“The Filling of Living Water”
John 4:1-42

“Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks of the water that I shall give him will never thirst.” [John 4:13-14]

“Living water” is an interesting expression. Jesus used it in John 4:10 to a Samaritan woman and again in John 7:38. What is fascinating in the John 4 passage is that Jews in that day did not associate with Samaritans. They were considered “unclean” because they were half Gentile. But in our passage this morning John recorded that Jesus “needed to go through Samaria.”

There were other routes to Galilee. The common one was to travel north through Perea, which was east of the Jordan river, thus bypassing Samaria. However, Jesus “needed to go through Samaria” because a harvest awaited through a Samaritan woman who was steeped in sin. 

Jesus used a bad Samaritan for good. She became a vessel of honor that evangelized a town. Can God use a sinner infected by the world? Absolutely! He will meet them; change them; and use them!

There are two interesting comparisons in this account. Firstly, there is the physical water versus the “living water.”  The woman was fixed upon the physical [as we oftentimes are], Jesus the spiritual. The world offers physical water that is temporal, Jesus offers spiritual water that is eternal. In the former you will thirst again; in the latter you will never thirst again.

Another comparison is the Samaritan woman in John 4 with Nicodemus in John 3. Both needed this “living water,” and both needed to be “born again.”  These peculiar expressions, however, point to the One Jesus Christ, and yet these two individuals could not be any more different.

“He was seeking; she was indifferent. He was a respected ruler; she was an outcast. He was serious; she was flippant. He was a Jew; she was a Samaritan. He was (presumably) moral; she was immoral. He was orthodox; she was heterodox. He was learned in religious matters; she was ignorant. Yet despite all the differences between this ‘churchman’ and this woman of the world, they both needed to be born again. Both had needs only Christ could meet.” [The Bible Knowledge Commentary].

In Jesus “there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcised nor uncircumcised, barbarian, Scythian, slave nor free, but Christ is all and in all.” [Col 3:11]

In Christ we all “put on the new man.”  This is done [and it can only be done] by the filling of the “living water” that comes by being “born again.”