Context No. 2673 of 4322 · John

John 4:13-17: in context

13Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again, 14but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” 15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.” 16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17The woman answered, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You said well, ‘I have no husband,’

At the well, Jesus tells the Samaritan woman that everyone who drinks ordinary water will get thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water he gives will never thirst; it becomes in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life. Give me this water, she says, so I never have to come back to this well. And then Jesus gently exposes the real thirst beneath her request: go, call your husband. She has had many, and none of them satisfied.

The contrast is between two kinds of water. The world's water works, but only for a while; you drink, and you are thirsty again, and back you come to the well, over and over. The woman's string of husbands is a picture of exactly that, returning again and again to a source that leaves her thirsty. What Jesus offers is different in kind: not another drink from an outside well, but a spring placed inside, welling up, satisfying at the source. We all have wells we keep returning to, hoping this time it will finally satisfy, and finding ourselves thirsty again. Christ offers the one water that does not run dry.

What wells do I keep returning to, hoping to be satisfied and finding myself thirsty again, when Christ offers a spring within that never runs dry?

Sources

John 4:14: whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.
John 4:15: Sir, give me this water, so that I don't get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.
John 4:13: Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again.