Basic Doctrines


I have a friend who says, “Pennies are like people. They’re not worth much until you pick them up.” Jesus made a habit of picking up castaway pennies, and one of them was a woman at the well.

In John 4:10, Jesus said to the woman at the well, “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.” The real issue is physical water versus spiritual water. In verse 13 it says, “Jesus answered and said to her, ‘Whoever drinks of this water will thirst again, but whoever drinks the water that I shall give him will never thirst. The water that I gave him will become in him a fountain of water springing up to everlasting life.’”

When Jesus says, “will never thirst,” He uses the strongest possible negative in the Greek language. The only way we can carry it across into English is “absolutely never, ever.” Jesus is saying, “Whoever drinks the water that I give will absolutely never, ever thirst again.” It doesn’t mean that we’re not going to recognize needs, but what it means is this once you are born into the family of God, there is nothing that can take you out of it.

So important is this that you will find the seven “NEVERs” of the Gospel of John. John records the seven statements that say that once you have trusted in Christ, at that moment of time, in simple childlike faith, you receive the Gift that He alone can give. With the gift you get Him (which is the real gift,) and nothing is ever going to separate you from it. You have eternal life! And when you have eternal life, you not only have it as a present possession, you have it as a permanent possession.

The woman says in verse 25, “I know that the Messiah is coming who is called Christ. When He comes, He will tell us all things. And Jesus said to her, …” — now watch your English translation, because it doesn’t tell it as it is — “Jesus said to her, the One speaking I AM.” That’s very important because if you know anything about the I AM, you go back to Exodus 3:14, and the answer from the burning bush was “You tell them that I AM that I AM.” Jesus and I AM are one and the same. He is proclaiming 1) His deity, that he is God in the flesh and 2) He’s proclaiming what He can do.

Later, of course, to the knowledge that He knows all about her. You’ve had five husbands in the one you have now is not your husband. And again, He did not do that to shame. He did it to say, “I know you. I know all about you. I know every broken heart that you’ve ever had. I know every tear that you ever cried. And I know the reason that things have happened to you. The way they’ve happened. And I don’t hold you accountable. I simply want you to come to the point where you recognize that you have a choice to make.”



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