According John 4:46-54
Introduction: The Seven Signs of the Gospel of John
The Gospel of John differs from the other three Gospels in its purpose. John does not seek to present a summary of all the works Jesus did. At the end of his book, in chapter 21, he himself declares that if everything Jesus did were to be written, the world itself could not contain the books. This tells us that during the three and a half years of His earthly ministry Jesus performed a great many works; yet for John, the purpose of presenting his Gospel is different: to show how Jesus established the Kingdom of Heaven on the face of the earth. And he does so by presenting, in his own words, seven great signs.
This is how John outlines his Gospel. From chapter 2 through chapter 21 he presents only seven great signs, and he interweaves certain events or particular situations between them. Those interwoven events are neither independent nor extra additions: John places them there to affirm and confirm the sign he has just presented. For example, in chapter 2 the first sign is presented, the water turned into wine. Immediately afterward we have two additional events: Jesus arrives in Jerusalem, drives out the merchants and the money changers, and overturns their tables; and in chapter 3 the encounter with Nicodemus is presented. Both accounts confirm the first sign, which, as we saw in its time, had to do with the establishment of the Kingdom of Heaven. The same happens with the second sign, the third, the fourth, and the following signs through the seventh: John keeps interweaving other events, but always interrelated with the sign.
In chapter 4, which is the one we study in this chapter, the case of the Samaritan woman is presented. This case is not an isolated account: John presents it in union with the second sign. The theme of this second sign has to do with the active power of the Kingdom of Heaven on the face of the earth.
The Kingdom of Heaven: A Kingdom Lived Out Now
We must speak of the Kingdom of Heaven because it concerns the establishment of the laws, principles, and ordinances of the Kingdom on the face of the earth. In the model prayer that Jesus presented, He says clearly: “Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven” (Matthew 6:10). That is why we must speak of the Kingdom: so that we may understand that we are living within the Kingdom of Heaven. This is the purpose of the teachings of the Gospel of John, and it is so important that it deserves repeating: we are living within the Kingdom of Heaven.
The Kingdom of Heaven begins, for the man and for the woman, when they understand not only the benefits of the Kingdom, but also the requirements the Kingdom demands in order to live and move within it. John is very specific in this regard: for him it is not only a matter of believing. Benefits are established, but in the same way requirements are established, and only those who submit to those requirements can live, move, and interact within the Kingdom of Heaven. John does not set believing aside; but he goes beyond what, for contemporary believers, is practically the only way of entering the Kingdom. In the previous teaching we established what those requirements are. Now we will see that the Kingdom also has an active power.
We must understand something clearly: the Kingdom of Heaven is not a passive environment. It is not only about praise, nor only about worship, nor only about songs, nor about the interreligious elements to which most of us are perhaps accustomed. John, by the Spirit of God, establishes that within the Kingdom there is activity and an active power, given precisely so that the man of God and the woman of God who live within the Kingdom may move with the confidence that they are doing and fulfilling the will of God.
The Samaritan woman’s interaction with Jesus is not a mystical account, nor a philosophical account, nor a story in which the woman is confronted with her own reality. It is about understanding the Kingdom of Heaven. Jesus did not approach her for the purpose of seeking water. Verse 7 says that a woman of Samaria came to draw water and Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink”; but this is not an occasional or circumstantial situation, in which Jesus is merely looking for a little water because He is tired from the journey, it being already midday and He coming from Judea on His way to Galilee. The dialogue that unfolds has a purpose: that Jesus establish the characteristics of the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us see what they are.
First Characteristic: Religious Knowledge Hinders Entrance into the Kingdom
We read in verse 9:
“Then the woman of Samaria said to Him, ‘How is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?’ For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” (John 4:9, NKJV)
And in verse 10:
“Jesus answered and said to her, ‘If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, “Give Me a drink,” you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.’” (John 4:10, NKJV)
In this dialogue we have the first characteristic of the Kingdom of Heaven on the face of the earth, and it answers the question: how does one enter the Kingdom? How can we live, interact, and have the assurance that we are within it? Based on this text I must establish the first and most important thing that each of us needs to understand: religious knowledge hinders entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven. Allow me to repeat it once more: religious knowledge hinders entrance into the Kingdom of Heaven.
