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January 28, 2008 Why Did Jesus Point Out Her Sinful State? John 4:16-18
Topic Started: Jun 5 2008, 07:05 PM (171 Views)
lightninboy

January 28, 2008
Why Did Jesus Point Out Her Sinful State? John 4:16-18

David Jeremiah has been going through Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well. I have enjoyed his exposition. However, this morning, as I was listening, he said something that jarred me a bit. When he came to verses 16-18, I found myself in disagreement with an inference he took.

Jesus told the woman, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” She said, “I have no husband.” Then the Lord said, “You have well said, ‘I have no husband,’ for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; in that you spoke truly.”

Dr. Jeremiah inferred from this that we must confess our sins in order to receive the gift of eternal life by believing in Jesus.

In the first place it is not at all clear that she was confessing her sins. She didn’t say that she was living in sin with a man that wasn’t her husband. Now it is true that after Jesus says this she doesn’t deny it and indeed says, “Sir, I perceive that You are a prophet.” So maybe that could be called confession.

However, the bigger question is why the Lord Jesus brought this up. Was it really to get her to confess her sins? The text suggests that He did so to prove to her that He is the Messiah. This is seen by comparing verse 25, “The woman said to Him, ‘I know that Messiah is coming’ (who is called Christ). ‘When He comes, He will tell us all things” (italics added), with verse 29, “Come, see a man who told me all things that I ever did. Could this be the Christ?”

The reason the Lord pointed out her past and her present was to prove to her that He is the Messiah. It is almost certain that this woman was already very aware of her sinful condition before she met Jesus. She was a Samaritan and they followed the Law of Moses which forbid sleeping with a man who was not your husband. She is alone at the well, possibly suggesting that the other women were not friendly with her. When she goes back to the town, she talks with the men, not the women, again suggesting she may well have had a low reputation in town.

All she had to do to be born again was to believe in Jesus for eternal life, as verses 10-14 make clear. However, for her to believe that Jesus indeed is the source of eternal life, He showed her that He is omniscient. While what He said might not convince a total skeptic (who might be inclined to figure this as some sort of trick), she was convinced. Surely the power of His presence, combined with his amazing words concerning living water and eternal life, His revealing something that only a resident of Sychar would know, her knowledge of the Torah, and the work of the Holy Spirit, convinced her.

Confessing our sins is a condition not of eternal life, but of fellowship with God (1 John 1:9). We as believers must confess the sins we are aware of if we wish to remain in fellowship with God.

The condition of eternal life is drinking the living water. One drink forever quenches one’s thirst (John 4:14). Drinking is a figure of speech for believing in Jesus. Never thirsting is a figure of speech for eternal life (compare John 6:35). So whoever simply believes in Jesus has everlasting life that can never be lost.

Increasing in Him,
Bob_Wilkin
No I will not, No I will not
Not go quietly
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lightninboy

Responses to “Why Did Jesus Point Out Her Sinful State? John 4:16-18”

1. dwags4him Says:
January 28th, 2008 at 5:45 pm
Question - In reading that story, I wonder if Christ is addressing someone who is already a believer, but is a believer in a state of carnality.

It is obvious that this woman is accutely aware of her sin, as Bob pointed out, but was needing a ‘kick in the butt’ to leave it behind. This sounds similar to the situation in I Cor. with the man committing incest. And before I get dragged to the scaffold, here me out.

I say this because, as Bob well said, the Samaritans did obey the Law of Moses, but disagreed where worship should take place. This would be quite similar to those Jews throughout the OT who would gather to worship at different places (against God’s directives), but did not forfeit their Jewishness in the process.

I am pretty sure that one was saved by faith alone, through God’s grace, in the OT by trust in the blood of the Passover lamb (specifically), or of the blood of whatever sacrifice had been laid out at that time (Abel, Abraham were regenerate before there was a Passover sacrifice per-se). I do know without a shadow of a doubt that ‘without the shedding of blood there is no forgiveness for sins,’ so I can’t be that far off.

With this in view, it would have been very likely that most of the people that Christ spoke to (having come to ‘the lost sheep of Israel’) had already been saved by faith in an effectual Passover Lamb. That would seem to point to the fact that this woman, being of the stock of Israel (somewhat poluted like Timothy), was probably regenerate.

