John 4 - Preacher's Commentary

Living Water and Ripened Harvest

John 4:1–42

How vividly we see that God loves the whole world as Jesus moves from the nighttime visit with Nicodemus, one of the religious “in crowd,” to an encounter with a woman whose name is never given, an outsider coming with her burden of loneliness and guilt. And Jesus touches the spiritual nerve of each. He unmasks the spiritual emptiness of the one who seems righteously self-sufficient and opens up the alienation of the second, caught in a maze of tangled relationships. He has no canned, packaged approach in dealing with either. To one He speaks of being “born again,” and to the other He offers “living water.”

4:1-26

The Woman at the Well: Living Water

“Give Me a drink”—Breaking Down Old Barriers (vv. 1–8). Why does Jesus leave Judea and move northward to Galilee? Particularly if He is becoming increasingly popular and the word is out that He is baptizing more disciples than John, although the writer is careful to note that it was the disciples who did the baptizing. That “success” is both a blessing and a problem. People are hearing and responding, but getting the attention of the Pharisees can only mean harassment and opposition. This is not the time for confrontation with the Pharisees, who become more and more His bitter opponents. That will come later. So it is better to move to another “front.”

Jesus is also a courteous gentleman. He has not come to take over John’s territory, to win a numbers game. He is profoundly grateful for John’s crucial work of preparation, which is now coming to a close. Jesus has a deeper ministry; He not only calls men to repentance, but to an acceptance of God’s reign. So Jesus and His band of disciples move to the north—they “left Judea” (v. 3). The meaning of this phrase is somewhat unusual. It is like “abandoning,” leaving Judea to itself, to its own wishes and fate. Jesus will never go back to that ministry of preparation He at first shared with John.

“But He needed to go through Samaria” (v. 4). What a world of meaning there is in that phrase. He did not need to save the three days He could gain by passing through this ill-regarded province rather than crossing the river and going up the eastern desert route. There did not seem to be urgent needs in Galilee that would cause Him to shorten the journey.

No, there is a deeper reason, an inner constraint of love and obedience. He knew the ignorance and spiritual hunger of the Samaritan people, and the Father had sent Him into the whole world—not just part of it. He could not avoid these people in spite of the long history of resentment and antagonism between Jews and Samaritans.

Any Jew could give perfectly valid reasons for this anger and separation. After all, the Samaritans were descendants of those who had not been deported or killed in the fall of the northern kingdom in 722 B.C. (2 Kings 17:23–40). These survivors had intermarried with the heathen colonists brought in from Babylonia by the Assyrian conquerors. So these people were looked upon as unclean traitors to Jewish blood.

Furthermore, the Samaritans were confused, even heretical in their religious beliefs. Even though their earlier polytheistic worship, caused by strangers bringing in their own gods, had given way to the worship of Jehovah, they accepted only the five books of Moses as their Scriptures and cut themselves off from the riches of the rest of the Old Testament.

The Samaritans also had hostile feelings toward the Jews. Their offer to help rebuild the temple in Jerusalem after the Jews returned from Babylonian exile had been refused, and this had caused great bitterness (Ezra 4:2). So the Samaritans refused to worship in Jerusalem, preferring their own temple on Mount Gerizim, which had been built about 400 B.C. When this place of worship had been burned by the Jews in about 128 B.C., the relation between these two peoples deteriorated even further. Samaritans on occasion would even detain Jews traveling through their territory. Little wonder then that a Jew would attempt to avoid any contact with these unclean dogs. But not Jesus! “He needed to go through Samaria.”

It was in broad daylight, at noontime, in this alien atmosphere, that Jesus came to Jacob’s well at the fork in the road near the town of Sychar. This was a place rich in the history of His people. For here, centuries earlier, Jacob had dug a well for his family and beasts. And on his deathbed, Jacob had given this land to his son Joseph (Gen. 28:21–22), and eventually Joseph’s body had been carried back from Egypt and buried here (Josh. 24:32).

What memories must have stirred in Jesus as He sat down at this well “being wearied from His journey” (v. 6). John says it so simply and naturally. He has no need to make a case for Jesus’ humanity. He had journeyed in His company and felt His weariness. There is a kinship between Jesus and every weary pilgrim who drops tiredly into the nearest chair after an exhausting day at the office or after struggling with the children and the telephone at home. Jesus has joined us in the frailty of our flesh. Otherwise, salvation is unreal.

