LIVING WATER SPRINGING UP AND FLOWING OUT
[p. 278] LIVING WATER SPRINGING UP AND FLOWING OUT
John 4: 11 - 14; John 7: 37 - 39
JT I thought it might help us to have our attention called to the Spirit’s activities in the saints, as adjusting our souls so that we might know relief and satisfaction, culminating in everlasting life. That is what comes out in chapter 4. And then to see how He acts from the heavenly side, which brings in the influence of heaven here — that is chapter 7. These chapters taken together present two sides of the Spirit’s work at the present moment. We have to notice that what chapter 4 presents is the result of an administration committed to the Lord. “The Father loveth the Son, and hath given all things into his hand”. John 3: 35. Then chapter 7 is the result of Christ being glorified. He goes up to heaven and sends the Spirit, so that the coming in of the Spirit is in order that there should be the influence here of heaven; that is, the superiority of the heavenly is brought into evidence — it is to influence all, as indicated in the remarks of John the baptist in chapter 3.
Ques Do you connect chapter 7 more with the Person of the Holy Spirit in contrast to the Spirit in connection with “life” as in chapter 4?
JT It says, “this, he said, concerning the Spirit” John 7: 39. The Person is more in evidence in chapter 7, where you also get the Levitical idea. Chapter 4 is more in accord with Numbers — the type of the springing well.
Ques What do you mean by Levitical?
JT I mean the priestly tribe as in Joshua. The divine thought was that they were to be distributed throughout Israel. They had cities allotted to them in all the tribes, and so were distributed throughout the whole area, and in that way a heavenly influence typically, established amongst the people, and diffused through [p. 279] all.
Ques Do you connect that with chapter 7?
JT Yes; it is quite clear that before we touch the heavenly, our souls have to be adjusted as regards our previous connections in the world. The Lord’s proposal in chapter 4 meets that. I think it is founded on the end of chapter 3. There is an administration — not exactly as with the apostles, but between divine Persons, the Father committing things into the hands of the Son, and the Son gives “living water” to any one who asks of Him. The great gain of the living water is, that if one drinks of it, one never thirsts for ever. Chapter 4 is the final solution of the whole question of man’s need, in mind and affections. In a way it runs parallel with Romans, whereas chapter 7 is parallel more with Ephesians.
Ques Would you connect the gift of living water in chapter 4 with chapter 20 — “Receive [the] Holy Spirit”? John 20: 22.
JT Only there it is not so much for relief; it is no question of our need, but rather of supporting us in the new and dignified position which the Lord’s words had given the disciples.
Rem I was thinking about the standpoint from which it is viewed.
JT Eternal life is brought in in chapter 4. John 20 goes beyond that. It is the Spirit of the heavenly Man breathed into them so that they have His Spirit — a most intimate transaction. Being breathed into is very different to having water given to you. Chapter 20 is not so much the deliverance side, but rather to give you an income equal to your dignity.
PRM So you would connect John 4 with Romans 6: 18 — “having got your freedom from sin, and having become bondmen to God, ye have your fruit unto holiness, and the end eternal life”?
JT Chapter 4 shows how you get into Romans 6; it shows how the soul reaches it subjectively. It is as if one’s affections had been scattered hither and thither, with a view to gratification, just as with the poor woman [p. 280] here, but the Lord proposes to give her living water so that they may be gathered up and directed upward. The Spirit of God comes in and takes up all those affections, and the tendency is upwards instead of downwards. It springs up into something.
Ques One must first be satisfied in mind and affections, before one can know eternal life. Not thirsting for ever. Do you look at that as something true in us before we enter into eternal life?
JT I think morally one has to be satisfied.
Ques Eternal life is over Jordan, you would say?
JT I think that ought to be made very clear.
Rem This chapter is helpful because it shows John’s way of presenting “over Jordan”. Eternal life is in Christ, and Christ is over Jordan.
Rem “The act of favour of God, eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord” (Romans 6: 23). Chapter 5 through Jesus Christ, but chapter 6 is in Christ Jesus.
WJ Do you mean deliverance is the result of satisfaction?
JT I think so. The affections go out here irregularly, all with a view to gratification. In the instance of the woman they were grossly irregular, it is an extreme case; but nevertheless, we are all the same more or less. The Lord shows that His proposal will bring in satisfaction that will he permanent. The solution is final.
PRM I would like a little help as to what “over Jordan” means.
JT It means that you are outside human relationships — all that pertains to life in flesh. We are entitled to be there on account of our acceptance of the death of Christ.
Rem Paul develops our death and resurrection with Christ; that is, you touch “over Jordan”.
