The Samaritan Woman

Jesus comes for all people

What are the differences between Nicodemus in in the last chapter and the Samaritan woman here?

-Nicodemus had a formal education, he had authority, he was respected, he kept the entire law, and he was theologically trained.

-The Samaritan woman was unschooled, she had no influence, she was an outcast of her society (as seen from her

-But both of them needed Jesus equally as much

Jesus meet her in the heat of the day, when no one else would be getting water. That is why this woman finds herself there now, to keep away from other people, so she could be alone.

This woman would have been considered “unclean” by several standards of Jews.

-She was a Samaritan, who Jews felt were not true Israelites and they did not allow to worship with them. Some would even go out of their way around Samaria to get to Judea.

-She was a woman, therefore considered property whoever she was married to. But in this case she was not even married, so she had no standing in society.

-She had been in several adulterous relationships.

Because of all these things, Jesus even talking to her would make him “unclean”. He would have been looked down for talking to her.

-Even she says, “Jews do not associate with Samaritans.” Which means literally, “Jews do not use dishes Samaritans have used”. Essentially

-Instead of making unclean, Jesus sanctifies what He touches, from lepers, to those possessed, and those considered low in society.

Who are the people you think our society would call “outcasts” or “unclean”?

Jesus refers back to Jeremiah 2:13 where it says “My people have committed two sins: They have forsaken me, the spring of living water, and have dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that cannot hold water’

Jesus is the satisfying water that leads to eternal life.

-Have you been so thirsty that water tested like the best thing ever?

-For me it is always at like 3am when I just wake up and I need something to drink and you just need water to hit the spot.

Just like Nicodemus she is still confused and is thinking in purely naturalistic ways. We often think about this when God tries to show us something better. God tells us that we will have joy, and we think that means we will have the clothes we want, the gaming system, we want, the makeup that will make us happy. But God is thinking of something greater.

-So Jesus shows her want she really needs. He points out her sin, not to ridicule her, not to make her feel dirty, not to make her feel judged. But to show her where she really needed to be satisfied.

-She brings up Jesus’ character as a way of distracting from her own personal sins, she tries to change the subject.

-Jesus points out that many times we don’t know what we are worshipping when we are looking for the one, true God. This is how Hindus, Muslims, Buddhist, and any other religion. They are looking for the one true God, they are looking for the living God.

The Gospel according to John 9. Jesus and the Samaritan Woman (4:1–42)

In the same way, ‘God is spirit’ means that God is invisible, divine as opposed to human (cf. 3:6), life-giving and unknowable to human beings unless he chooses to reveal himself (cf. 1:18). As ‘God is light’ and ‘God is love’ (1 Jn. 1:5; 4:8), so ‘God is spirit’: these are elements in the way God presents himself to human beings, in his gracious self-disclosure in his Son (cf. Porsch, p. 49; cf. Ibuki, pp. 311–313). And he has chosen to reveal himself: he has uttered his Word, his own Self-Expression. In that Word, now become flesh, he may be known as truly as it is possible for human beings to know him (1:1–18). That incarnate Word is the one who baptizes his people in Holy Spirit (1:33), for unless they are born from above, unless they are born of the Spirit, they cannot see the kingdom of God, they cannot worship God truly. This provision of the Spirit is made possible by the work of him who is the truth (14:6), and who by his glorification by way of the cross pours out the Spirit, who is called the Spirit of truth (14:17; 15:26; 16:13).

This God who is spirit can be worshipped only in spirit and truth. Both in v. 23 and in v. 24, the one preposition ‘in’ governs both nouns (a point obscured by the NIV of v. 24). There are not two separable characteristics of the worship that must be offered: it must be ‘in spirit and truth’, i.e. essentially God-centred, made possible by the gift of the Holy Spirit, and in personal knowledge of and conformity to God’s Word-made-flesh, the one who is God’s ‘truth’, the faithful exposition and fulfillment of God and his saving purposes (cf. esp. de la Potterie, 2. 673ff.). The worshippers whom God seeks worship him out of the fullness of the supernatural life they enjoy (‘in spirit’), and on the basis of God’s incarnate Self-Expression, Christ Jesus himself, through whom God’s person and will are finally and ultimately disclosed (‘in truth’); and these two characteristics form one matrix, indivisible. Indeed, the association of ‘word’ and ‘Spirit’ is strong in the Old Testament (e.g. Ne. 9:20, 30; Ps. 33:6; 147:18; Is. 59:21), and it is just possible that this connection is in the Evangelist’s mind, since Jesus the ‘Word made flesh’ (1:14) and ‘the truth’ (14:6) is also the one to whom God gives the Spirit without limit (3:34).

To worship the Father ‘in spirit and truth’ clearly means much more than worship without necessary ties to particular holy places (though it cannot mean any less). The prophets spoke of a time when worship would no longer be focused on a single, central sanctuary, when the earth would be full of the knowledge of the Lord as the waters cover the sea. The Apocalypse concludes with a vision of the consummated kingdom, the new Jerusalem, in which there is no temple to be found, ‘because the Lord God Almighty and the Lamb are its temple’ (Rev. 21:22). The fulfillment of that vision has not yet arrived in its fullness. Even so, Jesus insists, through his own mission the hour was dawning when the principal ingredients of that vision would be set in operation, a foretaste of the consummation to come. ‘God is spirit, and his worshippers must (Gk. dei, here the divine ‘must’) worship him in spirit and truth.’