But can anything noteworthy take place at an old well where a tired Traveler sits wondering if there is some way He can quench His thirst? This is a little bit like assuming in our time that anything really glorious can happen in a supermarket or a laundromat other than a shopper hurrying in to look for bread and milk just before closing time or a tired mother coming to wash the clothes after finally getting the children down for the night. We really do not expect the glory of God to break forth in these kinds of places, do we? But there is no way we can domesticate or control where and when He chooses to reveal Himself.

It was at this time, at noon, not the usual time for women to come to the well, that “A woman of Samaria came to draw water” (v. 7). The well was a social institution, a gathering place with its own particular ritual. Here the women of the village came toward evening to exchange small talk and learn the latest village news while they drew water. But this woman sought to avoid all that. Why go through the pain and embarrassment of being avoided and ostracized, the object of village gossip?

A man who came with fear and trembling to my office recently spoke haltingly of his misgivings, the long debate he had with himself before he dared come to a pastor’s study. In twenty-six years, he had been in church but one time, and that for his daughter’s wedding. He had been in “lots of trouble” over the years and “done time” in a state penitentiary. He remembered with shame the humiliation he had suffered the last time he had been in church for a regular service. The preacher, he said, had lectured him publicly because of his most recent divorce. He had never gone back. Yet he yearned to belong some place. I was amazed he had come to the office. His pain, I am certain, was not unlike that of the woman who came to the well that day.

All the makings of a dramatic confrontation are present as the woman approaches the well. But the wearied Stranger only makes a simple, unexpected request of her. “Give Me a drink.” In quietly asking her for help, Jesus had cut through centuries of suspicion and animosity. This breakthrough had not been the outcome of a conference on “cross-cultural evangelism,” which had developed a theology for “reaching the Samaritans.” No, there had been simply the honest expression of a basic human need. And at a deeper level, there had been the loving concern of one reaching out to touch that other solitary, needy person.

The Gift: Living Water (vv. 9–10). The woman can only respond with undisguised amazement, “How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” Jesus has disarmed her. She does not throw up a wall of defensiveness, but rather invites some kind of explanation. With the phrase, “For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans,” John seeks to help his Greek reader understand what a wide, deep chasm Jesus has come to bridge, “not only with a sinful daughter of men, but between the Son of God and the whole people of Samaria.”¹

So a dialogue is opened in which there comes an amazing reversal of roles. It is not long before the one who has been asked for water is addressing the thirsty Traveler as “Sir,” and asking Him for the water He offers. The One who asks for water is Himself the Giver of the everlasting water of life. And the one who is asked is in desperate need of the water that the Stranger alone can give. How strange and beautiful that the Giver of living water has come in weakness to share God’s gift. He is our strength and only hope for this life and the next. What would happen if we Christians let this Stranger teach us about reaching out in our neighborhoods and in our places of work? Becoming transparent and open, being less imperialistic and arrogant and more humble and real in our approach to people.

Next this tired Jewish Traveler makes an unexpected offer. He moves to the central issue quickly. There is “living water” that is the “Gift of God” and it can be this woman’s for the asking. Gift! What a beautiful word of generosity and grace. Out of His rich bounty God shares all that He has. And how incredible that His greatest gift is the dusty Stranger at the well.

But the Gift cannot be received without the Giver. “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give Me a drink,’ you would have asked Him” (v. 10). Jesus seeks to penetrate the woman’s spiritual darkness. Unless she comes to know and accept the One who speaks to her, His gift can never be hers. For the Father shares this living water through the Son. It springs forth from an unfailing Source and is not water that seeps into an earthen well, dug by human hands, even Jacob’s.

The Thirst: “Where do You get that living water?” (vv. 11–15). How absurd the offer of any kind of water seems coming from this nondescript Traveler. He has nothing with which to draw and the well is close to a hundred feet deep. She can only grasp physical matters, for she is locked in fleshly categories as was Nicodemus. She is ignorant, but curious. There is a wondering respect in her response, for she addresses him now as “Sir,” a form of “Lord.”

