether she was the one leaving those men or
if they left her. It does not change the issue; her choices were contrary to
the commandments of God.
The Balanced
Message: Jesus offered eternal life; this is gospel.
Jesus opposed sin and to this woman He joined to His gospel message the need
for her to admit her sin. Thus the gospel for sinners is joined with the law’s
demands upon sinners. The gospel and the law are not the same. One requires
faith and the other repentance. A sinner cannot have saving faith without repenting,
but one can never repent without believing in Christ. Here the law and the
gospel appear together; both are spoken on the authority of God. The Samaritan
did not win eternal life by changing her life, i.e., by repenting. (The Bible
never speaks of justification by repentance!) The water Jesus had for her was
truly and fully a gift. For her to receive it, she had to turn from her sin. To
preach only what God offers for free, omits the standard and the requirements
of God that show how much we need His gift. Gospel can only be gospel if it
saves from something. To preach only law, leaves out what God has done for us.
It leaves the sinner guilty and hopeless. Our faith for justification is never
in our law-keeping but only, always, and completely in God’s free gift.
Justification never brings us to a life of freedom from obedience but to God-directed
conduct, which is freedom in obedience to God. Our obedience is never
meritorious; it is a result of faith in what Jesus has merited for us.
The Lord showed that He knew
her completely (Hebrews 4:13). He had said if she knew what He would give and
Who He was, she would ask living water from Him. By showing how He could see
into her life, He showed Who He was as He did with Nathanael in 1:48-50. The
woman does not leave but continues the conversation. He had given reason why
she should take him even more seriously.
4:19 If
Jesus, a Jew she had never met before, could tell her what He knew about her
life, He must be a prophet. Prophets communicate things known only to God and
revealed by Him through them. The truthfulness of their message is one test of
their genuineness. She knew Jesus spoke the truth about her, so she was
convinced that Jesus was a Man from God! Nicodemus had drawn a similar conclusion
from Jesus’ miracles. In
4:20-24 This woman has a sense of history. She refers
to her ancestors again. Samaritans were convinced that
Since she saw Jesus as a
prophet, she set before Him the tradition of her people, and wondered if this
prophet of God will tell her who is right. She sensed that He would know. She
received a full reply:
1)
She
was ordered to believe! Ethics is not limited to conduct; it would be a
rejection of His imperative for her not to believe what He was about to tell
her. In our day we may forget that God has the right to order us to believe
truth.
2)
It
is not from her fathers that this will be settled, but by the Father who has
chosen how to be worshipped. He is a God Who actively seeks that we should
worship Him. By saying this, Jesus showed that the issue of right worship is
settled by God, not by the creative imaginations of the worshipper.
3)
The
issue of where to worship the Father is about to become irrelevant. Wherever
the Jews worship and wherever Samaritans worship will not matter, because
worship will not be centered in a temple of the Jews or the Samaritans. When
the new day of new covenant fulfillment arrived with the coming of Christ, the
externals of old covenant worship became obsolete (Hebrews 8:13).
4)
Samaritan
worship was ignorant because they rejected all the Scriptures given by the Lord
after the time of Moses. They did not recognize David or his sons as kings of
God’s people. What Israelite ancestors they did have set up alternative shrines
in
5)
Only
the Jews had this more complete revelation from God. God commanded the temple
in
6)
With
the Jews it was different. They had the words of God (Romans 3:2). The
salvation (in Greek it is the salvation,
not merely salvation) is of the Jews because salvation can only come from God,
and to the Jews He had given His gospel message. Through them came the Messiah.
7)
A
new day has already come because Christ has come. The temple on
8)
Though
the woman had raised the matter of geography, the Lord moved the subject to the
One worshiped and to how God must be worshiped. The Father will be worshipped
in spirit and in truth. Geography will be irrelevant.
9)
In
spirit – this probably is not a reference to the Holy Spirit, but spirit in
contrast to a physical building. Those who place very high priority on
constructing a church building should notice the emphasis the Lord made.
