Although Jesus came from God and was God (see John 1:14), He was also fully human. He got tired, hungry and thirsty. 

In the New Testament’s Book of John, we read the account of a hot and dusty day when, tired from hours of walking, Jesus sat down at a well near the Samaritan town of Sychar. Wiping sweat from His eyes, He calmly asked a woman there for a drink. Because Jews didn’t associate with Samaritans, the woman nearly dropped her water jug in shock. 

“You are a Jew and I am a Samaritan woman. How can You ask me for a drink?” she says (John 4:9). 

“I Am He”

Jesus told the woman that if she knew who He was, she’d be asking Him for a drink, but of a different kind of water. Living water. “Indeed, the water I give them will become in them a spring of water welling up to eternal life” (John 4:14). 

When the woman asked Jesus for some of that living water, He told her to go call her husband and come back.

“I have no husband,” the woman answered (John 4:17). 

“You are right … you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (John 4:18).

Whoa, how did Jesus know that? Worse yet, what else does Jesus know about my past? this bad girl must’ve thought.

So, she changed the subject by asking Jesus where the best place to worship was, saying,“I know that Messiah” (called Christ) “is coming. When He comes, He will explain everything to us” (John 4:25).“

Then Jesus declared, ‘I, the one speaking to you—I am He’ ” (John 4:26).

Hearing Is Believing

At this shocking statement, the woman left her water pot, rushed into the city and told everyone, “Come, see a man who told me everything I ever did” (John 4:29). She’d already decided Jesus was the answer to her soul’s thirst for living water, but she wanted her neighbours to make their own commitment to Jesus. 

“Could this be the Messiah?” (John 4:29) she asked them. 

This anonymous outcast woman born into a despised race became one of the first evangelists, simply by sharing what Jesus had done for her. The change in her must have been obvious. It made the people of Sychar curious enough to want to hear Jesus for themselves. 

People rushed from the town to the well where Jesus sat. After listening to Him for the next two days, many in Sychar decided to follow Jesus. They told the woman, “We no longer believe just because of what you said; now we have heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Saviour of the world” (John 4:42). 

Inside Out

Much like this woman, I have a past I was once ashamed of. 

But when I met Jesus, I experienced for myself the living water of His love and forgiveness. I began to share with others the change in my life. And because they’d known what I was like before I surrendered my life to Jesus and saw the change in me, they listened. 

Although Jesus knows everything about our past, He still loves and esteems us. He wants to change us from the inside out and give us His living water that will cleanse us of our past sins. And when others see the change in us, they’ll be thirsty for Jesus, too! 

All About the Woman at the Well

Read John 4

• Who: one of the first evangelists

• When: around 33 AD

• Where: Sychar, in the northern region of the West Bank

Illustration: The Doré Bible Illustrations (New York: Dover Publications, 1974)