And now Jesus, being driven away by the jealousy of the Jews, begins His
ministry outside that people, while still acknowledging their true position
in the dealings of God. He goes away into Galilee; but His road led Him by
Samaria, in which dwelt a mingled race of strangers and of Israel-a race
who had forsaken the idolatry of the strangers, but who, while following
the law of Moses and calling themselves by the name of Jacob, had set up a
worship of their own at Gerizim. Jesus does not enter the town. Being weary
He sits down outside the town on the brink of the well-for He must needs go
that way; but this necessity was an occasion for the acting of that divine
grace which was in the fulness of His Person, and which overflowed the
narrow limits of Judaism.
There are some preliminary details to remark before entering on the subject
of this chapter. Jesus did not Himself baptise, for He knew the whole
extent of the counsels of God in grace, the true object of His coming. He
could not bind souls by baptism to a living Christ. The disciples were
right in so doing. They had so to receive Christ. It was faith on their
part.
When rejected by the Jews, the Lord does not contend. He leaves them; and,
coming to Sychar, He found Himself in the most interesting associations as
regards the history of Israel, but in Samaria: sad testimony of Israel's
ruin. Jacob's well was in the hands of people who called themselves of
Israel, but the greater part of whom were not so, and who worshipped they
knew not what, although pretending to be of the stock of Israel. Those who
were really Jews had driven away the Messiah by their jealousy. He-a man
despised by the people-had gone away from among them. We see Him sharing
the sufferings of humanity, and, weary with His journey, finding only the
side of a well on which to rest at noon. He contents Himself with it. He
seeks nothing but the will of His God: it brought Him thither. The
disciples were away; and God brought thither at that unusual hour a woman
by herself. It was not the hour at which women went out to draw water; but,
in the ordering of God, a poor sinful woman and the Judge of quick and dead
thus met together.
The Lord, weary and thirsty, had no means even to quench His thirst. He is
dependent as man, on this poor woman to have a little water for His thirst.
He asks it of her. The woman, seeing that He is a Jew, is surprised; and
now the divine scene unfolds itself, in which the heart of the Saviour,
rejected by men and oppressed by the unbelief of His people, opens to let
that fulness of grace flow out which finds its occasion in the necessities
and not in the righteousness of men. Now this grace did not limit itself to
the rights of Israel, nor lend itself to national jealousy. It was a
question of the gift of God, of God Himself who was there in grace, and of
God come down so low, that, being born among His people, He was dependent,
as to His human position, on a Samaritan woman for a drop of water to
quench His thirst. "If thou knewest the gift of God, and [not, who I am,
but] who it is that saith unto thee, Give me to drink"; that is to say, If
thou hadst known that God gives freely, and the glory of His Person who was
there, and how deeply He had humbled Himself, His love would have been
revealed to thy heart, and would have filled it with perfect confidence, in
regard even to the wants which a grace like this would have awakened in thy
heart. "Thou wouldest have asked," said the divine Saviour, "and he would
have given thee" the living water that springeth up into everlasting life.
Such is the heavenly fruit of the mission of Christ, wherever He is
received.
[see note #22]
His heart lays it open (it was revealing Himself), pours it out into the
heart of one who was its object; consoling itself for the unbelief of the
Jews (rejecting the end of promise) by presenting the true consolation of
grace to the misery that needed it. This is the true comfort of love, which
is pained when unable to act. The floodgates of grace are lifted up by the
misery which that grace waters. He makes manifest that which God is in
grace; and the God of grace was there. Alas! the heart of man, withered up
and selfish, and pre-occupied with its own miseries (the fruits of sin),
cannot at all understand this. The woman sees something extraordinary in
Jesus; she is curious to know what it means-is struck with His manner, so
that she has a measure of faith in His words; but her desires are limited
to the relief of the toils of her sorrowful life, in which an ardent heart
found no answer to the misery it had acquired for its portion through sin.