Listen carefully: the only thing the Samaritan woman could see in Jesus was a Jew. She did not see that it was Jesus; she did not see that He was the Son of God; she did not see that He was God made flesh. She saw only a Jew asking her for a drink, and she immediately responded: how is it that You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me? Many times the prejudice we have formed through the religious knowledge we have acquired does not allow us to see what God is telling us.
How many men and how many women have, at some moment, prayed a prayer like this: “Lord, speak to me; tell me what I must do; I want to know You, I want to understand You; I want to know more, I want to learn more, I want to serve You”? But do you know what hinders it? It is not that God does not want to, it is not that God is not listening, it is not that He ignores the request we make. It is the religious knowledge by which we have lived for years. That knowledge does not let us see and, much less, does not allow us to enter the Kingdom of Heaven.
If we do not cast off all the baggage we have brought and acquired through readings, through systematic knowledge, through experiences, through gatherings, through our whole life, we truly will not be able to see the Lord or to know what He wants in each of our lives. Later in the dialogue, the woman says to Him: “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet” (John 4:19, NKJV). The most she could come to was believing that Jesus was a prophet; she could not see in Him God made flesh.
And yet, the Kingdom of Heaven has come to us. The Old Testament, in the book of Deuteronomy, and Paul in his epistle to the Romans, say that the Kingdom is not up there, so far away that one would ask who will bring it to us, nor is it down in the depths, so that one would ask who will bring it to us. It is among us. It is so near that many times there is not even a need to stretch out the hand to say “I found it, I touched it.” And even so we cannot see it and, of course, we cannot enter it either. What is the cause? Religious knowledge, because it establishes prejudices; and prejudices are premeditated, preconceived ideas, everything that each of us has acquired.
In order to enter the Kingdom of Heaven, it is necessary that we begin to identify our religious baggage and cast it off. What the Samaritan woman did, any one of us will do at a given moment: God speaking to us, revealing Himself, manifesting Himself to our lives, and we unable to see anything but a Jewish man; and, to top it off, one with whom we have no relationship or do not want to have one. This has happened many times. God has used elements that to us are objectionable, and even people who to us are contemptible, and for that reason we have not been able to see the work of God in our lives. The apostle Paul says:
“But God has chosen the foolish things of the world to put to shame the wise, and God has chosen the weak things of the world to put to shame the things which are mighty; and the base things of the world and the things which are despised God has chosen, and the things which are not, to bring to nothing the things that are.” (1 Corinthians 1:27-28, NKJV)
God always uses the same manner of approach, the same model He used with the Samaritan woman, and it is the same He will use with each of us. Therefore, in this first characteristic it is necessary that we strip ourselves of all the religious baggage we may have or may have acquired, because that knowledge blocks us and does not allow us to enter into the understanding of what the Kingdom of Heaven is.
A Parenthesis: Who Were the Samaritans?
Jesus says to the woman:
“Woman, believe Me, the hour is coming when you will neither on this mountain, nor in Jerusalem, worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we know what we worship, for salvation is of the Jews.” (John 4:21-22, NKJV)
Before moving on to the second characteristic, it is worth making a parenthesis about who the Samaritans were, because Jesus tells them, referring to them, that they worship what they do not know, while the Jews worship what they know. Let us go to the Old Testament, to the second book of Kings, chapter 17. With verses 24 and 28 we will form a clear idea of what the Samaritans were.
