John 4:7-12

⁷When a Samaritan woman came to draw water, Jesus said to her, "Will you give Me a drink?" ⁸(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.) ⁹The Samaritan woman said to Him, "You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can You ask me for a drink?" (For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.) ¹⁰Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water." ¹¹"Sir," the woman said, "You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can You get this living water? ¹²Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did also his sons and his flocks and herds?"

Jesus is thirsty; the woman is surprised, even offended. I love Calvin’s comments on v7: “When [Jesus] asks water from the woman, He does it not merely with the intention of obtaining an opportunity to teach her; for thirst prompted Him to desire to drink. But this cannot hinder Him from availing Himself of the opportunity of instruction which He has obtained, for He prefers the salvation of the woman to His own wants. Thus, forgetting His own thirst…that He might instruct her in true godliness, He draws a comparison between the visible water and the spiritual, and waters with heavenly doctrine the mind of her who had refused Him water to drink.”

Jesus simply asks her for a drink. But this is a culturally absurd thing to do. I don’t know that we can compare it to anything in our culture. Maybe if the President was to tour Mexico and ask a homeless woman for something to eat? The woman’s response sarcastically notes the cultural oddity. She says she is a Samaritan woman – as if He didn’t know. And she tells Him that He is a Jew. He should not be asking her for a drink. Picture her saying, “What? Is it lawful for You to ask drink from me, when You hold us to be so profane?” It appears that she’s mocking Jesus, as she has felt like He has mocked her. Despite her confusion, Jesus – as He was with Nicodemus – is completely serious and patient. And John helps out any of his audience who may not grasp the cultural significance of this encounter with a parenthesis – “Jews do not associate with Samaritans.”

Jesus makes it a teachable moment; the woman is sarcastic, yet curious. It may appear that Jesus only now decides to take advantage of the woman’s culture shock for an occasion to teach her, but we know better. Recall John 2:23-25. Jesus knows all men, and He knows what is in a man. Thus, forgetting His physical thirst and making her spiritual needs the priority, He says to her, “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked Him and He would have given you living water.” Let’s first acknowledge that the woman does not deserve Jesus’ teaching. She has effectively insulted Him and sinned against the Lord. Yet Jesus came to seek and save the lost, and we cannot fail to see grace in the fact that Jesus will bring this woman from death to life. Jesus does the same with us. Isaiah 65:1 “I revealed Myself to those who did not ask for Me; I was found by those who did not seek Me. To a nation that did not call on My name, I said, ‘Here am I, here am I.’” Praise God for that!

Jesus begins teaching the woman with two clauses: “If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink…” Some commentators suggest that the second clause is the interpretation of the first, so it could read, “If you knew the gift of God, namely who it is…” In other words, Jesus is the gift of God. And that’s true, but is that what Jesus is saying? Or is He saying that the gift of God is eternal life, and the One who can give that gift is speaking to you? Both? Regardless of His meaning here, we can say that such a set of clauses begins to instill this feeling of an unmet need within the woman. Has anyone ever said to you, “If you only knew…”? It makes you think you’re missing something important. So Jesus plants a desire in the woman with these clauses. And Jesus continues, saying that if the woman only knew, then she would have asked for a drink and He would have given her living water. If she had only known, then she would have asked. That’s our predicament prior to being saved. If we only knew the wrath of God resting on us, if we only knew that we were sinners in the hand of an angry God, if we only knew the eternal punishment that was temporarily being withheld by the forbearance of the Creator, then we would have asked, we would have sought, we would have come. But we don’t grasp the sinfulness of sin or the holiness of God. We don’t know the reality of our condition apart from Christ until we are in Christ, until He has come to us and made Himself known to us and quickened us to spiritual life. We are blessed to see this woman’s transition from death to life in just a short conversation with the Lord Jesus – it likely resembles our own conversion in many ways.

Lastly in v10, when Jesus says that He would have given her living water, He is speaking of the Holy Spirit. Remember the conversation with Nicodemus. We’re right there. We need to be born of water and the Spirit – the living water. The water Jesus gives is not only life-giving and life-sustaining; it flows from a living source, the Holy Spirit.

Now the woman’s response in v11 can be taken one of two ways. Remember we lack the tone with which the words were expressed. Some commentators suggest that she is mocking Jesus, that she is saying He cannot do what He implied that He can do – that is give her living water. In other words, she fully realizes He is speaking figuratively, yet insults Him anyway. Others suggest that she didn’t catch the figurative or spiritual intent. In other words she was baffled by His language and in confusion and curiosity tried to continue the conversation. Either way, we are certain that the woman knows that the water from Jacob’s well is important for is life-sustaining qualities. She is grateful to the patriarch for that. But she, like Nicodemus, is thinking only in physical categories. Thus she insults Jesus by asking rhetorically in v12, “Are you greater than Jacob?” (Of note, the Samaritans had ancestral ties to Jacob, yet that had been corrupted both in blood and faith lineage.) Again, perhaps we can sense the sarcasm in her assertion – “You think you’re more important than our ancestor!” She charges Jesus with arrogance. She compares the servant with the Master, a dead man with the living God. How often unbelievers – and believers alike – make this error! “They exchanged the glory of God for an image…” The woman doesn’t yet know that He created Jacob, that He is the Messiah; and she has no idea that Jesus’ water is greater than that in the well – like the water in the well, Jesus’ water also has life-sustaining qualities, but for spiritual life, not only for physical life.