Then when the Lord knew that the Pharisees heard that Jesus made more disciples and baptized more than John (though truly Jesus Himself did not baptize, but His disciples), He left Judea and went away into Galilee again. And it was needful for Him to pass through Samaria. And He came to a Samaritan city called Sychar, near the piece of land Jacob gave to his son Joseph. And Jacob’s fountain was there. Then being wearied by the journey, Jesus sat thus on the fountain. It was about the sixth hour. A woman came out of Samaria to draw water. Jesus said to her, Give Me some to drink. For His disciples had gone away into the city that they might buy provisions. Then the Samaritan woman said to Him, How do You, being a Jew, ask to drink from me, I being a Samaritan woman? For Jews do not deal with Samaritans. Jesus answered and said to her, If you knew the gift of God, and who is the One saying to you, Give Me to drink, you would have asked Him, and He would give you living water. The woman said to Him, Sir, You have no vessel, and the well is deep. From where then do You have living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob who gave us the well, and he and his sons and his livestock drank out of it? Jesus answered and said to her, Everyone drinking of this water will thirst again; but whoever may drink of the water which I will give him will not thirst, never! But the water which I will give to him will become a fountain of water in him, springing up into everlasting life. The woman said to Him, Sir, give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw. Jesus said to her, Go, call your husband and come here. And the woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, Well did you say, I have no husband. For you have had five husbands, and now he whom you have is not your husband. You have spoken this truly. The woman said to Him, Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where it is necessary to worship. Jesus said to her, Woman, believe Me that an hour is coming when you will worship the Father neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is of the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and in truth. For the Father also seeks such, the ones worshiping Him. God is a spirit, and the ones worshiping Him must worship in spirit and truth. The woman said to Him, I know that Messiah is coming, the One called Christ. When that One comes, He will announce to us all things. Jesus said to her, I AM! the One speaking to you. (John 4:1-26)
Many places in the Word use the term ‘spirit’, and when they use it in reference to a person his ‘spirit’ means goodness and truth inscribed on the understanding part of his mind and consequently on the life of that part of it. The reason why ‘spirit’, when attributed to a person, has this meaning is that inwardly a person is a spirit, indeed inwardly is in the company of spirits.
… From this one may know what ‘spirit’ means when used in reference to the Lord, namely that it is Divine Truth emanating from His Divine Good, and that when this Divine Truth flows in and is received by a person it is the Spirit of truth, Spirit of God, and Holy Spirit; for it flows directly from the Lord, and also indirectly through angels and spirits…when used in the Word in reference to a person, ‘spirit’ means goodness and truth inscribed on the understanding part of a person’s mind and consequently means the life of that part of it. For there is the life of the understanding part, and there is the life of the will part. That of the understanding part consists in knowing, seeing, and understanding that truth is indeed truth and good is indeed good. But the life of the will part consists in willing and loving truth for truth’s sake and good for goodness’ sake.
… That the life of the understanding, or the life of truth, is meant becomes clear from the consideration that in the natural sense ‘spirit’ is used to mean human life and breath. And drawing breath, which is the work of the lungs, corresponds to the life of truth, which is the life of faith and consequently of the understanding, whereas the beating of the heart corresponds to the life of the will and so of love.
… Once people know what ‘spirit’ present in a person means they may know what is meant by ‘spirit’ when this term is used in reference to Jehovah or the Lord. Everything a human being has, such as face, eyes, ears, arms, and hands, also heart and soul, He is said to have. Thus spirit as well is attributed to Him, and in the Word it is called Spirit of God, Spirit of Jehovah, Spirit of His mouth, and Spirit of Holiness or Holy Spirit. The fact that the term is used to mean Divine Truth emanating from the Lord is clear from a large number of places in the Word. The reason why Divine Truth emanating from the Lord is meant by ‘Spirit of God’ is that all of a person’s life comes from there, as does the heavenly life possessed by those who receive that Divine Truth in faith and love. The Lord Himself teaches in John that this is what ‘Spirit of God’ means,
The words which I speak to you, they are spirit and they are life. John 6:63.
‘The words’ which the Lord spoke are Divine Truths.
‘The Spirit’ which those believing in the Lord were to receive from Him means the life coming from the Lord that is the life of faith and love, as is evident from the specific expressions used in these verses. For ‘thirsting’ and ‘drinking’ means the desire to know and understand truth; and ‘rivers of living water’ which will flow from the belly are God’s truths. From this it is clear that ‘the Spirit’ which believers were to receive, also called ‘the Holy Spirit’, means the life brought by Divine Truth emanating from the Lord. This life, as stated just above, is called the life of faith and love, being the spiritual and heavenly life itself present in a person.