Which makes this story very interesting…..

The best thesis I have heard on this idea is that the tearing of the veil in the Temple was the official end of an effectual sacrificial system, which meant that the Passover Lamb that was killed the day after Christ died was NOT effectual for regeneration. Therefore, if a Jewish man brought his son to celebrate his first Passover the day after Christ became the TRUE Passover lamb, then the child’s faith in the blood of Christ would be what was believed in for eternal life….even though his father would have been regenerated (by faith alone) possible decades earlier….when the Passover Lamb WAS an effectual provision for regeneration. The son would have left unregenerate, needing to trust in Christ’s blood, but the father would have no less been regenerate than before, since that cannot be lost.

Anybody got any clearer ideas?

Thanks

Dave

2. Diane Says:
January 29th, 2008 at 8:57 pm
Friend, I don’t see how the woman at the well could have been already saved because of verse 10. Jesus said to 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.” He was offering her His gift which she hadn’t yet taken by faith.

Also, I don’t believe that anyone in the O.T. could be saved by believing in the blood of the animal sacrifice to save them.
Heb. 10:4…. “For it is not possible that the blood of bulls and goats could take away sins.”

Enjoy reading this blog because it makes me think and check things out like the Bereans.

All because of His wonderful grace,
Diane


3. dwags4him Says:
January 30th, 2008 at 4:10 pm
Thanks Diane….I was shooting from the hip there and I agree with the fact that this Samaritan was probably unregenerate before her time with Christ. Just a matter of re-reading the passage….The thing that really helped me is that Christ never makes any mention of the ‘kingdom of Heaven/God’ to her. In other passages (just grab a conc. and search “kingdom of Heaven/God”), Christ offers people the ability to either enter/inherit this kingdom (which I take to refer to the literal 1000 year reign of Christ in the M. K.), but He does so with acts of obedience attached which do NOT included simple belief. Therefore the recipients of those passages MUST have been previously regenerated…but not here.

But

I am still looking, for a good answer for what a pre-Christ believer believed IN for regeneration.

I agree that ‘…it is impossible for the blood of bulls and goats to take away sins (Heb. 10.4),’ but that does not answer the question of what people needed to believe in in the OT. I am pretty sure that Hebrews 10.4 is speaking of how a Christian receives forgiveness from sins making physical sin offerings ineffectual. This would match the purpose of the book, which is to point Hebrew Christians to stick with Christ and not return to useless sacrifices…..Christ’s blood has been shed….no other blood will do.

I do know that in the OT (and my guess is until Christ actually shed His actual blood on Calvary) people were cleansed from sins BY the blood of bulls and goats, because the Law seems clearly to say so many different times… (Heb. 9.22)

So, what then did a person in Jerusalem in the time of King David do to be regenerated? If I say “keep the law,” than I negate most of Romans. If I say “by faith,” I agree with all of Scripture, but ‘by faith in WHAT’ is my question.

‘Faith in God’ seems to me to be a cop-ou answer, because that really doesn’t help me see what the blood of the sacrifices represents.

I believe that our example Jew would have been justified by faith 9once for his whole life) in the provision of God’s Passover sacrifice (offered once a year), just like we believe once and are regenerated.
Then, he would have been forgiven for his sins and kepy in fellowship with the Jewish community afterward by trusting in God’s promise that if a sacrifice was offered, and the blood was presented, than the sin was forgiven.

In the same way, when I screw up, I go right to I John 1:9, and believe that God meant what He said, and I leave forgiven. The Jew in David’s day, already having been regenerated once for all time by belief in the Passover Lamb, would then leave the temple grounds cleansed before God by his sin offering (or more specifically by the blood, and what it forshadowed.)

I thank you for your time….Please anyone else with an idea chime in….I also realize that what I am asking is a rather unusual question. I studied 5 years at Moody and never heard anyone answer the question I am asking….

Thanks Diane!