Worship happens in our spirits in any place we are. Formerly, the robes of the priest and the
furniture of the tabernacle or temple were required. Now all that is required
is that we physically gather to worship; plus He has required the use of physical
water for baptism plus bread and wine for the Lord’s Supper. There is no appointed architecture for church
buildings and no word that we ought to have one. I am writing this in
10)
In
truth – because error about God leads to a false worship of God. The Samaritan
rejection of so much Scripture resulted in confusion. Christians must strive
for as accurate a knowledge of God as we can find in God’s written Word. Error
in doctrine is another term for confusion in the mind.
Summary: Notice what the Lord did! He told her her
religion and her people were wrong. Some would say this is not the way to do
effective evangelism. In John 4 there is no miracle for her to see; Jesus’
evangelism was effective in a simple proclamation of truth and frank rejection
of error. Soon she would not be faced with a choice of two places of worship.
She was a Samaritan woman face to face with the Messiah of Israel. He called her
into worship in spirit of the Father Who is Spirit, and instructed her in truth,
the foundation of all worship.
4:25,26 I do
not assume that the woman mentioned the proper place of worship was an attempt
to change the subject from her mixed up life with many men. She spoke of Christ
as a prophet seriously and thus as a man with answers. Now she changes the
subject from prophet (of which there were many) to Messiah (and she was
expecting only one). Her description of the Messiah was that He would explain
and reveal truth (“tell us all things”). That is what Jesus had been doing with
her in her personal life and in the matter of worship. Her statement in v.25 could
easily be taken as a question as she wondered if Jesus might be that Messiah.
This is the very opposite from avoiding Him because her deeds were evil.
Instead she was coming to the light (3:19-21).
Jesus told her He is the
Messiah. This is most unusual. With the exception of private conversation with
His disciples and the question the Sanhedrin pressed on Him just before His
crucifixion (Matthew 26:63), there is no record of the Lord telling anyone else
that He was the Messiah. (See Matthew 16:13-20.) This open admission to a
woman, a Samaritan woman, a person not a disciple, a person He would probably
not see again in His days on earth, is remarkable. Her believing acceptance of
all He had said to her, including telling her her people were wrong, was
rewarded (Hebrews 11:6) with more. The Lord said, “Take care then how you hear, for to the one who has, more will be
given …” (Luke 8:18). How He responded to this woman is a wonderful example
of this!
4:27-30 We ought to read this very carefully.
Jesus’ disciples were amazed that Jesus was talking to a woman. It was not just
that she was a Samaritan. Scholars report from ancient writings how much men
looked down on women; then we see in Scripture, especially in Jesus’ friendship
with Mary and Martha, that He treated them in fellowship and conversation the
same way He did men. (We should not miss that the Lord never appointed a woman
as a leader in the church, or as an apostle.) It is not that Jesus simply said
something to her, but that He carried on a normal conversation with her. The
tense (talking) shows it was a
continuing conversation.
She went into the town.
Leaving her water jar may be a sign that inviting others to come and meet Jesus
was her priority. She could walk faster without it, and she intended to return
to where Jesus was. To her people she did not announce that Jesus is the
Messiah, but she opened the question that He might be. Her invitation “come and see” is like 1:39 & 46. In
evangelism we are not able to open the eyes of the blind, only the Lord can
make men see. But we are given the privilege to invite others to come and see. Thus evangelism by nature
is simply presenting Christ. Her admission that Jesus had been able to tell her
secrets would make her fellow Samaritans marvel. No wonder they wanted to see
who this man was.
4:31-34 The Lord did it again! He used a common word for a
more important meaning. The disciples spoke of ordinary food. They had gone into
the town for that food (4:8) and had returned with it, while Jesus had remained
behind tired and thirsty. He said He had food to eat. As has happened so often
in this Gospel, they wondered if He meant food of the same kind. That was His
opportunity to speak of the food of doing the will of God. This cannot mean
that doing the will of God is a duty and no more. Since it is given in the
analogy of food, it must mean that just as food does something for us,
satisfying a need, so doing the work of God is satisfying.
4:34 He spoke of finishing the work the Father had given Him. It is only in this
Gospel that the words “It is finished”
appear (19:30). This indicates complete obedience because He finished all the
Father gave Him to do. It also shows that the evangelism that happened at the
well in
4:35-38 The Lord spoke about His work and our work! We
have no role in any atoning labor, but we are not limited to being observers
only when it comes to delivery of the message. We are participants in it (2 Corinthians
6:1; John 20:21). In His analogy of reaping a harvest He said, “I sent you to
reap…” Just as the food He spoke of was
the will of the Father, not regular food, the reaping He means would not be in
agriculture but the souls of man. This is much like “I will make you to become fishers of men” (Mark 1:17).
