What does it mean that believers in Christ will never thirst (John 4:14)?

I cannot accept. any favour in the place where Jesus was crucified. If it had been last Friday that the Lord was crucified it could not be forgotten, but the fact remains. The invitation went out to the Jews first: "Come; for all things are now ready." They refused it. Then it is sent to the poor of the flock and the Gentiles who never got a place here, and the servant is sent forth and told to compel them to come in. Now you must not make that the gospel; it is the finish of the gospel, if you like, because the invitation is to come into the house. Luke 14 is our side; Luke 15 is God's side. You have the joy of the finder there. The business of the Servant (the Spirit of God here) is to bring them into the house; and the work of the Servant is not done till He has got them in. The question is, What is this supper, and how is it to be enjoyed? You must start with this - it is not from earth, or on earth. "The kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost." (Romans 14:17.) In simple language this is what is called the great supper. The Holy Ghost is the feast, and He conducts the guests to it. I might say a great deal about that, while I quite admit that the invitation is to go forth over all the earth. In John 4 we have a guest found in the woman of Samaria. The Lord meets her there in the most desperate circumstances in which anyone could be found as to character and position, and He tells her, Whosoever drinks of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst for ever. It is the strongest figure that can be used. It means shall never thirst again, either here or hereafter. Your soul is conducted by the Spirit of God into the region of satisfied desire. The philosopher will say that is an absolute impossibility. The Spirit of God comes and takes up a poor outcast woman in the most degraded circumstances as to character and condition, and brings her into the enjoyment of a life outside, and entirely outside everything here. "Shall be in you a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

The Lord thus explains more clearly than ever how the living water is the great supernatural gift man needs. The water of an earthly spring, however good, like every natural boon, lasts but for the moment. It quenches thirst, only to recur soon and constantly, as is the nature of all things seen and temporal. The soul, immortal as it is, needs more to satisfy, as God delights in giving when He is looked to in felt want. But here the Lord vouchsafes what satisfies the believer and God Himself, what forms a blessed and permanent and intimate relationship with the Son and the Father. It is not only eternal life, as in John 3, but the Spirit of adoption given, and therefore said to become in him, the believer, a fountain of water springing up into eternal life. Not only are creature things no longer an object of desire, but a fountain of divine refreshment is within through the indwelling Spirit, Who ever leads the believer to worship by His own power, to rejoice in Christ Jesus, and to have no confidence in the flesh. It is not holy longings only as of old, but present possession and enjoyment by virtue of Christ come and redemption. It is inexhaustible and leads the soul to the sources on high.

134 Here is rest and power. We have not only everlasting life in Him from whom we shall never be separated; but the man has a well of water in himself. "It shall be in him a well of water," etc. This is power coming down from God - heaven is brought down into my heart. It is the power of divine life bringing me into fellowship with the Father and the Son. It is nothing short of all that is in God dwelling in me. I have got something that lays hold of that life - the gift of God. Mark, it is here the well of water in the individual. There is an eternal spring in my own soul. There is a power in the person associating him with all that is in God; the man drinks it in - receives it as a thirsty person - and then it becomes in him a well which makes him partaker of what is in God. It brings into intercourse with, and feeding in spiritual apprehension on, the things of God.

Indwelling the Christian believer this living water becomes ‘in him a fountain of water, springing up into eternal life’ (v. 14). In this divinely energetic way the Holy Spirit lifts up into the knowledge and enjoyment of the Father and the Son. Only a divine person can do this. This satisfies the heart and soul as nothing else can. ‘Whosoever drinks of the water which I shall give him shall never thirst for ever.’

Living water is the Spirit in the soul as the power for worship, the divinely implanted spring that brings life to the one who believes in the Son of God, and enables him to enter into all the blessings of eternal life that subsist in Jesus. Life in the Spirit of God within makes the believer independent of every creature spring, the springs that gratify a nature born of the flesh. But abiding satisfaction for the heart, for the desires of the divine nature, are met by the well-spring of living water.

I pray you to notice that the "well springing up" and "everlasting life" are distinct, and they must not be confounded. When the soul, through the sovereign grace of God, has been born of Him, and possesses the divine nature, the next thing the Lord proposes is this — I will put a power within you, the exercise of which will ever lead you to enjoy that which belongs to you in heavenly relationship, and to which you belong. It shall be "a well (fountain) of water springing up into everlasting life." It is not our idea of a well that is here represented. You know what a fountain is. It is a perennial spring, ever bubbling up, and unhindered. The statement which the Lord here makes is a wonderful one. "Whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst." The soul that thus drinks is landed in a region of satisfied desire.