A few words on the character of this woman. I believe the Lord would shew
that there is need, that the fields were ready for the harvest; and that if
the wretched self-righteousness of the Jews rejected Him, the stream of
grace would find its channel elsewhere, God having prepared hearts to hail
it with joy and thanksgiving, because it answered their misery and need-not
the righteous. The channel of grace was dug by the need and the misery
which the grace itself caused to be felt.
The life of this woman was shameful; but she was ashamed of it; at the
least her position had isolated her, by separating her from the crowd that
forgets itself in the tumult of social life. And there is no inward grief
like an isolated heart; but Christ and grace more than meets it. Its isolati
on more than ceases. He was more isolated than she. She came alone to the
well; she was not with the other women. Alone, she met with the Lord, by
the wonderful guidance of God who brought her there. The disciples even
must go away to make room for her. They knew nothing of this grace. They
baptised indeed in the name of a Messiah in whom they believed. It was
well. But God was there in grace-He who would judge the quick and the
dead-and with Him a sinner in her sins. What a meeting! And God who had
stooped so low as to be dependent on her for a little water to quench His
thirst!
She had an ardent nature. She had sought for happiness; she had found
misery. She lived in sin, and was weary of life. She was indeed in the
lowest depths of misery. The ardour of her nature found sin no obstacle.
She went on, alas! to the uttermost. The will, engaged in evil, feeds on
sinful desires, and wastes itself without fruit. Nevertheless her soul was
not without a sense of need. She thought of Jerusalem, she thought of
Gerizim. She waited for the Messiah, who would tell them all things. Did
this change her life? In no wise. Her life was shocking. When the Lord
speaks of spiritual things, in language well suited to awaken the heart,
directing her attention to heavenly things in a way that one would have
thought it impossible to misunderstand, she cannot comprehend it. The
natural man cannot understand the things of the Spirit: they are
spiritually discerned.
The novelty of the Lord's address excited her attention, but did not lead
her thoughts beyond her waterpot, the symbol of her daily toil; although
she saw that Jesus took the place of one greater than Jacob. What was to be
done? God wrought-He wrought in grace, and in this poor woman. Whatever the
occasion might be as regards herself, it was He who had brought her
thither. But she was unable to comprehend spiritual things though expressed
in the plainest manner; for the Lord spoke of the water that springs up in
the soul unto everlasting life. But as the human heart is ever revolving in
its own circumstances and cares, her religious need was limited practically
to the traditions by which her life, as regarded its religious thoughts and
habits, was formed, leaving still a void that nothing could fill. What then
was to be done? In what way can this grace act, when the heart does not
understand the spiritual grace which the Lord brings? This is the second
part of the marvellous instruction here. The Lord deals with her
conscience. A word spoken by Him who searches the heart, searches her
conscience: she is in the presence of a man who tells her all that ever she
did. For, her conscience awakened by the word, and finding itself laid open
to the eye of God, her whole life is before her.
And who is He that thus searches the heart? She feels that His word is the
word of God. "Thou art a prophet." Intelligence in divine things comes by
the conscience, not by the intellect. The soul and God are together, if we
may so speak, whatever instrument is employed. She has everything to learn,
no doubt; but she is in the presence of Him who teaches everything. What a
step! What a change! What a new position! This soul, which saw no farther
than her waterpot and felt her toil more than her sin, is there alone with
the Judge of quick and dead-with God Himself. And in what manner? She knows
not. She only felt that it was Himself in the power of His own word. But at
least He did not despise her, as others did. Although she was alone, she
was alone with Him. He had spoken to her of life-of the gift of God; He had
told her that she had only to ask and have. She had understood nothing of
His meaning; but it was not condemnation, it was grace-grace that stooped
to her, that knew her sin and was not repelled by it, that asked her for
water, that was above Jewish prejudice with regard to her, as well as the
contempt of the humanly righteous-grace which did not conceal her sin from
her, which made her feel that God knew it nevertheless, He who knew it was
there without alarming her. Her sin was before God, but not in judgment.
