John 4:19-24

¹⁹"Sir," the woman said, "I can see that You are a prophet. ²⁰Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we must worship is in Jerusalem." ²¹Jesus declared, "Believe Me, woman, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. ²²You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. ²³Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. ²⁴God is spirit, and His worshipers must worship in spirit and in truth."

The woman is defensive and perhaps tries to change the subject – or maybe she genuinely wants to learn as a fruit of conviction and repentance; Jesus speaks the truth in love. Calvin explains v19: “Not only does the woman modestly acknowledge her fault, but, being ready and prepared to listen to the doctrine of Christ, which she had formerly disdained, she now desires and requests it of her own accord. Repentance, therefore, is the commencement of true docility…and opens the gate for entering into the school of Christ. Again, the woman teaches us by her example, that when we meet with any teacher, we ought to avail ourselves of this opportunity, that we may not be ungrateful to God… [as He gives us teachers from whom we have opportunity to learn].”

Some have suggested that the woman is trying to change the subject after Jesus makes her uncomfortable about her promiscuity. Others suggest that she is displaying the fruit of conviction and repentance, passing from what is particular to what is general. Perhaps she wishes to be generally instructed concerning the pure worship of God. She does the right thing when she consults Jesus, whom she perceives to be a Prophet, that she may not fall into a mistake in the worship of God. It is as if she inquired at God Himself in what manner He chooses to be worshipped; for nothing is more wicked – according to Calvin – than to contrive various modes of worship without the authority of the Word of God.

The historian Josephus records historical details about the beginnings of the Jewish / Samaritan disagreements and confusion over particular worship detail (see Antiquities 11:7-2 and 8-2 and 2 Kings 17:27). We won’t go into those details, but the important thing to note is that the Samaritans and the Jews were both zealous to worship rightly and both were relying on their interpretations of what their Fathers or ancestors had prescribed and set forward as examples. Thus, the argument was genuine – though both groups were failing to worship as God had prescribed in His Word – in Spirit and in truth.

Jesus explains that the worship of God as a result of the work He was doing is not confined to a particular location. Remember – out with the old and in with the new. Calvin adds, “By calling God Father, [Jesus] seems indirectly to contrast Him with the Fathers whom the woman had mentioned, and to convey this instruction, that God will be a common Father to all, so that He will be generally worshiped without distinction of places or nations.”

Jesus then goes on, in v22-24, to explain that reality more fully. First He says that the Samaritans were worshiping what they do not know and that the Jews were worshiping what they do know. Picture Paul in Athens pointing out the altar with a sign, “To an unknown god.” People will worship; that’s a fact. And Jesus says that the Samaritans were trying to worship God, but they didn’t know God. On the other hand, the Jews (Jesus gives them credit here) were not worshiping some unknown deity. They knew God, and they were worshiping Him. To their discredit, their worship was merely exterior ritual (as a whole). They lacked the interior reality – as Jesus later points out to the Pharisees in all four Gospel accounts. “He who does not have the Son does not have the Father” (John 5:23; 2 John 1:9). The point is that the Jews have a truer worship as they had the law (just as we have His Word), while the Samaritans were not given the law and relied only on what “the Fathers” passed down (similar to Catholics who know not the Bible). Their worship was not based on truth. The evidence for that, Jesus says, is that salvation is from the Jews. We talked about the benefits of being a Jew in our Romans study, and the benefits were given so they might be lights to the Gentiles (Jonah). And of course, Jesus is salvation, and as a Jew, He came from the Jews. But Jesus points out that even the Jews’ worship was inadequate – only a type or symbol of the worship that Jesus was inaugurating. Now that Jesus was bringing in the new, the argument between the Samaritans and Jews would be insignificant.

There are many questions that can be asked regarding true worship in spirit and in truth and spiritual worship versus physical worship and all of that. Plainly, worship must be Christ-centered, because it is Christ-commanded. And worship should be Word-driven. We pray the Bible back to God; we sing the Bible back to God; and we preach the Bible back to God. It’s that simple – though needless to say, much more complex.

Finally, Jesus says that God is spirit. Calvin comments, “This single consideration, when the inquiry relates to the worship of God, ought to be sufficient for restraining the wantonness of our mind, that God is so far from being like us, that those things which please us most are the objects of his loathing and abhorrence. And if hypocrites are so blinded by their own pride, that they are not afraid to subject God to their opinion, or rather to their unlawful desires, let us know that this modesty does not hold the lowest place in the true worship of God, to regard with suspicion whatever is gratifying according to the flesh. Besides, as we cannot ascend to the height of God, let us remember that we ought to seek from His word the rule by which we are governed."