Thomas Bilney was concerned about his soul. The student at Trinity Hall, Cambridge, studying canon law, kept seeking ways to deal with the guilty conscience that assailed him. He entered the confessional booth time and again, giving details of his sins to the priest, and then meticulously following the prescribed cure the priest offered. Fasting, long vigils of prayer, attending multiple masses, and paying exorbitantly for indulgences, Bilney tried everything; but nothing could clear his guilty conscience or give peace to his soul. His finances drained from paying for indulgences and his already slender frame wasted away even more from the physically taxing fasts and vigils. He came away from all of these religious acts thinking, "Alas! My last state is worse than the first."
Having heard talk of a new book compiled and translated by the renowned humanist scholar Erasmus, the 16th century Cambridge student sought to find the book—the Greek New Testament with a Latin translation. The scholarly study might ease the anguish of his mind or at least divert it from the strain over his soul. Yet to buy the book, Bilney knew, would put him in jeopardy at the college that had banned the reading of Greek and Hebrew books, calling them "The sources of all heresies." But a New Testament, whether in Greek or Latin, he thought, could not be wrong to acquire and read since it was the record of Jesus Christ. In spite of his fears, he stole away to the home where the banned Greek Testaments were being sold, secured his copy, and just as quietly stole away to his room, and with locked door, opened the book to read.
As we might do with any rare book, Bilney opened it just to gaze upon the beautiful style, and in doing so, he saw the words of 1 Timothy 1:15, "This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners; of whom I am chief." Stunned, he declared, "What! St Paul the chief of sinners, and yet St Paul is sure of being saved!" At this point, he had never picked up a copy of the Scriptures in any language and read them. He had heard in the church's liturgy various snippets from the Bible in Latin but now, he could see for himself. He looked at Paul's statement and exulted, "…how sweet art thou to my soul!"
The historian Merle d'Aubinge, recounts the story of how these words of Paul haunted Bilney from one angle and then instructed him from the other. "He could not tell what had happened to him; it seemed as if a refreshing wind were blowing over his soul, or as if a rich treasure had been placed in his hands." And then the Spirit of God took Paul's words and made them Bilney's own: "I also am like Paul…and more than Paul, the greatest of sinners!" In that sweeping moment, Thomas Bilney realized that his fastings, vigils, and multiplied masses only further destroyed him. His doubts ended; peace flooded his soul. "Jesus Christ," he exclaimed. "Yes, Jesus Christ saves!" [The Reformation in England, d'Aubigne, vol. I, 153-155].
Thomas Bilney became the solitary witness to the gospel at Cambridge. One man transformed by the simple knowledge that Jesus Christ saves, began to tell another and another, opening his Greek Testament and reading to friends of the good news. One by one, people listened to his testimony and then saw for themselves in the Scriptures that Jesus Christ saves sinners, delivering them from the guilt and bondage of sin. In this way the Reformation began in England, not as a reaction to Rome but as a response of desperate sinners to the good news that Jesus Christ came into the world to save sinners. Before and after Thomas Bilney, countless numbers have been gripped by that reality that Jesus Christ saves. It's the same testimony that Samaria's new believers declared, "For we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world."
Savior is no casual title for Jesus Christ. It identifies Him as the solitary person that can deliver us from our sin and from the wrath of God. Thomas Bilney saw this and believed. Later, when threatened with burning at the stake unless he recanted his faith, Bilney recited the Apostle's Creed, and then gladly held the chain that bound him to the stake while awaiting the flames, with his final word in Latin, "Credo," "I believe" [d'Aubinge, vol. II, 74-76].
Do you believe that Jesus Christ, God's Son, is your Savior? Mark it—all men need a Savior by reason of our sin and enmity with God. Jesus Christ alone is that Savior whom men need. The angel of the Lord announced to the shepherds in the field, "For today in the city of David there has been born for you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord" (Luke 2:11). Peter told the Sanhedrin, "He is the one whom God exalted to His right hand as a Prince and a Savior, to grant repentance to Israel, and forgiveness of sins" (Acts 5:31). Paul tells us that it was "our great God and Savior, Christ Jesus, who gave Himself for us to redeem us from every lawless deed, and to purify for Himself a people for His own possession, zealous for good deeds" (Titus 2:13-14). John tells us in his first epistle, "We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son to be the Savior of the world" (1 John 4:14). Do you know Jesus Christ as your Savior?