“Then the king of Assyria brought people from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and from Sepharvaim, and placed them in the cities of Samaria instead of the children of Israel; and they took possession of Samaria and dwelt in its cities.” (2 Kings 17:24, NKJV)
The Samaritans, then, were not Israelites. The king of Assyria had carried captive ten tribes of Israel; only two remained, Judah and Benjamin. In place of the captive tribes, the king of Assyria settled people from Babylon, Cuthah, Ava, Hamath, and Sepharvaim. In other words, they were not Israelites: they were Gentiles. Now verse 28:
“Then one of the priests whom they had carried away from Samaria came and dwelt in Bethel, and taught them how they should fear the LORD.” (2 Kings 17:28, NKJV)
What happened was that all these people, transported from their cities and placed in the cities of Samaria, faced a difficult situation: the beasts of the land began to rise up and attack them. They understood that this was supernatural, and they said that the gods of that land were attacking them because they were not native to it. It was then that the king of Assyria sent one of the priests to teach them the law of Moses so that they would learn to fear Jehovah. That is how the Samaritans came into being.
Second Characteristic: The Kingdom of Heaven Is Not an Idea or a Tradition
Let us return to verse 22: “You worship what you do not know” (John 4:22, NKJV). This is the second characteristic, and it is very important: the Kingdom of Heaven is not an idea or a tradition. These people did not know God. They had never mentioned the name of Jehovah, which is the name revealed in the Old Testament; they did not know who Jehovah was and had never invoked Him. But because of the circumstances they faced, with the beasts of the land attacking them, they were instructed in the law of Moses and began to walk in the rituals and in everything the priest had taught them. They had not been converted nor had they truly surrendered; they began a process of transculturation and started to act according to what the law of Moses imposed. But everything they understood of the law became, for themselves, an idea, a tradition, a ritual, and they did it precisely to be delivered from what was attacking them.
Therefore, we cannot say that we are within the Kingdom of Heaven because we adopt customs, even customs from the Bible. We cannot say that we are within the Kingdom simply because we make reference to the Bible, to the Old and the New Testament. For this reason we often find ourselves acting according to what the Holy Scriptures present, but without truly functioning as the Scriptures demand of us. Why? Because what we are following is, quite simply, an idea.
When I speak of ideas, I also mean many other complex elements: philosophy, metaphysics, esotericism, fortune-telling. Many people mix all these elements with what the Word of the Lord establishes, and we end up establishing false doctrines by which we walk. Are we living in the Kingdom of Heaven that way? The answer is no, because the Kingdom of Heaven is not an idea, it is not a philosophy, it is not a tradition, it is not a thought, an ideology, a theory, or a hypothesis; it is nothing we can formulate, not even methodically. It is not that, because I am doing this, this, and this, since “it’s in the Word,” we have the assurance of being within the Kingdom. It is not so.
These two characteristics are a stop along the way so that we may examine how we are walking. If we have a religious background and want to integrate it and live by it, we are in fact not living within the Kingdom of Heaven. If we have brought ideas, ideologies, hypotheses, theories, and philosophies from what we have known in the world and want to integrate them, we are not within the Kingdom of Heaven. The question, then, is: what really is the Kingdom of Heaven?
First Definition: The Kingdom of Heaven Is a Body
In verse 24 we have a first definition:
“God is Spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” (John 4:24, NKJV)
What is the Kingdom of Heaven? The Kingdom of Heaven is a body: the body of Jesus the Christ. In the epistles to the Romans, First and Second Corinthians, Ephesians, and Colossians, the apostle uses the term “the body of Christ.” We are, he says, members of the body of Christ; Christ is the head and all of us are forming the body. Let us see what the Spirit of God says through the apostle Paul in Ephesians 1, beginning at verse 20:
“Which He worked in Christ when He raised Him from the dead and seated Him at His right hand in the heavenly places, far above all principality and power and might and dominion, and every name that is named, not only in this age but also in that which is to come. And He put all things under His feet, and gave Him to be head over all things to the church, which is His body, the fullness of Him who fills all in all.” (Ephesians 1:20-23, NKJV)
The subject of the sentence is Christ Jesus, and God gave Him to be head to the Church, which is His body. Paul is not speaking of a local church or of a church as an institution; he is speaking of the Church as a body. What, then, is the Kingdom of Heaven? It is a body: the body of Christ. We are living within the body of Christ. That is why, in one of the earlier teachings, I said that many of us have developed a local-church consciousness, but we have not developed a Kingdom consciousness. We know how to interact within a local church, but we have not been able to interact within the body of Christ. The purpose is to enter into the body of Christ and to interact in it, because the Kingdom of Heaven is that body, a spiritual body. In his epistle to the Colossians, also through the apostle Paul, the Spirit of God says that we are hidden in Christ. This teaches us that the Kingdom of Heaven has nothing to do with physical elements, with the existential and material elements of our surroundings. The Kingdom of Heaven is spiritual.
