“Whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life.” John 4:14
The larger story this verse comes from takes place around a well. John uses this physical well where water is drawn from to show us something really important about Jesus. In the Old Testament, wells provided water as a source of sustenance in the dry desert. They have been places of meeting, and of offering the relief of community and emotional connection. Wells also act as places of rescue for travelers and for animals. The safety of the water felt like an oasis in the desert. It quenched thirst and gave renewed strength.
The Israelite community was familiar with the stories of their patriarchs involving wells. In Abraham’s day, Sarah’s runaway slave girl is met by the angel of the Lord at a well. Later on, Abraham sent his trusted servant on a journey to select a wife for Isaac. He meets Rebekah when she waters his animals with a drink from a well. In the next generation, Jacob is fleeing for his life and arrives at a well where he meets Rachel and waters her flock of sheep. Years later, Moses flees Egypt and arrives at a well in Midian where he meets his future wife and waters the flock of her and her sisters.
Based on these stories, we could make the case that wells were romantic from all the matchmaking done around them. While that may be true, the Bible wants us to see that wells were a place of relationship and community building.
Jesus knew the heritage surrounding wells, so it is no surprise that he would turn up at Jacob’s well at some point during his time on earth. He comes at midday to a small Samaritan village. He knew what would happen, and he knew who he would encounter. John wants us to understand that Jesus is a well himself, of the very things the physical well provided. He is sustenance in the wilderness, a source of deep and satisfying relationship, and the rescuer from desperate thirst. That day in Samaria, he knew a weary traveler along a lifelong road of parched hopes and the fine dust of futile pursuits would come here to draw water. Jesus settles discreetly on the side of the well and waits.
The source of living water has come to the source of the town’s well water, and now this unsuspecting woman will get the chance to draw water from the well she has always longed for. She gets hung up on his ethnicity, his lack of utensil with which to draw water, and the local history that entitled her to use this well. But Jesus invites her into something else completely. “Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give them will never thirst.”
Living water was water that flowed. It had a source, a direction, and a destination. It was of better quality, purer and clearer, than the stagnant waters of a pond or cistern.
Jesus offers living water that cleanses and frees. He offers to the Samaritan woman a new life. It is one connected with the activity of the Holy Spirit. If she accepted this water and drank from it, this living water would flow within her too. It would be a spring welling up of its own accord from a source beyond her. Always fresh. Always abundant.
Jeremiah describes God as the spring of living water, and John uses a similar phrase in chapter seven when he quotes Jesus. “Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whomever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.”
To come to Jesus and drink is to believe. To come to Jesus and drink is to long for cleansing. To come to Jesus and drink is to accept the transforming power of the Holy Spirit. Jesus gives the invitation for the thirsty soul to come to him and drink. He is the only one who satisfies our thirst. We don’t have to look anywhere else for the answers to the longings that ache deep inside us. Everyone who drinks the water he gives them will never thirst.
