We can hardly estimate sufficiently the importance of this Scripture, because it shows the condition and position in which a new-born soul is placed by Christ, and therefore brings out the largeness of God’s purpose towards a poor vile sinner. In the woman of Samaria we find one without title to a single blessing, and the Lord is here opening out to this poor lost one the purpose and blessing for sinners which had lain deep in the heart of God! It is not so much opening up His work for the sinner, as the issue, the result in the sinner, the good of His work to such, and if I do not know this, I do not know the place of unparalleled blessedness, I which He sets me. It is the extent of this present blessing of which souls are ignorant. True, the work of Christ in putting away sins must be done, or there could not be the full result of it made known. But it is in the result of the work that I reach the full extent of the blessing in which He proposes to set us now.
There is no way by which God could bless souls now but through the death of His Son. “The Son of man must be lifted up.”
He who could create a world, who healed the leper, who raised the dead, who could do everything, even He cannot save a soul unless He die! In the second chapter of this gospel, we find the Lord Jesus is on earth among men; but man is under judgment, and there is no getting him out of it. When Christ is at the wedding in Cana of Galilee, He finds the wine is out. Man’s brightest day is a failure! When He goes to the temple, He finds it is a house of merchandise. Man is a failure in His own state—a scandal in his relation to God. He is irreparable. It is not merely that man as man could not recover himself; but God’s trial did not recover him. He tried every means to do so, and all was useless. Why? because he is under judgment. There is not capacity for recovery, no constitutional stamina for it. Jesus would “not commit himself “to man, “for he knew what was in man.” The sinner must be set aside in the judgment of the cross. This is what chapter 3 brings out. “Except a man be born again he cannot see the kingdom of God.” And, “as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish but have eternal life.” The keeping of the law would have prolonged man’s life; the word was “Do this and live.” “The man that doeth these things shall live in them;” but it would not have imparted eternal life. Eternal life is life in the Son of God. We have forfeited our lives in judgment, but through the grace of God we are given instead, life in God’s own Son. My own life goes in judgment, but Christ offered up His life for me, and besides this, He met the judgment of God. God now gives me the eternal life—in Him who was my Substitute, and that Substitute is the Son of God! “He that hath the Son hath life, and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life.” (1 John 5:1212He that hath the Son hath life; and he that hath not the Son of God hath not life. (1 John 5:12).) God puts man clean out in judgment; and what comes in God’s own Son risen from the dead. Head of a new creation; a thoroughly new thing! He it is who says to this woman, “If thou knewest the gift of God, and who it is that saith to thee give me to drink, thou wouldest have asked of him, and he would have given thee living water.”
We have three things brought out here. (v. 10-24.) First, The gift. of God. (10-14.) Secondly, that our state is exposed by the light. (16-19.) Thirdly, the character of the relation and position in which we are placed before God. (23-24.)
First, “If thou knewest the gift of God.” What is this gift? It is eternal life; and this life is in His Son. You may say, “I know I am saved.” But I ask, Is that all? Is there nothing more? It is not merely that I am delivered, but I have got the life of the Deliverer. The moment I reach God, man is put out; the moment I get what God is giving me in Christ, man disappears—vanishes out of sight like a dissolving view. Many a man does not owe a farthing of debt, and yet he is poor. You may know that you owe nothing, that Christ has paid the debt of your sins for you, and yet you may not know your riches in the possession of life in the Son of God? Many Christians know they are freemen, but do not know their riches in Christ. So they are as ready to try to get the world as ever they were, and so they spoil their Christian profession. For while they can talk of being saved; they are looking about for something to minister to them in this scene, to satisfy their heart, just because they do not know the blessedness of the gift of God. This gift was what Christ is propounding to the poor woman of Samaria, and which the indwelling of the Holy Ghost makes known to us now. “Whosoever drinketh of this water shall thirst again, but whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst, hut the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life.” It is not a question of what man should do now to be saved. It is God’s gift. As the Lord says, “The water that I shall give!” It is not merely freeing a person from a weight of debt—that is the first thing surely—Christ not only bears the judgment, and takes the weight of my sins away; but what does He give me besides the Spirit of God—the living water—springing up into eternal life, so that I NEVER THIRST! The Saviour dies to pay the debt. Every Christian acknowledges the good of His death; but what does He lice for? What have you got by His life? “For if when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life.” (Rom. 5:1010For if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we shall be saved by his life. (Romans 5:10).)