Part of the biblical record focuses on the gospel crossing language, culture, and race to change hearts. But the biggest barrier to the gospel is not language or culture—instead, it's the darkness of the heart. It's our sin manifested in unbelief, pride, stubbornness, and arrogance against God. Yet everyday, by the great kindness of God, the gospel crosses barriers that men have erected against the true knowledge of God. I had erected my own barriers against Christ—my baptism, my church membership, my religious knowledge, my own way of doing religion, when Christ swept them away in saving mercy. The gospel breaks through every barrier that the depraved heart erects. Certainly, in our mission work we labor to cross cultural and language barriers to present the gospel but our gospel is not bound. "It is the power of God unto salvation to everyone that believes!" (Rom. 1:16)
In our reading through the Gospels, we find Christ preaching primarily to Jews. He told the Canaanite woman, "I was sent only to the lost sheep of the house of Israel" (Matt. 15:24). They had the old covenant and the biblical foundation. They also broke the old covenant and ignored their biblical foundation. In keeping with the promises through the prophets, Christ introduces to them the new covenant built upon the wonderful heritage that had been laid before them. Yet, by and large, they rejected Christ and His gospel. With smugness, arrogance, and a desire to box God into their own little petty religion, they turned from Christ in unbelief. Thankfully, not all refused the gospel! And even more thankful, Christ did not limit the gospel to the Jews. The Canaanite woman met the Savior; so did the Roman centurion; and so did the Samaritan woman at the well. And she was not alone!
As John reminded us in 4:9, "Jews have no dealings with Samaritans." The feud between them had lasted for hundreds of years. Samaritans claimed descent from the tribes of Ephraim and Manasseh but the Jews considered otherwise, claiming them as descendents of those colonizing the northern kingdom after being conquered by the Assyrians, with the re-colonized coming from other conquered regions. In other words, the Samaritans claimed Jewish descent and the Jews totally rejected it. Religiously, Samaritans embraced portions of Judaism while rejecting others; they also had a thick vein of other religions running through them. Rejecting Jerusalem, they put their religious center on Mount Gerazim. Their religion focused on a place and not a Person, as Christ showed the Samaritan woman [cf. ISBE, IV, 303-308].
In a stand-off, Jews and Samaritans would have nothing to do with each other. Jews despised their claims of Judaism and worship of Yahweh. But they needed the gospel just as much as the Jews.
How did the gospel come to Samaria? Jesus encountered a Samaritan woman coming to Jacob's well just outside the city of Sychar in Samaria. His disciples had gone into the city to find food while Jesus rested by the well. A woman came to the well around noon. That was not the normal time for drawing water due to the heat of noonday. But she was not a normal woman. She was immoral, and thus shunned by others in society so that she had to carry out the customary duties of a woman when other women were not around. She came to the well with her waterpot; she left without it because something much more important had captured her affections and pursuits (v. 28). What changed her?
(1) She thought it unusual that a Jew would ask a Samaritan woman for a drink of water. Jesus told her of her ignorance concerning Him. "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" (v. 10). Her response shows ignorance in two areas. First, "Sir, You have nothing to draw with and the well is deep; where then do you get that living water?" That was another way of saying, 'What exactly are you offering?' What kind of gift of God do you have in mind? I've been to this well many times before and never found 'living water,' so what do you mean by living water? Second, "You are not greater than our father Jacob, are You, who gave us the well…?" In other words, "Who are you to make such a claim?" What gives you the authority to offer living water?
Is this not at the heart of where many struggle? Some hear talk of living water or eternal life or salvation or redemption, and they find it puzzling, even amusing. They think that whatever it is that Jesus offers they don't need it. And others add to this, thinking that whatever it is that He offers that they don't need, how can Jesus really do anything for them?
(2) Jesus begins to reveal Himself and the nature of the living water that He gives. "Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life" (vv. 13-14). There's a sharp contrast: no one else can satisfy the deep thirst of the soul—no one! Nothing else but Christ will satisfy you. You can drink from the polluted wells of this world but they will only give temporary satisfaction. Christ alone satisfies without peer. "I will give him" is repeated twice, pointing to the uniqueness of Christ alone as the One who has power to satisfy the soul. It is what Christ gives, and Christ alone, that meets the intense needs of our lives. His gift has continuing effects: "the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life." It keeps on springing up, keeps on filling, keeps on satisfying, and culminates in eternal life.
