Jesus meets a Samaritan woman at the well that Jacob dug at Sychar. (This well still exists today.) The Samaritans, including this woman, were looking for “The Prophet” that Moses spoke of in Deuteronomy 18:15-16 to fill the role of Messiah. (The Samaritans only accepted the first five books as scripture so they could only use these books to identify Jesus as the Messiah.) Jesus proves to her he is the Messiah while offering her “living water.”
Jacob’s well was honored and historical, but powerless to actually quench thirst for very long. And it definitely could not quench the power of death. Isaiah had encouraged the people of his generation to “draw water from the wells of salvation” (Isaiah 12:3), and Jesus builds on this concept presented by Isaiah.
The phrase “welling up” or “springing up” creates the idea of water bubbling out of the ground. The word is translated “leaping” in Acts 3:8 when the lame man leaped to his feet when his legs were healed. The life and salvation that result in drinking the “living water” spoken of by Jesus is more than being delivered from death, sin and hell.
Besides saving us from the condemnation spoken of in John 3, this “living water,” or salvation, is a spring to life that transforms every area of the human experience from death and darkness to life and light. How much more can be done if a person is alive and in the light, compared to when they are dead and in the dark?
The salvation that Jesus provides so much more than being “saved.” It is the bubbling forth of everything good and alive and productive and righteous and eternal.
In John 7, this water that springs up in a believer’s soul becomes a stream that flows from the believer and transforms the world around them just like irrigation channels directed from a spring of water can water and bring to life a desert area.
“Jesus stood and said in a loud voice, ‘Let anyone who is thirsty come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as Scripture has said, rivers of living water will flow from within them.’ By this he meant the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were later to receive.” – John 7:37-39
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