Blog 37:
Apparently, it has been a month since my last post…I guess a lot of stuff has been going on recently. One thing I have been reflecting on is the famous interaction Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s Well in John 4. It is a famous passage that is loaded with so much theology that a pastor could spend several weeks preaching from it. I won’t subject you all to that here, but the thought that stands out to me during this read-through is, “Does never thirsting again mean never drinking again?” Jesus makes a promise to the woman that anyone who drinks the water He offers will never thirst and His water leads to eternal life. So, what does he mean?
It can be easy to read this passage as a ticket to paradise that will require no more personal work regarding the struggles of living in a fallen world as fallen people… just drink once and you will be magically re-oriented into spiritual closeness with God and will never experience any sense of separation from Him. This is tricky because placing faith in Jesus does place us back into right relationship with God but, as Paul writes extensively in Romans, we are completely justified yet we are still sinful. I firmly believe this passage on its surface gives us reassurance in an eternal sense but it also gives us a picture of how to have a meaningful relationship with God even in the midst of the fallen-ness around us… and sometimes inside us.
So, does never thirsting again mean never needing to drink again? Do we simply drink one time and the Holy Spirit takes care of everything else for us forevermore? If we are simply considering the eternal sense of entering Heaven when we die, then “yes” … one drink from the water that Jesus offers seals us into eternal life via the Holy Spirit. We never have to be concerned again for our salvation; once saved always saved is how reformed theologians would refer to this concept.
Yet, I wonder if Jesus has the words God spoke to the prophet Jeremiah in mind as He makes this promise. Jer. 2:13 records God saying, “They have forsaken Me, the fountain of living waters, to hew for themselves cisterns, broken cisterns that can hold no water.” The Israelites in the time of Jeremiah knew God had chosen them as a people and they became complacent in that knowledge. No longer was He their provider in the deserts of Egypt, no longer was He their strong conqueror who overcame the Canaanites, no longer was he the sovereign God on Mt. Sinai promising blessings and curses…He was simply a memory. The Israelites not only dismissed God as their source of spiritual life but they attempted to foster their own. As a result of this, God demonstrated just how broken and empty their cisterns were by allowing their long painful exile.
Much has been said and written about how the woman at the well was too focused on her “immediate need” but my challenge to you is, do we do the same thing? I confess I have been guilty of this as I have read this passage. I focused on my immediate need when I was first face-to-face with Jesus, salvation and eternal life. There are certainly times I refuse to allow the Spirit to refresh me in my day-to-day. You may think I am reading too much into the text but bear with me… Jesus claims in verse 14 that if we drink his living water that we will never thirst again; so, if you are a believer reading this, have you ever still felt spiritually thirsty? You have placed your faith in Jesus and received the indwelling of the Holy Spirit but you still feel spiritually empty sometimes. Have you felt as though there was separation between you and God even though He has promised to be with you always?
When we feel spiritually thirsty it’s not because the Holy Spirit is suddenly insufficient to meet our spiritual need, it’s because we are busy trying to carve our own cisterns. We create separation through our thoughts or actions and we stop being refreshed by the living restorative waters of the Holy Spirit. When we return, He is infinitely faithful and capable to quench our thirst.
In modern society, it is easy to take the water we have for granted. We turn on a faucet and out flows healthy, drinkable water. Not so in Jesus’ time…this term would have had great meaning to His listeners. The term living water in a physical sense is a source of water that is fresh and renewing rather than a stagnant standing body of water. Jesus then conveys the same image when He calls the Holy Spirit living water.
It seems His use of this term carries a sense of ongoing continual renewal rather than simply a one-time washing. In the upper room discourse Jesus washed His disciples’ feet and proclaimed them clean because of the word He spoke to them but He immediately instructs them to abide in Him. He and the Spirit He promised were their source of cleanliness, yet they needed to remain in fellowship with Him for this to be fulfilled perfectly. In short, we are eternally secure through one drink but this eternality is only fulfilled completely by continuing to drink the living water of the Holy Spirit.
The thing to remember is that Jesus doesn’t stop offering us access to these living water at conversion because we don’t stop being sinners at conversion. The Holy Spirit is still refreshing us and sanctifying us when we draw near to Him. As I sit here writing this, I can assure you at some point in my pride I will go back to trying to carve out my own cistern. I can also assure you, however, the Holy Spirit stands ready to refresh and restore me when I put my pick down and just drink what He is offering me. My prayer is that we would yield more and more each day to the Spirit’s call to drink and be satisfied in Him. Blessings to you all!