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Scripture • World English Bible
John 4:16–26
16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
17The woman answered, “I have no husband.”
18for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
19The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
20Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews.
23But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshipers.
24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he has come, he will declare to us all things.”
26Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who speaks to you.”
World English Bible (WEB) • Public Domain
Reflection
At Jacob’s well Jesus meets a woman whose life has been messy, public, and lonely. He cuts through the small talk, names the reality of her relationships, and then shifts the conversation from her past to the heart of worship. She raises the long-standing debate about sacred places — the mountain where her people worship and Jerusalem where the Jews worship — and Jesus redirects her to something deeper: worship is not primarily about geography or ritual; it is about persons and posture. He promises an hour when true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for God is spirit.
There are two short phrases in Jesus’ teaching that frame what authentic worship looks like: worship in spirit and worship in truth. To worship in spirit means our worship must engage the real, unseen life given by God. God is not a tangible object to be manipulated by location, a formula, or outward show. He is spirit, so he relates to us where we are most truly alive — in the soul, the will, the affections. This calls us to sincerity, to honest prayer, to vulnerability before God, and to dependence on the Holy Spirit to open our hearts and empower our devotion.
Worship in truth means worship grounded in reality — namely, the reality of who God is and who Jesus is. Truth resists sentimentality and superstition; it corrects and guides our feelings. The Samaritan woman expects a debate about place. Jesus answers with identity: the Messiah is present. Truth is not merely accurate doctrine for the head; it shapes the heart. When we worship in truth, Scripture informs our singing, our prayers, our confession, and the way we see ourselves. Truth and Spirit work together: the Spirit makes truth come alive; truth gives the Spirit something faithful to illuminate.
Jesus also says the Father seeks such worshipers. Worship is not a one-sided effort to impress God; it is initiative met with divine longing. God, who is spirit, seeks people who will relate to him genuinely and rightly. That is good news for anyone who has felt unqualified or tied to religious forms. If God seeks true worshipers, then our failures are not final; the Father pursues and restores.
Practically, this encounter invites us to examine where we place our confidence: in buildings, in liturgies, in emotional experiences, or in the person of God revealed in Christ. It calls us to foster inward worship — a life shaped by the Spirit and the Word — so that our corporate gatherings, private devotions, and everyday choices all flow from a heart that knows and loves God.
Jesus’ revelation as the Messiah at the end of the exchange reminds us that true worship is rooted in relationship with him. He is the one who makes worship possible. We do not manufacture the Spirit or invent truth; we receive them from the Father through the Son. The woman comes to faith not by arguing about places but by encountering the living God who knows and saves her.
Let this passage encourage you: worship is not a performance but a relationship. If you long to worship more truly, invite the Spirit to search your heart, return to the truth of Christ’s person and work, and let your life — speech, service, choices — be an offering that flows from genuine encounter with the living God.
Putting Faith Into Action
- Practice inward worship: set aside 10–20 minutes this week for silent prayer where you offer honest confession and then listen, asking the Spirit to speak and to cultivate a sincere affection for the Father.
- Ground corporate praise in truth: before your next worship gathering, choose one Bible truth about Jesus (for example, his saving presence) and let that truth shape your songs, prayers, and meditations.
- Make everyday actions worship: pick one regular habit (work, parenting, a commute) and do it this week with intentionality as an act of worship, seeking to honor God in how you speak and serve others.
Prayer
Father, thank you that you seek worshipers who come to you in spirit and in truth. Search my heart, deepen my dependence on your Spirit, and anchor my devotion in the truth of Jesus. Help me to worship you honestly, humbly, and faithfully — in private and in community. Amen.
Memory Verse
John 4:16 — Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.” (WEB)
“Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.””
Bible Context
Read all of John 4
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Bible Context
Read all of John 4
John 4
World English Bible • WEB
1Therefore when the Lord knew that the Pharisees had heard that Jesus was making and baptizing more disciples than John
2(although Jesus himself didn’t baptize, but his disciples),
3he left Judea and departed into Galilee.
4He needed to pass through Samaria.
5So he came to a city of Samaria called Sychar, near the parcel of ground that Jacob gave to his son Joseph.