(3) Jesus then exposes the woman's own character. She asks for this water so that she won't have to come back and draw water from the well—keeping everything on a physical level. But she missed the point because of her dark heart. So, He tells her, "Go, call your husband and come here." She answered, "I have no husband." Jesus tells her, "you have correctly said, 'I have no husband'; for you have had five husbands, and the one whom you now have is not your husband; this you have said truly" (vv. 17-18). Now, was He just trying to make her feel badly about the past? Of course not; His purpose was much clearer; He wanted her to see the truth about herself. Before Him stood a broken, ruined, wrecked, and miserable woman, full of insecurities, doubts, and fears, disdaining and resenting others who had not walked her path.
Has Jesus exposed your character to you? Do you see yourself for what you really are with all of the brokenness and ruin that your sin has brought upon you? Until you come to terms with your need of forgiveness and a cleansed conscience, then you will not look to Christ for living water.
(4) Then she attempted to deflect the attention on her own broken life by changing the subject to worship. Yet her idea of worship centered on a place rather than upon the living God. Jesus challenged her false assumption, and even that of many of the Jews by pointing out, "true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth" (v. 23). Subjectively, the spirit engages God; objectively, every aspect of worship has its foundation in biblical truth. The woman's flawed view of worship revealed a flawed and inadequate religion that could not bring her into God's presence.
(5) And then it hit her: even the Samaritans believed in Messiah, could this Man be the promised One? "When that one comes, He will declare all things to us." Jesus said (literally), "I AM, the One speaking to you" (v. 26). She dropped her waterpot! Her earlier mission to draw water suddenly changed. Christ revealed Himself as the Messiah. However weak her faith may have been, she embraced what little she understood of Jesus Christ in those moments, and then returned to her own people. It's not great faith that saves, it's the Great One, Jesus Christ, that saves even those with weak faith.
With brutal honesty, this woman (waterpot still left behind) came to the men of the city with no more shame: "Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?" We must admit that she lacked refinement in her oration; she missed plenty of details; but with simplicity, she pointed to Jesus Christ as the Savior of sinners. Take heart, as F.F. Bruce pointed out, "Let us not grow weary in well-doing; the most unlikely soul may prove the most effective witness" [The Gospel of John, 115].
Here were the beginnings of faith in Samaria. "From that city many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified, "He told me all the things that I have done"." What did they believe about Christ? John doesn't tell us at this point, so we're left to wonder. Did they believe the full revelation concerning Christ as Son of God? Did they see Him as the only Redeemer of sinners? Could they have testified themselves at this point, "We are saved!"? We don't know. But this we do know: hearing at least a glimmer about Jesus Christ drastically affected them. We know this because they immediately came in mass to Him at the well. "So when the Samaritans came to Jesus, they were asking Him to stay with them; and He stayed there two days."
Faith in Christ became personalized for the Samaritans. Some, initially, responded to what the woman testified, though likely without genuine faith. They were on the start toward Christ but had not come to a saving faith. I went through a similar experience as a teenager. I heard four other teenagers testify of Christ. It piqued my interest and turned my mind to Christ and spiritual matters. But I stopped short of true faith in Christ. I could have left that time and felt that I had improved spiritually because of agreeing with what these other teenagers said. Yet I was still lost in my sin. Then the truths of the gospel followed so that my inward affections were awakened to trust in Christ as revealed in the gospel. The first testimonies were an aid to the process but stopped short of me embracing Jesus Christ as my Savior and Lord.
At that point in my life, I had a secondhand faith. That's likely what we see at the onset of the movement among the Samaritans. The reason that I would make this assertion is due to the way they described what transpired. "Many of the Samaritans believed in Him because of the word of the woman who testified." Some interpreters distinguish the way "believed" is used here and how it is used in verse 41 and 42. They would consider the first as interest piqued and even agreement with what the woman said; yet short of embracing Christ. Note how they distinguish it themselves: "Many more believed because of His word… "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves"." Something different transpired. The reality is that a testimony, as important as it is, can only point to Christ. A testimony does not save. The word of Christ—the gospel—believed, does. How far will secondhand faith take you? It puts the cup in your hand; it takes you to the feasting table; it leads you to the door. As wonderful and useful as they are, testimonies do not save—Christ saves through the gospel taking root in the heart by faith. Have you stopped short of saving faith by resting in a secondhand faith?
