What Jesus offers is Living Water, but what so many of us often think He offers is only earthly.
There's so much to dig into in the first part of John 4, the account of Jesus encountering the Samaritan woman at the well. I'll do into much more detail some other time, but for now I want to focus on what Jesus offers, and what the woman thinks He offers.
In this respect, the Samaritan woman at the well is thinking exactly like Nicodemus, the Pharisee with whom Jesus had a conversation just before this (John 3). Jesus offered them both something eternal, but they both thought that what He was offering was only earthly.
In Nicodemus' case, it led to confusion about what being born again/from above meant. Here, it leads the woman not to confusion but to misunderstanding. She wants what it is that she thinks Jesus is offering: some kind of magic water that will always satisfy, so that she wouldn't ever have to come back to Jacob's well to draw it in the heat of the day ever again. "Give me this water always", she says.
And which of us wouldn't want that? Something that always satisfies, something that would make our lives easier here in a broken world.
But what Jesus is offering is something much more than that. It's something that will satisfy not just for the rest of our lives on earth, but for eternity. He's offering capital-L capital-W Living Water: the water that flows from God Himself, which sustains even the Tree of Life (Revelation 22:1-3). In other words: Living Water is the source of eternal life.
There are so many other connections to draw here too: as John connects Jesus back to eternity and to creation, to the saving waters of Baptism (Titus 3:3-7), and more. But for now, it's more than enough to meditate on this: what Jesus offers you and me is the same thing He offered the Samaritan woman so many years ago. And if, like her, we really knew the fullness of Jesus as Lord, as Christ, as Saviour, and what He was truly offering, we wouldn't hesitate to use His own words: "Give me a drink!"
He invites you and me to do exactly that. No, we don't know Him fully. But He knows us, and He knows what we need: not earthly things, but Living Water.
Contribute to the Conversation