Now she raises the crucial question of identity, “Are You greater than our father Jacob?” One catches a sense of possessive pride in her inquiry, for she belonged to a people who claimed Jacob as their greatest ancestor, descendants of Joseph’s sons, Ephraim and Manasseh. Surely this Stranger cannot be greater than their “father.” She has brought the conversation nearer to the heart of the matter. The question has become, “Who is this Stranger?” “By what right can He make any offer of water?”

Jesus does not argue about the place of Jacob in Samaritan history. But He makes it clear that water from this well can satisfy thirst only for a brief time. She will have to return to the well again and again. No “water from below” can quench the parched longing this woman brings to this well. Neither the teaching of Moses nor the institution of the law can bring her life and newness.

God’s age of grace has come. The One at the well offers “water from above” that can quench this woman’s deepest thirst, not for a day, but forever! Water that is not tame and tepid, but full and abundant, “springing up” within her into everlasting life.

All through the Scriptures water has a rich and varied spiritual meaning, but always of life. It seems that the precious physical water, coming from well or river, bringing life and beauty to the barren land of Jesus, had become a symbol of that everlasting water which could quench and revive the parched, dying human spirit. So the psalmist cries out, “As the deer pants for the water brooks, so pants my soul for You, O God” (Ps. 42:1). And the prophets speak repeatedly of its rich spiritual meaning: “living water shall flow from Jerusalem” (Zech. 14:8); “with joy you will draw water from the wells of salvation” (Is. 12:3); and there is the promise of the day when “waters shall burst forth in the wilderness, and streams in the desert” (Is. 35:6).

So the teaching of Jesus, His words of wisdom and truth, is life, water for man dying of thirst. There is no inner newness without receiving God’s wondrous gift, the Holy Spirit, promised and offered by the Son. Nicodemus in that earlier conversation had heard Jesus say he could only be born again “by water and the Spirit.” And on the last day of the feast (John 7:37–39), Jesus flings out that urgent invitation, “‘If anyone thirsts, let him come to Me and drink. He who believes in Me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.’ But this He spoke concerning the Spirit.” It is this invitation the woman at the well is now hearing.

She responds by asking, “Sir, give me this water.” But the request is still at the fleshly level. Is it possible that her physical thirst can be so quenched by this Stranger that she will not need to make constant trips to this well? But is there a deeper stirring, a wondering if there is something more here than the physical water which has never quenched her deepest thirst?

The Sin Issue: “Go, call your husband” (vv. 16–19). An opening has come. Everything that has taken place between Jesus and this woman has been a preparation for this delicate moment. Now with an incisive, deft stroke of His spiritual scalpel Jesus lays bare the woman’s deepest self. With one simple sentence, “Go, call your husband,” the One who is Light has exposed her evil deeds, the disorder of her domestic life. If she cannot face herself and admit that her tangled, sick relationships are sin, she can never drink of living water. The gift is free, but it cannot be received without repentance.

One catches a note of sad regret in the woman’s terse reply, “I have no husband.” Jesus commends her for telling the truth. All of us need to be aware of the flashes of beauty and goodness we see in every sinner. And then He opens up her whole confused situation. She has lived with a passing parade of men, five of them technically husbands, and the latest a live-in affair. None of them are lasting, meaningful relationships. “She belongs to no man, but has been the property of five.”²

What a symbol she is of our own age—lonely and restless, desperately casting about for some kind of deep belonging, going from one manipulative arrangement to another, always hoping that this “roommate” will work out better than the last one. Ours is an age which supposes itself to be sophisticated in all sexual matters, which is noted for office affairs and wife-swapping, in which all kinds of live-in arrangements, orgies, and perversion are more and more the order of the day. Yet it is an age that is tragically ignorant of what it means to be truly human and has neither pondered nor grasped the mystery of human sexuality.

The woman shows deepening respect, addressing the Stranger, “Sir,” again, convinced now that He must be some kind of prophet. It is the least she can say. After all, a prophet is one who has the gift of discernment and boldly speaks God’s truth about a given situation. Surely this man knows her condition.

