"Jesus answered her: All who drink of this water will be thirsty again.
But whosever takes a drink of the water that I will give them shall never,
no never, be thirsty any more. But the water that I will give them shall
become a spring of water welling up, flowing, bubbling continually,
within them unto eternal life."
(John 4:13-14)
Let us think of the Holy Spirit and the inner life of the believer.
There is an inner life; an inner life so deep, so truly inner, that no one
knows it but God and ourselves. It is a life of which, in its deeper depths,
we never speak to our dearest friends.
There are defeats there, there are victories there-heart surgings, heartaches,
that we cannot put into words-we can only go with them before God and the Spirit,
who helpeth our infirmities, can make intercession for us
with groanings which cannot be uttered.
Now, we are to think of the Holy Spirit as indwelling the believer:
The Upspringing Foundation Within
What a wonderful symbol it is! How apart from all other instructions,
it speaks of the constant renewal of the spiritual life. You know the contrast
was with Jacob's Well, which was very deep, and out of which water
must be laboriously drawn..
When our Lord spoke to the woman about this living water, this water
which was not down in the bottom of the well, but was upspringing,
she asked a question: "Whence hast thou this water? Thou hast
nothing to draw with and the well is deep."
What a contrast, what a picture of the average Christian life!
Somehow, if we are Christians at all, we get on; we manage to get
through the day after a fashion, but it is just like that poor woman,
laboriously drawing water out of Jacob's Well.
We draw it up just a little at a time, and some of us with a sense that we
have nothing to draw with, and there is a constant effort to be spiritual;
and over against that our Lord puts the picture of a fountain, that
springs up of its own lovely energy, and throws its crystal flood into the
clear air and dances and sparkles there in the sunlight, and then flows
away to be kissed by the sun back again into the azure blue.
Now the Christian life, the true spiritual life in Christ's conception of it,
is a life which has within it the source and renewal of its freshness
and vigor and power. An upspringing foundation constantly fed
from a higher source, coming down that it may ascend again.
Here is a little springlet in the valley half afraid that it may dry up;
and the spring up on the mountain says: "No, you shall not dry up,
for I am renewing your abundance all the time."
What a contrast with the average life!
Here is the plentitude of divine power, the omnipotent Spirit of God,
Who has not only taken up His abode in us, but wishes to be in the
believer a living vital force, constantly renewed,
Himself, the unwasting Source.
Now, is our Christian life like that, or do we have to painfully draw
it with a creaking windlass out of Jacob's Well till our backs ache?
Which is it? There is a contrast.
From the chapter, "The Spirit-Controlled Life"
"The New Life In Christ Jesus"
Cyrus Ingerson "C.I." Scofield
(1843-1941)
American theologian, minister, and writer
Editor of the Scofield Study Bible.
"The New Life In Christ" was compiled from the
sermons Dr. Scofield preached to his congregations
in Dallas, Texas and Northfield, Massachusetts, and
with the exception of "The Imparted Life" all were
first published in the "Dallas News".
This edition was published in association with
Oliver B. Green
(1915-1976)
American Independent Fundamentalist
Baptist Evangelical Minister and
Founder of The Gospel Hour Inc.
Greenville, South Carolina
Published in the USA.
"This book is here and now committed to the care of Him whom
it seeks to exalt in the fervent prayer that through His grace it may
show the way into happy, victorious, fruitful Christian living
to many in bondage."-C.I. Scofield
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