Biblion Bible Commentary
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The Savior of the World
John 4:39-42
39 From that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified, “He told me everything that I have done.” · WEB
A town believes on a woman's word, then meets him, and gives him a title no one in Judea has used.
From that city many of the Samaritans believed in him because of the word of the woman, who testified, "He told me everything that I have done" John 4:39.
The first sentence records something the book has not yet shown: a group believing on the strength of one person's testimony. And the testimony was thin — a single fact about herself, and a question she did not dare answer.
It is worth setting beside chapter two, where many in Jerusalem believed because of the signs and were not trusted John 2:23–24. Here no sign has been worked at all. Nothing has been multiplied, healed or turned into wine. What happened was a conversation.
So when the Samaritans came to him, they begged him to stay with them. He stayed there two days John 4:40.
He accepts, and the two days are the quiet scandal of the chapter. A Jewish teacher lodging in a Samaritan town, eating Samaritan food, for two days. The disciples' astonishment in verse twenty-seven has been thoroughly outrun.
The verb for stay is this Gospel's word for abiding, which the book has already used of the Spirit remaining on him and of the first disciples staying with him that afternoon John 1:32 John 1:39.
Many more believed because of his word John 4:41. The second wave is larger than the first, and the cause has changed from her word to his.
They said to the woman, "Now we believe, not because of your speaking; for we have heard for ourselves, and know that this is indeed the Christ, the Savior of the world" John 4:42.
The sentence sounds ungracious and is not. It is exactly what she wanted — she never asked them to take her word for it; she said come and see John 4:29. A witness whose hearers end up not needing her has done the job the way John the Baptizer described it John 3:29–30.
The Savior of the world is the title, and it is remarkable in three ways.
It appears here and once more in the whole New Testament 1 John 4:14. It is spoken by Samaritans — a people the Judeans held to be religiously counterfeit, who have arrived at the widest confession in the Gospels. And the world is the word this book uses for what did not recognize him John 1:10 and what God nevertheless loved John 3:16.
The title also had an owner. Savior of the world was among the honors carried by the Roman emperor on inscriptions and coins. A village in Samaria has just assigned it to a travel-stained rabbi who spent two days in their houses.
And the chapter's shape is worth seeing whole. A ruler of the Jews came at night, was told he must be born from above, and left without a recorded answer John 3:1–9. A Samaritan woman met him at noon, and her town ends up saying this.
settled What this mark means