When Jesus speaks of worship, He is not necessarily referring to songs or praises. He speaks of an honor that the man of God and the woman of God establish with their lives, through their actions, through the way they move, and through the awareness that they are within the body of Christ, which is the Kingdom of Heaven.
And in order to enter the body of Christ, I do not only need to believe; above all things, listen well, I need to submit to Him. The man who does not want to submit to the Lord or accept His will for his life cannot move within the Kingdom of Heaven: he will automatically be expelled. The same is true of the woman who believes but is not willing to walk in submission to what the Lord determines for her life. I speak in personal, individual, singular terms: it is not about the will of God in general terms, but about the will of God for each one of our lives, personal, individual, and non-transferable. If we are not willing to walk in submission to that will, we cannot live within the Kingdom of Heaven.
That is why the Spirit of God, through the apostle Paul, presents this definition of the Kingdom as a body. You know that a body expels every foreign object; it is designed to do so. Every element that produces no benefit is expelled from the body. Each of us has to understand this: it is not enough merely to believe; it is necessary to submit to the will the Lord has arranged for our lives. If a man does not want to accept and live the will that God establishes for him, he will be definitively expelled. We are not speaking of the eschatological Kingdom of Heaven, but of the Kingdom of Heaven present and active in our days and in our surroundings.
Second Definition: The Kingdom of Heaven Is Revelation
Let us move to verse 25 to see another definition:
“The woman said to Him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When He comes, He will tell us all things.’” (John 4:25, NKJV)
Of all the words the Samaritan woman spoke, these are practically the only ones, and in reality the ones that opened the way for her to enter the Kingdom of Heaven. Let us see Jesus’ answer:
“Jesus said to her, ‘I who speak to you am He.’” (John 4:26, NKJV)
These words opened the way for her. There Jesus identifies Himself: I am the Christ, the Messiah of whom you speak. From that moment the disciples arrived, and the woman left her water pot and ran into the city to speak to her fellow townspeople, because there she was impacted by the Spirit of God, by the words Jesus spoke to her. And notice how important this is: it is the same way God used when He revealed Himself to Moses in the burning bush, when He said, “I AM WHO I AM.” Jesus uses the same expression: “I who speak to you am He.”
This is the second definition: the Kingdom of Heaven is revelation. No man and no woman who lives by knowledge can enter the Kingdom of Heaven; knowledge does nothing but limit entrance. Constantly people come saying: “I want to know more, I want to learn more.” I have to tell them that we are posing the wrong proposition. It is not about knowing more, but about wanting to live by revelation. Many are not willing to live by revelation, because revelation demands and revelation requires. Not all of us are willing to walk by revelation, because it appeals not only to the conscience of the man or the woman, but to their spirit, and it moves us to move in the spirit and not in the flesh.
Revelation has nothing to do with anything mystical or with something hidden that only I know and others do not. Many times we have forged preconceived ideas, philosophical ideas, about what revelation is. Revelation is understanding the work of God and what He wants. A little further on, the disciples arrived with food and said to Him, “Teacher, eat.” Jesus answered:
“I have food to eat of which you do not know.” (John 4:32, NKJV)
And they wondered whether someone had brought Him something to eat. They saw everything as physical, they explained everything rationally, logically, according to the knowledge they had. A man of God or a woman of God who walks by knowledge but not by revelation will not be able to understand the work of God. Walking by revelation is walking with what God is showing concerning His work.
