Lent 2023: John 4:1-42

Jesus and the Samaritan Woman

4 When Jesus[a] learned that the Pharisees had heard he was making and baptizing more disciples than John 2 (though Jesus himself was not baptizing, but his disciples were), 3 he left Judea and went again to Galilee. 4 He had to travel through Samaria; 5 so he came to a town of Samaria called Sychar near the property[b] that Jacob had given his son Joseph. 6 Jacob’s well was there, and Jesus, worn out from his journey, sat down at the well. It was about noon.

7 A woman of Samaria came to draw water.

“Give me a drink,” Jesus said to her, 8 because his disciples had gone into town to buy food.

9 “How is it that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” she asked him. For Jews do not associate with Samaritans.

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.”

11 “Sir,” said the woman, “you don’t even have a bucket, and the well is deep. So where do you get this ‘living water’? 12 You aren’t greater than our father Jacob, are you? He gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his sons and livestock.”

13 Jesus said, “Everyone who drinks from this water will get thirsty again. 14 But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will never get thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give him will become a well[f] of water springing up in him for eternal life.”

15 “Sir,” the woman said to him, “give me this water so that I won’t get thirsty and come here to draw water.”

16 “Go call your husband,” he told her, “and come back here.”

17 “I don’t have a husband,” she answered.

“You have correctly said, ‘I don’t have a husband,’” Jesus said. 18 “For you’ve had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.”

19 “Sir,” the woman replied, “I see that you are a prophet. 20 Our ancestors worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews say that the place to worship is in Jerusalem.”

21 Jesus told her, “Believe me, woman, an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know. We worship what we do know, because salvation is from the Jews. 23 But an hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in Spirit and in truth. Yes, the Father wants such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in Spirit and in truth.”

25 The woman said to him, “I know that the Messiah is coming” (who is called Christ). “When he comes, he will explain everything to us.”

26 Jesus told her, “I, the one speaking to you, am he.”

The Ripened Harvest

27 Just then his disciples arrived, and they were amazed that he was talking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do you want?” or “Why are you talking with her?”

28 Then the woman left her water jar, went into town, and told the people, 29 “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did. Could this be the Messiah?” 30 They left the town and made their way to him.

31 In the meantime the disciples kept urging him, “Rabbi, eat something.”

32 But he said, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”

33 The disciples said to one another, “Could someone have brought him something to eat?”

34 “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to finish his work,” Jesus told them. 35 “Don’t you say, ‘There are still four more months, and then comes the harvest’? Listen to what I’m telling you: Open your eyes and look at the fields, because they are ready for harvest. 36 The reaper is already receiving pay and gathering fruit for eternal life, so that the sower and reaper can rejoice together. 37 For in this case the saying is true: ‘One sows and another reaps.’ 38 I sent you to reap what you didn’t labor for; others have labored, and you have benefited from their labor.”

The Savior of the World

39 Now many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of what the woman said[k] when she testified, “He told me everything I ever did.” 40 So when the Samaritans came to him, they asked him to stay with them, and he stayed there two days. 41 Many more believed because of what he said. 42 And they told the woman, “We no longer believe because of what you said, since we have heard for ourselves and know that this really is the Savior of the world.”

—John 4:1-42

Read & Journal

Read John 4:1-42. Ask yourself:

• What does this passage teach you about Jesus? His character? His purpose?

• Consider Jesus’ treatment of the woman. What words would you use to describe how he interacts with her? Why?

• Most people came to the well in the morning to draw water for the day’s needs, but this woman, an outcast and a well-known sinner, came in the middle of the day. Why would it have been surprising to her for a rabbi like Jesus to talk to her?

• It would have been highly unlikely for a rabbi to talk to a woman in public, much less a woman who was a Samaritan. The Jews hated the Samaritans and generally avoided traveling through the area. Yet Jesus had led his disciples straight through Samaria on a collision course with the woman at the well. When has Jesus gone out of his way to show you the way back to him?

• Consider verse 26. After discussing some theological points and revealing he knows all about the woman’s life, Jesus says “I Am the Messiah” or as the Greek reads, “I am, the one speaking to you.” Whatever the phrasing Jesus had revealed for the first time in John’s Gospel that he is the Messiah. Why is it important that he shares that truth with a sinful woman whom her own community considered an outcast?

• It’s easy for us to think that some people—perhaps even ourselves—are too messed up, too sinful, too far gone for Jesus to even care or take notice of us. How does this passage fly in the face of that way of thinking?

• Does Jesus’ treatment of the woman challenge how you regard those who don’t fit in to society, outcasts or sinners? Why or why not?

• Jesus didn’t wait for the woman to get her life straightened up or to deal with all the problems her sin had likely created. When she was at her worst, he came near and offered living water and lasting hope. He does the same for you. Spend some time in prayer today, thanking him for saving you and giving you hope, both in the past and today.