You sit down across the table from someone you just met. You just happened to strike up a conversation in a public setting and decide to sit down together to talk some more. After just a couple of minutes, the conversation takes a turn, and this person starts telling you your own life story! Imagine they make a comment about your past, so specific that you are stunned because there is no way this stranger could have known that. In fact, it is something that very few people know about you, and you do not talk about often because it is embarrassing. How do they know? Why do they bring this up? What could all this mean?
Two thousand years ago, just outside of a town called Sychar in the region of Samaria, there was a woman, whose name we are not told, who had an experience quite similar to the one mentioned above when she met Jesus at a well. First, it is important to note the social dynamics at play between these two people. Jews and Samaritans had great social tension between them that went back centuries. They did not like each other at all. Jews especially viewed Samaritans with intense hatred, and would go to great lengths not to have to travel through Samaria. As John puts it in John 4:9, “Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.” Despite this, Jesus takes His apostles through Samaria, sits down at a well to rest, and sends His apostles into town to buy food (4:6-7). The woman quickly acknowledges the unexpectedness and abnormality of Jesus addressing her at all, much less striking up a conversation with her, when she says, “How is it, that you, a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a woman of Samaria?” (4:9). Jesus answers by referring to “the gift of God,” and “living water,” and His comments seem to confuse the woman at first, but over time, she becomes convinced that He is the Christ. Her main reason for believing He is who He claims to be? As she puts it, “He told me all that I ever did.”
What happened was, after speaking to the woman about eternal life, Jesus asked her to go get her husband and come back to Him to talk some more. She had not mentioned this ahead of time, but He knew (as the Omniscient God Incarnate) that she had in fact been married five times and was currently living in a sinful relationship with a man she was not married to. We are not told why she had been married five times or what the exact situation is with the man she is currently with is, but we can imagine that her past would have been a source of great shame and heartache for her. Imagine the awkwardness, sadness, bitterness, and pain that would come from five failed marriages. Then add to it the guilt associated with her current relationship. Beyond all of that, though, her painful past is being trudged up all of a sudden by a man who from her perspective, does not know her at all! The truth, though, is that He knew her before she was born! What a powerful thought!
We all react different ways to feeling guilty. I would imagine for many of us, if our past sins were brought up unexpectedly in a conversation with a stranger, we might take offense to that and not want to keep talking, or just be so embarrassed and ashamed that we look for an escape. However, as this woman talks with Jesus, she is appropriately convicted of her sin, and His talk of eternal life and God’s gift to mankind starts to make sense. He was here to save people from their sins, not by sweeping them under the rug, but by addressing them head-on and overcoming them with His own blood! She certainly did not understand all that that meant just from their interaction at the well, but the ball was rolling. All because He told her all that she ever did.
As we look at the skeletons in our closets and the shameful parts of our pasts that only God Himself fully sees and comprehends, may we first be convicted of the high price that sin has, but also find overwhelming comfort in the fact that Jesus died for us, “while we were yet sinners” (Romans 5:8, 6:23).
It is only when we look at Jesus’ description, price, and payment for our sin that we can fully acknowledge that He is “indeed the Savior of the world” (John 4:45).
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