The Active Power of the Kingdom: The Word
Let us now read verses 39 through 42, where we find the central theme of this teaching:
“And many of the Samaritans of that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, ‘He told me all that I ever did.’ So when the Samaritans had come to Him, they urged Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days. And many more believed because of His own word. Then they said to the woman, ‘Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves have heard Him and we know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.’” (John 4:39-42, NKJV)
Notice the expressions: “because of the word of the woman,” “many more believed because of His own word,” “not because of what you said,” that is, not because of your word, “for we ourselves have heard Him.” What do we have here? The active power of the Kingdom of Heaven. In what does it consist? The active power of the Kingdom of Heaven is the Word. It is the Word of God, in general terms, which must also be our word. When we have embraced the Word, received it, and walk by it, that Word becomes flesh, life, and spirit in us, and our words are also forceful, because they have been born of the Word of God.
Here I want to cite a text we all know because we have heard it on many occasions, but which we often recite as if it were poetry, without the spiritual force that is revealed to us in it:
“For the word of God is living and powerful, and sharper than any two-edged sword, piercing even to the division of soul and spirit, and of joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart.” (Hebrews 4:12, NKJV)
A great majority of us know it by heart, but we cite it as poetry because we have not understood that the active power of the Kingdom of Heaven is the Word. When a man of God or a woman of God has “eaten the scroll” and lives by this Word, their own word is forceful, even if they do not quote the Word of God. That is what happened with the Samaritan woman: her word was forceful because she was living by the Word and had acquired the active power of the Kingdom. That is why, wherever she goes and with whomever she is, the Kingdom of Heaven is established.
We have not yet entered the second sign. We were seeing what the Kingdom of Heaven consists of, because if we do not understand it, we will not be able to move on to what comes next.
The Second Sign: The Official’s Son
Let us go to verse 46, where the second sign is presented:
“So Jesus came again to Cana of Galilee where He had made the water wine. And there was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum. When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to Him and implored Him to come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.” (John 4:46-47, NKJV)
“Then Jesus said to him, ‘Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will by no means believe.’ The nobleman said to Him, ‘Sir, come down before my child dies!’ Jesus said to him, ‘Go your way; your son lives.’ So the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way.” (John 4:48-50, NKJV)
“And as he was now going down, his servants met him and told him, saying, ‘Your son lives!’ Then he inquired of them the hour when he got better. And they said to him, ‘Yesterday at the seventh hour the fever left him.’ So the father knew that it was at the same hour in which Jesus said to him, ‘Your son lives.’ And he himself believed, and his whole household.” (John 4:51-53, NKJV)
This second sign has to do with the active power of the Kingdom of Heaven. If a man or a woman understands what the active power of the Kingdom is, he or she will “eat the Book.” They will not see it as devotional readings—which, by the way, are religion—nor as the ten, fifteen, twenty, or thirty minutes of reading that one routinely makes a habit of every day, nor as part of their responsibility as a Christian or their commitment to the church. They will not see it in any of these ways or in similar ways. They will see it as the only way to see the work of God, to enter the Kingdom of God, and to live within it.
The case presented to us is that of an official of King Herod Antipas, since that was the region Antipas ruled. This man heard the news and saw in Jesus the only way to solve his problem. Something very important: the father was not inventing a need that did not exist; he was being sincere and truthful. His son was dying, he was at the point of death. He traveled from Capernaum to Cana of Galilee—I urge you to locate the two places on a map—and this took him almost a day going and almost another day returning. When the servants tell him the fever left “yesterday at the seventh hour,” remember that the day had twelve hours and the night twelve hours; the seventh hour would be approximately one in the afternoon. It took him a whole day to return, and obviously a day to go. How much time and how much effort he invested! Why? Because it was real: his son was at the point of death.
But see what verse 50 says: “Go your way; your son lives,” and “the man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way” (NKJV). This is precisely what the second sign consists of: life is in the Word. The Word brings life, and I am not speaking poetically. When I say that life is in the Word, I mean the life we are living, not only spiritual life. Your existence depends on the Word. My existence depends on the Word.