JT The great need is satisfaction. We do not see the compensation there is in the Spirit. It culminates in an order of things outside nature altogether. We are apt to live in nature, but the Spirit would lift us outside [p. 281] of nature. The proposal the Lord makes here is, to give us that by which we are lifted outside of nature, to find permanent satisfaction in another region, that of eternal life.
WJ Is “Come and see” in John 1: 39 connected with Colossians? “Come and see” involves that He will bring you over Jordan.
JT I think John presents Christ very much in the way that the sun is set in the physical universe. It is placed there to regulate things and to set things in movement. John is very astronomical. He introduces Christ as One who sets things in movement, divinely, in the way of impulse. You will find from the outset He gives impulse. If Jesus begins to move, others move, not by commandment, but by impulse; they move under His influence. He sets saints in movement. You get it set forth in John 1; the two disciples are first attracted to Christ, and directly the two disciples of John follow Him and find His abode, they are set in movement, and then in their turn they affect others — Andrew finds his brother Simon, and he too follows, and Philip finds Nathanael, and then others also are drawn after Christ.
WJ It is all a question of movement — to “come and see” the greatness of what was there.
JT And so in this chapter, we find the same effect in the woman. She is set in movement at once. She goes to the men, and says to them, “Come, see a man who told me all things I had ever done; is not he the Christ?” John 4: 29. It is the intrinsic value of the living water, that is manifested, to give permanent satisfaction; the affections are satisfied, and the mind is satisfied. Thus there is liberty and power to go over Jordan.
WJ We must leave earth to gain heaven.
PRM What I find souls want to know is, what is the present, practical gain of eternal life down here.
JT It is a very great thing to enter a region of satisfied desire, so that you do not have to cast about [p. 282] for satisfaction. And there is no fear of death in one who has touched eternal life.
Rem The result is a witness of life down here; that is God’s testimony that God has given us eternal life.
JT The defect lies in this, that we live in nature. The woman is a most extreme case; she was steeped in corruption. Jesus proposes that which will give deliverance from sin, and permanent satisfaction to the affections. Besides that, eternal life implies that one is released from the pressure of death — a very wonderful thing! Surely that is a great gain!
PRM What do you mean by living in nature?
JT In natural relationships. They are right in their place, but the law of new creation lifts me out of them, so that I am not obliged to live in them; death terminates them; and as having drunk of the living water I have power to enjoy eternal life.
Ques Are not natural relationships right?
JT A man, who is over Jordan, will be a better husband and father, than one who is not. You fulfil every right relation whilst really living outside them. And you are set free from the fear of death as to them. Whilst there is the fear of death, you are not enjoying eternal life. In the living water springing up into eternal life, the soul is delivered from all that would detain it, even natural ties.
FHB In the case of this woman, you spoke of her being set in movement, so that she might know what she had outside this world.
JT Yes. One great defect with us, as I said, is that we live in nature, and the more cattle you have, the more you are detained, as we see in the tribes that refused to go over Jordan.
Rem You cannot have eternal life without touching the righteous One.
JT What the Lord indicates in John 17 is that the believer should be brought into acquaintance with God, and into the knowledge of a Man before God for His [p. 283] satisfaction. The knowledge of the Father as the only true God, and of Jesus Christ whom He has sent is eternal life. Eternal life is the adjustment of everything on the earthly side. No one can pass in to the heavenly side without eternal life; but eternal life is not special to us. Others will have it, and though no doubt it has a special character now — we have it in a peculiar way — yet it is not our special blessing. There are things that are special to us, as the truth of the church and sonship in its heavenly character, which the Holy Spirit would lead us into; and in order to come into these special things, we must move into the region of life everlasting.
PRM “Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent” refers to His service John 17: 3.
JT Of course now it is Christ in heaven, having accomplished redemption, but it includes what Christ was as Man down here under the eye of God, in the power of the Spirit. It is not His eternal relation, but the Man — the Sent One. The knowledge of Him and of the true God is eternal life. Then there is subjective energy, and that is by the springing up of living water within; so that the soul is sustained in the position indicated, your affections fully satisfied; you are not afraid of death, and you are in all the blessed light of the revelation of God. A man free of death in his spirit is a great testimony. And a man who does not want things in this world as possessing something better, must be a testimony to it. What the Lord proposes to the woman is that He is going to set her up just where she was, in independency of all the gratification the flesh seeks, with something that is permanent within her — the energy of life. He gives her a new spring — a source of satisfaction.
