09. Chapter 9: Living Water
Chapter IX.
LIVING WATER The last chapter was full of thoughts of the River and the Well. Let us linger a while longer in the same region of Scriptural imagery; it is a region full “of fountains and depths, that spring out of valleys and hills” (Deu 8:7). The words “living water” occur in two remarkable passages ofSt. John’sGospel, passages widely separated in time and circumstance, but closely united in spiritual significance by this phrase, and that, too, in a way which makes the second passage the true sequel and development of the first. In John 4:14. , the Lord Jesus tells the woman of Sychar that had she known the gift of God, and known Him who spoke to her, she would have asked, and He would have given living water; and that this water would have precluded all thirst for ever; and that it would prove to be, within its recipient, a fountain of water, of water not stagnant but “springing, leaping, unto eternal life. ” And in John 7:38, we hear the same Voice speak of living water in a far different scene. Not seated alone with one listener by the rural well, but standing in the midst of the crowds and movement of the great day of a greatTemplefestival, He invites all who thirst to “come to Him, and drink. ”And by this He means “to believe on Him” (John 7:39). And He assures His hearers that as this is done the result shall be not merely a reception of living water, but such a reception as shall be an overflow. Out of the drinker, out of the believer, “shall flow rivers of living water. And this spake He of the Spirit, which they that believed on Him should receive. ” In the occasions and contexts of each of these utterances there is indeed much to study. The very contrast, to which I have already alluded, between the extreme difference of the two sets of circumstances and the holy sameness of the Lord’s thought and tone amidst them, would alone be matter for fruitful meditation. It is full of illustration of whatHewas and is. It is full of example for His followers. And let us never forget that the example of Christ is, for His followers, the example of Him with whom they are vitally and indissolubly one. But these thoughts are not my main purpose at present. Nor do I attempt even a brief comment on all the details of the two utterances themselves. I ask my reader’s attention now for only two or three main points. Let us think of the sacred Gift itself; and of its personal possession by the believer in Christ; and of its conveyance through him to others. i. The Gift; the Living Water. St John, that is to say, the Holy Spirit by him, explains this to mean the Holy Spirit. It is the personal Paraclete. And it is the Paraclete in a mode of presence and action specially conditioned by the soul’s having come to Christ, having believed on Christ, already. True it is, deeply true, that when we come and believe it is already because of the Spirit, the Spirit of Faith (2Co 4:13). But this is not the phase of truth before us in these two utterances. The Lord takes the case of the man as having, anyhow, come and believed. Then, in the sense of after-experience, after-life, in manifestation, unfolding, indwelling, empowering, the man shall “receive the Spirit. ”In a sense different from that which might have been true before, the Spirit, the Holy Ghost, shall be in him, and he in the Spirit. He shall be a “spiritual” man, not in any vague sense (1Co 2:15), not merely as having, somehow, a higher range of interests and ideas. He shall be, in a sense as literal as it is divine, actuated by the development of a new Life, the Life Eternal, the Life of the Head of the newborn Race, the Life imparted, maintained, dilated, by nothing less than the personal presence in his very being of the Holy Spirit, the divine Agent alike of the Human Birth of the Head and of the New Birth of each Limb. The Spirit shall be in that man, in this sense, and therefore “Christ shall dwell in his heart” (Eph 3:17). I lay stress on this last point, because of its extreme practical importance in the whole subject of the life of faith and peace. Let us remember on the one hand that we possess the Lord’s indwelling by the Holy Spirit only. Let us remember on the other hand that what we possess by the Holy Spirit is above all things the indwelling Lord. We are not to look for two separate experiences, so to speak; a presence of the Spirit and a presence of Christ. The presence of Christ is thanks to the blessing Spirit’s presence. The Spirit’s presence is to be known — how?By the character of our actual relations of thought, love, and will with Christ; by our view of His unsearchable preciousness, by our rest in His dominion, by our peaceful power over self and sin in Him. To receive the living water is to be filled, or, however, to be filling, with Him, revealed and applied by the Spirit. This then, let us remember, is the promised, the guaranteed, gift of God in Christ to all, to all who come. ii. Now turn to the promise of the Well. Its main concern is with the personal possession of this Gift; not yet with its liberation, so to speak, and distribution through the possessor. The Lord undertakes that the man who drinks that water shall never thirst; obviously in the sense of never needing to complain of an intermittent supply fromthiswell. He shall find that he has received the ultimate answer to his entire end. He shall find that he has so received it that he may, if he will, be always enjoying it, always resting in it, always living in it. To follow the precise words further, the water which Christ shall give him, the water which he shall owe to the work and love of Christ, “shall become (so literally) in him a spring of water, of water leaping up, unto eternal life. ”
I do not examine minutely those last three words. It is interesting to ask whether they mean, “until the arrival of the state of glory, the ultimate phase of eternal life,” or whether they may not rather mean, “unto, resulting evermore in, the present realities and experiences of eternal life”; in other words, “so as to underlie, secure, and blessedly convey, the life of “God in Christ evermore to the needs and longings of the man. ” But it is not material now to discuss this.