The Word Is Not a Devotional Reading: The Word Is Life
They are not devotional readings, nor responsibilities we have acquired toward a church, a denomination, or a ministry, nor the fulfillment of an ordinance of the kind “a Christian has to read the Bible.” If we act this way, we are not going to get anywhere; I must tell you so. If we look at the Bible as devotional readings, because at church they told me “read two chapters in the morning and two in the afternoon,” and I am fulfilling the responsibility I acquired with a congregation, even with a pastor, we are not going to get anywhere. We will not see the work of God if we do not understand that the Word is living and powerful, that it divides soul and spirit, that it discerns the thoughts, and that it pierces to the marrow.
Do you know why many people are sick? Do you know why many people are weakened? First Corinthians, chapter 11, mentions it. Do you know why many people are dying? Because they read the Word, yes, but in a devotional way, in a methodical, systematic, routine, and daily way, without understanding what they are reading. Sometimes we have read the Word and five minutes later we no longer remember what we read. If we keep reading it that way, we are not going to get anywhere.
“Your son lives” was the only thing Jesus said to the father, the king’s official, and the man believed the word of Jesus and went his way. The Word is life, and I do not say it poetically. The Word brings life, it brings strength, it brings vitamins and minerals to the body; it is true food:
“Man shall not live by bread alone, but by every word that proceeds from the mouth of God.” (Matthew 4:4, NKJV)
And this is literal. Why do you think Moses spent forty days on the mountain with God and did not taste food? Forty days, with their nights, in the presence of God, and he did not come down weak, or frail, or worn out. Why? Because the Word is living and powerful. Listen well: the Word is the active power of the Kingdom of Heaven. There is life in the Word. And, in the words of the apostle:
“But if the Spirit of Him who raised Jesus from the dead dwells in you, He who raised Christ from the dead will also give life to your mortal bodies through His Spirit who dwells in you.” (Romans 8:11, NKJV)
This is so because the Word is spirit. That is why this second sign comes to establish for us the active power of the Kingdom. The first sign, the water turned into wine, inaugurated the Kingdom of Heaven; with the second, the active power of the Kingdom is established, which consists of the Word. This is living by revelation; it is being able to move by revelation; it is understanding that God is going to speak to me, and that He is going to speak to my particular and personal need, through the Word. Why? Because the Word is life, and it brings life to the man who trusts in it and to the woman who surrenders to it.
Conclusion
This second sign establishes a forceful teaching for every man of God and every woman of God: the active power of the Kingdom of Heaven is the Word, and there is life in the Word of God. To enter the Kingdom we must cast off the baggage of religious knowledge; we must understand that the Kingdom is not an idea, a philosophy, or a tradition, but the body of Christ, to which it is not enough to believe in order to belong, but to which it is necessary to submit; and we must understand that the Kingdom is revelation, not accumulated knowledge.
I pray to the Father that the Spirit of God may open our understanding, as Luke says in chapter 24, and allow us to understand the active power of the Kingdom of Heaven that has been entrusted to each one: the Word of God. When the Word has been established in our lives, our words will also be medicine for others, strength for others, and blessing for others. Why, then, live in spiritual weakness if we can be strong in Christ Jesus? May the eternal God give us a heart to understand and to live in the active power of the Word of God.
Review Questions
- What “religious baggage”—ideas, traditions, prejudices, or acquired knowledge—may be keeping you from seeing what God is saying to you, just as the Samaritan woman could see only a Jew and not the Christ?
- According to the teaching, the Kingdom of Heaven is a body, and it is not enough to believe; it is necessary to submit. Are you willing to walk in submission to the will God has determined personally and individually for your life? What would that mean in concrete terms?
- How have you been reading the Word: as a devotional reading, a routine, or a responsibility to a church, or as the source of life and the active power of the Kingdom? What would change in the way you approach it after this teaching?
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