Daily Good News – A Different Kind of Relationship

May 4, 2015 1268

 

“You have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband” (John 4:18).

This woman was a serial polygamist. Her current ‘partner’ was number six, and now Jesus woos her – in a very different way. The Lord comes to her as the seventh significant male in her life, and in the Hebrew the word seven (sheba) may also be translated covenant. Jesus makes a very different promise to the people he woos and he demonstrates that promise here. He offers salvation, freedom from sin’s death penalty, and eternal life with him.

He demonstrates to her that he is different from other men. Not only that, but he knows things about her life that she had kept hidden. And unlike other men, his interest is in her eternal well-being, in the spiritual gifts he can offer her.

In the end, her attempts to distract him with theological discussion come to nothing, because this is not about theology. Jesus offers her the most important relationship of all: a covenant relationship with himself. She discovers what her real needs are, that she is thirsty for the living water that gives eternal life, and she eagerly accepts it.

 

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