True Worship: “In spirit and truth” (vv. 20–24). But she falls back on the old antagonism, the competition between Jerusalem and Gerizim. This woman had good reason to be proud of Mount Gerizim because Abraham and Jacob had both built altars there (Gen. 12:7; 33:30), and this Mount was to be blessed and Mount Ebal was to be cursed after the people had crossed the Jordan and come into the Promised Land (Deut. 11:29). According to tradition, it was on this mountain that Abraham had come to sacrifice his son Isaac. This woman was also well aware of the stubborn loyalty every Jew had for the Jerusalem, the “Holy City.” She said, “You Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where one ought to worship.”

At a deeper level, one wonders if the woman is not seeking for the “right” altar. At which place can she find forgiveness—Jerusalem or Gerizim? Now that this “prophet” has exposed her sin, she desperately needs a priest who can assure her of cleansing and new life. Where can she be set free from her burden of guilt?

Jesus again moves beyond the old resentments to deal with the reality of worship. His coming has ushered in God’s new age. The old institutions and places of worship are passing away. Earlier in the cleansing of the temple Jesus made it clear that He will be the “place” of worship, that He is the temple of God (John 3:19). So it is no longer a question of Jerusalem or Gerizim, but of being rightly related to the One we worship.

So truth and spirit are at the center of living worship. Knowing who it is we worship is of utmost importance. Worship in ignorance, regardless of what name we give it, is a sham and an empty form. This had become the situation among the Samaritans who had removed themselves from so much of the prophecies and teaching of the Old Testament. Sadly, they worshiped what they did not know.

On the other hand, salvation came from the Jews. After centuries of faithfulness to the law and prophets, now the Messiah, the Chosen One, has come among them. The One at the well has not only come to reveal the truth, but is Himself the Truth. The Living God can only be known and worshiped through Him.

But it is not only Whom we worship, in truth, but in what way, by what spirit, we worship Him. God, whose essence is Spirit, as well as light (1 John 1:5) and love (1 John 4:8), will share His Holy Spirit, through the Son, at the completion of His work. Thus He will touch, heal, and recreate the deepest self of any who hear and receive. That water which the Stranger offers the woman will spring up into everlasting life, freeing her from her attachment to Mount Gerizim and bringing her into authentic worship of the Living God.

There is a divine dialectic in worship. The Spirit and the truth are always interacting, the one leading to the other, then back again. The Spirit brings us into truth, and the truth draws us into the Spirit. In Jesus, we live in Spirit and truth, and He brings us to the Father whom we worship and adore.

His Identity: “I who speak to you am He” (vv. 25–26). The woman has heard unexpected teaching from this “prophet,” truth that is heavy with messianic allusions. The hour that is coming signals crisis and decision, a time of judgment and opportunity. According to her tradition, she knows the Messiah is coming, a teacher and lawgiver in the tradition of Moses. He will announce God’s final and absolute truth. The “He” used here is emphatic and can only refer to all that the Messiah is (v. 26).

The woman has come far enough to hear the secret. The dusty Traveler, this Jew whom she has called “prophet,” now reveals His identity. He is the Messiah, the eternal “I Am” translated from the Greek ego eimi. It is an arresting phrase, reminiscent of the divine name revealed to Moses in the wilderness, “I AM WHO I AM” (Ex. 3:14). This is the only place in the Gospel where Jesus speaks of Himself as the Messiah prior to His trial. And He does so to a Samaritan. In this declaration, Jesus has issued an invitation, a challenge to respond. Glory has broken forth at the well!

4:27-42

The Ripened Harvest

The Witness of the Woman (vv. 27–30). It is at this dramatic juncture in the dialogue that the disciples return. They are somewhat taken aback that He is conversing with a woman, but interestingly, no reference is made to her being a Samaritan. There were meticulous rules governing the relations of men and women in public, even husbands and wives. One of the sayings of the Rabbis ran: “A man shall not be alone with a woman in an inn, not even with his sister or his daughter, on account of what men may think. A man shall not talk with a woman in the street, not even with his own wife, and especially not with another woman, on account of what men may say.”³ In view of this, the disciples showed unusual reticence by not voicing any of their questions. It seems that John noted this detail because he is proud of them. Perhaps the disciples were beginning to understand Jesus’ loving, unorthodox style of ministry.

