John 4:41-42 - Exposition

And very many more believed, during that visit, by reason of his word— Christ's own word. We know not what the word was, but the specimens which John has recorded make us certain that torrents of living water flowed from his lips. He was moving in the full power of the Spirit. He was unveiling the nature of that "salvation" which was, as he said, "from the Jews;" but a salvation which affected and was adapted to the whole world. And they ( repeatedly ) said to the woman (the play of aorist and imperfect tenses throughout this passage is very noteworthy), No longer do we believe by reason of thy speaking . The word λαλιά does not generally connote so serious a meaning as λόγος . The first word is used for "utterance" pure and simple ( Matthew 26:73 ), and for the inarticulate voices of lower creatures as well, while λόγος and λέγειν never have the latter meaning; but still λαλιά is used in classical Greek for "discourse," and in John 8:43 is used by Christ of his own "utterance." Meyer says the term is purposely chosen from the standpoint of the speaker, while in John 8:39 λόγος is used of the same λαλιά by St. John as narrator. The above are the only times the term is found in the New Testament. For we have ourselves heard, and we know —fully, by personal intuition (we might have expected ἐγνῶμεν here)— that this is indeed the Saviour of the world. £ This sublime description only occurs in one other place in the New Testament (viz. 1 John 4:14 ), and here it falls from the lips of a Samaritan. There is no improbability that it should have expressed the thought of Samaritans, for they entertained wider and less nationalized views than did the Jews. Baur's notion, that the author wished to contrast heathen or Gentile susceptibility with Jewish narrowness and reserve, is out of keeping with the facts. A genuine heathen would have been as easy to invent as a susceptible Samaritan. "The Saviour of the world" is one of the noblest and most accurate terms in all the Bible to denote the work of Christ. It is the outcome of a discourse and of teaching which led men to the idea of spiritual and sincere worship of the Father, which searched for moral conditions rather than orthodox ritual, which demanded purity of life more than outward observance, and treated doing the will and work of the Father as more indispensable than necessary food. We need not be surprised ( Acts 8:1-40 .) to find the outcome of this sojourn of the Divine Lord among the misunderstood and hated Samaritans. The effort of the Tubingen school to find in this narrative an idealization of the synoptic tradition of Christ's special beneficence towards the Samaritans is very unfortunate, because, in Matthew 10:5 , the "twelve" were forbidden to enter into cities of the Samaritans, and advised to occupy all their energies in evangelizing the cities of Israel. The record of Acts 8:1-40 . affords very slender basis for a corresponding enlargement. The narrative before us shows that, in answer to the receptivity of the Samaritans, the Lord made the richest and fullest and most explicit and immediate revelation of himself. The extension of the kingdom of grace to Samaritans, and their incorporation into the body of Christ, was arrested by the need of the visit of the apostles, by the magic and hypocrisy of Simon; of which there is not here the slightest trace.