By J.G. Bellet
John 4
We are all attracted by the journey which the Prodigal takes from the distant land of his degradation and misery, home to his father's house, in Luke 15. It is a touching picture of the return which a sinner makes under the quickening and conduct of the Spirit, back to God, and then finding in Him a forgiving Father.
There is, however, another and a different journey described in Scripture, the co-relative, as I may call it, of the Prodigal's. I mean the journey of the Father out to the distant land after His prodigal. We read it in John 4.
Jesus who came from the Father in heaven, and represented the Father in this world of sinners, is there seen as making this journey. He goes into defiled Samaria, a figure of this polluted world; for Samaria was as a leper, separated from the place of righteousness, and treated as a thing outside the camp. But there, into that reprobate land, that native land of prodigals, the Lord goes. And He finds a sinner there, one who was still as with the swine in the fields of a stranger, feeding upon husks, unsatisfied.
The journey costs Him sore. He is weary, hungry, thirsty: and in the heat of the day seats Himself where this Prodigal was soon to join Him. And there, in the presence of her need, He at once forgets His own, setting Himself to minister to her, in the patience that love will suffer, and with the skilfulness that love suggests.
He seeks her confidence in the most effectual, gracious manner. He asks her for a cup of cold water, the smallest of all favours known among the children of men. He would make her feel at ease in His presence; and she does so. But attracted by something that more interested her than the thirst of a stranger, i.e., the novelty of the whole circumstance, He at once follows where she, under that attraction, was leading Him.
It is, however, after a Prodigal He has gone, and He can receive her and bless her in no other character. It was the ruined state of lost, revolted sinners He had come from heaven to relieve, and such only He can now have to do with, on the other side of the borders between Judea, the place of the sanctuary, and unclean Samaria.
But this woman of that unclean place, this Prodigal in the distant land, does not as yet know herself. He therefore sets Himself to teach her, to awaken her to her condition. And with what grace He does this. He would do all to spare her feelings, but He cannot spare her sin.
Surely we may say, if the journey which the Prodigal took towards home, in Luke 15, was beautiful, as being in due consistency with his condition as a convicted sinner, beautiful is this journey which the Father takes after the Prodigal in the considerate grace and patient love which give it character from first to last. Blessed is it to see in one of, these journeys, the fruit of the hidden, effectual work of the Spirit in the soul of a sinner, putting him on the road back to God in the only character in which God could receive him--and blessed it is to see in the other of these journeys, that grace which acts as from itself and in sovereignty, seeking and saving that which was lost, in the exercise of the most patient, skilful love, that was tender as far as faithfulness admitted.
And here let me add, for it is happy and edifying to be able to do so, that these two journeys, the one of the seeking Saviour, the other of the returning sinner, end in the same place, though they were taken as from opposite points, one to, the other from, the distant land. Both end in the joy of the Father's house--with, however, this distinguishing excellence in John 4 over Luke 15, that it is rather the joy of the household that is seen in Luke 15, but the joy of the Father (of the Lord Jesus, the witness of the Father in this world of sinners, as we noticed before, and as He Himself tells us) that is seen in John 4. "I have meat to eat which ye know not of," are words which bespeak the joy of the Divine bosom over one that was dead but alive again, that was lost but now found; and which, as the Lord Himself intimates, lay quite beyond the measure of either disciples here, or angels in heaven.