The first offering we read of in Scripture is Abel’s. He offered “the firstlings of his flock, and of the fat thereof.” Abel sees what the righteousness of God demands, and owns, as it were, “I am under judgment, and God’s righteousness requires a victim not chargeable with my sin, to bear my sin; and not only so, but there must be the fat—the excellency of the animal also.” Thus the excellency of Christ was brought out most distinctly in His death. It is not only the burden of sin is removed, but the life bestowed of Him who has done so. “If thou knewest the gift of God.” God having taken off the weight and burden of sin, what is to be the result? “Whosoever drinketh of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst.” NEVER THIRST! we must not allow the word to be weaker than it really is; God does not use exaggerations. Can you say, “I never thirst?” People reply, “I shall be able to say that in heaven.” But Christ says, it is to be so with you NOW. Do you believe what He says? He says so to the sinful woman, without title and without repute, and what is more, He shows her that He would like her to receive it. He would not only like to relieve her conscience by presenting salvation to her, but it is as though lie says to her, “I want you to be a participator in the fullness of the blessing which I am propounding; I am laboring for your blessing,—toiling for you! “He makes it manifest to her that He takes an interest in her welfare. He makes it manifest to her soul that He desires to be the communicator to her of the blessing of which He spike.
Oh, let us not make any qualification as to what this wondrous blessing is. Why have not all Christians the enjoyment of it because they do not expect it—do not look out for it; and blessing does not come to those who are indifferent to it.
The Lord first awakens in the soul of this poor woman a desire for the blessing, and then bestows it. So, when the need for it and the value of it is awakened in your heart, then you will get it. God makes no demonstration of interest to you greater than you are able to accept. Well, there are souls who can confirm the sincerity of God’s statements, who can say, “I have tasted of this water, and I have got what is superior to everything. It puts me in a place in which I do not want anything to be added, for it is one incapable of addition! It is a region of satisfied desire!” If you tell me you have not got it, I reply, the word is, “If any man thirst let him come unto me and drink.” Your eye must be occupied, not only with the wondrous work He did, but with the one who did it; and when you are occupied with Him, your soul will know that the life of Christ is of such a character, that it makes you superior to everything in this wide world, and independent of everything too!
He knows the whole of your secret history; you cannot have peace in His presence unless you can let His eye dive down into the inmost depths of your heart—to search out what you are, and disclose how lost you are without such a Saviour. Then, knowing what He is to you, you can, like this woman, talk to others of the way He has made room for the blessing in your heart. (v. 28-29.) There is no blessing without Him. The moment the character of this life comes out, He shows us that it can only be known entirely outside everything human. He says to the thief, “Today you will be with me.” He takes him out of every connection he had here. He does not restore his own life, but gives him another—a new life—when He had died and delivered him from the consequences of his sin.
The third point is, the relation this wondrous gift introduces us into with God. (see verses 20, 21, 23.) “The hour cometh, and now is when the true worshippers shall worship the Father in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him.” It is not the worship of distance, but that of the nearness of relationship. It is the soul occupied with an object that delights it—not seeking for anything, but in the full sense of having got everything the cop is full! You can say then, I have got the enjoyment; I know the joy; I am in the region of satisfied desire; I am put by the Spirit of God into the full result of the work of Christ, where there is no room for want. He has given me His own life, which is superior to everything; and God, who is the foundation of all blessing, becomes the object of my adoration! Blessing God is the expression of the worshipper. Why Because God hath blessed him! You must be a recipient of the highest order, or you cannot be a worshipper of the highest order. “The Father seeketh such to worship Him.” But alas! Christians are not even looking for this; they are often as ignorant of the fullness and character of the gift of God, as a sinner is of salvation. Let us not make light of the blessedness of the condition in which He places us. You don’t make light of Christ’s having come into the world to be the bearer of sin; but that alone will not make you consciously rich, it will make you righteous, but not rich. What God has called you for is to enjoy and manifest the life you have in His own Son. Man was the crowning thing of all His works; God is obliged to put His foot on him in judgment, and what does He say? I will set him up again in the beauty and fashion of my own beloved Son! Not in that condition in which the judgment fell, not in the image of the earthly, but in the image of the heavenly. God has come in His own exhaustless purpose of grace, and triumphs over the ruin of this scene; and people don’t believe it! They just accept relief from the penalty, but they want to keep up and minister to the sinful nature, the thing that brought in the penalty. But the grace of God has put out the one, in order to bring in the other, to set me up in His own Son.
You say to me, “Do you shut me out of all the attractions of the world?” I reply, “yes—clean out of every one of them!” Worldly joys are thoroughly eclipsed by the life of Christ; and if nature and flesh wants to come up and claim a place, I say to it, “ I have got a better thing than ever you were.” Hence every natural mercy is accepted, and used only as subject to this, which is superior to
May God give you to understand it. When He does you will see how it surpasses everything of which your own mind could form any idea. S.