Faith & Sex Pt. 2 Living Waters for the Thirst: Deeper than Lust & Sexual Liberation
In John 4, Jesus initiates a conversation with a Samaritan woman at a well by asking her for a drink of water. The text tells us in the 6th verse that it was about the 6th hour—noon. This is the hottest time of the day. This woman is coming to the well to draw water by herself in a culture where women tend to go to draw water early in the morning to avoid the heat. She clearly wants to be left alone.
It is no wonder that when Jesus’ reaches out to her, she pushes back. She is skeptical of Him and for very real reasons. Her response in verse 9 is effectively, “why are you talking to me? You’re not supposed to be talking to me (my translation).”
The text also explicitly informs readers that Jews and Samaritans did not associate with one another. Samaritans were seen by Jews to be half-breeds (used here in an intentionally derogatory sense) because they were not fully Jewish but rather multi-racial in being mixed—for this reason, they were looked down as racially inferior. Tensions between Jews and Samaritans abounded. In fact, Jews often deliberately avoided traveling through Samaria purposefully taking a longer route around the town just to avoid interacting with Samaritans. The woman at the well would have automatically recognized Jesus to be Jewish by His clothing, so the woman’s reaction to Jesus makes sense. For both cultural and personal reasons, her defenses are up. She resists conversing with Him and attempts to push Him away.
Jesus perceives her resistance to Him but yet He persists and insists on conversing with her. Jesus is not afraid of her walls—her defensiveness. Beyond her guardedness, He sees her and is inviting her to see Him and to know Him.
Jesus responds, “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.” Here, Jesus is saying, “if only you truly knew and truly recognized who I truly am, you would know that I am offering you something so much greater than you could possibly ever even imagine.”
Again, the woman’s response is a pushback. She is somewhat defensive and skeptical when she says, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with and the well is deep. Where can you get this living water…?”
The way that I hear this exchange and what it may sound like today is: “Look man, are you for real? You don’t even have a bucket or anything to draw water with. And who do you even think you are to be making these kinds of offers? Are you greater than Jacob? Please you’re nothing special…go somewhere (my translation).”
And even though she is still pushing him away, Jesus does not let up. Although she is skeptical as to whether He genuinely has anything to offer her and is questioning whether He is just bluffing, even calling His character into question, her demeanor does not intimidate Jesus. He refuses to be put off and He does not become defensive. He remains gentle and confident in His offer. He insists that the water that she is currently drinking is inadequate to really deeply quench her thirst and satisfy her. He is certain that the water that He is offering her will not just fulfill her, but it will become an eternally life-giving spring. Talk about quenching a thirst! I promise sprite has nothing on this.
So maybe now, from her response, the woman is thinking, “Man, this man is really persistent. Okay, bet, well, if this water is as good as he says it is and he insists on giving it out for free, I may as well get some so that I don’t have to get thirsty or have to keep coming to the well to get water (my translation).”
After all, she is probably tired of having to come to the well at noon just to avoid people and if she gets ahold of this living water, she can just avoid them altogether. It sounds like a good deal to her so now she’s down.
And yet, she is still missing out on what Jesus is saying. Jesus is talking about something much greater than physical water and so much deeper than she can comprehend.
During this time, a woman couldn’t have entered into an agreement without her husband present. Jesus tells her to go call her husband. And with that one question, it is clear that Jesus has hit a soft spot. She responds that she has no husband, but she is not being fully forthright.
But Jesus being Jesus and knowing the truth even when we aren’t willing or ready to admit to the truth exposes her. He responds in verse 18, “You are right…the fact is, you have had five husbands, and the man you now have is not your husband. What you have just said is quite true.”
In this moment, Jesus exposes this woman’s source of shame. Anyone who has had 5 husbands in our day would be sure to be gossiped about, looked down upon, and an outcast. Now imagine what it may have meant over 2,000 years ago for a woman to have had 5 husbands and to be currently living with a man that’s not her husband. Imagine the names that this woman must have been called and the stigma that must have been attached to her. It’s likely that few people wanted to be associated with her. And imagine going places knowing that everyone is whispering about you. No wonder she is coming to the well at the hottest time of day. She is marginalized—people don’t want anything to do with her. And it’s no wonder that she is defensive, she is probably tired of people judging her and thinking that they know her so she, in turn, rejects them as well.
But then there’s Jesus. Jesus who refuses to let any amount of stigma, shame, sin, cultural boundaries, or even her own guardedness to keep Him from pursing a relationship a relationship with her or to keep her from knowing him. Imagine, this whole time, Jesus has known her secret, but still refused to be deterred from knowing her.
