Is It Really Good News?

I’m struck by a particular detail in the story of Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well in John 4.  It’s not her outcast status or even the fact that Jesus took the unusual step in His culture of having a conversation (a theological one at that!) with a woman.

What I’m struck by is what she says when she runs excitedly back into town.  “Come, meet a man who told me everything I ever did.”  She goes on to wonder whether He could be the Messiah, but her opening excitement is that He told her everything she had ever done – including that she had had five husbands and was not married to the man she was living with. 

And it appears to have been good news to her, freeing news to her, to meet a man like that.  The town knew the details of her life and they used them to shame her.  Jesus knew the details of her life and He used them to bring her into relationship with Him.

It makes me wonder.  When we interact with people, or when we introduce people to Jesus, do they come away feeling they’ve encountered “good news”?  News that produces freedom and life and relationship rather than shame and guilt and distance.  Do we speak of grace but in reality impose law?  Do we exude the abundant life Jesus promises or do we focus on what they have to give up?

Lauren Winner, in her book Real Sex (The Naked Truth About Chastity), says that the church has typically not done a good job of presenting chastity as “good news”.   I think it’s a common problem, impacting many areas of our lives.  We wrestle with the call to holiness and the good news somehow becomes a list of dos and don’ts.

I’m not talking about tossing truth out the window or not ever addressing the issue of sin.  I also know we are called to live holy lives, that we are to be different than the world around us.  Discipleship requires us to address thorny issues.  Our actions matter.  Sin is not to be taken lightly.  Jesus Himself told the woman caught in adultery to “go and sin no more” – but He did so after a grace-filled interaction (John 8). 

At some point I will probably write about confronting people and speaking the hard truth, about facing consequences of unwise or sinful choices, about setting appropriate boundaries.  Scripture tells us we need to do those things and it tells us how to do them.  It’s not that I don’t believe those things are important.  It’s just that it is not what this post is about.

This is about the good news of encountering a God who knows everything about us – all the ugly parts, all the regrets, all the things we would like to keep hidden – but who speaks good news into that in a way that transforms lives.  That makes an outcast woman run into town and invite those who shun her to follow her back to the well because she has encountered someone who changed her life. Jesus was full of grace and truth.  His conversations set people free.  I want to be like that.