Marvellous meeting of a soul with God, which the grace of God accomplishes
by Christ! Not that she reasoned about all these things; but she was under
the effect of their truth without accounting for it to herself; for the
word of God had reached her conscience, and she was in the presence of Him
who had accomplished it, and He was meek and lowly, and glad to receive a
little water at her hands. Her defilement did not defile Him. She could, in
fact, trust in Him, without knowing why. It is thus that God acts. Grace
inspires confidence-brings back the soul to God in peace, before it has any
intelligent knowledge, or can explain it to itself. In this way, full of
trust, she begins (it was the natural consequence) with the questions that
filled her own heart; thus giving the Lord an opportunity of fully
explaining the ways of God in grace. God had so ordered it; for the
question was far from the sentiments which grace afterwards led her to. The
Lord replies according to her condition: salvation was of the Jews. They
were the people of God. Truth was with them, and not with the Samaritans
who worshipped they knew not what. But God put all that aside. It was now
neither at Gerizim nor at Jerusalem, that they should worship the Father
who manifested Himself in the Son. God was a spirit, and must be worshipped
in spirit and in truth. Moreover the Father sought such worshippers. That
is to say, the worship of their hearts must answer to the nature of God, to
the grace of the Father who had sought them.
[see note #23]
Thus true worshippers should worship the Father in spirit and in truth.
Jerusalem and Samaria disappear entirely-have no place before such a
revelation of the Father in grace. God no longer hid Himself; He was
revealed perfectly in light. The perfect grace of the Father wrought, in
order to make Him known, by the grace that brought souls to Him.
Now the woman was not yet brought to Him; but, as we have seen in the case
of the disciples and of John the Baptist, a glorious revelation of Christ
acts upon the soul where it is, and brings the Person of Jesus into
connection with the need already felt. "The woman saith unto him, I know
that Messias cometh; and when he is come, he will tell us all things."
Small as her intelligence might be, and unable as she was to understand
what Jesus had told her, His love meets her where she can receive blessing
and life; and He replies, "I, that speak unto thee, am he." The work was
done: the Lord was received. A poor Samaritan sinner receives the Messiah
of Israel, whom the priests and the Pharisees had rejected from among the
people. The moral effect upon the woman is evident. She forgets her
waterpot, her toil, her circumstances. She is engrossed by this new object
that is revealed to her soul-by Christ; so engrossed that, without
thinking, she becomes a preacher; that is, she proclaims the Lord in the
fulness of her heart and with perfect simplicity. He had told her all that
she had ever done. She does not think at that moment of what it was. Jesus
had told it her; and the thought of Jesus takes away the bitterness of the
sin. The sense of His goodness removes the guile of heart that seeks to
conceal its sin. In a word, her heart is entirely filled with Christ
Himself. Many believed in Him through her declaration-"He has told me all
that ever I did"; many more, when they had heard Him. His own word carried
with it a stronger conviction, as more immediately connected with His
Person.
Meanwhile the disciples come, and-naturally-marvel at His talking with the
woman. Their Master, the Messiah-they understood this; but the grace of God
manifested in the flesh was still beyond their thoughts. The work of this
grace was the meat of Jesus, and that in the lowliness of obedience as sent
of God. He was taken up with it, and, in the perfect humility of obedience,
it was His joy and His food to do His Father's will, and to finish His
work. And the case of this poor woman had a voice that filled His heart
with deep joy, wounded as it was in this world, because He was love. If the
Jews rejected Him, still the fields in which grace sought its fruits for
the everlasting granary were white already to harvest. He, therefore, who
laboured should not fail of his wages, nor of the joy of having such fruit
unto life eternal. Nevertheless, even the apostles were but reapers where
others had sown. The poor woman was a proof of this. Christ, present and
revealed, met the need which the testimony of the prophet had awakened.
Thus (while exhibiting a grace which revealed the love of the Father, of
God the Saviour, and coming out, consequently, from the pale of the Jewish
system) He fully recognised the faithful service of His labourers in former
days, the prophets who, by the Spirit of Christ from the beginning of the
world, had spoken of the Redeemer, of the sufferings of Christ and the
glories that should follow. The sowers and the reapers should rejoice
together in the fruit of their labours.
