Rivers of Living Water (John 7:38-39)

Question 4135

The promise of rivers of living water comes from John 7:38-39, where the Lord Jesus, standing in the temple on the last day of the Feast of Tabernacles, cried out, If anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water. John then adds his own inspired explanation, Now this he said about the Spirit, whom those who believed in him were to receive, for as yet the Spirit had not been given, because Jesus was not yet glorified. So the living water is the Holy Spirit, and the promise is that the believer who comes to Christ and drinks will become a channel through whom the Spirit life flows out to others.

There is a lovely progression in the image of rivers of living water. The Lord first speaks of coming and drinking, which is the believer receiving the Spirit for himself, and then of rivers flowing out, which is the same Spirit overflowing through the believer to the world around him. What begins as a personal thirst quenched becomes a stream of blessing to others.

The setting of the rivers of living water

The Feast of Tabernacles was one of the great festivals of Israel, and by the time of Jesus it included a daily ceremony in which a priest drew water from the pool of Siloam in a golden pitcher and poured it out at the altar, while the people remembered the water God had given from the rock in the wilderness and looked forward to the promised outpouring of his blessing. It was against this backdrop, very likely at the climax of that water ceremony, that Jesus stood and cried out his invitation. The symbolism could hardly have been more striking. The water poured at the altar pointed forward, and Jesus declares that he is the one who gives the true living water for which the ceremony longed. The Spirit he promises is the fulfilment of all that the feast foreshadowed.

John tells us pointedly that the Spirit had not yet been given because Jesus was not yet glorified. The full gift of the Spirit in the way the New Testament knows him awaited the death, resurrection and ascension of the Lord Jesus, and was poured out at Pentecost once he had taken his place at the right hand of the Father. The connection between the glorifying of Jesus and the giving of the Spirit is taken up in our answer on what happened at Pentecost.

Living water that overflows

Earlier in the same Gospel the Lord had spoken to a woman at a well of water that he would give, water that would become in her a spring welling up to eternal life (John 4:14). There the picture is of an inward spring that satisfies the believer own thirst. Here in chapter 7 the picture moves outward, from a spring within to rivers flowing out, from the believer being satisfied to the believer becoming a source of blessing to others. The two belong together. The Spirit first meets the deep thirst of the soul that no earthly thing can satisfy, and then, in the one who has drunk deeply, becomes a stream that carries life to those around.

This tells us something about the normal Christian life. The believer is not meant to be a stagnant pool, hoarding the blessing he has received, but a channel through which the Spirit flows to others. The overflow may take many forms, a word spoken in season, a life of evident grace, a love that draws the thirsty to the source, but the principle is the same. What we receive of the Spirit is not for ourselves alone. The believer who is being filled, as we describe in our answer on being filled with the Spirit, will find the Spirit overflowing in blessing to those he meets.

What the Scripture has said

The Lord grounds his promise in the words, as the Scripture has said, pointing back to the Old Testament hope of a great outpouring of water in the last days. The prophets had spoken again and again of water in the desert, of a fountain opened for the cleansing of sin, of living waters going out from Jerusalem, of the Spirit poured out like water on the thirsty ground. Ezekiel had seen a river flowing from the temple, growing deeper as it went and bringing life wherever it reached (Ezekiel 47). All of these streams find their meaning in the Spirit whom Jesus gives, and the believer in whom the Spirit dwells becomes, in a small way, a part of that life-giving river flowing out into a dry world.

This rich background guards us from thinking of the gift of the Spirit as something thin or only private. The living water is nothing less than the abundant life of God, promised through the ages and now given freely to all who come to Christ and drink. The same Spirit who animates the whole life of the believer, whose person and work we set out in our answer on who the Holy Spirit is, is the river that flows from the heart of the one who believes.

Coming and drinking again

The form of the Lord invitation repays notice. The words come and drink describe an action the thirsty are to take, and they describe a coming that is to be repeated rather than done once and forgotten. The believer does not drink once at conversion and then live on the memory of it, but comes again and again to the same Lord for the same supply. The Christian life is a continual coming to Christ to drink, and the freshness of the soul depends on keeping up that habit of return.

This guards against a common mistake, the idea that the gift of the Spirit at conversion is a reservoir we slowly draw down over the years until it runs low. The Spirit is not a finite store but a living fountain, and the One who gives him invites us to keep drinking. A believer whose inner life has gone dry has not exhausted the Spirit, but has stopped coming to the source, distracted by other waters that cannot satisfy. The remedy is always the same, to return to Christ and drink afresh.

The setting at the Feast of Tabernacles gives the promise an added depth. That feast looked back to the wilderness years, when God had given water from the rock to a thirsty people, and it looked forward to the age of blessing the prophets had foretold. By standing at the heart of that feast and crying out his invitation, the Lord Jesus was claiming to be the true rock from which the living water flows, and the giver of the age of the Spirit that Israel awaited. Paul would later write that the rock which followed the people in the wilderness was Christ, and here the Lord himself makes that very claim in the temple courts.

All of this means that the thirst of the human heart has only one true answer. People try to satisfy it with one pleasure or possession after another, and find that none of them holds water for long. The Lord Jesus stands in the middle of all our striving and says, if anyone thirsts, let him come to me and drink. The living water is himself, given by his Spirit, and the soul that drinks of him finds at last the satisfaction it had sought everywhere else in vain. No other spring can reach the deep thirst of the soul, and no one who comes to this spring is ever turned away.

So, now what?

The first word of the promise is an invitation, so begin where Jesus begins. If you are thirsty, come to him and drink. The living water is not earned or worked up but received as a gift by the one who comes to Christ in faith, and there is no thirst so deep that he cannot satisfy it. Do not try to slake the thirst of your soul at the broken cisterns of the world, which can never hold water, but come to the fountain himself.

Then expect the water to overflow. If the Spirit dwells in you, you are meant to be a channel of his life to others, and the way to keep the rivers flowing is to keep coming and drinking, returning again and again to the Lord to be filled. A believer who has run dry has usually stopped coming to the source, and the remedy is to come afresh and drink deeply.

Look around you at a thirsty world, and remember that the Lord has made you a means by which his living water reaches others. Stay close to the source, keep drinking, and let the rivers flow.

“Whoever believes in me, as the Scripture has said, out of his heart will flow rivers of living water.” John 7:38