Peniel: Seeing the Truth
Peter Shee—Singapore
“I am the way, the truth…
If you have known Me, you would have known My Father also;
And from now on you know Him and have seen Him.”
(Jn
14:6-7)
No one has seen God at any time
(Jn 1:18). Even Moses who saw God’s form
(Num 12:8) did not really see God as He is (1 Jn 3:2). Interestingly, apostle Paul used Moses, whom God knew face
to face (Deut 34:10), to demonstrate the blindness of the unbelieving Jews—the
veil that Moses placed over his shining face shielded the Israelites from the
glory of God then, and also the truth of the Scriptures thereafter.
The Fourth Gospel introduces Jesus
as the true light that helps us truly see God, and equates knowing God with
eternal life (Jn 1:9,18; 17:3). John wraps this up beautifully in his first
epistle: “And we know that the Son of God has come and has given us an
understanding, that we may know Him who is true; and we are in Him who is true,
in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God and eternal life” (1 Jn 5:20).
A personal encounter with Jesus is
essential for everyone who wants to know God. This is the experience of the
Samaritan woman in John 4.
Here, Jesus takes a decidedly
different approach from the way He deals with the blinded Jewish leaders of His
time. Instead of speaking in parables, obscuring the message from already
hardened hearts, Jesus now lifts the veil, albeit gradually, and reveals
Himself, giving knowledge of God to an unknown Samaritan woman:
First Step
to Seeing God—Seeing your real need
One of the reasons why people
cannot see God is because they do not see a need to. Jesus’ words to the
Pharisees are instructive: “If you were blind, you would have no sin; but now
you say, ‘We see.’ Therefore your sin remains” (Jn 9:41).
The Samaritan woman knows she has
a need, just that she doesn’t know what that need is. Though she has earlier
refused Jesus a drink, she is not embarrassed to request: “Sir, give me this
water, that I may not thirst, nor come here to draw” (Jn 4:15). She expects a
physical quencher, for her spiritual thirst is yet unknown to her. Jesus then
leads her to discover her real problem by asking for her husband.
True
satisfaction—“If you knew the gift of God” (Jn 4:10)
“Till grace my sightless eyes
received, Thy loveliness to see”
A true recognition of one’s needs
opens up the mind to see the real solution to that need—what God is prepared to
give which we are not yet prepared to receive.
With five husbands behind her and
currently living with a man not married to her, the Samaritan woman has a void
in her life that only God could fill and Jesus helps her to realize it. Upon
seeing that Jesus is not just a prophet greater than her ancestor Jacob, but
the very gift of God, the answer to all her needs, she leaves behind her
waterpot—a telling sign of her satisfaction—and takes a different course from
her daily routine, going into the city to tell of her encounter with the Savior
(Jn 4:28–29).
True worship—“You
worship what you do not know; we know what we worship …” (Jn 4:22)
“Be Thou my vision, O Lord of
my heart”
When the Samaritan woman is made
to see her spiritual condition, her focus immediately switches from the mundane
to the spiritual, from water to worship.
Worship is a matter of the heart;
it involves an earnest desire to be in the presence of God, comparable to a
deer panting for the water brooks (Ps 42:1–2). We may have attended church for
decades and even participated in running special services, but if we cannot
enjoy the simplicity of private prayer and meditation on God’s word, most
likely our public worship is superficial, involving more of the body than the
spirit and mind.
Though the worship experience can
be enhanced with physical ambience, uplifting music and good sermons, nothing
is more important than the worshipper himself. Jesus tells the Samaritan woman
that the key to true worship is to know the One you worship, for only then can
worship be of the spirit, out of sincerity and truth (Jn 4:24).
God seeks true worshippers (Jn
4:23) just as they seek God. He will be found in worship, which need not be on
a sacred mountain or in a holy city; we only need purity and truth in the heart
to see (Mt 5:8; Heb 10:22) the God who is true (Jn 7:28).
See Jesus
for who He is
The unnamed woman’s testimony
captures the interest of some people in the city to go and see Jesus for
themselves. There are many who can tell us the way to God, but there is only
One who is the way and the truth (Jn
14:6).
The men of Samaria act on the
woman’s word (Jn 4:39), but only to see the truth for themselves. After two
days of face-to-face teaching from Jesus (Jn 4:41), they can truly say they
know who Jesus is by first-hand experience and not through third party witness.
They tell the woman, “Now we believe, not because of what you said, for we ourselves
have heard Him” (Jn 4:42).
True faith—“We
know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world” (Jn 4:42)
“With eyes of faith we look to
Thee as God’s beloved only Son”
The Samaritans of the city are
rewarded in their quest with an insight that exceeds the thinking of their
Jewish contemporaries—that the Messiah is not a political liberator of the
Jewish nation and that He is more than a prophet to Israel; He is in fact the
Savior of the whole world.
The woman’s earlier remark, “I
know that Messiah is coming. When He comes, He will tell us all things” (Jn
4:25), is now perfected by the enlightened proclamation: “We know that this is
indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world” (Jn 4:42). Seeing this truth means
genuine faith that leads to salvation (1 Pet 1:9), for indeed “the Son of God
has come and has given us an understanding, that we may know Him who is true;
and we are in Him who is true, in His Son Jesus Christ. This is the true God
and eternal life” (1 Jn 5:20).
True food—“I
have food to eat of which you do not know.” (Jn 4:32)
“Open our eyes Lord, We want to
see Jesus”
At about the same moment, when the
woman of Samaria leaves her waterpot by Jacob’s well and turns towards the
city, the disciples of Jesus return from the city with food. When they urge
Jesus to eat, He gives them a discourse on true food in order to open their
eyes (Jn 4:35) to the true harvest, the gathering of fruit for eternal life (Jn
4:36). To the Samaritans, He is the Savior of the world. To His disciples, He impresses
on them that He is the harvester of souls and bids them to join Him until the
work is accomplished (Jn 4:34).
Urging the disciples who offer Him
food to reap from the harvest of eternal value is later mirrored in His advice
to seekers of bread: “Do not labor for the food which perishes, but for the
food which endures to everlasting life, which the Son of Man will give you” (Jn
6:27). While our work is to believe in Him (Jn 6:29) and gather others into
this faith, His work includes the giving of Himself as our bread of life (Jn
6:35,51).
Jesus sows His life (Jn 12:24)
that he might harvest our souls into eternal life. This is the will of God (Jn
6:38–39), His work and His food (Jn 4:34). This is the story He tells when
certain Gentiles make the request, “Sir, we wish to see Jesus” (Jn 12:21).
Conclusion
“To know Christ and to make Him
known”
Seeing the truth is to come to an
accurate knowledge of Jesus Christ, a compelling truth that inevitably
transforms our lives (Phil 3:10). It sees us abandon our waterpot, counting as
worthless the things we used to value and trust (Phil 3:7–8); it redirects our
paths and orders our steps as one yoked to Christ for His work (Mt 11:28–29),
making Him known to others.
