Commentary on the Gospel of John

                                  Chapter Four

                                                                                                                                      Verses 6-15

Jesus went to a city of Samaria called Sychar and sat on a well and waited for the woman. The woman came to the well and immediately recognized that Jesus was a Jew probably because of the type of robe He wore. She was surprised that Jesus asked her to give Him some water because Jews seldom even spoke to Samaritans. Jesus replied to her question, as He often did in His ministry, by comparing a material object; that is, water, with a spiritual idea; that is, living water. He also told her that He had the power to give her this living water.

As Jesus already knew, this woman possessed a deep spiritual nature because she immediately recognized that this living water had to be something more than just material water. She also began to realize that Jesus must be someone special; that is, someone perhaps sent from God.

Whenever Jesus spoke in parables or compared material objects to spiritual ideas, He deliberately did so to separate the spiritual believers from the unbelievers. Jesus knew that the spiritual nature of potential believers would cause them to begin to grasp the spiritual ideas hidden within His parables and His comparison of material objects with spiritual ideas.

God is fair. God wrote His entire Word in such a way as to separate believers from unbelievers. Isaiah 6:9-13. God even allowed contradictions in His Word, and quotes from pagans, to cause unbelievers to disbelieve. Ezekiel 20:25; Acts 17:28. God feels that unbelievers have every right to disbelieve. God gave them the free will to do so. For this reason, God's Word (KJB) has to be inerrant and infallible because it accomplishes one of the very purposes for which God wrote it. God does not want unbelievers to associate with believers saved by grace because the evil influence of the unbelievers will cause a lot of confusion among His believers. II Corinthians 6:14-18. Even so, the Devil sometimes causes unbelievers to stick with believers to cause sin and confusion among believers. John 12:1-8. Those who contend that God's Word can only be inerrant and infallible because it contains no contradictions or errors do not understand that one of the reasons God wrote His Word was to separate believers saved by grace from unbelievers. Nevertheless, God created every living human in His image with a latent faith, and therefore, He will cause every living human eventually to repent and believe in Christ of their own free will, some by His grace and all others within the regions of death when He reveals Himself to them in a future, great worship service. John 5:24; Revelation 5:11-14; Luke 20:38; I Corinthians 15:22; Genesis 1:31; Ecclesiastes 3:14; I Corinthians 13:8.