There is an urgency, an air of authority, about the woman as she hurries back into the city. She “left her waterpot” (v. 28). Why slow herself down with a pot when she is compelled to share her awakening faith? Living water springing up into eternal life cannot be contained in earthen pots. The woman has tasted the water of God’s grace and knows that the old age of Jacob’s well is passing.

She may not have a message of full-blown Christian theology to share, but she has met a Man who knows all about her. This she blurts out, inviting everyone to come out and see Him. “Could this be the Christ?” (v. 29). The account of what has happened to her is so electrifying that it arouses her whole village.

How often I have been brought up short by the unrehearsed witness of someone who has just gotten started, just become a believer. It is like the first cry of life from a newborn baby. So often the language is fresh and earthy, and there is life and power in what is said. We “domesticated Christians” wonder wistfully, “Was I like that once? What has happened to me along the way?”

This account reminds me so much of Janet, our new friend. My first contact with her was Monday of Holy Week in 1979. As I walked into the office that day, my secretary said I had a long distance call. Janet was calling from New Haven, Connecticut, and it was obvious she was weeping. She had been up most of the night reading a firsthand testimony I had written of God at work in a well-established, middle-class, suburban church that I had served as pastor for sixteen years. It is a story of how God sent some “losers” to us and how they helped us “respectable church members” discover that we were losers too—that all of us only have a chance by the grace of God. The publishers had insisted we call it God Loves the Dandelions, which was a quote from a lovely woman who had met the Lord. And it was the Dandelions standing out in the title of the book on a library shelf that had intrigued Janet.

She poured out her story in nervous gulps. She hesitatingly identified herself as having been a call girl for seven and a half years. She later reported she could not believe there was no change in the tone of my voice when she identified herself. That could only be by the grace of God. Janet had finally come to the end of her rope when in despair she had failed even in trying to end her own life. She had come to New Haven to “get her head screwed on right.”

I assured her I wanted to be her friend and encouraged her to write me. In a few days a five- or six-page letter written on yellow legal paper arrived, which I tried to answer as best I could. My experience with ex-call girls is a bit limited. She quickly answered and again I tried to respond. Later she said she could hardly believe I would answer her and that she carried those first two letters with her like lucky charms. Then there were phone calls and more correspondence—eventually a thick file folder full. All this communication was a mixture of newsy daily items and a desperate cry for friendship. My wife, Ruth, became very much a part of this also.

Then about a year later, Janet visited us—a fascinating and educational four-day stay in our home. Ruth and I have chuckled many times about how she walked off the plane carrying a gallon of Vermont maple syrup in one hand and two live lobsters in a plastic container in the other. Then a year later, we visited her in New Haven on a trip to Maine. We were entertained royally in some of the choice eating places of New Haven—Janet is almost recklessly generous—met her two lovely, but troubled, children, and again had long rambling visits. All through this the conversation and correspondence was deepening, moving nearer the Center, focusing more and more on that Stranger at the well. The first simple prayer I heard Janet utter publicly was an unforgettable experience.

Then in 1982—almost three years to the day from her first call—Janet called again. This time to announce she had made her confession of faith and would be baptized on Palm Sunday. The pastor, a dear friend, later reported that the church had never heard a confession quite like Janet’s, so open and honest that “ordinary” believers hardly knew how to handle it.

Later that spring when Janet learned that I was to take part in a Billy Graham School of Evangelism in Boston, in typical fashion she volunteered to come up and help in any way she could. So I suggested she might “say a few words” at the close of the seminar I was leading. When I introduced her as a friend who had a word to share about what Christ had done in her life, none of the several hundred pastors and church leaders knew what they were in for—nor did I.

Janet is brutally honest, and there was no point in covering up where she was coming from. So she plunged in. “Seven years ago at this time of the day I would have been in a bar waiting for my ‘pimp’ to give me the sign that he had a ‘john’ and a room.” One could almost hear a gasp in the hushed silence. From there on it was a story of alienation and fear, of her passage through the dark night of guilt and self-hatred, always hoping for something better.

