Jesus
answered and said to her,"Everyone who drinks this water will be thirsty again;
but whoever drinks the water I shall give will never thirst;
the water I shall give will become in him
a spring of water welling up to eternal life."
The woman said to him,
"Sir, give me this water, so that I may not be thirsty
or have to keep coming here to draw water."
John 4:13-15
Here,
Jesus is declaring himself our Savior and Redeemer. But what does this mean? It is clearly of the utmost importance and
yet we tend to gloss over it and answer with platitudes. Is Jesus talking about heaven? Is he talking about some kind of moral self-improvement? Is he talking about a comfort offered by
faith? Are we redeemed from some sin
committed by an ancient ancestor? Are we saved from our bad behavior by belief,
correct conduct, or irrevocably by Jesus’s self-sacrifice? What are the obligations of faith? Is this all
so paradoxical and mysterious that we need not bother ourselves about it and
just be good people?
