John 4 - CSB Spurgeon Study Bible

4:10 “Jesus answered, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who is saying to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would ask him, and he would give you living water.’” See the deadly mischief of ignorance concerning spiritual things? If she had known, she would have asked, and Christ would have given. But the first link was missing and, therefore, the rest of the chain was not drawn on. Sometimes all people need is a little wise instruction, and they will then trust the Savior. God grant that we may always be ready to give it. Some need much more than that, but Christ could truly say to this Samaritan woman, “If you had known, you would have asked, and I would have given.”

4:13 “Jesus said, ‘Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again.’” All things that are of earth are unsatisfactory. Our spirit craves for something more than time and sense can yield, but nothing that comes of earth, even if it should yield a transient satisfaction, can maintain its excellence for long. Pointing to the water in Jacob’s well, our Lord said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again.” And therein he took up his parable against all earthly things, whether fame, or riches, or fleshly pleasure, or anything else beneath the sun. Whoever drinks at these shallow wells will not quench but thirst. If for a time he imagines that he has done so, he will be deceived, and in a little season the old craving will return. Waters from his own cistern may stay a man’s desires for a while, but before long he must thirst again.

4:34 “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work.” He says nothing about his own will. People think that if they could have their own way they would be perfectly happy, and their dream of happiness consists in this—that their wishes will be gratified, their own longings fulfilled, and their desires granted to them. This is all a mistake. A person will never be happy in this way. Perfect happiness is to be found in exactly the opposite direction, namely, in the casting down of our own will entirely and asking that the will of God may be fulfilled in us. “This is my food,” says the sinner, “to do my own will.” Jesus Christ points to another table and says, “This is my food, to do the will of him that sent me. My greatest comfort and the most substantial nourishment of my spirit are not found in carrying out my own desires but in submitting all my desires to the will of God.” When we have conquered ourselves, we have conquered all. When we have won the victory over our own desires and dislikes and have subdued ourselves through sovereign grace to the will of God, then we will be perfectly happy.

4:46-47, 53 “There was a certain royal official whose son was ill at Capernaum. When this man heard that Jesus had come from Judea into Galilee, he went to him and pleaded with him to come down and heal his son, since he was about to die. . . . So he himself believed, along with his whole household.” Notice that the official’s faith came in stages. There was first the spark of faith, which rested entirely on the report of others. And it was such a little faith that it only concerned the healing of the sick child. The nobleman did not know that he needed healing in his own heart. Then notice that his faith was so feeble that he limited Jesus’s power to his local presence. He asked Jesus, “Sir, come down before my boy dies.” Yet his faith was sufficient for him to take a considerable journey to find our Lord.

Then there was the fire of faith. He stood before the Savior resolved not to go away from him. His only hope for his child’s life was in this great Prophet of Nazareth, and therefore he did not intend to leave him till his request was granted. Then we see the flame of faith. When Jesus said, “Go, . . . your son will live,” “The man believed what Jesus said to him and departed.” Finally there was the conflagration of faith. When the answer to his prayers was confirmed, “he himself believed,” as well his wife and son. From that day forth he became a disciple of the Lord Jesus. He followed him, not as a healer only, or as a prophet only, or as a Savior only, but as his Lord and his God.