After Jesus exposes her, she does what so many of us are prone to do when someone brings up a subject that makes us uncomfortable—she changes the subject. She acknowledges that Jesus is a prophet, after all, how would He know what He knew? But instead of talking about herself and engaging with what Jesus has just revealed, she instead begins to talk about religious matters, specifically, what appears to be a disagreement between Jews and Samaritans about the appropriate place to worship. Notice for her how this conversation still goes back to the division between Jews and Samaritans. Notice how perhaps she is using this information lowkey to put up another barrier between her and Jesus and to push Him away.
Jesus still is not deterred. His response is that it is not about where you worship—physical location, it’s about how you worship. In verse 23 Jesus is seeking to take her deeper in her understanding to show her that “true worshippers, the kind that the Father is seeking, will worship in Spirit and in Truth. This is what God has always been interested in: our hearts. God is looking for a people who are pursuing Him with their hearts, seeking to know Him more, to seek His face and get caught up in His presence—people who are genuinely desiring Him and wanting to know His truth.
Again, the woman does not agree or immediately engage with Jesus. She is not yet willing to concede that He is right. And in turn, she is not willing to admit that she may be wrong. Instead, she says that when the Messiah comes, He will be the one to explain everything and finally set the record straight. And to her surprise, Jesus reveals that He is indeed the Messiah.
This is the first person in the gospel of John to whom Jesus is reported to have disclosed his identity: a marginalized woman.
This whole time, unknowingly, this woman has been talking to the Messiah. He is the one who everyone has been waiting on and He chooses to reveal Himself to her—someone who others may have thought to be the least deserving of such a great revelation. But Jesus does not care much for making decision based on what other expect about him or what others will think of him. Jesus is not seeking to please anyone but his Heavenly Father.
In revealing himself to her, Jesus is saying that “I am the living water that you have been searching for. You’ve been looking for fulfillment in all of the wrong places, in your numerous relationships, and you’ve been coming up short, but if you search for fulfillment in me, you will know true satisfaction and wholeness.”
Jesus does not allow her past or even her current sinful situation to keep her from knowing Him. In fact, He probably recognizes that the underlying motivation for her sinful actions is the pursuit of fulfillment with the hope that these things or relationships would make her whole—but true wholeness is found in Him. This life pattern of broken relationship after broken relationship is what she knew and what she came to accept for herself but Jesus is offering her something different. In revealing Himself to her, Jesus offers her a new and restored identity not in what she’s done or who she was but in Him. In verses 39-42, we are told that this woman shares her testimony with people from her town and many come to believe because of her. Shout out to Jesus for first using a woman to preach His gospel. No longer will she be the talk of the town for her relational history, from hence forward she’ll be the woman who brought the town to know the Messiah.
I think that so many of us are like this woman in so many ways in seeking fulfillment in things other than God be it relationships, money, status, or anything that our culture tells us will bring us fulfillment outside of God. But I’m going to use this opportunity to speak specifically about hook-up culture and sexual sin. There is a current water that so many of us are drinking that says sexual freedom and liberation is found in the choice to do what you please with whoever you please as long as it’s consensual.
So when Jesus, or Christians carrying His teachings, come along with an alternative view point it seems outdated and oppressive, so we, like the woman, resist Jesus in refusing to believe that He actually has something to offer us. We wonder if He has come to just impose some religious teaching on us and to force us to submit to antiquated rules and regulations. And of course, we don’t want anyone to impose anything on us because we just want to be free to do as we please. But this isn’t what Jesus is doing at all. Jesus is a gentleman, He never forces Himself on us or anyone else, instead He comes to offer us true and deep soul fulfillment in Him. He realizes that the water that we are drinking now is stale and leaves us thirsty, but He has come to quench our thirst in offering us living water in Him.
In her Everyday Feminism article, “3 Reasons Why Sex-Positivity Without Critical Analysis is Harmful,” Melissa Fabello critiques sex-positivity. She encourages her readers to think critically about sex positivity and to not fall into the trap of “carelessly labeling everything (everything being all free and open engagements in sex acts) an example of liberation.” Her first point is that “we don’t make decisions in a vacuum.” She seeks to persuade readers to think through the ways in which our “socialization affects the choices that we make.” Part of her purpose for writing, as stated in her third point, is to question where “we draw the line between what is authentically liberating and what is just sexism presented in a shiny new package.”