Many people try to exist on a temporary faith. They simply agree with what someone else has said without seeking to know whether God has spoken. But Jesus taught that genuine faith comes when a person hears Christ for himself. Consider a few passages that express this. First, John 6:44-45, "No one can come to Me unless the Father who sent Me draws him; and I will raise him upon the last day. It is written in the prophets, 'And they shall all be taught of God.' Everyone who has heard and learned from the Father, comes to Me." There's nothing secondhand here; the word comes to the heart personally; the mind is affected so that the sinner recognizes that God has spoken clearly through His Word. A second example is in John 10. Jesus sets forth the distinction between His sheep and those that belong to another. "When he puts forth all his own, he goes ahead of them, and the sheep follow him because they know his voice. A stranger they simply will not follow, but will flee from him, because they do not know the voice of strangers" (10:4-5). Here is the personalization, the relational nature of the gospel as the Holy Spirit makes it alive in the heart. "I am the good shepherd, and I know My own and My own know Me…I have other sheep, which are not of this fold; I must bring them also, and they will hear My voice; and they will become one flock with one shepherd" (10:14, 16). "My sheep hear My voice, and I know them, and they follow Me" (10:27). Do you see the repetitive note? The gospel is not just words on a paper or monotonous syllables from a speaker to one with faith in Christ. Instead, the gospel is alive as the word of Christ being spoken in the heart. The difference, quite obviously, is what Paul explained in Romans 10:17. "So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ."
The Samaritans were emphatic in the way that they stated their own testimonies of having trusted Christ. "It is no longer because of what you said that we believe, for we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world." Literally, they were saying, "we ourselves have heard and know." They moved from the informational aspect of the woman's testimony to the experience of saving faith so that now they had their own testimonies of Christ. This doesn't denigrate the woman's testimony. The information that she set forth concerning Christ proved critical in what God would do in their lives. But they had to get past information to experiential knowledge.
Lots of people stay in the information stage when it comes to the gospel. They know plenty of facts about Christ and the gospel. They may even be able to explain the gospel. But they've not embraced Jesus Christ savingly; they've thought about Him and about their souls, but they've not trusted Him to save them through His righteous life and death. Christ intrigues them but they do not truly know Him experientially as Savior. As Bruce so wisely points out, "Second-hand acquaintance with Christ or hearsay belief in him cannot be a substitute for personal knowledge and saving faith" [116]. Or as Wm. Hendriksen put it, "Personal contact with Christ is necessary to make faith complete" [NTC: John, 176]. Do you have that personal, experiential knowledge of Jesus Christ through faith? That's different than "asking Jesus into your heart," or "praying the prayer," or "walking the aisle," or "making a decision." It's an encounter that changes you forever so that you hear Christ, know Him, and follow Him (cf. John 10:27).
"For we have heard for ourselves and know that this One is indeed the Savior of the world." They understood the meaning of Savior since it was commonly used in the Roman Empire to refer to the emperor, as well as used in some of the pagan religions in referring to Zeus or Asclepius, the healer, as saviors. It meant a "deliverer" [C.K. Barrett, The Gospel According to St. John, 2nd ed., 244]. In this case, it's not deliverance from another nation's army but deliverance from sin and self and Satan. Unless one knows that he needs deliverance from sin—acutely recognizing his own bondage because of sin—then "Savior" is just an informational term. There's nothing relational about it. When bondage to sin is understood, then nothing is more important than having a Savior! We'll gladly leave our waterpots just as did that woman! While secondhand faith is appreciated for pointing the way, it is left for genuine faith in Christ once one understands his bondage to sin and sees Christ alone as Savior.
He's not just Savior for the Jews—that's what these new believers understood. He's Savior for Samaritans, Americans, Maasai, Ugandans, Brazilians, Samoans, and any other people group that you can name. For all that believe in Him, Jesus Christ becomes Savior, Deliverer, Lord, and King. Do you know Him as Savior?
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