Grace and Legalism: The Samaritan Woman

The story of the Samaritan woman is a story about the abuses of legalism in the Jewish religious lifestyle. Jesus knew about this woman before his encounter with her. How he knew is too easily answered by saying that he had divine knowledge. That caveat is always too easy of a cop out. Exploring answers from the human side of Jesus is far more interesting.

Jesus may have spent time in Sychar at some earlier time in his young manhood. While there he could have become acquainted with this woman’s plight. He could have known of her at some other place where she lived in another marriage. He could have known one or more of her husbands. The possibilities are numerous. But, he did know who she was and where she had been in life.

The woman was obviously not considered an adulterer because she was still alive. The Samaritans believed in the Law of Moses too. They could have been a little more lenient than those leaders in Jerusalem, but not likely where adultery is concerned.

The best possibility is that she was a victim of the legalism practiced by Jewish men of righteousness who had a legal right to put away a wife for very trivial reasons. (Deut. 24:1-2) " When a man hath taken a wife, and married her, and it come to pass that she find no favor in his eyes, because he hath found some uncleanness in her: then let him write her a bill of divorcement, and give it in her hand, and send her out of his house. And when she is departed out of his house, she may go and be another man’s wife." (NASB)

Years before, two famous rabbis had debated the application of this scripture and came to different conclusions about how it should be implemented. Hillel believed that the wife must do something serious like unfaithfulness in order for a bill of divorcement to be issued. Shammai, on the other hand, taught that a wife could be divorced for anything that displeased her husband.

Evidently, the opinions of Shammai were popular in Jesus’ day. Some Jewish men routinely put wives away, and they were picked up by others. This behavior could be repeated as often as a man chose to exercise this legalism.

Jesus encountered this practice in Matthew 19:3-9 when he was challenged to take sides in the debate. He answered that God never intended for wives to be treated in this way and that putting them away for no reason made adulterers of both the husband and the wife. This assessment was a simple truth. Men were passing women around like prostitutes. They were using interpretations of the Law to abuse the institution of marriage and the lives of countless women.

The woman at the well was probably one of those women who had been passed around. She was not anathema to the men of Sychar as indicated by the fact that they listened to her report about Jesus, and believed it.

The Samaritan woman knew about legalism. She was a living example of one who had been abused by it’s misuse.

Jesus knew of her thirst for righteousness when he saw her coming to the well. Or was it a thirst for a life of peace, or a thirst for meaning for herself in all of the degradation and disrespect that she had known?

Jesus told her that he had living water to give that would quench her thirst. He could take her beyond legalism to grace. She had not seen too much of grace, just the wrong end of legalism. Jesus treated her with grace and no doubt shared his message of grace with the whole town during the next two days.