I completely agree that critical thought is absolutely necessary. To be clear, lest I mislead anyone, Fabello is not making her argument from a standpoint of faith. And still, again, her challenge to think critically about what true liberation means, be it sexual or not, is an extremely important one.
I would like to harp on her point that we do not make decisions in a vacuum. Included in the reality that our socialization affects the choices that we make is the reality that our pursuit for sexual relations are often much deeper than merely the pursuit of pleasure. How do these underlying motivations affection our understanding of liberation? For example:
If you’re having sex with anyone as a means to affection in the hope that that person will want to date you, commit to you or love you, then are you really liberated?
If you’re having sex with anyone as a means of comfort or cure to your loneliness but still end up feeling lonely afterwards, are you really liberated?
If you’re having sex or hooking up because the idea of someone wanting to have sex with you makes you feel better about yourself and more attractive, are you not basing your worth in your sex appeal, and are you really liberated?
If you’re having sex because of societal pressures and the need to prove to others how conscious, enlightened, progressive and liberated you are really are, but still somehow feel like crap afterwards, isn’t that just as bad as abstaining because of societal pressure to be a virgin or celibate? Aren’t you still merely making a decision from societal pressure and not genuine choice? Does this make you liberated?(Sidenote: God is not interested in you abstaining from sex until marriage for mere religiosity’s sake, He’s interested in you waiting from the deep and genuine believe that what He has for you and His vision of sex is more precious and beautiful than you can ever imagine and that this vision flourishes in the context of marriage. Prudish teachings that make us ashamed of sex and sexuality come more from religiosity than anything else. God is not afraid or ashamed of sex, He created it to be beautiful for a purpose, a context, and for His glory.)
If you’re having sex or hooking-up casually and feel good in the moment but end up feeling empty and hollow the following day because even though you’re told that you’re free, you still somehow can’t escape the weight of your conscience telling you that something is not right about casually offering your body to someone else but you ignore your conscience and chalk this feeling up to antiquated religious teachings instead of realizing that maybe God is trying to tell you something only to do it again and to come up feeling empty again, are you truly liberated?
If none of these may apply to you, that’s great, I am happy for you. This is for people who are ready and willing to be real with themselves in acknowledging that one of their main underlying desires in pursuing sex and relationships is the hope for fulfillment and the desire but yet you still feel like your coming up short, maybe it is also time to acknowledge the reality that so many of us are aware of the reality that we carry a God-sized void in our hearts that worldly pleasures, be it sex, relationships, money, status, or anything other than God, though they may feel good temporarily, are just inadequate to fulfill you. Again, if you don’t feel this way, then this isn’t for you. However, if you do feel this way and you’re tired of the thirst, if you’re ready to face this reality, maybe it’s time to let God fill this void in accepting Christ’s living waters that never run dry. And just like with the woman at the well, Jesus will not allow where you've been or what you've done to keep you from knowing Him and His healing waters and love. He took care of all of that on the cross.
I’ve heard it said that sin is an attempt to fulfill a legitimate desire through an illegitimate means. I believe that there is a lot of truth to that statement. I’ve really struggled with lust before and in my faith walk. I tried to not be consumed by my lust but it just seemed to have a hold of me. Based on everything that I learned growing up from what I read and the things confirmed in popular media, I came to believe that the height of intimacy was in romantic and sexual relations. My lust problems weren’t just because I was hormonal, they were fueled by the rejection and abandonment that I experienced from a young age and actually rooted in a deep longing for intimacy, love, and affection. In my faith walk, God has been showing me that not only is He a Father who loves and cares for me deeply, and always has since I was younger, but He was also showing Jesus to be my eternal bridegroom and the lover of my soul. As God was teaching me that the height of intimacy is not in sex, romance, or marriage, as I had for so longed believed, but rather it is in knowing and loving Him and receiving His love for me, I received a new found level of freedom from lust and freedom in Him. It felt like Jesus’ living waters were springing up, washing over me, making me new in Him, and drawing me in. It got to the point where I didn’t even want to lust over anyone because all I wanted was to soak in the presence and bask in the adoration of the God who loves and cares for me more deeply and intimately than I had ever imagined. My heart and soul felt so full.
When I find myself falling into sin patterns or taking up idols that God has already freed me from, I have to ask, what are my real motivations for my actions beyond my brokenness, where am I putting my hope and seeking to gain fulfillment? Then I repent, and I ask God for the grace to help turn my wandering heart back to Him to drink from His living waters that I may know true wholeness.
