John 4
4
Jesus Talks With a Woman From Samaria
1When Jesus learned that the Pharisees had heard that he was baptizing more disciples than John, 2-3he left Judea and went back to Galilee. Jesus, however, was not in fact baptizing; his disciples were.
4Jesus had to go through Samaria. 5He came to a town there called Sychar, near the piece of land Jacob had given his son Joseph. 6Jacob’s well was there. Jesus was tired from the journey, so he sat down by the well. It was around noon.
7A woman from Samaria came to get some water. Jesus said to her, “Please give me something to drink.” 8(His disciples had gone into the town to buy food.)
9The Samaritan woman replied, “You’re a Jew, and I’m a Samaritan woman. How can you ask me for a drink?” (She said this because Jews won’t have anything to do with Samaritans.)
10Jesus answered, “If you knew the gift of God and who was asking you for a drink, you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
11“Sir,” the woman said, “you don’t have any jar, and the well is deep. Where would you get this living water? 12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us this well? He drank from it himself, and so did his sons and his animals.”
13Jesus answered, “Everyone who drinks this water will get thirsty again. 14But anyone who drinks the water I give them will never get thirsty. In fact, the water I give them will become a spring of water inside them bubbling up into eternal life.”
15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me that water so that I won’t get thirsty and I won’t have to keep coming here to get water!”
16He told her, “Go get your husband and come back.”
17“I don’t have a husband,” she answered.
Jesus said to her, “You’re right to say that you don’t have a husband. 18You’ve had five husbands, and the man you’re living with now isn’t your husband. What you’ve just said is very true.”
19“Sir,” the woman said, “I can tell that you’re a prophet. 20Our people have always worshiped on this mountain, but you Jews claim that the place where we should worship is in Jerusalem.”
21Jesus said, “Woman, believe me, a time is coming when you won’t worship the Father either on this mountain or in Jerusalem. 22You Samaritans worship what you don’t know; we worship what we do know, because salvation comes from the Jews. 23But a time is coming—in fact, it’s already here—when true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth. Those are the kind of worshipers the Father is looking for. 24God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship him in the Spirit and in truth.”
25The woman said, “I know that the Messiah is coming, the one called the Christ. When he comes, he’ll explain everything to us.”
26Then Jesus said, “That’s the one who’s talking to you. It’s me.”
The Disciples Return
27Just then Jesus’ disciples came back, and they were surprised to find him talking with a woman. But no one asked her, “What do you want?” And no one asked him, “Why are you talking with her?”
28The woman left her water jar and went back to the town. She told the people, 29“Come and see a man who told me everything I’ve ever done. Could this be the Messiah?” 30The people came out from the town and made their way toward Jesus.
31Meanwhile, his disciples were telling him, “Rabbi, eat something!”
32But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know anything about.”
33Then his disciples asked each other, “Did someone bring him food?”
34“My food,” Jesus said, “is to do what my Father sent me to do and to finish his work. 35Don’t you have a saying, ‘It’s still four months until harvest time’? But I tell you, open your eyes and look at the fields! They’re already ripe for harvest. 36Even now people are being hired to gather a crop for eternal life, so that the one who planted and the one who will gather can rejoice together. 37It’s really true that ‘one plants and another gathers.’ 38I’m sending you to gather what you haven’t worked for. Others have done the hard work, and you’re going to gather the benefits of their work.”
Many Samaritans Believe in Jesus
39Many of the Samaritans from that town believed in Jesus because of what the woman said about him: “He told me everything I’ve ever done.” 40The people came to him and asked him to stay with them, so he stayed for two days. 41And many more of them believed as he spoke with them.
42They told the woman, “At first we believed because of what you said. But now we’ve heard for ourselves, and we know that this man really is the Savior of the world.”
Jesus Heals an Official’s Son
43After those two days Jesus left and continued on to Galilee. 44(He himself had pointed out that a prophet isn’t respected in his own country.) 45When he arrived in Galilee, the people living there welcomed him. They’d seen everything he’d done in Jerusalem at the Passover Feast because they’d been there themselves.
46Jesus went again to Cana in Galilee, where he had turned the water into wine. A royal official was there whose son was sick in bed at Capernaum. 47When he heard that Jesus had arrived in Galilee from Judea, he went to Jesus and begged him to come and heal his son. The boy was close to death.
48Jesus told him, “You people will never believe unless you see signs and wonders.”
49The royal official said, “Sir, please come before my child dies.”
50“You may go home,” Jesus replied. “Your son will live.”
The man took Jesus at his word and headed home. 51While he was still on the way, his slaves met him and told him that the boy was going to live. 52He asked them at what time his son had gotten better. They replied, “Yesterday, at one o’clock in the afternoon, the fever left him.”
53Then the father realized that this was the exact time when Jesus had said to him, “Your son will live.” He and his whole family became believers.
54This was the second sign that Jesus did. He did it after he came back from Judea to Galilee.
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