A number of difficulties are
connected to this passage, though there is simple truth being taught:
We should be humbled when we
run into difficulties of interpretation, and everyone does! We should not turn
away from a text when this happens but seek in it what we can be sure of. This
text teaches much:
Now, who did the hard work in
relation to the Samaritan harvest? I do not know. Was the Lord referring to
some previous work of John the Baptist, or was it a reference to His own work
at the well while the others were shopping for food? I simply do not know. This
we do know: The Lord gave very helpful teaching here that is very clear in
general application, even though it is difficult to discern its specific
application in that day.
4:39-43 The
Samaritan harvest In no other place in the Gospels do we read
of a town that responded like this one, no not in
When
Jesus stayed with the Samaritans in that town (v.40), so did His disciples.
There were no motels, so this must have been culture shock for them to be sleeping
in Samaritan homes on beds slept in the night before by people with whom the
Jews have no dealings! (4:9) This was good preparation for Acts 1:8 and 8:4-8. The
Samaritans were proclaiming Jesus of Nazareth to be the Savior of the world! At
that point, they were ahead of the understanding of the Jewish disciples. They
rejoiced that the grace of God was spreading outside the small confines of
4:43-54 The Healing of an
Official’s Son What follows is really another chapter,
a story of something back on the familiar soil of
God had committed to the
light of the Messiah shining in
4:43-45 The Lord left a place (Samaria), where every word He spoke was accepted as the word of a prophet of God, to go back to His own people. He was accepted as the Messiah and announced as the Savior of the world. Back among Jews, His welcome was from the curious. They had seen the signs mentioned in 2:23-24, and they had an appetite for more (v.48). The “welcome” was weak; the honor was absent. A prophet has no honor at home (Matthew 13:53-58).
4:46,47
Earlier in
The same
story? In Matthew 8, a Roman military
officer in
Numerous scholars think this is the same
story with multiple discrepancies. What this reveals is the low view many
academics have for Scripture. If this is the same story, the four Gospels are a
hodgepodge of sloppy writing and the texts are unworthy of our trust. If that
view is true, there is no successful work of the Holy Spirit overseeing the
human writers, guiding their minds (2 Peter 1:20,21), and keeping the facts
fresh in their memories as Jesus promised (John 14:25,26). A skeptical view of
Scripture is fatal to having confidence in the Bible, and it is all so simple
to avoid. The two stories are two stories, not two garbled accounts of the same
incident.
4:48 The Lord objected to the widespread Galilean distortion concerning signs and wonders. Many in our day are preoccupied with such things to the point of terrible neglect of the gospel message. In God’s ways, the thing signified is much greater than the sign that does the signifying! A bride who thinks more of her ring than her husband is a fair analogy of the distortion of miracles the Lord so often encountered. The Jews had a deep cultural and religious defect when it came to signs and wonders, a problem that Paul (a Jew) pointed out in 1Corinthians 1:18-25. Signs were often given, but not always, to authenticate a prophet (7:31; 9:17; Mark 6:14,15; Luke 7:11-17). Once authenticated, the proper issue should be: what does that prophet say from God? By a preoccupation with signs, their good purpose was obscured as the means to it became the chief fascination. Those who study John should meditate carefully on 2:23-25, a text that throws light on 4:48, and some other reports of faith such as 8:30,31. (See Appendix 8A The Popularity of Jesus.) The Lord reacted to the prevailing distortion concerning this aspect of His work, but He reminded opponents (5:36; 10:32) and disciples alike (14:10,11) that miracles made clear to all Who He was. In His closing remarks, the Apostle John connected faith to miracles. Faith in Christ was his desired goal and the basis of his choice for the very few miracles he reported. If attention is held to the sign, the sign has been abused. If attention is turned to Christ, the sign has served its purpose. No Gospel concentrates on the significance of signs to the degree that this one does.
4:49,50
The Lord was talking with a man in
anguish. He did not make him wait long for a word of hope. Jesus declined his
plea to go to
4:51-54 The servants traveled to
Christ was back in