Going Deeper: Meeting the Messiah in John 1-4Sýnishorn

Day 7: True Worship (John 4:1-26)

Read John 4:1-26

At this point, you might be asking who this new life is for. Is it just for people like Nicodemus, the religious expert? Well, Jesus’ next one-to-one couldn’t be more different than Nicodemus. Notice that we’ve changed where we are: Jesus is now in Samaria, an area once part of Israel, but looked down on in Jesus’ time for its religious and ethnic mix. As 4:9 tells us, Jews did not have anything to do with Samaritans.

This one-to-one also crosses other boundaries. Just as Jews did not speak to Samaritans, so men did not speak to women outside their family. If you look ahead to 4:27 you’ll see how this shocked Jesus’ disciples. And this woman is, by the standards of the time, morally compromised. She has had five husbands and is now living with another man she’s not married to (4:18). In many ways she is the last person you would expect Jesus to be talking to.

But what a conversation it is! They start off on the topic of water, and once again, Jesus quickly moves from literal H2O to something much deeper. He offers the Samaritan woman living water (4:10). She is confused; how is He going to get that out of the well when He doesn’t even have a bucket? Jesus stretches her understanding... this 'water' from Jesus will become like an internal spring, overflowing to eternal life (4:14).

The woman sees that Jesus is a prophet and turns the conversation to worship. She points out that Samaritans worship in a different place than the Jews – Mount Gerizim rather than the temple in Jerusalem. But Jesus is clear – with His arrival, true worship is through the Spirit, not in a special place.

As the woman tells Him that the Messiah will make sense of it all, Jesus breaks some very special news: He tells her that the Messiah is speaking to her (4:26). In John's Gospel, this is the first time Jesus tells someone He is the Messiah. He tells this woman, looked down on in so many ways, not Nicodemus, 'Israel's teacher’!

The last person you would expect is offered a place in God’s kingdom. She has access to the living water and true worship that only the Messiah can give. So whoever we are, whatever we have done, the new life that Jesus brings, His grace upon grace, is an offer to us too.