8. Savior of the World

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After Our Lord had cleansed the temple, wrought miracles in Jerusalem, and told Nicodemus that He had come to die for those who were bitten by the serpent of sin, He left Jerusalem, which had rejected Him, and went into “Galilee of the Gentiles.” The usual route between Judea in the south and Galilee in the north was through Perea. The Jews took this route to avoid passing through the land of the Samaritans. But Our Lord did not take it. He had declared that the temple was for all nations; He was called to minister to all races and peoples.

And He was obliged to go by way of Samaria.

JOHN 4:4

The Gospel speaks of His death and Redemption as a “must.” What had happened in Samaria was related to that other—that He should offer His life vicariously for mankind.

Separating the two provinces of Judea and Galilee was a strip of country inhabited by a mongrel semi-alien race, the Samaritans. Between them and the Jews there was a longstanding feud. The Samaritans were a hybrid race, formed centuries before, when the Israelites were brought into bondage. The Assyrians sent some of their own people among them to mix with them, thus creating a new race. The first colonists of Samaria brought idolatry with them, but later on, there was an introduction of a spurious Judaism. The Samaritans accepted the five books of Moses and some of the prophecies; but all other historical books were rejected because these recounted the story of the Jews whom they despised. Their worship was performed in a temple on Mount Garizim.

No Jew would ever pronounce the word “Samaritan,” so hateful was it. Hence, when the lawyer was asked who was the neighbor, he used a circumlocution. On the other hand, the most offensive term the Jews could apply to anyone was to call him a “Samaritan,” as they once called Our Lord, Who ignored the charge. But later on, in the story of the Good Samaritan, Jesus represented Himself as a “certain Samaritan,” indicating the humiliation and the scorn heaped upon Him on His coming to earth.

Our Blessed Lord did not avoid these people. The Maker of all worlds must needs pass through the abode of “foreign” humanity on His way to the heavenly throne. A Sovereign Love laid this necessity upon Him. The time was noon, and Our Blessed Lord was “wearied with His journey” so He sat down at Jacob’s well. But along with this weakness, there appeared His Omniscience, as He read the heart of a woman. Christ was weary in His work, not of it. Two of the greatest converts that Our Blessed Lord ever made, the Syrophoenician woman and this woman, were both made when He was tired. When He seemed most unfit to do His Father’s business, He did it most effectively. St. Paul was taken from work to prison; but he converted some of his jailers and wrote his Epistles. The willing heart always creates its own opportunities.

A Samaritan woman came to draw water.

JOHN 4:7

It was rather unusual for a woman in the East to come in the heat of day in order to draw water. The reason for this unusual conduct is to be discovered a little later. Nothing in an earthly sense was more accidental than a woman carrying a waterpot to a well; and yet, it was one of those ordinary everyday providences of God, which help unravel the riddle of a soul. The great benefit which lay in ambush for her, she knew not. He was there first. As Isaias wrote:

They have found Me that sought Me not.

ISAIAS 65:1

Our Lord found Zaccheus; not Zaccheus Him; Paul too, was found when he was not searching for his Lord. The drawing power of Divinity the Master emphasized later:

Nobody can come to Me without being attracted

Towards Me by the Father Who sent Me.

JOHN 6:44

As she filled her pitcher, she must have already sought to avoid Our Blessed Lord, for she recognized in Him the features of Jewish physiognomy with which the Samaritans had nothing in common. But to her surprise, the Stranger beside the well addressed her with a request,

Give Me some to drink.

JOHN 4:7

Whenever Our Lord wished to do a favor, He always began by asking for one. He did not begin with a reproof, but with a request. His first was “Give!” There must always be an emptying of the human before there can be a filling with the Divine, as the Divine emptied Himself to fill the human. The water, a subject uppermost in her thoughts, became the common denominator between the Sinless and a sinner.

How is it that Thou, Who art a Jew,

Dost ask me, a Samaritan, to give Thee drink?

