The Saints Gospel 23

The Living Water

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So when Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John— although Jesus Himself was not baptizing, but His disciples— He left Judea and went away again into Galilee. And He had to pass through Samaria. So He came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the plot of land Jacob gave to his son Joseph. Jacob’s spring was there. Jesus, therefore, wearied from the journey, sat down as He was by the spring. It was about the sixth hour. A woman from Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give Me a drink.” For His disciples had gone away into the city to buy food. So the Samaritan woman said to Him, “How do You, being a Jew, ask a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” For Jews do not associate with Samaritans. Jesus answered 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.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, You have no vessel for drawing water, and the well is deep.

“Where, then, do You have this living water? Are You greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, and his sons and his livestock?” Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks from this water will thirst again. But whoever drinks from the water that I will give him will certainly never thirst; rather, the water I will give him will become in him a spring of water leaping up into eternal life.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I may not thirst or come through here to draw.”

He said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” The woman answered Him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You have spoken well in saying, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one you have now is not your husband. This you have spoken truly.” The woman said to Him, “Sir, I see that You are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped on this mountain, and you say that in Jerusalem is the place where one must worship.” Jesus said to her, “Believe Me, woman, an hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, because salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for the Father seeks such people to worship Him. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.” The woman said to Him, “I know that Messiah is coming, the One called Christ. When He comes, He will announce all things to us.”

Jesus said to her, “I am He, the One speaking to you.”

At this His disciples came and marveled that He was speaking with a woman. Yet no one said, “What do You seek?” or, “Why are You speaking with her?” So the woman left her water jar and went away into the city and said to the people, “Come, see a man who told me everything I did. Could this be the Christ?” They went out of the city and were coming to Him. Meanwhile the disciples urged Him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.” But He said to them, “I have food to eat that you do not know.” So the disciples said to one another, “Has someone brought Him something to eat?” Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of the One who sent Me and to complete His work. Do you not say, ‘There are still four months, and the harvest comes’? Behold, I tell you, lift your eyes and look at the fields, for they are white for harvest. Already the one who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit for eternal life, so that the one who sows and the one who reaps may rejoice together. For in this the saying is true: ‘One is the sower and another the reaper.’

“I sent you to reap what you have not labored for. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”

Many of the Samaritans from that city believed in Him because of the word of the woman, who testified, “He told me everything I did.” So when the Samaritans came to Him, they asked Him to stay with them, and He stayed there two days. And many more believed because of His word. They said to the woman, “We no longer believe because of your speech, for we ourselves have heard and know that this is truly the Savior of the world.”

← 22 The Friend of the Bridegroom · The Saints Gospel: all scenes · 24 The Kingdom Has Drawn Near →

Saints Translation · The Saints Gospel · a harmony of Matthew, Mark, Luke, John, and Acts 1 · words of Christ in red · working draft awaiting specialist review.