John
4:10: "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."
Introduction
Over two years ago I wrote an article titled What Being Born of Water and The Spirit in John 3:5 Mean. I
gave what I believe John 3:5 should mean. I must say that this has taken too
long to come, but being a spiritual issue I realized that I needed not to be
hasty. For those who have waited with me, thank you. Here is the article I
promised
Jesus
talks with the Samaritan woman (John 4:1-24, 39-42)
As Jesus talks with the Samaritan woman at the
well, He tells 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.” (John
4:10). Here Jesus still uses the word water, but explains farther
that it is the “living water”. This water when taken, according to the same
chapter verse 14, one never becomes thirsty again and that it turns into a
spring of water that wells up to eternal life.
The woman like many of us
expected physical water in a small jar or container. She never realized the
symbolic meaning. However, when Jesus sent her to go call her husband, she
doesn’t go due to her controversial marital arrangement. She later on leaves
without demanding to be issued a container of water.
Was she offered the living water?
Did she partake of the living water? According to her later reaction, yes. In
fact, when she got filled she went out calling her friends and village mates
who also came to share with her in partaking of the “living water”. She became
an evangelist.
The Samaritan woman got the living water, she
drunk of it. Not baptized by it, but given. In fact, I dare say that the woman
got born again of Water and the Spirit. What could this water be. It seems that
the living water here has connection with the message of life that Jesus shared
with this woman. She got this message, the message of the gospel.
Elsewhere in John 6:63 Jesus said, “The Spirit
gives life, the flesh counts for nothing. The words I have
spoken to you are Spirit and they are life”. It seems to me that this also has
a relationship with the same water that gives life. The words of Jesus, and of
God for that matter, cleanses and gives life, life eternal. This life is found
when one believes in the teaching of Jesus. That is why there is an inference to
the fact that, “there are some of you who do not believe”, (John 6:64).
When Jesus says that it is the
Spirit that gives life, one sees that the same living water that becomes a
spring of water welling to eternal life is the same with the “Spirit that gives
life”. With this alone, it is possible to say that when Jesus tells Nicodemus
that he should be born again by water and the spirit he is meaning that Nicodemus
has to believe in the Word of God. Moreover,
he is saying that the water and the spirit work together to give life. Or
should I say that they are the same.
In Ephesians 5:26, Paul teachers
that Christ “gave himself up for the church to make her
holy, cleansing her by the washing with water through the word, and to present
her to himself as a radiant church, without stain or wrinkle or any other
blemish, but holy and blameless.” The cleansing is done by
the water through the word. This cleansing makes the church pure and blameless,
holy and even radiant removing wrinkles and stain. This I believe, is what
happens when we lay ourselves under the influence of God’s word. The word of
God purifies believers from all ungodliness.
Conclusion
Jesus meant that salvation is
only possible if one experiences spiritual washing and cleansing through the
word of God as effected by work of the Holy Spirit. We can find this in Titus
3:5 (He saved us through the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Holy
Spirit) and Ephesians 5:26 (to make her holy, cleansing her by the washing with
water through the word). Anyone reading John 3:5 should not try to link it up
with baptism of water since there is not even a single mention of baptism in
the conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus.