JOHN 4:9

In this long conversation between the two, there was a progression of spiritual development which finally ended in her coming to the knowledge of Christ, the Savior. Imperfect understanding at first sneered at Him as a member of a certain race or people. At first, He was only “a Jew.” The answer of Our Lord implied that He actually was not the receiver but the giver. She had erred in thinking that it was He who needed her help, when in reality it was she that needed Him.

If thou knewest what it is God gives,

And Who this is that is saying to thee,

Give Me drink, it would have been for thee to ask Him instead,

And He would have given thee living water.

JOHN 4:10, 11

He set forth Himself under the image of water, as a little later on, when men would ask for bread that nourishes, He would set forth Himself under the appearance of bread. Though He spoke of Himself as the Gift of God, the woman saw in Him only a weary travel-stained man of another race. Her eye could not penetrate beneath the outward form to the Divine nature enshrined within. She saw the Jew, but not the Son of God; the weary man, but not the rest of weary souls; the thirsty pilgrim, but not the One Who could quench the world’s thirst. The penalty of those who live too close to the flesh is never to understand the spiritual. But she grows in respect for Him as she adds:

Thou hast no bucket, and the well is deep;

How, then, canst Thou provide living water?

Art Thou a greater man than our father Jacob?

It was he who gave us this well;

He himself and his sons and his cattle have drunk out of it.

JOHN 4:11, 12

He was now called not a “Jew” but a “man.” The woman suspected, though she could not quite understand His words, that He, being a Jew, was casting some aspersions upon the traditions of her people. He answered that He was greater than Jacob:

Anyone who drinks such water as this

Will be thirsty again afterwards;

The man who drinks the water I give him

Will not know thirst any more.

The water I give him will be a spring of water

Within him, that flows continually

To bring him everlasting life.

JOHN 4:13, 14

Here was His philosophy of life. All the human satisfactions of the cravings of body and soul have one defect; they do not satisfy forever. They only serve to deaden the present want; but they never extinguish it. The want always revives again. The waters the world gives fall back to earth again; but the water of life which He gives is a supernatural impulse, and pushes onward even to heaven itself.

Our Blessed Lord did not attempt to dislodge the world’s broken cisterns without offering something better. He did not condemn the earthly streams nor forbid them; He merely said that if she restricted herself to the wells of human happiness, she would never be completely satisfied.

She could not understand grace or heavenly power under the analogy of water for the body; for she had long slaked her thirst at the muddiest pools of sensual gratification. She continues:

Sir, give me water such as that,

So that I may never be thirsty

And have to come here for water again.

JOHN 4:15

He was no longer “Jew” or “man,” but “Sir.” Confusion was still in her mind, for she imagined that His promise would exempt her from the toil of coming to the well. Our Lord spoke from the top of spiritual apprehension; the woman, from the depths of sensuous knowledge. The windows of her soul had become so dirty with sin that she could not see spiritual significance in the material universe.

Our Blessed Lord, seeing that she failed to comprehend the spiritual lesson, now brought home to her why she did not understand His meaning: her life was immoral. He got into her conscience with rather an abrupt turn of conversation:

Go home, fetch thy husband, and come back here.

JOHN 4:16

He intended to bring out her sense of shame and sin. “Go…, come…. Go and face the truth of the life you live; come and receive the waters of life.” The woman answered:

I have no husband.

JOHN 4:17

This was an honest and truthful confession as far as it went; but it did not go far enough. She had asked for living water, but she did not yet know that the well must first be dug. In the depth of her spirit there was a potency for His gift; but the waters of grace could not flow because of the hard rocks of sin, the many layers of transgression, the habits formidable as clay, and the multiple deposits of carnal thoughts. All these had to be dug before she could have the living water. Sin had to be confessed before salvation could be obtained. Conscience must be aroused. With master skill Our Lord was exposing her whole wanton career, and like a lightning flash, fastening a sense of guilt upon her conscience.

