John 4:7-26

Conversation of Jesus with the woman of Samaria, John 4:7-26.

Upon this memorable narrative we may remark: 1. It stands in striking comparison with the Lord’s discourse with Nicodemus. The one was indeed with a leading metropolitan Doctor of the Jews, the latter with a poor country woman, and a Samaritan at that. The former shows our Lord’s dealing with, and mastery over, and development of, the higher minds of the day, in bringing them from their proud half-scepticism to the deepest and most humbling heart-truths of his Gospel. The latter shows how he would take a rude mind of humble rank, and raise it to a knowledge of himself, and in himself to a grasp of the sublimest truths of eternity and God. 2. Modern rationalists have expressed much contempt at the want of dignity of Jesus’s holding this converse with a garrulous female at a country well. Still greater was the contempt of the Jewish rabbis for woman. “No man salutes a woman,” says one doctor. “He plays the fool who instructs his daughter in the law,” says another. This condescension of the Saviour, therefore, crosses alike the pride of the rationalist and of the rabbi. Doubtless it was Jesus’s intention to cross the pride of both. Those sublime truths which the philosophers of Greece could impart only to the schools, Christianity brings down to the masses of society; to its humblest ranks; to women and to children. 3. This female, however, evidently possessed great strength of womanly character; a strength of passion which had exposed her to the extraordinary guilt of her past life; strength, nevertheless, of religious conviction powerfully struggling with her guilty nature; and strength of intellect, exhibited not only in the keenness of her insight into his remarks in the dialogue, but displayed in the powerful effect of her report upon the action of her townsmen. 4. The successive steps by which the Lord reveals himself furnish a beautiful study into the operations of mind. He presents himself first as a man and a Jew, 7-9; he proposes himself to her faith as a spiritual life-giver, 10-15; he confirms the faith in his offer by proving himself a holy prophet, 16-19; he so unfolds the truths of God as to be accepted as Messias, 20-26. Through all this progress he carries also the thought of her sin and his salvation.