Living Water

Jesus’s first miracle in John happens at a village wedding. The wine runs out, an embarrassment for the family, and Mary brings the problem to her Son. In the King James text His reply sounds abrupt, but the Joseph Smith Translation renders it as a willing question: “what wilt thou have me to do for thee?” Mary’s instruction to the servants is one of the best pieces of advice in scripture: “Whatsoever he saith unto you, do it” (2:5). The six stone waterpots, each holding two or three firkins (roughly twenty gallons or more), were used for ritual washing. Jesus fills vessels of the old law with something new and better, and the ruler of the feast says, “thou hast kept the good wine until now” (2:10). John calls it the beginning of His miracles, and His disciples believed.

🔗 Cross-references

• Mark 2:22 ↗Jesus’s own image of new wine that needs new bottles.
• Luke 1:38 ↗Mary’s answer to Gabriel shows the same trusting obedience she urged on the servants.

At Passover, Jesus finds the temple courts full of cattle, sheep, doves and money changers. He makes a whip of small cords, drives them out and overturns the tables: “make not my Father’s house an house of merchandise” (2:16). His disciples remember Psalm 69:9: “The zeal of thine house hath eaten me up.” When the leaders demand a sign, He says, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up” (2:19). They think of the building, which had been under construction for forty-six years; John explains that “he spake of the temple of his body” (2:21), and that the disciples understood only after the Resurrection. Some of the Savior’s words take years, and experience, to open up.

🔗 Cross-references

• Psalm 69:9 ↗The psalm the disciples remembered as they watched Jesus cleanse the temple.
• Malachi 3:1 ↗The prophecy that the Lord “shall suddenly come to his temple.”
• 1 Corinthians 3:16–17 ↗Paul teaches that we ourselves are temples of God, and the Spirit dwells in us.

Nicodemus is a Pharisee and “a ruler of the Jews,” and he comes by night (3:1–2). He sincerely believes Jesus is “a teacher come from God.” Jesus tells him he must be born again, of water and of the Spirit (3:3, 5), and compares that birth to the wind: you hear it but can’t trace where it comes from or where it goes (3:8). Nicodemus asks, “How can these things be?” (3:9). The restored scriptures help: we are born again of water, of the Spirit and cleansed by the blood of Christ (Moses 6:59–60), and a mighty change of heart makes us His sons and daughters (Mosiah 5:2, 7). The conversation ends with the most quoted verse in the Bible: “For God so loved the world…” (3:16). Being born again is His loving work in us, not only ours.

🔗 Cross-references

• Moses 6:59–60 ↗The Lord teaches Adam that all must be born again of water, of the Spirit and cleansed by blood.
• Mosiah 5:2, 7 ↗King Benjamin’s people feel a mighty change of heart and become the children of Christ.
• John 19:39 ↗Nicodemus appears again after the Crucifixion, bringing spices to honor the Savior’s body.

John the Baptist’s disciples are worried. The crowds are leaving John and going to Jesus. John’s answer is one of the most generous sentences in scripture. He calls himself “the friend of the bridegroom,” the one who stands nearby and rejoices to hear the bridegroom’s voice: “this my joy therefore is fulfilled. He must increase, but I must decrease” (3:29–30). There is no jealousy in it, only joy. John had built a following, and he gladly let it go so people would follow the Savior. The chapter closes with a witness that the Father has given all things into the Son’s hand, and that believing on Him brings everlasting life (3:35–36).

🔗 Cross-references

• John 1:29 ↗John points his own disciples to Jesus: “Behold the Lamb of God.”
• Philippians 2:3–4 ↗Paul’s counsel to esteem others better than ourselves and look on their things as well as our own.

Traveling to Galilee, Jesus “must needs go through Samaria” (4:4), a region many Jews avoided. Samaritans were descended in part from peoples the Assyrians resettled in the north (2 Kings 17:24), and the two groups had no dealings with each other. Tired, He sits at Jacob’s well at about noon and asks a Samaritan woman for a drink. Then He turns the conversation: “If thou knewest the gift of God… he would have given thee living water” (4:10). Centuries earlier the Lord had called Himself “the fountain of living waters,” mourning that His people had dug “broken cisterns, that can hold no water” (Jeremiah 2:13). Jesus knows her whole story, speaks of it without contempt, teaches her to worship “in spirit and in truth,” and tells her plainly: “I that speak unto thee am he” (4:26).

🔗 Cross-references

• Jeremiah 2:13 ↗The Lord as the fountain of living waters, and the broken cisterns we dig in His place.
• 1 Nephi 11:25 ↗Nephi learns that the fountain of living waters represents the love of God.
• Isaiah 12:3 ↗“With joy shall ye draw water out of the wells of salvation.”

The woman leaves her waterpot and hurries into town: “Come, see a man, which told me all things that ever I did: is not this the Christ?” (4:29). Meanwhile the disciples urge Jesus to eat, and He answers, “My meat is to do the will of him that sent me” (4:34). He tells them to lift up their eyes, because the fields are “white already to harvest” (4:35), even as the townspeople are streaming out to meet Him. Many believe because of her testimony, and more because of His own words, until they say, “this is indeed the Christ, the Saviour of the world” (4:42). Back in Cana, a nobleman begs Jesus to heal his dying son. Jesus says, “Go thy way; thy son liveth,” and the father “believed the word” and walked home before he knew the outcome (4:50).

🔗 Cross-references

• Doctrine and Covenants 4:4 ↗The Lord repeats to latter-day servants that the field is white already to harvest.
• Doctrine and Covenants 18:15–16 ↗The joy of bringing even one soul to the Lord.

Today is fast Sunday, and this week’s key passage fits it well. When we fast, we feel physical hunger and thirst on purpose, and that can teach us to feel our spiritual thirst too. Jesus sat by a well, tired and thirsty, and offered a woman water that would become a spring inside her. Later, at a feast in Jerusalem, He stood and cried, “If any man thirst, let him come unto me, and drink” (John 7:37). When you take the sacrament water today, remember the well: the One who offers living water knows your whole story, and He is still offering. End your fast with a prayer that brings Him the thirst you’ve noticed this week.

🔗 Cross-references

• John 7:37–38 ↗At a feast in Jerusalem, Jesus invites anyone who thirsts to come to Him and drink.
• Isaiah 58:6–11 ↗The fast the Lord has chosen, with its promise that you shall be “like a watered garden.”