(Arcana Coelestia 9818{3,8,13})
Today we will consider the content of Jesus’s discussion with the Samaritan woman around Jacob’s well or fountain. We saw last time that by the well or fountain we have what corresponds to the Word as the source of all that is true and in the area known as Samaria, we have what represents that part of the human mind that corresponds to the understanding faculty. We saw this in the fact that each of the great divisions of the land of Canaan in New Testament times is a symbol for different parts of the human mind through which the Lord as Divine Truth makes his presence known and felt. Judea in the south represents the things of the affections or will. Samaria in its position between Judea and Galilee represents the thinking operations of the mind in relation to spiritual life. And Galilee to the north represents the more external aspects of bringing our affections and thoughts into life.
Samaria concerns itself with those things to do with our thinking on spiritual matters, and as a place represents the state of our beliefs in them. In broad terms, what this journey of Jesus’s from Judea to Galilee represents is an arising within of an affection or desire to see what is good and true expressed in our life. This shift in our state of life is described in natural terms as Jesus making a journey but inwardly it is the progressive states of change which we undergo whereby what is spiritual becomes established in us. This shift in state begins in the inner Judea of our minds where Jesus with His disciples are baptising, that is, where the principles of spiritual life drawn from the Word are being used to have our affections purified from selfish tendencies.
As our affections are purified from self interest, so there is a need to have thought structures and concepts put in place through which what is genuinely good and true can be promoted. Because desiring good and being able to see it come into being are two very different states of life and in the spiritual or religious life two things are needed if we are to enter into the full potential of what the Lord has created us to be. These are charity and faith. Charity is loving good, and faith is loving and believing truths. By loving truths, we mean having beliefs, concepts and thinking structures that are able to bring goodness into life. So true charity and true faith work together to produce what is good. If we desire good but have beliefs that aren’t based in what is true, then the good which we do will be misplaced. For example, desiring to do good without knowing that all good is from the Lord, without this truth in our belief system it will mean that we will attribute the good that we do to ourselves. If this is done, the good is not really good but something that is done to look good, or to draw attention to ourselves or is perhaps used to promote ourself over others. A sure sign that we are taking the good to ourselves is when we take offence when our ‘good’ actions are rejected, rebuffed or questioned in some way.
But having truths from the Word in our belief and thinking structures, in this case that all good is from the Lord, puts us in a different relationship to the good which we seek to do. This belief, when held and made conscious in us, enables us to see what aspect of self is concealed in the good that we seek to perform. For if we do good and take credit for it but have this truth called to mind then we are in a position where we can call on the Lord to have the loves of the self removed, with a view to having the good which we desire come into life. We are then able to recognise that even our desire for good is not from us but from the Lord. Any desire we have for good is from the Lord, it is really His desire in us, and it is this spiritual fact that is captured in today’s story in the statement that,
It was needful for Him to pass through Samaria.
The straightening out and reforming of our beliefs in regard to the spiritual life centres on the well. This is the point of meeting between Jesus and the Samaritan woman. The Samaritan woman embodies a couple of things. On one level she embodies the affection for truth that those have who acknowledge the Word in its literal sense and then return to the well seeking from it what might quench their thirst. This is illustrated by her dependence on Jacob’s fountain for water as a love for the Word, of being engaged with it and drawing from it what is needed. But without an awareness of a deeper understanding, we can find that the literal sense is confusing and often contradictory and so can hold beliefs that are inconsistent and even work against each other. We may hold that God is love yet find ourselves being judgemental of others. We might justify this attitude from a literal reading of the Word seeing ourselves as being on God’s side and those who don’t believe what we believe or behave in the way we think they should behave – as being on the other side, as those who are against God.
The confusion which a literal reading of Scripture brings is captured in the content of the Samaritan woman’s questions and responses. At the well Jesus speaks and challenges the woman to consider her need to keep returning to get the water she needs.
If you knew the gift of God, and who is the One saying to you, Give Me to drink, you would have asked Him, and He would give you living water… Everyone drinking of this water will thirst again; but whoever may drink of the water which I will give him will not thirst, never! But the water which I will give to him will become a fountain of water in him, springing up into everlasting life.
This is how the Word begins to challenge us. The Word promises a living water from which we will never thirst again. Surely this is the kind of water, or truth, we desire above all else, and our affection for truth, the Samaritan woman within us, knows it. Natural truth or the Word understood literally cannot transform us inwardly, so when this is all that we draw from, we will thirst again because the issues we seek to have dealt with in our lives are only temporarily satisfied. Without a deeper understanding of the Word, we keep returning to the same states of life which drive us back to the well for another temporary fix.
