Jesus’ encounter in John 4 with the woman at the well is one of my favorite Gospel stories.  I love how Jesus kicks cultural norms to the curb by going to the well on purpose to speak to an immoral Samaritan woman.  This was not an accidental encounter.  Jesus doesn’t do accidental encounters.

Another thing I love is how God draws this defeated - damaged woman in.  God wanted her when no one else did so He met her to make her into someone no one else thought she could be:  clean, adored, and accepted.  But the part that gives me pause - is how the woman is changed by Jesus’ revelation that He is the Christ.  The woman said, “I know that Messiah is coming (He who is called Christ).  When He comes, He will tell us all things,” Jesus said to her, “I who speak to you am He.” (John 4:25–26) And with that, she left her water jug at the well and ran (not walked) back to town to tell everyone - all who rejected her and avoided her and wouldn’t speak to her to come and see and believe.  (John 4:29)

I don’t know about you, but if someone approached me at the grocery store and began listing my sins, I don’t think I’d start inviting others over.  “Hey, you should hear this guy.  He just listed every wrong thing I’ve ever done”.  But this woman ran to tell everyone.  Why?  I can only guess she no longer felt ashamed.  She took Jesus at His word and freedom followed.  Romans 8:1 says, “There is therefore now no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus.”  This rejected Samaritan woman believed Jesus and the chains fell off.   When we, by grace through faith, embrace the truth of Christ as our Savior, the shackles of shame disintegrate.  The result is the ability to run (not walk) into situations that once paralyzed us, like speaking confidently to those who know all about our past.  One of the beautiful miracles of the gospel is a permanent redefinition of who we are.  In Christ, we are not the sum of our mistakes; we are the beautiful manifestation of His perfections.

The truth is we are all like the Samaritan woman: sabotaged by sin, ashamed of things in our past, and broken due to our own decisions.  When we believe that Jesus is the Christ - the Son of the living God - who died and now lives on our behalf, the result is the same for us: instantaneous redemption that shreds shame into oblivion and grants us the ability to speak (even to those who once rejected us) about Christ’s marvelous works.  Like Paul writes in 2 Corinthians 3:2–3, in Christ, we become like a letter of recommendation to the rest of the world.  A letter “to be known and read by all . . . Written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

You are changed forever if you’ve accepted Jesus’s plain revelation that He is the Christ.  You are not the sum of past mistakes; you are proof of the living God.