But then she, too, had met that Friend at the well who gave her a drink of living water. “And now,” she concluded, shyly like a little girl with a lovely, new gift, “I can even say there’s joy in my life. That’s something new.” I saw strong men weep with gratitude. They had heard a modern-day woman of Samaria who had left her waterpot to hurry into the village to tell them what had happened.

And in that Samaritan village, this unexpected news coming from such an unlikely source did not fall on unresponsive ears. The people hurried out to see who it was that had opened up this woman. They “came to Him,” which literally means they “kept coming out” in the Greek tense John uses. Can you imagine this news being gossiped about and people excitedly leaving whatever they were doing, hurrying out to see who this is that has given life to this woman?

Jesus’ Food: “To do the will of Him who sent Me” (vv. 31–34). The disciples are eager that Jesus eat the lunch they have brought from the neighboring village. After all, they had left Him hungry and weary, and their journey has not been a short one. But He ignores their offer for He has “food to eat of which you do not know” (v. 32). What does this mean, they wonder? Has this woman or someone from the village come along and shared food with Him? The disciples are ignorant like Nicodemus and the woman. They do not understand that which is from above, the hidden spiritual food of which He partakes. They, too, are earthbound, caught in the limitations of fleshly existence.

Jesus’ ultimate Source of nourishment is that divine, eternal relationship He shares with the One who has sent Him. It is in obeying Him and doing His will that He finds fulfillment, His most satisfying food. And He will see that work through to the end (v. 34). It will be finished in His death on the Cross. This will be His final, earthly banquet! Is it not true that any one of us who has been caught up in God’s mighty work, however small it may have seemed, discovers food in an entirely different dimension than any physical lunch?

“The fields are white” (vv. 35–38). It is this obedience to His Father’s will which has brought Jesus to a great harvest. The response of this one Samaritan woman which has made her an uninhibited witness among her own people, despised and rejected as they are, now brings them running to hear and believe. In God’s age of grace, which Jesus is ushering in, all the neat calculations about harvesting four months after sowing, as the ancient proverb put it, are upset and transcended. We are now dealing with God’s timetable. This is kairos, Greek for “the proper time,” that time of great opportunity, of which the prophet Amos spoke concerning the restoration of Israel, “‘Behold, the days are coming,’ says the Lord, ‘When the plowman shall overtake the reaper’” (Amos 9:13). The word of Jesus, thrown out at the well, has grown and ripened almost immediately and is now being harvested.

In this age, no one can carefully project who will receive the greatest wages, sower or reaper. Their work is intertwined, interdependent, and the wages are the same for both, the joy of eternal life. This is the time of grace.

The disciples can only reap a harvest because others have faithfully sown. Is not the costly ministry of John the Baptist a part of this? And the woman who is even now eagerly sharing among her own people what she has so recently heard and believed? Is she not sowing? Even the witness to the Messiah found in the Pentateuch, which the Samaritan understood so vaguely, may be part of the preparation for later reaping. So the disciples are entering into the faithful labors of others. Only then can sowing take place.

Many Believed Because of Jesus’ Own Word (vv. 39–42). The woman’s “word” to her own people is really a report, a testimony, a piece of news. She is faithfully telling what has happened to her. Many “believed in Him” because of this woman’s witness. It caused them to come to Him, which is the chief purpose of anyone’s witness. It has been pointed out by students of evangelism that most of the spontaneous, real witnessing is done by new believers within two years after their conversion. As they are drawn into more and more church activities, they become domesticated, begin to worry about what people will think, and lose that early, joyous abandon. What a tragedy!

These Samaritans are spiritually thirsty, longing for living water. All prejudices are brushed aside as they urge the Jewish Traveler, who has had such a profound effect on this needy woman, “to stay with them.” This is no surface invitation, but an urgent cry, “Come and live with us.” The Word made flesh now tabernacles among these estranged and needy people. And while it was only two days—notice again John’s detail—what a rich, full time it became. A few hours with eternal consequences, a time of celebration.

How vividly I recall visiting our fellow believers in Burma in 1967 on a twenty-four-hour visa enroute from Bangkok to Hong Kong. It was a time of heavy military restrictions in that country. I was in Rangoon for exactly twenty-one hours. But what an unforgettable time of sharing, singing, praying, and rejoicing it was! Of course, we could not waste it by sleeping.