The more you are in communion with the Father and the Son, the more you enjoy His grace, and His sunshine, the more will your heart live in the atmosphere which is characteristic of everlasting life. This can only be in the power of the Holy Ghost, hence the Lord says, "Whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him, shall never thirst." They are remarkable words. I admit you may turn to me and say, Who is thus satisfied? I never saw the person. Well, if you never saw the person, let me say to you, Drink yourself of that "living water," and be the person. Get to know in the practical experimental history of your own soul what the Lord says here, "He that drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well of water springing up into everlasting life." I have no doubt this refers to the Spirit of God as the power acting in that new life which is possessed by the believer in the Son of God now.

The Lord spake to her of the living water which He gives; of that which slakes the soul’s thirst so perfectly, that whosoever drinks thereof “shall never thirst for ever.” But not only does this living water satisfy: it becomes within the one who drinks “a fountain of living water, springing up into eternal life.” Eternal realities and relationships are so realized that the once thirsty sinner becomes a true worshipper of the Father in spirit and in truth. Christ the Living One is the giver of this living water.

Nicodemus ought to have known much of this from the prophets. But now in John 4 we get a wholly new thing — a divine gift by Jesus, ("I will give") living water to form a well within, ever springing up into everlasting life — so that there shall be not more thirst. This is the Holy Ghost given to dwell in the regenerate one, to be the power and energy of life in communion with God its source and end. Here then is a source of joy apart from and independent of all circumstances — of joy the deepest and eternal, and a source that never fails though at times the joy may be clouded over here below; it is the knowledge of all that eternal life is that we have got, made known to us by the Holy Ghost dwelling in us, Who is at the same time the power of communion in it, with God its source and level. Could there be any joy beyond this in heaven itself? Now the Holy Ghost is given to be the power of it below, and the spring of it all is thus in every individual believer.

Thoroughly interested, "the woman says to him, Sir, thou hast nothing to draw with." She is surprised. She does not understand the Lord, she does not rise to the thought in His heart, so she goes on, "and the well is deep." What a revelation! There are volumes contained in these four words, "The well is deep." They bespoke a weary existence. She was tired of life. Her will and her sin had but left her heart empty. Despised of all, isolated, and abandoned, she came at a time when the well was very empty. And is not that exactly what every man, passing through this world finds, "The well is deep," and gets deeper every year he lives, and he has to lengthen the rope by which he seeks to draw the water with which he would fain satisfy his heart. That becomes more difficult as time goes on, and the Lord tells us the reason, "Whosoever drinks of this water shall thirst again." The water from the world's well can never satisfy the soul that drinks thereof, but observe the deeper meaning in the next words, "Whosoever drinks of the water that I shall give him shall never thirst; but the water that I shall give him shall be in him a well (a fountain) of water springing up into everlasting life." "The well is deep," indeed, for you, if you have not found the Lord. You have not received eternal life, nor the Holy Ghost, and you are not satisfied. There is no satisfaction here except in the love of Christ. No one can be satisfied without Christ. You may be seeking after your pet objects, following your pet occupations, and be engrossed by your choicest pleasures, but, mark, there is sin coupled with every one of them. And what is the result? Man is unsatisfied. He is lost, at a distance from God, and he never can be satisfied until he comes back to Him. What a contrast exists between an unsatisfied sinner in his sins, and on his road to hell, and a real Christian who possesses Christ, and enjoys Him, too, because he has within him "a well of water springing up into everlasting life."

Without doubt the Lord is here speaking of the Holy Ghost, under the figure of "living water," not yet however as a divine Person come down to dwell within the believer (though what He speaks of could not be without this) but as the power of life. Water always rises to its own level. We noticed in chapter 3 that the water, so to say, came down from God — the Word communicated by grace being operative by the Spirit, and a new life and nature the result. Now we find there is to be a new power within to enable that life to rise up to its source — to that life of heavenly relationship and communion in which eternal life consists. The Lord proposes here that the water He shall give, shall be in the believer "a well of water springing up into everlasting life," a divine and ever-springing up fountain of joy. Life is dependent on external supplies for its sustenance, but here we find a fountain spoken of — a constant, continual source of supply. It is a new privilege and blessing. We have not as yet the personality of the Spirit, indwelling the believer, spoken of, but it is couched under the lovely figure of "living water." It is the thought of a power acting in the new nature, and leading the possessor into the enjoyment of divine, and heavenly joys, and relationships. It brings the soul into the full joy of grace, tasted, and proved, and leads to deep communion of heart with Him who is the perennial source or spring of everlasting joy. The heart is brought by the Spirit into a region of entire satisfaction in the Lord.