GWW Are not Othniel and Achsah examples of natural relationships held rightly? Everything with them was held in its proper place; her interests are in the inheritance, and she makes demand for the upper and nether springs.
JT The “upper springs”, I think you have in John 7, but the “lower springs” are John 4. Eternal life is not only outside the world, but outside natural relationships.
GWW You regard natural relationships in the light of eternal life.
JT A man rules his own family, and maintains every right relationship and obligation, but his life is elsewhere. He is not afraid of death, though it lies on his family relationships — he is lifted above it, he has passed from death into life.
GWW In contrast to the two and a half tribes, he is like those in the land.
JT I think most of us are Gadites, Reubenites and Manassites — we live in natural things.
WJ We are most reluctant to leave earth.
JT The more “cattle” we have, the more difficult it is.
P R M But do you leave earth for eternal life?
JT You live outside it. The word here is “springing up”; that shows the direction the living water in chapter 4 takes.
PRM What does ‘leaving earth’ mean?
JT We are speaking of the earth as the sphere of natural things, which in themselves are legitimate; but it has also a bad sense as in James 3: 15. Eternal life is a spiritual realm or order of things outside of it, it is entered into through death, but in the power of the living water within the believers.
HD'AC Is it not that you are on the earth, but in a new condition — the relationships taken up on new lines — on resurrection lines?
JT Resurrection does not literally take us off the earth; it takes place on the earth. But the earth is also viewed as the sphere in which nature lives — I was using it in that sense. Eternal life is outside all this. It involves spiritual knowledge and power.
[p. 285] Ques Why is Christ not spoken of as “the eternal life” until after He is risen and in glory?
JT It could not be available for us until redemption was accomplished and the Spirit given. Of course He speaks of Himself as “the Life” before His death.
PRM It is down here that eternal life is known and enjoyed?
JT Yes, in a sense, but as over Jordan. We must not, however, confuse it with heavenly privilege. These chapters refer to christianity. We cannot separate resurrection from the heavenly position so formally as we shall be able to do in the millennial world. God is not developing any earthly order of things now, but a heavenly; so that although we share in what those in the millennium will enjoy on the earth, the things as applying now have a distinctive character and cannot be separated from our heavenly portion.
PRM Is not eternal life heavenly life?
JT We are on the road to heaven.
PRM It is here that it is known and enjoyed.
Ques What was in your mind in connection with eternal life referring to the Lord’s life here? Do you speak of the knowledge of Jesus Christ as “sent” as referring to his path upon earth?
JT I referred to the knowledge of the Man — the true Man, as we may say.
Ques When you speak of the knowledge of the “true Man”, have you in your mind the Person of Christ in resurrection?
JT I do not detach what He was down here from what He is up there.
Ques You would distinguish between Psalm 16 and the thought of eternal life?
JT The Lord had His wilderness position, but then all that He is up there was in principle seen in Him down here. It is to “know thee the only true God and Jesus Christ” John 17: 3 — The Man. The knowledge of Jesus Christ implies all that He was down here.
[p. 286] Rem It is God, who has taken the name of “Father”, and Jesus Christ, speaking of the Lord as a Man.
JT “This is life eternal, that they might know thee, etc” John 17: 3. How am I to know that blessed Man unless I study the gospels, which tell us what He was down here? But what He is now in heaven, as known by the Spirit sheds light on what the gospels present.
Rem Every divine thought is seen in Jesus Christ. Take, for instance, Psalm 16, where you get the thought of the perfect dependent Man — you would not connect eternal life with that — every responsibility fulfilled.
JT But then the knowledge of Jesus Christ implies all these things. One has to acquire the knowledge of Jesus Christ — what a Man He was, especially as solving the question of responsibility and life. How can we know Him save as we study His path of dependence? We must keep to the terms of the Spirit — “Jesus Christ whom thou hast sent”; that is a Man here carrying out God’s will, and thus He resolved the question as to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and the tree of life. It is not family relationships — it is a question of God and Man brought together. Family relationships lead to heaven.
Ques Do you think that is John 17:1? He lifts up His eyes to heaven. Sonship is unfolded by Paul.
JT Yes. In John 17: 1 - 5, His personal glory is in view. It is divine Persons there: verse 5 refers to something beyond us — “the glory which I had along with thee before the world was”. Verse 1, is the Father and the Son, in connection with what they were carrying out according to purpose.
Rem That is very clear, for it goes on to say, “As thou hast given him power over all flesh” John 17: 2.
JT Yes; and then “This is life eternal that they might know thee” John 17: 3 — He explains that wherein it lies — eternal life is the knowledge of the true God — delivering from idolatry — and the knowledge of the true Man — delivering from lawlessness.
