This is the tenth message in a series on Jesus’ encounter with the woman at Jacob’s well recorded in John 4.

Dear Friends:

The tide of grace is surging up against the hard rocks in the woman’s soul. She glimpses Jesus’ spiritual power and feels its attraction. Yet her soul is bared and vulnerable and her convictions of a lifetime are challenged in his presence. Something is going to have to give.

She recognizes him as a prophet–one inspired by God to deliver a message for a specific purpose. He speaks to her with an unsettling gentleness that offers her a deep draught of grace even as he identifies her need for that quenching.

This is not what she is used to in the conditioning of survival. Five husbands have come and gone for her in a society that has no good place for an adult woman outside of the marital relationship. Her current relationship is ambiguous at best. She has learned to use the thin covers of time, place, and distraction to cloak her inadequacies and fears.

There is no cloak quite as deceptive as religious conformity. If you show up at the right place at the right time, pay your offerings and don’t ask too many questions, you’ll get by regardless of the personal condition of your soul. But “group think” religion is no substitute for faith.

The woman retreats behind the neat fence lines of religion when Jesus gets too close for her comfort. Her people say that the crest of Mount Gerizim rising steeply behind them is the holy place of God. His people say Jerusalem is the place of worship. Whatever the spiritual appeal of Jesus to her soul, he can’t be right if he doesn’t conform to doctrine, can he?

The Apostle Paul skewered “go along to get along” religion at the end of his letter to the Galatians. He said a religion that compels appearances and boasts of success in obtaining group conformity as its reason for being is afraid of being persecuted for dependence on Christ alone (Gal 6:12-16).

This is the kind of religion endorsed by the angry elder brother when the prodigal son was welcomed home by his father with a party (Lk 15:25-32). It is a religion that tries to tell God how to behave, rather than God’s spirit leading us to obedience.

Paul refused to humor this kind of religion. He said, “May I never boast of anything except the cross of our Lord Jesus Christ, by which the world has been crucified to me and I to the world. For neither circumcision nor uncircumcision is anything; but a new creation is everything!” (Gal 6:14-15).

There is a temptation to pass off the woman’s observation on the proper place of worship as small talk. If we yield to that temptation, we are joining the rebellion against God. The original lie of Satan was that we could be like God, “knowing good and evil” (Gen 3:5). The old saying is, “The road to hell is paved with good intentions.” Doing “good” in our own wisdom and strength is every bit the sin as our doing evil because either way we are denying God as the source and strength of our life. We are called to follow God, not compete with him.

Aunt Sally who has never swatted a fly, serves lemonade and cookies to all the neighborhood kids, volunteers at the soup kitchen, but who rejects Jesus Christ as her Savior and Lord has no more chance of eternity than a porn-obsessed serial killer. Neither does the person who lives her life in strict adherence to principle and virtue, refuses Aunt Sally’s lemonade and cookies because of their sugar content, and prides herself on not needing to repent of pride and selfishness because of her inherent righteousness.

Jesus said, “I am the way, and the truth, and the life. No one comes to the Father except through me” (Jn 14:6). Paul famously said to the Romans, “Since all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God; they are now justified by his grace as a gift, through the redemption that is in Christ Jesus. . . Now to one who works, wages are not reckoned as a gift,but as something due. But to one who without works trusts him who justifies the ungodly, such faith is reckoned as righteousness” (Rom 3:23-24, 4:4-5).

If it all comes down to Jesus for us, why not trust him? This brings us to the hardest thing for us to do it seems–trust. Powerful forces gather to prevent our trust in Jesus Christ and they are now confronting the woman. The light and heat of noon are her opportunity to get the water she needs for subsistence. She has her routine. She has her work. She has her religion. She has a semblance of a life, or at least the routines of an existence.

Jesus’ offer of living water means the difference between life and mere existence for her. She’s accepted the offer, but does she really want the difference?

This is the challenge of grace to human pride. We struggle and fight to scratch out an existence that is ours. We take pride in our effort. We are trained to make that effort by parents, teachers, mentors and bosses. “If at first, you don’t succeed, try, try again!” is a mantra drilled into us at school and work. There is a dark side of that saying which goes, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results.” Surely, the  sequence of five husbands and a lover points out the problem and that her set-piece religious traditions aren’t answering it.

Our best efforts come to define us. We take pride and find our identity in them. Pride urges us on. Fear convinces us that if we quit there is no one who will look out for us. But our self-definition as men and women who can take care of ourselves and work our way through our difficulties is a pernicious lie. Satan urged Eve and Adam to action in the pride of self-reliance (Gen 3:1-7). We have been working ever since for what God willingly would give us, becoming dry and thirsty in the process.

Too many times, I’ve watched spiritually dehydrated men and women experience a cool and sweet drink of Christ, the Living Water, only to stop and turn away again in distrust that his grace is sufficient for all their needs.

Just as distressing, is when the lie of Satan takes hold in sin and failure and the work of enslavement is complete in a soul that has given up hope of Divine satisfaction:  “I know Jesus says he loves me, but how could he if he knows everything that I’ve done. He could never love someone like me.”

It is heartbreaking to see someone taste the Living Water only to go back to drinking the astringent sour vinegar of guilt and shame because that’s all she knows and she believes herself unworthy of saving love. Often the bitter drink is legalistic religion and there is no human recipe or flavoring that can transform legalism into refreshment for a thirsty soul.

Before meeting Jesus, the woman’s idea of worship was limited to the rocky heights of Mount Gerizm. But true worship isn’t earthbound. True worship points the believer to the source of the Living Water springing to life and flowing out of the believer’s heart (John 7:37-38).

Water that doesn’t flow stagnates. Flowing water cleanses, refreshes, and quenches. Jesus came to flow, not to contain. When she leaves this encounter, she will leave her water jar behind (John 4: 28).

“I see you are a prophet,” the woman says to Jesus. She recognizes the messenger . . . she is ready to listen to his message. The flow has commenced.

“O taste and see that the Lord is good. Happy are those who take refuge in him” (Ps 34:8)

Under the mercy of Christ,

Kent

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Please note that the content and viewpoints of Mr. Hansen are his own and are not necessarily those of the C.S. Lewis Foundation. We have not edited his writing in any substantial way and have permission from him to post his content.

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Kent Hansen is a Christian attorney, author and speaker. He practices corporate law and is the managing attorney of the firm of Clayson, Mann, Yaeger & Hansen in Corona, California. Kent also serves as the general counsel of Loma Linda University and Medical Center in Loma Linda, California.

Finding God’s grace revealed in the ordinary experiences of life, spiritual renewal in Christ and prayer are Kent’s passions. He has written two books, Grace at 30,000 Feet and Other Unexpected Places published by Review & Herald in 2002 and Cleansing Fire, Healing Streams: Experiencing God’s Love Through Prayer, published by Pacific Press in spring 2007. Many of his stories and essays about God’s encompassing love have been published in magazines and journals. Kent is often found on the hiking trails of the southern California mountains, following major league baseball, playing the piano or writing his weekly email devotional, “A Word of Grace for Your Monday” that is read by men and women from Alaska to Zimbabwe.