John 4:14, “But whoever drink of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty again. The water I will give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life.”
The Living Water is the Spirit who flows from the Father and the Son, revealing to us the Father in the Son as the satisfaction of our soul’s thirst and the essence of eternal life.
What is the water that Jesus will give those who ask Him? Ultimately it is the Holy Spirit (7:38-39). The Holy Spirit takes up residence within a person and becomes in them a living well, a fountain, whose waters bubble up and overflow and flood the person with eternal life. And what is eternal life? It is —17:3 — to know the Father and Jesus Christ whom He has sent. But, of course, in John’s theology, this is not two different knowings. To know the Father and the Son (who reveals the Father) is to know the Father in the Son. And this is a knowledge that can be had only by the Spirit (John 16:14, 2 Cor. 4:6), that is, only by the “Living Water.”
And so, what is Jesus promising here in 4:14? He is promising that He will give the Spirit to His people, and the Spirit will bubble over and fill their lives with the knowledge of the One True God in Jesus Christ whom He has sent. THIS is eternal life.
Note also that eternal life is equated with the quenching of our soul’s thirsts. The thirsting soul— the soul, like this woman’s, who goes from one relationship to the next, one high to the next, one gratification to the next—the thirsting soul does not have eternal life, it is still in death, still in darkness, still unborn, still under God’s wrath. Jesus has come to give Living Water to such souls that they might drink and be satisfied, that is to say, that they might know the Father in the Son by the Spirit and so have eternal life. The satisfaction of our soul’s longings, eternal life, and knowing God in Christ are overlapping and even—if rightly understood—synonymous concepts.
Our soul-thirsts are quenched as we drink from fountain of living water who is the Holy Spirit, and this living water satisfies us because He takes from what is Christ’s and makes it known to us (John 16:14), that is, He shows us the beauty of God the Father in the Son. And to know God in this way—to know the One True God in and as the man Jesus who dies and rises again, to know God for us in Jesus —is the satisfaction of our soul’s deepest longings and is the essential nature of eternal life.
Now….there’s something else interesting to see here. the Greek word that John uses for “well” in 4:6 is the same as the one that Jesus uses for “fountain” in 4:14 and the same that YHWH uses for Himself as the “fountain of living water” in Jeremiah 2:13 LXX. The woman speaks of the well as a “pit” (not, however, the word for “cistern” from Jeremiah….so this connection is not as strong as it might be). At the very least, it seems that John wants us to contrast the pit from which the woman is drawing water that leaves her thirsty again and the fountain that Jesus is ready to plant in her heart, the fountain who is God the Spirit Himself.
In verses 16ff Jesus is going to push this woman to see that the thirst He is talking about is the thirst of her soul, the thirst that has driven her through six different relationships in relatively rapid succession. There is the contrast between the pit and the fountain. The pit—like the Jeremiah 2:13 cisterns—is something we go to in our own strength, something from which we draw out water that satisfies for a time, but invariably leaves us thirsty again. The fountain, on the other hand, is something that God Himself plants within us, it is the fountain of His own Spirit, the fountain which is Himself. And this fountain of the living God overflows to satisfy our deepest longings with the beauty of who God is for us in Jesus Christ….that is Johannine eternal life and that is what Jesus stands ready to give all who would say to Him. “Give me a drink.”
Finally, one more thought to add here. In Revelation we again see the fountain of living water (Revelation 21:6), only now it is made more explicitly Trinitarian since it is ultimately shown to be the “river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the lamb.” The living water (The Spirit) flows from the throne of God and the Lamb (the Father and the Son). And it is this throne, this Lordship, this fellowship of Love and Joy that Jesus plants in the hearts of His people…..the Father and the Son make their home in the disciple (John 14:23), and the Spirit floods them with the life that is to know the Father in the Son (John 14:26, 16:14, etc.). So, again, what Jesus stands ready to do is to establish the throne of heaven in the hearts of His people……By the regeneration of the Spirit, the rule of of the Father in the Son is established in our hearts, from which the thirst-quenching Spirit flows into all our life, satisfying every longing by the revelation of the Father in the Son that we might know God and so have eternal life.