Our Lord answered:

True enough, thou hast no husband.

JOHN 4:18

He commended the woman’s honest confession. An unskillful physician of souls would probably have rebuked her sharply for concealing the truth. Our Lord on the contrary said, “True enough.” But then He continued:

Thou hast had five husbands,

But the man who is with thee now

Is no husband of thine; thou hast

Told the truth over this.

JOHN 4:18

The man with whom she was living was not a husband; she had fallen so deep into degradation that she did not go through the legal sanction of marriage which in other times she would have done.

The woman felt Our Lord was “meddling.” He was probing into her morals and behavior and implying that she could not receive His gift because of the way she lived. She then did what millions of people have done ever since when religion demands a reformation in their conduct: she changed the subject. She was willing to make religion a matter of discussion, but she did not want to make it a matter of decision. Our Blessed Lord had brought the discussion around to the moral order, namely, the way she had conducted herself personally before God and her conscience. To avoid the moral problem, she first tried flattery, then introduced a speculative problem:

Sir, I perceive that Thou art a Prophet.

JOHN 4:19

She, who at first called Him “Jew,” then “man,” then “Sir,” now called Him a “Prophet.” She dropped the subject of religion down to the purely intellectual plane, in order that it might not affect her morally. And she added:

Well, it was our fathers’ way to worship

On this mountain, although You tell

Us that the place where men ought to

Worship is in Jerusalem.

JOHN 4:20

The woman made a wild attempt to get off the hook. She tried to pull a red herring across the road by bringing up the old religious squabble. The Jews worshiped in Jerusalem; the Samaritans on Mount Garizim. She sought to turn aside the arrow directed to her conscience by introducing a speculative subject. This would distract her soul from its evil.

But He answered:

Believe Me, woman, the time is coming when

You will not go to this mountain,

Nor yet to Jerusalem, to worship the Father.

You worship you cannot tell what,

We worship knowing what it is we worship;

Salvation, after all, is to come from the Jews;

But the time is coming, nay, has already come,

When true worshippers will worship

The Father in spirit and in truth;

Such men as these the Father claims for His worshippers.

God is a spirit, and those who worship Him

Must worship Him in spirit and in truth.

JOHN 4:21–21

He was telling her that the little local disputes would vanish very soon. The controversy between Jerusalem and Samaria would be superseded; for, as Simeon had foretold, He would be a Light to the Gentiles. Our Lord did, however, vindicate the Jews by saying:

Salvation, after all, is to come from the Jews.

JOHN 4:22

Indeed the Messias, the Son of God and Savior, would rise from among them and not from the Samaritans. “Salvation” is equivalent to the Savior, for Simeon, while holding the Babe, had declared that his eyes had seen “Salvation.” Israel was the channel through which the salvation of God would be conveyed to the world. It was the tree which had been watered for centuries, and which had now brought forth the consummate flower: the Messias and Savior.

The words of Our Lord carried the poor sinner into deeper waters than she could conquer, and transported her into a realm of truth too great for her understanding. But one thing that He said, about an hour coming when there would be true worship of the Father, she dimly grasped, for the Samaritans themselves had some belief in the Messias. She answered:

I know that Messias (that is, the Christ)

Is to come; and when He comes,

He will tell us everything.

JOHN 4:25

She did not yet give Him the title of “Messias,” but she would make the acknowledgment in a moment. The Samaritans had enough of the Old Testament to know that God would send His Anointed One; but in their perverted religion, He was merely a prophet, just as He was to the Jews, in their perverted understanding, a political king. But her statement was tantamount to saying that she awaited the One promised by God. In answer to her feeble belief, Our Lord answered:

I, Who speak to thee, am the Christ.

JOHN 4:26

It was settled now; it was no longer Jerusalem or Mount Garizim in which worship must be centered, but in Christ Himself.

