“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son,” says John 3:16. No, God so loved the Jews! Yes indeed, God so loved the Jews that he gave his one and only Son. But God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son that “whoever” believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. Wasn’t it the local tin-cup maker and knife-sharpener that said he praised God for the word “whoever”? He said something close to, “If God had said he so loved John I couldn’t have believed it was me. There are so many Johns.” He went on then to say something like, “Even had he said he so loved John Bunyan I would have thought it must be some other John Bunyan; it couldn’t be me, as evil as I am. But ‘whoever’ is wide enough, it lets me in.”

God so loved the world says John and illustrates what he means in John 4:1-42. Jesus is sitting by a well near a Samaritan town called Sychar. He is sitting by a well that is next to “the plot of ground Jacob gave to his son Joseph.” Joseph, the favoured son of Rachel, Jacob’s favourite wife! Joseph, the son of Jacob, back to whom the Samaritans traced their origin as part of the northern tribes. (Notice, “Jacob our father” in 4:12.)

And here in Samaritan territory sits God being a man, a weary and thirsty man. Here sits the Son of God having dealings with a promiscuous woman. Was she promiscuous? Jesus’ description of her probably indicates she was but she was no more socially promiscuous than her nation was religiously promiscuous. Didn’t Hosea teach us that the whole northern kingdom (Israel) had gone running after other gods—gods that were not her husband? And hadn’t God spoken of a day when Israel, the whoring wife, would be called “the virgin daughter” and didn’t he in Hosea promise that one day he would take her back as Hosea would take Gomer back? Fancy that, God having dealings with a nation (Israel in total) that ran from one “husband” to another and now, in this representative Samaritan he is dealing not only with a promiscuous woman but a promiscuous people (compare John 4:22).

But maybe it shouldn’t surprise us that he speaks so easily with her, for while he was born in Judea and was a self-confessed Jew (4:22), he grew up in Galilee, Nazareth no less, out of which nothing good could come (John 1:46). Galileans were given grudging approval by the south but it was grudging; and at least once hard-line southerners called Jesus a Samaritan (John 8:48). Already God was “slumming” and offers to this Samaritan woman and, through her, to the whole Samaritan nation, the faithfulness of God.

Jacob gave land and a well to the Samaritans (via the gift to Joseph–4:12) but here God gives his one and only Son who in himself is the well of the water of life (compare John 7:37-39). Jacob’s gift was fine and might have indicated his partiality for Joseph but God’s gift of Jesus Christ is beyond estimation and demonstrates his continued and universal love of the human family—promiscuous though it is.