But what a picture is all this of the purpose of grace, and of its mighty
and living fulness in the Person of Christ, of the free gift of God, and of
the incapability of the spirit of man to apprehend it, preoccupied and
blinded as he is by present things, seeing nothing beyond the life of
nature, although suffering from the consequences of his sin! At the same
time, we see that it is in the humiliation, the deep abasement, of the
Messiah, of Jesus, that God Himself is manifested in this grace. It is this
that breaks down the barriers, and gives free course to the torrent of
grace from on high. We see, also, that conscience is the doorway of
understanding in the things of God. We are brought truly into relationship
with God when He searches the heart. This is always the case. We are then
in the truth. Moreover God thus manifests Himself, and the grace and love
of the Father. He seeks worshippers, and that, according to this double
revelation of Himself, however great His patience may be with those who do
not see farther than the first step of the promises of God. If Jesus is
received, there is a thorough change; the work of conversion is wrought;
there is faith. At the same time what a divine picture of our
Jesus-humbled, indeed, but even thereby the manifestation of God in love,
the Son of the Father, He who knows the Father, and accomplishes His work!
What a glorious and boundless scene opens before the soul that is admitted
to see and to know Him!
The whole range of grace is open to us here in His work and its divine
extent, in that which regards its application to the individual, and the
personal intelligence we may have respecting it. It is not precisely
pardon, nor redemption, nor the assembly. It is grace flowing in the Person
of Christ; and the conversion of the sinner, in order that he may enjoy it
in himself, and be capable of knowing God and of worshipping the Father of
grace. But how entirely have we broken out in principle from the narrow
limits of Judaism!
Nevertheless in His personal ministry, the Lord, always faithful, putting
Himself aside in order to glorify His Father by obeying Him, repairs to the
sphere of labour appointed Him of God. He leaves the Jews, for no prophet
is received in his own country, and goes into Galilee, among the despised
of His people, the poor of the flock, where obedience, grace, and the
counsels of God alike placed Him. In that sense, He did not forsake His
people, perverse as they were. There He works a miracle which expresses the
effect of His grace in connection with the believing remnant of Israel,
feeble as their faith might be. He comes again to the place where He had
turned the water of purification into the wine of joy ("which cheereth God
and man"). By that miracle He had, in figure, displayed the power which
should deliver the people, and by which, being received, He would establish
the fulness of joy in Israel, creating by that power the good wine of the
nuptials of Israel with their God. Israel rejected it all. The Messiah was
not received. He retired among the poor of the flock in Galilee, after
having shewn to Samaria (in passing) the grace of the Father, which went
beyond all promises to, and dealings with, the Jew, and in the Person and
the humiliation of Christ led converted souls to worship the Father
(outside all Jewish system, true or false) in spirit and in truth; and
there, in Galilee, He works a second miracle in the midst of Israel, where
He still labours, according to His Father's will, that is to say, wherever
there is faith; not yet, perhaps, in His power to raise the dead, but to
heal and save the life of that which was ready to perish. He fulfilled the
desire of that faith, and restored the life of one who was at the point of
death. It was this, in fact, which He was doing in Israel while here below.
These two great truths were set forth-that which He was going to do
according to the purposes of God the Father, as being rejected; and that
which He was doing at the time for Israel, according to the faith He found
among them.
In the chapters that follow we shall find the rights and the glory shewn
forth that attach to His Person; the rejection of His word and of His work;
the sure salvation of the remnant, and of all His sheep wherever they may
be. Afterwards-acknowledged by God, as manifested on earth, the Son of God,
of David, and of man-that which He will do when gone away, and the gift of
the Holy Ghost, are unfolded; also the position in which He placed the
disciples before the Father, and with regard to Himself. And then-after the
history of Gethsemane, the giving of His own life, His death as giving His
life for us-the whole result, in the ways of God, until His return, is
briefly given in the chapter that closes the book.
We may go more rapidly through the chapters till the tenth, not as of
little importance-far from it-but as containing some great principles which
may be pointed out, each in its place, without requiring much explanation.