At this moment the disciples returned from the city, whereupon the woman left the well. But in her excitement she left her water bucket. Any time would do for water. Acting impulsively, she hastened into the city to tell the men:

Come and have sight of a man

Who has told me all the story of my life;

Can this be the Christ?

JOHN 4:29

Here was a new title given to Our Lord. Now He was the “Christ.” She began with a pressing invitation. She did not say that He had told her all the things that pertained to the worship of God; but all the things that she had done, even her own faults which she had shunned. The sun no sooner rises than it shines; the fire is no sooner kindled than it burns; so grace acts as soon as the soul cooperates. She became one of the first home missionaries in the history of Christianity.

She told what one would have expected her to withhold. She came to draw water, and when she found the True Well, she left behind her waterpot, as the Apostles had abandoned their nets.

Our Lord, too, on this occasion forgot His hunger, as the Apostles pressed Him to eat, for He told them He had a meat whereof they knew not.

It is worth noting that the Samaritan woman told the men of her meeting with Christ. It may well have been that the women in the city would not allow her to associate with them. That is why she came to the well at noon; the other women came in the cool of the morning or in the evening. Apparently because the women had shunned her, she gave her first message to the men. And evidently she worked effectively in the village; for the Gospel tells us:

Many of the Samaritans from that city

Came to believe in Him

Through the woman’s testimony,

He told me all the story of my life.

JOHN 4:39

The woman did not say, “You must believe what I say,” rather she told them, “Come and see for yourselves.” Make an investigation; shake off prejudice. Her earnest manner convinced the men. A few hours later, she ran out to the well again, the men trailing behind her; but this time for a different purpose—the pursuit of salvation.

And when they came out to Him,

The Samaritans urged Him to stay with them,

And He stayed two days there.

Many more of them came to believe through his preaching.

JOHN 4:40, 41

After seeing Our Lord, they said to the woman:

It is not through thy report,

That we believe now;

We have heard Him for ourselves,

And we recognize that He

Is indeed the Savior of the world.

JOHN 4:42

This was the first time the phrase “Savior of the world” was used to describe Our Lord. Her spiritual growth was now complete. At first Christ was to her a “Jew,” then a “man,” then “Sir,” then a “Prophet,” then “the Messias,” and at last the “Savior of the world” and “Redeemer from sin.” Conversion might be rapid in some, but it was not complete in this woman until she saw that Our Lord came to save not the just, but sinners. No physical miracle was performed; no healing, nor opening of blind eyes. The wonder wrought was in a sinful soul. Out of release from sin came the most glorious title. The Cross was not mentioned, but the One Who hung upon it was clearly denominated: “Savior of the world.” The Cross was everywhere in His life long before He mounted it.

In contrast to this woman were the Pharisees. They denied sin, but they had all the effects of sin: terror, anguish, fear, unhappiness, and emptiness; by denying the cause, they made the cure impossible. If the starving deny famine, then who shall be the bearer of bread? If the sinners deny sin and guilt, then who can be their Savior? Of those conceited, proud Pharisees, Our Lord said:

They who are well, have no need of a Physician.

LUKE 5:31

Two classes of people make up the world: those who have found God, and those who are looking for Him—thirsting, hungering, seeking! And the great sinners come closer to Him than the proud intellectuals! Pride swells and inflates the ego; gross sinners are depressed, deflated and empty. They, therefore, have room for God. God prefers a loving sinner to a loveless “saint.” Love can be trained; pride cannot. The man who thinks that he knows will rarely find truth; the man who knows he is a miserable, unhappy sinner, like the woman at the well, is closer to peace, joy and salvation than he knows.

Millions in this world have white grace in their souls; they feel the Divine Presence. Millions of others have black grace; they feel not God’s Presence, but His absence. The Samaritan woman who first felt His absence, came to feel His Presence. But if she had never sinned, she never could have called Christ “Savior.” He had come not with a book in His hand only to read to those who wanted to be taught; He did more: He came with Blood in His Body to pour it out in full acquittal of a debt man could never pay.

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