6Jacob’s well was there. Jesus therefore, being tired from his journey, sat down by the well. It was about the sixth hour.
7A woman of Samaria came to draw water. Jesus said to her, “Give me a drink.”
8For his disciples had gone away into the city to buy food.
9The Samaritan woman therefore said to him, “How is it that you, being a Jew, ask for a drink from me, a Samaritan woman?” (For Jews have no dealings with Samaritans.)
10Jesus answered her, “If you knew the gift of God, and who it is who says to you, ‘Give me a drink,’ you would have asked him, and he would have given you living water.”
11The woman said to him, “Sir, you have nothing to draw with, and the well is deep. So where do you get that living water?
12Are you greater than our father Jacob, who gave us the well and drank from it himself, as did his children and his livestock?”
13Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again,
14but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never thirst again; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.”
15The woman said to him, “Sir, give me this water, so that I don’t get thirsty, neither come all the way here to draw.”
16Jesus said to her, “Go, call your husband, and come here.”
17The woman answered, “I have no husband.”
18for you have had five husbands; and he whom you now have is not your husband. This you have said truly.”
19The woman said to him, “Sir, I perceive that you are a prophet.
20Our fathers worshiped in this mountain, and you Jews say that in Jerusalem is the place where people ought to worship.”
21Jesus said to her, “Woman, believe me, the hour is coming when neither in this mountain nor in Jerusalem will you worship the Father.
22You worship that which you don’t know. We worship that which we know; for salvation is from the Jews.
23But the hour comes, and now is, when the true worshipers will worship the Father in spirit and truth, for the Father seeks such to be his worshipers.
24God is spirit, and those who worship him must worship in spirit and truth.”
25The woman said to him, “I know that Messiah is coming, he who is called Christ. When he has come, he will declare to us all things.”
26Jesus said to her, “I am he, the one who speaks to you.”
27Just then, his disciples came. They marveled that he was speaking with a woman; yet no one said, “What are you looking for?” or, “Why do you speak with her?”
28So the woman left her water pot, went away into the city, and said to the people,
29“Come, see a man who told me everything that I have done. Can this be the Christ?”
30They went out of the city, and were coming to him.
31In the meanwhile, the disciples urged him, saying, “Rabbi, eat.”
32But he said to them, “I have food to eat that you don’t know about.”
33The disciples therefore said to one another, “Has anyone brought him something to eat?”
34Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of him who sent me and to accomplish his work.
35Don’t you say, ‘There are yet four months until the harvest’? Behold, I tell you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, that they are white for harvest already.
36He who reaps receives wages and gathers fruit to eternal life, that both he who sows and he who reaps may rejoice together.
37For in this the saying is true, ‘One sows, and another reaps.’
38I sent you to reap that for which you haven’t labored. Others have labored, and you have entered into their labor.”
39From that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified, “He told me everything that I have done.”
40So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed there two days.
41Many more believed because of his word.
42They said to the woman, “Now we believe, not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world.”
43After the two days he went out from there and went into Galilee.
44For Jesus himself testified that a prophet has no honor in his own country.
45So when he came into Galilee, the Galileans received him, having seen all the things that he did in Jerusalem at the feast, for they also went to the feast.
46Jesus came therefore again to Cana of Galilee, where he made the water into wine. There was a certain nobleman whose son was sick at Capernaum.
47When he heard that Jesus had come out of Judea into Galilee, he went to him and begged him that he would come down and heal his son, for he was at the point of death.
48Jesus therefore said to him, “Unless you people see signs and wonders, you will in no way believe.”
49The nobleman said to him, “Sir, come down before my child dies.”
50Jesus said to him, “Go your way. Your son lives.” The man believed the word that Jesus spoke to him, and he went his way.
51As he was going down, his servants met him and reported, saying “Your child lives!”
52So he inquired of them the hour when he began to get better. They said therefore to him, “Yesterday at the seventh hour, the fever left him.”
53So the father knew that it was at that hour in which Jesus said to him, “Your son lives.” He believed, as did his whole house.
54This is again the second sign that Jesus did, having come out of Judea into Galilee.
World English Bible (WEB) • Public Domain
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