During those two days Jesus spent in that village, it was His word the people heard, and they came to believe in the One who shared the Word. Faith is never faith if it is based only on someone else’s testimony, however thrilling it may be. No, saving faith comes by hearing the word of the Messiah and trusting Him!

It is these Samaritans, not the Jews, who first know that Jesus is the “Savior of the world.” He has performed no physical miracle among them, only made Himself known. They have been outsiders and now they know they are included. He has come for them as well.

4:42

Mighty Works and Rejection

John 4:43–5:47

Scripture Outline

Rejection and Acceptance (4:43-45)

Healing and Beyond Signs and Wonders (4:46-50)

He Himself Believed and His Whole Household (4:51-54)

A Cripple Walking Home: “Do You Want to Be Made Well?” (5:1-8)

The Controversy: “Who Is the Man?” (5:9-15)

The Issue: The Relation of Father and Son (5:16-20)

Life and Judgment are in the Son (5:21-30)

The Witnesses Who Surround Him (5:31-39)

The Tragic Rejection (5:40-47)

4:43-45

Rejection and Acceptance

Jesus now moves on to Galilee where He is “received.” These people have witnessed “all the things He did in Jerusalem at the feast.” At least they accept Him because of these works. While faith can never finally rest on mighty works, they can be a point of beginning. How gracious that He starts with any one of us where we are, often with our gawking curiosity asking for more wonders, but He knows that our only hope will be to finally believe in Him.

It was the rejection by Jerusalem, the center and symbol of all that was His “own country,” that caused Him to journey northward to Galilee. And in doing this, He refers to an ancient proverb that “a prophet has no honor in his own country.” Here is that somber theme that John has introduced at the very outset of his Gospel, “He came to His own, and His own did not receive Him” (1:11).

4:46-50

Healing Beyond Signs and Wonders

So Jesus returns to Cana, the place of His first sign. Here a royal official from the court of Herod Antipas, seeks Him out. How ironic that while the religious leaders of Jerusalem reject Jesus, the servant of a worldly prince should come to believe in Him “with his whole household” (v. 53). The mission of this official is urgent. His son is ill, near death. No wonder he “went to Him and implored Him” to heal his son.

Jesus seems to almost brush this official aside because He perceives that he is expecting him to continue doing the signs and wonders he has seen in Jerusalem. There is far more at stake here than saving the physical life of a child, crucial as that is. And that is the spiritual birth, the total healing of this official and his household. This can only happen if one has authentic faith in the One who is the Healer. So Jesus will allow this man to come to that lonely, helpless place where all his false defenses and supports are surrendered and he will obey any command that is given.

Now the official is insistent. The child whom he loves is desperately ill and there is no one other than this Man who can help. His cry for help is now rooted in Jesus, not in signs and wonders. He says, “Sir,” which is a term of beautiful respect placing himself under the authority of Jesus, “come down before my child dies!”

And in response to this cry of faith Jesus speaks the word, “Go your way; your son lives.” And the man took Jesus at His word and made off for home, a bold act of faith! He asked no questions and needed no further proof. Jesus’ word was enough. “Your son lives.” Three times in this brief narrative these words ring out like the joyous refrain of a resurrection hymn!

4:51-54

He Himself Believed and His Whole Household

There is the confirmation that life has come when the servants of the official meet their master on the road to share the good news! “Your son lives!” It is like the Samaritan woman hurrying back to her village to let her neighbors know what has happened. And while some commentators discuss at what hour by human calculation the healing took place, the point is that when Jesus spoke the word, the fever left the boy, and he was healed. As a dear friend, Howard Rees, who has struggled for years with illness and pain, but always with the radiance and joy of God’s grace, said years ago, “God’s trains always run on time.”

And in the coming of physical health to this home, spiritual life is born. “He himself believed, and his whole household.” There is a contagion about the new life. It always reproduces itself. It is corporate, communal. Again John, the evangelist, gives us a significant detail—this is the second sign of Jesus in Galilee “when He had come out of Judea.” The unbelief and hostility of Judea opens the door for this healing ministry in Galilee where there is still a climate of acceptance. Judea’s loss is Galilee’s gain.