Reading… and Thinking

The woman said to Him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet. Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you people say that in Jerusalem is the place where men ought to worship.” Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, an hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father. You worship what you do not know; we worship what we know, for salvation is from the Jews. But an hour is coming, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth; for such people the Father seeks to be His worshipers. God is spirit, and those who worship Him must worship in spirit and truth.”

— John 4:19-24 (NASB)

This dialog is from the encounter Jesus had with the Samaritan woman at Jacob’s well. As you may remember, the Samaritans were a mixture of Israelites left in the land after the Assyrian captivity of the northern kingdom, along with the people that the Assyrians imported. They developed a mixed religion that included worshipping Yahweh, and also worshipping pagan deities.

By this time, the paganism was pretty much gone, and they thought of themselves as the sons of Jacob. Sychar (that is, Shechem) where this incident took place is in the valley between mounts Ebal and Gerazim. Jacob settled here when he left Laben. He dug a well, which is still there today. Before he died in Egypt, he gave this piece of land to Joseph. When Israel took the land, this was the place where the law was read and an altar was erected. Later, Joshua gathered the nation here to rededicate them to the Lord.

So this place was rich in history, and the Samaritans made it their place of worship. They were not welcome in Jerusalem—the Jews did not accept them as truly Jewish. But of course God really had said that everyone must go up to the place He chose to set His Name, and that place was Jerusalem. This is the background for the woman’s remarks.

Jesus’ reply to her contains a terrifically important principle. The Jews had the truth; they knew what they were worshiping. The Samaritans were worshiping in ignorance of the truth, and that wasn’t OK. Later in the chapter, the warm reception given to Jesus is clear evidence that they were spiritual people. They were far more willing than the Jews to accept Jesus as the Messiah—in fact he plainly tells them that he is the Messiah, something he never does to the Jews. So these Samaritans were spiritually minded, which was good. But it wasn’t enough—those who come to the Father must (no option) worship in spirit, and also in truth.

The flip side of the Samaritans’ problem was the Jewish problem. They had the truth all right, but they were not spiritually minded. They were legally minded. Jesus told the Samaritan woman a few personal details, and she immediately recognized he was a prophet. The Jews witnessed miracle after miracle, and couldn’t see it. This is brought home very forcefully in the next chapter. Jesus healed a man who had been crippled for 38 years, an amazing miracle. But he did it on the Sabbath. “For this reason the Jews were persecuting Jesus, because he was doing these things on the Sabbath. But he answered them, ‘My Father is working until now, and I myself am working.’ For this reason therefore the Jews were seeking all the more to kill him, because he not only was breaking the Sabbath, but also was calling God his own Father, making himself equal with God.” (John 5:16-18)

Jesus is making the point that God did not stop working on the seventh day. He was done with creation, yes, but His power is required every day to sustain the creation, and to save men and women. Neither of the accusations from these unspiritual Jews was true. Jesus did not break the Sabbath—he used it the way the Father intended. And he did not make himself equal to God—he clearly said that he was the Son of God. But the Jews could not see, could not hear. They had no spiritual vision to see the miracle. All they could see was their tradition being violated. Plotting the murder of a prophet, much less the Son of God, is not a spiritual reaction!

So having the truth without the spirit is no better than the other way around. The true God is not honored by sincere worship, if truth about Him is lacking. And the God who is spirit is not honored by unspiritual, traditional worship, even with an understanding of the truth about Him.

As Jesus said, if we want to be accepted by the Father, we must worship in spirit and in truth. We must seek the truth about God, with a spiritual mind. When we find it (and we are guaranteed that we will!) then we must apply our minds to understand it, and at the same time embrace the spirit of it. It must be allowed to mold and shape every aspect of our lives.