Jesus points out to the woman what is possible – that He can provide water that can bring about a real and lasting transformation of our very essence and being. He teaches her from the well and gives her a vision of what is possible. In the same way, the Lord teaches us from the well of the Word, giving us a vision of what is possible. Through this very passage we are in contact with great potential. We can then ask with the Samaritan woman…
… give me this water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw.
How strange then is Jesus’s response, for He doesn’t give her what she asks but asks her to…
…Go, call your husband and come here.
We may wonder what this has to do with receiving the living water which Jesus speaks of but as we shall now see that without this disclosing of our state of life and our acknowledgement of its condition, there can be no reception of the Lord. To be married spiritually is to have goods and truths joined together in the mind. This is the goal of spiritual life, for it is in this marriage that the Lord dwells, bringing unity within our self as the mind centres its focus on the Word. The affection for truth that arises in the hearts of all who seek the kingdom of heaven yearns for the type of truths that it can be made one with. In our process of seeking for this we may join with ideas and concepts that at first appear to hold promise but are soon found lacking and so are separated from. So until the inner sense of the Word is opened, this affection for truth, this woman, has no husband – it has no truth that can satisfy its longing. This woman having had five husbands speaks to that cyclic loop of returning again and again to the well to find what will fulfill her longing but only to be temporarily satisfied. She is truly us all, as we seek to know the Lord in His Word. So Jesus speaking to disclose her state of life is the Lord bringing this state into consciousness for us. As we seek to know the Lord, so the Word opens our life and brings what is needed to be seen into view…
And the woman answered and said, I have no husband. Jesus said to her, Well did you say, I have no husband. For you have had five husbands, and now he whom you have is not your husband. You have spoken this truly.
Here we see an important principle of spiritual life – we must speak truly in response to the questions that the Word asks of our own states of life if we are to enter the true meaning of worship. Simply put, our worship is how we live in response to the truths that we have. Do we use them to examine our outer and inner life? This activity is what worship is from the perspective of Spiritual Christianity. And like this woman, our responses to the challenges which the Word sets for us leads us in a process of gaining clarification as to the nature of true worship. The woman says…
Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where it is necessary to worship.
Here is a recognition that Jesus, the Word, is a prophet. This represents a deepening awareness that the Word is from God and that there is more to it than what lies on its surface. Here is Divine teaching that is able to penetrate into and reveal the states of our life. It reveals confusion on the question of worship – is it on this mountain, or in Jerusalem? This mountain refers to worship in ignorance or a worship that lacks inner truths to guide and direct it. It is a state of living from a simple acknowledgement that God is and that one should life a good life but there is little understanding as to who God is or what living a good life constitutes from a spiritual perspective. We can see that this is what is meant here, for the woman doesn’t yet see that the one who sits on this well is the Lord Himself nor that Jerusalem represents worship from an understanding which comes from being in possession of truths that teach who the Lord is and how he is to be worshipped.
The Word now reveals a deeper truth, and it is that…
God is a spirit, and the ones worshiping Him must worship in spirit and truth.
This opens the way for the greatest revelation of all. In stating that God is a spirit, we have reinforced for us the truth that God is the Word, the Divine Truth – the light that enlightens everyone born into the world and that in this light is the life of every human being. The term spirit used in relation to God refers to the life of truth, or that which proceeds from the Lord’s Divine Human which is the Holy Spirit. To worship in spirit and truth then is to be in the life of truth or to live from what truth teaches and so be in the good of life.
The Samaritan woman who is our affection for truth is now moved to declare its hope…to consider or make conscious its deepest felt expectation… the expectation that lies within in the heart of all those seeking to worship in spirit and truth…
The woman said to Him, I know that Messiah is coming, the One called Christ. When that One comes, He will announce to us all things.
This woman’s conversation with Jesus represents our own developing sense of the Word. The affection for truth leads us to the Word in its literal sense but it is water which can only quench our thirst temporarily. So we return again and again and as we look to the Word, we see that it speaks of living water, it speaks of this one called the Christ who when He comes will announce all things. For those who read the Word and in response to it ask for that living water, it promises to lead them on a journey. They live in the hope and expectation that the Christ will come, not realising that He is fully present upon the well that they draw from. These states of living in this type of hope can be present with us every time we return to the Text. We might engage with it without realising or seeing how it is the very living presence of the Lord with us but as we are in conversation with it, that is as we meditate and learn the truths there, so the Lord begins to reveal Himself. At first, we regard it as merely teaching from God; we have yet to see that Divine teachings cannot be separated from the Lord Himself and that full impact of John’s opening statement that God is the Word must and will be felt if we heed the message of the Gospel. We need not look anywhere else for Jesus says to the woman – as the Word says to us…
…I AM! the One speaking to you.