4. jreitman Says:
February 12th, 2008 at 9:39 pm
Dave, you have asked an extremely important question. The best answer to your question I’ve seen was provided by Charles Ryrie in his classic work, “Dispensationalism Today” (first published in 1962, I think), and basically says this:

The basis or grounds for salvation in any era of human history is Christ’s death, once for all, for our sin. Romans 3:25-26 explains how God remained just, even though he “passed over the sins previously committed by OT saints,” until the time that people could have faith in Jesus. The basis for their salvation was still Christ’s death, which avails for past, present, and future sin.

So, in what did OT saints place their faith for salvation? What was the object of their faith? Very simply, the promises of God that had been revealed to that point in human history. Hebrews 11, the renowned “hall of faith” for OT saints provides example after example of OT saints who had faith in the revealed promises of God and whose salvation was “put in lay-away,” so to speak, and “did not receive the promise” until they “should be made perfect” together with us (Heb 11:39-40).

The OT sacrifices were never efficacious for salvation in the sense that you are stating. Diane is correct. The issue of the “blood of bulls and goats” is explained in Hebrews 9 and 10 as a temporal (and repeated, not once for all) purification of the people of God for restoration of fellowship. This is analogous to Christ’s footwashing in John 13 and the “cleansing” of confession that you quoted from 1 John 1:9.

I hope this helps, but would refer you to Ryrie’s treatment for a more comprehensive explanation.

Jim

5. dwags4him Says:
February 15th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
Thanks Jim….that was helpful….

Now how does that help with the issue at hand about those who rejected Christ before He died, but had faith in the promises before Christ appeared?

I get what you and Diane both said and I agree with the fact that blood of bulls and goats cannot actually take away sin ever….they sort of stand in proxy (per whatever had been revealed for that time period) for Christ’s blood….thanks for that.

Here’s the trillion dollar question for me….It would seem that Christ upbraids the Pharisees for their lack of belief in Him, but constantly seems also to challenged them to “do” things differently. If He is challenging them to “do” things to “enter the kingdom,” than “entering the kingdom” cannot = justification by grace through faith alone….

Thanks for your gracious comments….I am trying to be a stick in the mud, but I need to have some good discussion here. Thanks!

Dave

6. jreitman Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 8:34 pm
I love your skepticism, Dave…you sound like a “Berean.”

I see two questions here: The first relates to a potential contradiction regarding the object of one’s faith during the transitional period when the Mosaic Covenant is still in effect before the inauguration of the New Covenant through Christ’s blood, which made the Old Covenant obsolete. The second has to do with Christ’s ostensible requirement of righteous works for salvation in passages like Matt 5:20 and the accounts of the rich young ruler in Mark 10 (cf. also Luke 18 and Matt 19) and the Good Samaritan in Luke 10.

Christ Himself answered the first question directly in John 5. Verse 5:16 states that “the Jews persecuted Jesus, and sought to kill Him, because He had done these things on the Sabbath.” It becomes clear in Jesus’ response—which takes up the rest of the chapter—that he is addressing those among these Jews who were very zealous in holding to the “promises” of the Old Testament. His conclusion is decisive, 39 “You search the Scriptures, for in them you think you have eternal life; and these are they which testify of Me. 40 “But you are not willing to come to Me that you may have life. 41 “I do not receive honor from men. 42 “But I know you, that you do not have the love of God in you. 43 “I have come in My Father’s name, and you do not receive Me; if another comes in his own name, him you will receive. 44 “How can you believe, who receive honor from one another, and do not seek the honor that [comes] from the only God? 45 “Do not think that I shall accuse you to the Father; there is [one] who accuses you–Moses, in whom you trust. 46 “For if you believed Moses, you would believe Me; for he wrote about Me. 47 “But if you do not believe his writings, how will you believe My words?”

In a nutshell, if these Pharisees were so zealous in upholding the promises through the word of God, why did they not recognize the signs of the prophet who would come after Moses, whom Moses promised in Deut 18:18-19. Their failure to believe Jesus was unmasked as a failure in fact to believe the promises. Those who truly believe the promises of the Seed to come will recognize him and believe (in) him.

