THE KING’S BUSINESS
444
V. 22. “ Ye worship ye know hot what (rather, that which ye know not ) : we know what we worship ( rather, we worship that which we know ) : for salvation is of (rather, out of) the Jews.” The “ye” and “we” in this verse are both very emphatic: a strong con trast is drawn between the worship of the Samaritans and the worship of the Jews. The worship of the Samar itans was a worship of a Being they did not know, the worship of a Be ing with whose character as He had revealed Himself through the proph ets and Psalmists they were totally unacquainted. The Jews on the other hand worshipped a God who had been revealed to them with marvel ous fulness in the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which they studied. The great reason why the Jews knew God, the God whom they worshipped, was because salvation came out from among them. The preparation for this “ salvation” was through the ora cles of God with which .they had been entrusted (Rom. 3 :2 ), the Per son in whom this “ salvation” cen tered, who indeed Himself was “ sal vation” (Luke 2:30) was born of their race, the Son of a Jewish wom an, “ born of the seed of David ac cording to the flesh” (ch. 1 :3). God Himself had separated the children of Israel from all other nations, in order that through them the truth of God might be preserved in the world and that so salvation might come to - all nations. “ Salvation” in the strictest sense was “ out of the Jews.” While our Lord has refused to di rectly settle the controversy as to whether Gerizim o r Jerusalem was the true place of worship, because the question of places of worship was about to lose all significance, never theless, He here teaches in the most emphatic way that the religion of the Jews .was the true religion and
which was offered “ in spirit and in truth (cf. v. 23)'.” The woman had made no refer ence to the object of worship in her question but our Lord specifies the true object o f worship, " the Father:’ True worship is the worship of “ the Father—God,!’ i. e., of the God who is the Father. Our Lord emphasizes this by repeating it three times (vs. 21, 23). There is a close connection between this thought of the true ob ject of worship and of the true kind of worship; as “ the Father ■” is the true object o f worship, naturally, He will be worshipped wherever His children are, not merely in Gerizim nor in Jerusalem, but wherever a child of God is there is a place to worship “ the Father.” This thought of God as “ the Father” while not entirely peculiar to John’s Gospel, is a marked characteristic of it, because of the frequency of its occurrence. God is spoken of in the Gospel of John as the Father no less than 120 times. The basic thought of God in the whole Gospel is that He is “ the Father,” not indeed the Father of all men (see ch. 1:12; 8:44; 1 John 3 :10) but the Father of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ and of all who are in Him. The most promi nent feature in that revelation of God which Christianity makes is that God is the Father. This was the keynote to the prayer our Lord taught His disciples (Matt 6:9-11 cf. 6:6, 8). It was also the keynote of the prayer He Himself offered the night before His crucifixion (John 17:1, 5, 11,. 24, 25). Our Lord here speaks of “ the Father” in contrast to what the wom an in her question had said about “ our fathers.” He would turn her thought from the fathers to “ the Father.” God is the one Father in whom alone the thought of father hood is fully realized (cf. Eph. 3:14, 15, R. V. note marginal reading).
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