HD'AC Who is the “Thee”?
JT That is the Father, “the only true God”; for eternal life we have to know the Father as the ‘true God’.
PRM It is a question of revelation — not of our relationship with him.
JT The Father is the only true God. We have to know that eternal life is the knowledge of the true God.
HD'AC Not only God as Almighty, or Jehovah, but God fully revealed as Father.
JT The point is that you have in your soul the true God. The Lord says, “the true God”. For eternal life you must have God and man brought together. Man lost God, and had become idolatrous; and the point is to bring in the true God. The idea of “eternal life” is there. God and man must be brought together in righteousness before you can have eternal life. “The only true God” involves more than “the Father”. With the latter we cannot connect judgment (John 5: 22), but we can with the true God.
PRM I think what meets the difficulty as to the Father is this — eternal life can only be in the knowledge of God in full revelation. It is not there our relation with the Father — it is His.
JT In endeavouring to emphasise the thought of “the Father”, you are apt to weaken that of “the true God”. Here it is the Son addressing the Father whom the Son knew. It is one divine Person speaking to Another as revealed, that is, according to the relations They had taken, What is prominent here is “the only true God”. It is not, to know Thee the Father. He is addressing His Father, but it is not the Father in relationship as regards us.
HD'AC It is very important to have the knowledge of Christ as the true Man of God’s pleasure.
JT Yes; a Man who did everything for God’s pleasure. There is the utter overthrow of idolatry in the knowledge of the only true God, and of lawlessness, in the appreciation of Christ as the Man who loved [p. 288] righteousness and hated lawlessness, so that you have God and Man brought together in relationships which are perfectly adjusted. You see it first in regard to God and Christ, but redemption being accomplished, it is perpetuated and maintained in men here in the power of the Holy Spirit.
PRM What about 1 John 1: 2 — “We ... shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father”?
JT That is what was seen by the apostles. The true Man involves eternal life characteristically down here, manifested to the apostles. They all declare it and speak about it. Christ was it.
PRM And you would say it included the forty days during which He remained on earth?
JT No doubt. It is what He was as Man with the Father. The apostles were witnesses of that, since they “handled” Him. In 1 John 1 it is “from the beginning”, not in the beginning. It is the beginning of christianity including the incarnation. It does not refer to Christ as in pre-incarnate Deity.
PRM If you were asked to point out in the pathway of the Lord Jesus that which spoke of eternal life, what would you say?
JT Wherever we find Him in direct relation with God. The eternal life was seen in what He was in power outside of and superior to all here, including death, as with the Father.
PRM “I praise thee, Father, Lord of the heaven and of the earth”, Matthew 11: 25?
Rem “As the living Father has sent me, and I live on account of the Father”. John 6: 57.
JT As a Man, all His springs were there. There was the bringing together of God and man in Christ down here — that is to be received as light in the soul and is to be sustained. He gives the gift of living water, so that the Spirit springs up in the believer, withdrawing him from every natural or worldly influence, freeing him so that he is practically out of death and in life.
[p. 289] GWW As to the forty days, what was there for God as distinct from what His life was among men?
JT Morally there was no difference as to Christ; but He had laid down His life in flesh and blood which properly is not the condition for eternal life. Eternal life in its true spiritual bearing is seen in these forty days — an out-of-the-world heavenly condition — outside the need of material things. It is true that men, even nations, will enter into eternal life in the millennium, but believers have it now in a fuller way.
Ques Do you make a distinction between “life” and “eternal life”?
JT The terms are often equivalent, especially in John’s epistle, but in Romans 8: 10 “the Spirit is life”, implies potentiality. Christ had His own blessed relation with the Father outside of everything. “That eternal life, which was with the Father”. 1 John 1: 2.
DLH Your thought in regard to eternal life is that God, as such, had that thought in regard to man, as such, from the outset? I refer to the two ideas in the garden of Eden — the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and the tree of life. The idea of relationship — the Father, and we standing as children, or in sonship, comes in as additional in relation to God’s counsels.
JT It was God’s thought for man. The thought of God for man was set forth in the tree of life in the midst of the garden.
PRM That, too, is purpose?
JT Not quite; it is promise — “the promise of life which is in Christ Jesus” 2 Timothy 1: 1. I think it had in view a need; whereas purpose is for the satisfaction of the heart of God Himself, apart from any question of need on our part. When you come to heavenly relationships, they are hardly to meet a need in us; they are not promise, they are entirely a matter of counsel. You and I would have been satisfied with eternal life. The heavenly calling is what you might call excess — We were “marked ...
