"15 The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I will not be thirsty or have to come here to draw water.”
16 Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” 17 The woman answered him, “I have no husband.” Jesus said to her, “You are right in saying, ‘I have no husband’; 18 for you have had five husbands, and the one you now have is not your husband. What you have said is true.” 19 The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. 20 Our fathers worshipped on this mountain, but you say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.” 21 Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. 22 You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 But the hour is coming, and is now here, when the true worshippers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father is seeking such people to worship him. 24 God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.” 25 The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming (he who is called Christ). When he comes, he will tell us all things.” 26 Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am he.”
John 4:15-26
Our Lord's words in 14 seem to have had the effect He intended, for they drew from her a response in which all mockery must by this time have disappeared and which revealed the deep yearning of her heart. But it is significant that having worked to bring her to this point, Jesus did not meet her conscious need of living water - and for this reason: this was not her basic problem, but only the evident symptom of it. Her life was all wrong, and she needed cleansing there, in the disorder that was making her thirsty. Until that was dealt with, there could be no possibility of that thirst being quenched. Our Lord's words in 18 are just as devastating as those to Nicodemus in 3:3, and they served the same purpose, namely, to bring a conviction of real need and to indicate that this was no mere man who was addressing her. In this connection, it is very significant to note the dawning illumination that was taking place in her mind. She began by thinking of Jesus simply as a Jew; then, as the conversation continued, she became conscious that he was more than this, that He was a prophet; and from this she graduated to the conviction that He was the Messiah, and finally that He was the Saviour of the world. This is how our Lord works: He discloses Himself, in the context of speaking the Word, and blind eyes are opened to see His glory. Not but that the growing revelation is disputed and resisted - sometimes for long enough - in the human heart. This is one of John's basic points in his gospel, as we have seen - the conflict between light and darkness - and it is evidenced very clearly in 20, where we see the woman seeking to evade the very uncomfortable personal challenge by recourse to a theological question in the abstract, an interesting point of discussion. But how graciously, gently and firmly Jesus dealt with her in 21-24, bringing her right back to priorities once again. 0h for grace and wisdom to do likewise.