The second question is HUGE (I’m not sure you could value it at even a trillion dollars) and the subject of widespread debate among devout evangelicals—at times even within the same theological tradition. The “easy” answer to the statement in the Sermon on the Mount “that unless your righteousness exceeds [the] [righteousness] of the scribes and Pharisees, you will by no means enter the kingdom of heaven” is that NO ONE possesses this righteousness and that it can only come through

7. jreitman Says:
February 22nd, 2008 at 10:01 pm
Christ’s once-for-all substitutionary atonement (Rom 3:21-26; 2 Cor 5:21), as we have already discussed (see also Zane Hodges, “Grace in Eclipse,” pp. 26-29).

However, the immediately preceding context (Matt 5:18-19) discusses a variable “status” of people WITHIN the Kingdom of Heaven according to how well they adhere to the Law; in the following context Christ sets a higher bar for such adherence to exceed the specific BEHAVIORS that the Pharisees required under the Law.

Jesus’ emphasis in the entire Sermon (Matt 5-7) seems to presuppose a definition of justification that includes positional status in the eyes of God but is aimed at VINDICATING that righteous status with behavior that fulfills the Law from the attitude of the heart. The beatitudes define the inward dispositions that will produce such outward behavior and result in a full “three-dimensional” justification and the resulting “inheritance” in the Kingdom.

The Sermon and the accounts of the Good Samaritan and the Rich Young Ruler are addressed to people who want to justify themselves in Kingdom terms; but Jesus always seems to go beyond what we would call (positional) justification, seeking to define how one will be justified (or vindicated) as righteous by one’s BEHAVIOR. He seems to look forward to such behavior as actually possible for humans. His notion of “inheriting” the Kingdom or eternal life goes beyond just “getting in” and he makes it clear that he places such great value on this inheritance that he is constantly inviting his followers to vindicate their righteous STATUS with righteous BEHAVIOR.

Does this imply that Christ advocated justification by works? In the context of these encounters with Jesus he makes it clear that “without me you can do nothing”—the works he commands of the Pharisees (and everyone else) will require ongoing trust in Jesus in order to be accomplished, so “justification (or vindication) by works” necessarily presupposes ongoing faith in Christ. So our POSITION in Christ is secured by grace through faith, but our INHERITANCE with Christ is secured by works that stem from SUSTAINING that same faith. In my humble opinion that is what the book of James is all about, and it is the relationship of one’s vindication to a faith connected with works that is discussed in the notorious passage, 2:14-26.

8. dwags4him Says:
February 23rd, 2008 at 3:28 pm
Thanks Jim!

I agree completely on your take on James, and that is why I can see where you are coming from in the Gospels….

God does the work…but He uses only usable instruments.

Our faith connects us to God as we go along with Him, and His grace enables us to live for Him. (Eph. 2.8-10, Philip. 2:13)

I think…and we may simply shooting past one another here….that Christ’s speeches on “inherit/entering” the kingdom are focused on the rewards that await those believers who choose to avail themselves of God’s extravagent grace and do what pleases him. These words are meaningless to someone who does not believe that God is, and is a rewarder of those who diligently seek Him. This seems strongly to hint that the hearers must already be in a position to please God, and would be regenerate. (Not perfected…each having different speck, motes, planks in their eyes, but having at least some concept of what God desires a believer to act like.)

Christ seems to be coaching his ’shepherds in training’ to constantly rely and turn back to Him….and in so doing, they will realize an inheritance in the Kingdom….they will be in Heaven regardless of their endurance (because regeneration is apart from works from first to last).

Keep talking brother!

Dave

9. jreitman Says:
February 23rd, 2008 at 8:55 pm
No, I don’t think we’re shooting past each other at all, Dave. If I understand your last posting—which seems clear enough—I think you read me accurately. The more I reflect on “Christ’s speeches on ‘entering/inheriting’ the kingdom” the more I see them as offering an abundant life that is contingent on the response of his followers to his invitation to SEEK the Kingdom—this offer applies whether they are “already” (’inheriting’) believers or “not yet” (’entering/inheriting’) believers.

Those of us who accept the invitation to seek his Kingdom become his “usable instruments,” as you so aptly put it—I call them his “agents.” And that invests our being “in Christ” with IMMENSE significance by virtue of our direct involvement in mediating the reconciliation of a fallen world to God (2 Cor 5:18-21). I can think of no purpose more fulfilling than that…to think that he would actually let us do that!!

Jim
No I will not, No I will not
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