John shows Jesus leaving Jerusalem. His reason for going into Galilee is that the jealousy of the Pharisees had been working. From the beginning Jesus had been rejected of them; Jerusalem had rejected Him; He came to His own, but they received Him not. He will now turn to other sheep which He must also bring in.

On His way to Galilee, then, we have here what might be called His Samaritan ministry. The beginning of this chapter therefore speaks of the reason for His going to Galilee as well as what happened on the way to Galilee. And as is so typical of this Gospel, it lets us into a deeper view of all that was really at work. It is only John who gives us the details of what happened. On His way to Galilee, He met the woman of Samaria.

In this Gospel of Christ’s divinity, we see His true humanity also. Wearied and rejected, He sits outside Jerusalem and its formal religion, sitting by the well at Sychar. But He remains unwearied in His love for the lost, not only those of the house of Israel, but also for the outcasts. Christ for the world is what we find in this Gospel. The infinite and divine Savior cannot be confined to one nation!

It is particularly in John’s Gospel that we find the record of Jesus’s conversations with individuals or groups on controversial subjects. We never read of His formal preaching, such as the Sermon on the Mount. Here, then, in this chapter we have what is typical of this Gospel: Jesus Christ, truly God and truly Man, in personal conversation with an outcast, and non-Jew and a rejected person.

Cor Bruins