The Woman at the Well: Part 2
Read John 4:1-40, Christ's encounter with the woman. In what way does Jesus connect the woman's daily life and circumstances to the spiritual truth He wants to share? That is, how was He able to connect to her spiritual needs?
The woman is so excited by what she has seen and heard that she rushes back to town, not even bothering to take her water jar (John 4:28). She has met the Messiah, and she just has to share the news with others.
The first part of her testimony is an invitation for them to meet for themselves the Man who knew her life story (vs. 29). Here is a simple but classic truth about witnessing. Our mission is not to convert people. Our task is to sow the seed and bring people to Jesus. From there, the Holy Spirit cares for conversion. As the people later testify after meeting Jesus—"Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world" (John 4:42).
The second part of her testimony is a question—"Is not this the Christ?" (vs. 29). The way this question is structured in the Greek suggests that she is assuming that the answer to her question is negative. Thus, her question is literally: "He could not be the Messiah, could He?" or "This is not the Christ, is it?"
Either the woman was still not 100 percent certain about Jesus being the Messiah or, more likely, she was breaking the news gently to people who could be hostile to her for making such a claim.
Though many lessons could be taken from this account, one important one is that by doing what He did, Jesus clearly broke with the traditions of His time, witnessing to not only a woman but a Samaritan woman, but then using this woman to be a messenger and evangelist for the gospel.
| Jesus uses a Samaritan, a woman, and one of hardly the best moral background too, to be a witness for Him. It is as if He purposely went against every taboo and prejudice of His time. What lessons should we draw from this for ourselves about who is or is not qualified to work for the Lord? |
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