John 4:1-15 – Jesus Promises “Living Water”

BIBLE TEXT

John 4:1-15

SUMMARY

While traveling through Samaria, Jesus encounters a woman at a well and tells her that he can provide a “living water” that will extinguish all thirst.

ANALYSIS

Jesus meets a Samaritan woman beside Jacob’s well and tells her about living water. This is the longest conversation that Jesus has with anyone in the Gospels. The woman has come to the well to fetch water for her household but Jesus will offer her living water toward eternal life. The expression living water can have different meanings. In most contexts, living water simply meant flowing water, like the water in a spring or stream. Ordinary living water would quench bodily thirst and thereby enable people to live in the ordinary physical sense. Jesus, however, uses “living water” as a metaphor for the Spirit that meets people’s thirst for life in relationship with God (John 7:37-39). Jesus says that the spiritual water that he provides gives eternal life (John 4:14). The living water brings people into relationship with God and with Jesus. The woman at the well will then share this living water with her townspeople by inviting them to “come and see.”