[p. 290] out beforehand for adoption through Jesus Christ to himself, according to the good pleasure of his will, to the praise of the glory of his grace, wherein he has taken us into favour in the Beloved” (Ephesians 1: 5, 6).
DLH In Ephesians we get the two thoughts in connection with the two prayers. He is spoken of first as the God of our Lord Jesus Christ, and then as the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which brings in the thought of family relationship.
PW The expression as used in John 17: 3 “the only true God, and Jesus Christ” leaves room for those who shall come after us.
DLH So the bringing in of eternal life verifies God’s original thought in the tree of life in the midst of the garden?
JT Yes. In the millennium the men who live will be in correspondence with the Man of God’s pleasure — Jesus Christ; they will be freed from idolatry and lawlessness — God’s law in their hearts and minds, and the pressure of death removed.
DLH The introduction of heavenly relationships into John 17: 3, is really to obscure the thought of eternal life.
JT Yes. To arrive at any divine idea, you have to see it by itself in relation to Christ. In Scripture the Spirit is connected with the side of family relationships as well as with covenant relationships. You have in Romans what may be called covenant conditions — the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Spirit; but then you get a further thought in Galatians, where the Spirit is the Spirit of sonship. We stand in certain relations, and there are affections which go with them, and we need the Spirit whatever the relation may be. I do not know anything less understood than the action of the Spirit as bringing us to recognise family relationships, and the affections connected with them. They are outside covenant conditions and those of [p. 291] eternal life.
DLH Distinguishing them and putting them in their right relations is most important.
JT Chapter 7 suggests the heavenly side of things, the Spirit coming down from heaven — from Jesus glorified. The result is that you have a great heavenly power and influence down here — “rivers of living water” John 7: 38.
WJ Mr. Stoney used to say that instead of the earth contributing or ministering to you, you now contribute to the earth.
JT Chapter 7 supposes an Ephesian saint; there is excess — flowing out. You really do not come to the divine thought of giving until you take heavenly ground; the forty-eight Levitical cities to my mind suggest the bountifulness of heaven distributed over all the land. God would follow up His people with a heavenly influence; even though the two and a half tribes chose to remain on the further side of Jordan — God would follow them up with a heavenly influence, He gives the Levites to dwell in certain cities among them.
DLH Referring to the two and a half tribes, have you any thought why one tribe was split in two?
JT That question has been in my own mind. I think it shows one thing at any rate: that the half tribe which went over Jordan, set forth special spiritual energy, for they cut themselves away from the rest of the tribe; they broke away from their own brethren, who had settled on the further side of Jordan. To them belonged the daughters of Zelophehad, who are mentioned by the Spirit as demanding their inheritance among their brethren, the sons of their father — that is where they wanted it. They were marked by special spiritual energy.
DLH There must thus have been peculiar energy in the half tribe that went over.
GWW Do you think there was anything in the fact, that the Levites were all first-born ones, being taken instead of the first-born of Israel? As showing the [p. 292] sovereignty of God, two of those who remained on the wilderness side of Jordan were set aside. Reuben was Jacob’s first-born, but he was set aside, and then the same is true of Manasseh, Joseph’s first-born.
JT Where nature is active the elder brother is owned — but God set aside the first-born after the flesh. The flesh puts in its claim, but God sets it aside. It is significant in this sense that Reuben and Manasseh failed to value the inheritance.
It is striking that Job’s eldest son is mentioned as having a place. Twice over in the first chapter he is specially mentioned. His brothers and sisters were feasting “in the house of their brother, the firstborn” Job 1: 18 when the great wind blew and smote them all. The first-born in nature is always put forward by the flesh which acts contrary to the mind of God. So you find that with people who live on the other side of Jordan there is natural precedence and superiority, instead of the law of new creation. The laws of nature regulate us. The law of new creation makes the last first; “He who is the least among you all, he is great” Luke 9: 48.
PRM That is confirmed in Galatians, which almost seems to refer to the blessing of Jacob, who guided his hands wittingly in relation to Manasseh and Ephraim: “As many as ... walk by this rule” — that is, of new creation — “peace upon them and mercy, and upon the Israel of God” (Galatians 6: 16).
JT The energy of faith that breaks loose from nature, as seen in the half tribe of Manasseh, is worthy of special note.
DLH Though in Corinthians the apostle Paul says, “Does not even nature ... teach you” 1 Corinthians 11: 14.
PRM Nature teaches you but does not lead you.
JT Nature must have its place, and we may learn from it; but it must not govern us. When it comes to what is law to you, that must be “new creation”.