Jesus answered her, "If you knew the gift of God and who it is that asks you for a drink, you would have asked him and he would have given you living water."
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Jesus answered, "Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again, but whoever drinks the water I give him will never thirst. Indeed, the water I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life." (John 4:10, 13-14)
I have thought about writing on this topic many times, but I was finally moved to action by an article in the local paper on Sunday. It described a large group of young people who got together with the intention of doing something good. Here's how the reporter put it:
About 2,000 people -- many of them teenagers, college students and young adults -- took to the streets of Columbus yesterday for community-service projects that put their Christian faith into action.
After that follows some examples of what they think this means:
The 50 projects included cleaning parks, rehabbing homeless shelters, organizing food pantries and hosting barbecues and gasoline-giveaways in poor neighborhoods.
I must confess that I have grown quite weary of hearing that doing "good works" (in the eyes of the world) is somehow putting Christian faith into action. None of the students quoted in that article used the name of Jesus even once. The cause that they identified as the main motivation was "social justice". What they don't acknowledge (and perhaps don't realize) is what this phrase implies. Inherent in the notion of "social justice" is the idea that a crime has been committed. The perpetrator is society. And so, it is up to us to right this wrong in the cosmic court of the Almighty.
The problem is that God's justice is much higher than ours. There is no "good deed" we can do that will change the position of the sinner before God. If we have turned from our sins and trusted Jesus for salvation, then our sins are forgiven and we receive the righteousness of Christ instead of our own. It's the great exchange. So now God will see us not as we are, but washed clean by the blood of the spotless lamb, our Lord and Savior. This is what we ought to be taking to the streets. This is the "living water" that Jesus speaks of in the passage quoted above.
Let us examine the conversation that Jesus has with the Samaritan woman in John chapter 4. Notice that he didn't go there with the intention of doing some "good deed" for her. He's not offering her a drink. In fact, he starts the conversation by asking her for a drink. Now that's something you probably won't see suggested in any evangelism class these days: "start the conversation by imposing yourself upon the person by asking him/her to do you a favor." But this is how the Lord did it. When she was surprised by the fact that he was even speaking to her (Jews didn't speak to Samaritans), Jesus used the analogy about "living water" as a way of firing her curiosity. During the course of the conversation he alerted her to the fact of her sinful condition, and the fact that God desires true worship in spirit and truth. Then he revealed himself to be the Messiah. Having heard the good news, the woman went and told all her friends and neighbors. She didn't go off to clean up their streets and mow their lawns. She gave them living water.
But what are these young people doing with their efforts to "put their Christian faith into action" by trying to achieve "social justice"? I would say they are giving people "non-living water". Those people will be thirsty again. And what will they do then? Those well-intentioned young people won't be around to do anything for them. Why did they not offer the people living water? Did Jesus not command us to go and make disciples? As disciples of Jesus Christ, we look to the scriptures for guidance, not to the world. Where did these young people get the idea that cleaning up broken glass on a street will make an eternal difference in someone's life? Here's one clue:
The work was the culmination of the Justice Revival, a three-day event organized by 40 area churches and Sojourners, a Washington-based social-justice organization.
The Sojourners is led by Jim Wallis, a man for whom this issue is more important than Christianity itself. As a result, his organization also works with Muslims and people of other faiths. This is putting the world before God, the temporal in front of the spiritual. Jim Wallis is a nice man. But he clearly has his priorities mixed up. Jesus said seek first the Kingdom of God, and the other things will be added. I don't want to be "like the pagans" running after those things, and I don't think we should encourage others to do it either. We should be giving them the living water of the gospel, after drinking of which they will never thirst again. I'm not saying that you just walk up to a person and say "Hey dude, did you hear that Jesus died to save you from your sins?" To be sure, some plowing needs to be done before the seed of the gospel can be planted. But this work needs to be done, otherwise those thirsty people will continue to be parched until the time comes when it is too late to do anything for them.