John 4:25-26

²⁵The woman said, "I know that Messiah" (called Christ) "is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us." ²⁶Then Jesus declared, "I who speak to you am He."

The woman reveals her knowledge of Messiah; Jesus says, “That’s Me!” The woman reveals that she knows Messiah is coming, and that He will explain everything to her (the people). His discourse regarding the extraordinary change in the Church of God probably kindled in her mind everything she had learned of Messiah as a little girl. Her language indicates a soon coming Messiah, and that should be expected, as many people in the region were wondering about and even expecting the arrival of the mysterious figure known as Messiah, or Christ. Furthermore, it is clear from her language that the woman prefers Jesus to Moses and to all the Prophets in the office of teaching; for she comprehends in a few words that the Law was not absolutely perfect or adequate for salvation, that nothing more than first principles was delivered in it, and that it pointed to Messiah. If she hadn’t recognized these things, she would not have said that the Messiah “will explain everything to us.” There is an implied contrast between Him and the Prophets. She seems to realize that Messiah’s role will be to lead His disciples to the goal, whereas the Prophets were merely pointing in the direction of Messiah.

Jesus’ answer to her essentially unasked question (Who is Messiah?) is that He is Messiah. He is the fulfillment of the Old Testament Temple worship. He is the Temple. When He acknowledges to the woman that He is the Messiah, He presents Himself as her Teacher, in compliance with the expectation which she had formed. By using these words, ‘I who speak to you am He,’ Jesus employs the name Messiah as a seal to ratify the truth of His Gospel; for we must remember that He was anointed by the Father, and that the Spirit of God rested on Him, that He might bring to us the message of salvation, as Isaiah 61:1 declares: “The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on Me, because the LORD has anointed Me to preach good news to the poor. He has sent Me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners.”

In conclusion, there’s a seven-fold stage through which this woman seems to pass. (1) Total alienation. As the story begins, she is casually proud, standing above Jesus. She thinks she’s in control; she knows things that He doesn’t. Yet she’s blind and cannot see at all. Her intentions are hostile through arrogance or sarcastic apathy. (2) Curiosity, or fascination. When she hears Jesus speak about waters of life – if she drinks them, she would never thirst again – her heart and mind begin to race. And all this drudgery of coming out to the well to draw water would go away – in her confusion, she asks if she might experience this water. (3) Conviction. The woman sees Jesus merely as a man. But Jesus is the Great Physician; He knows where to touch – it will hurt – and He says to her, “Go, call your husband.” (4) Self-protection. “I have no husband,” she said. And she has had five husbands. And the man she is now with is not her husband, and it suddenly dawns on this woman that Jesus knows things about her that she thought He didn’t know. (5) Careful investigation. She realizes that here was One standing before her who knew the deepest secrets of her heart and exposed the sinfulness and the waywardness of her lifestyle. And she begins to grope near the truth, saying in v19, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.” (6) Spiritual awakening. She finds a fulfillment in Jesus in the words in v26. “I who speak to you am He.” That is, the Christ, the Messiah, the One she had vaguely heard about, the One the Jews were looking and longing for, the One the Old Testament Scriptures speak of. (7) Taste of grace. We’ll pick up the story next time as she leaves her water pots and goes into the city and says to everyone she can find in v29, “Come, see a Man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”

So we have glimpsed a little more of the nature of Christ’s promised Kingdom. It provides eternal joy to those who enter into it, as Christ demonstrated with the miracle at the wedding in Cana; yet for those who rejected its spiritual nature, in favor of the physical signs that pointed to it, it brings judgment. This long-awaited Kingdom is substantial (it possesses the substance, or reality, that the physical nation of Israel only typified physically) and universal (its bounds are worldwide and multi-ethnic). Christ fulfills, with true spiritual life and blessings, the things that were present in physical symbols, under the patriarchs. Jacob’s well gave physical water – but Christ would give spiritual water (eternal life by the Spirit). Later, we’ll see that Israel (and the twelve disciples) ate physical bread (Moses) – but Christ provides bread of eternal substance. Thy Kingdom come…