What is material is the assurance that “the water shall become in him a spring of up-leaping water. ” Here we have, for one thing, the delightful assurance (let us treat it as an assurance) that the holy Thing shall be in the man. The context shows that the special point of the thought here is that he shall carry it about with him, in the depth of his being, always and everywhere. He shall not need to travel, or to toil, to get it within him. In his travelling and in his toiling it shall be within him. Go where he may, do, bear, what he may, meet whatever he may at any time by way of circumstances, he shall not be dependent for a moment upon circumstances for his water of life. It is his by gift. It is in him always, in him now. Alone with self and the Tempter, he bears it in him. Deep in the stress and throng of life, it is in him. In his strongest hour, and in his weakest, this holy Thing, which is not himself but the Spirit, and Christ by the Spirit, is in him.
Then further observe the phrase, “it shallbecomea spring of up-leaping water. ”Is it not as much as to say that the Gift as realized, and watched, and used, shall develop its true character and preciousness?It might be suspected at first to be but a cup; it shall soon prove to be a source, a spring, a depth originating in God. It shall be not only always there, but always new there, while always the same there. The happy possessor of it shall be always antecedently supplied for all circumstances, in this experience and discovery that the water is a spring. And thus he shall be independent of circumstances, in a sense very real and happy. He will be no despiser of “means of grace;” nay, he will prize them in their right use more than ever. But they will be to him means of cultivation and advance in the knowledge and the use of grace far rather than supposed originations of it. His water-spring is within him, always within him. And it proves to be a spring of water “leaping up. ”The imagery is beautifully special. The immortal supply is from an ultimate Source so living that its flow has not motion only but a motion of gentle while vivid life. The idea conveyed is that of “the Spirit’s calm excess,” in the beautiful words of an ancient hymn. The soul’s experience shall have about it a chastened life and brightness through Him who thus divinely dwells within. Joy, in the pure depth of that word in the spiritual vocabulary, joy shall pervade the being. The certainties of grace, of the Spirit, of Christ, shall give to the soul a commentary all their own on the apostolic word, “always rejoicing” (2Co 6:10). Yes, there shall be that humble but profound pleasure, which we have studied above,
Such is the matter as it stands in the personal and definite promise of the Lord at the Well. Let me take it, let me remind my reader to take it, in its holy simplicity and fulness. And “having this promise, let us cleanse ourselves” (2Co 7:1). Let us do our practical part by seeing to it, in watching and prayer, that the weeds and rubbish are cleared from the basin of the spring, and that no stone lies needlessly upon its mouth. iii. Now for a few moments let us pass on to theTemplecloister, to the Lord’s utterance on the great day of the feast. Here is the living water again, and the coming, and the receiving. And here is this development of the promise; there shall be an overflow. I say nothing on the place of the quotation; “as the Scripture hath said. ”Enough for us now that Christ, inthisScripture, hath said it.
What does it mean? It means that the man who really drinks of Christ, drinking of the Spirit, shall assuredly be a conveyer, a conductor, for the Spirit, for Christ, to others. It means that the really and livingly spiritual man shall be a spiritual blessing, a spiritual power. The thought requires, of course, a reverent caution. It cannot mean that he shall be an origin of grace; and indeed this is guarded by the special imagery, in which the thought is fixed on the drinking the Spirit from Christ, and no mention is made of the spring within, which might have seemed possibly to countenance the notion of our becoming origins, though it would not have done so really. Nor again is there any assurance here that at our own will or decision we can convey blessing to others. That is the express prerogative of the Lord Himself. But the assurance is that we shall be richly fruitful, somehow, of spiritual results; of results in others in the way of their also tasting of the gift of God. Our work in the matter is to drink, is to believe; to live by faith on the Son of God (Gal 2:20), who obeyed and died for us and liveth in us. His undertaking is that we shall be, in proportion, aqueducts for His living water.
More is meant here, surely, than that we shall merely know what to say, and say it. This is something indeed; this is a great thing. But it is a thing in which a hypcrite can be a conductor. The truth here is that He will use that man, or the woman, who is really drinking the heavenly Water from the Rock, who is really filled for life’s need with the supplies of life eternal, in another, a more mysterious way, and yet a way all the while profoundly natural. Through that personality the Spirit shall be pleased to work special blessings, for He will have made it fit to be so used. It shall livingly reflect something of the glory of the Lord. It shall be a true channel of persuasion, attraction, conviction. It “shall be a vessel unto honour, sanctified, serviceable to the Master” (2Ti 2:21). The believer in question may perhaps know that he is thus privileged and employed, by manifest results of fact; he may conspicuously be “a blessing” to very many souls and lives around him. Or he may never know it thus at all. But that matters, comparatively, little. The concern is with the Master’s knowledge, the Master’s interests, not the servant’s. For the servant, for the bondservant, let it be enough to know that the Master meant what He said, and will be found to have kept His word, to His own glory.