Water
Humans can exist for days without food, but water is absolutely essential for life. Besides quenching thirst, water is also an important component of daily living. We use water to keep ourselves and our possessions clean, grow our crops, and cool ourselves down. In the desert and semiarid regions depicted in the Old and New Testaments, water was considered a precious commodity, and life was oriented around access to water sources.
Water is also characterized as a deep and chaotic primal force. Psalmists used it as a symbol of death in verses such as 18:16: “He reached down from high above and took hold of me. He pulled me out of the raging water.” Time and again God demonstrated his power over water as a symbol of his role as Creator and his sovereignty over all the created order. Old Testament passages depicting God’s control over the waters (Gen. 1:2; Exod. 14:21–22; Job 38:11; Ps. 93:4) mirror similar accounts in the New Testament when Christ calmed the seas. In response to Jesus’ demonstration of power, the disciples declared, “Who is this man? He gives orders to the wind and the water, and they obey him!” (Luke 8:25).
Baptism
One of the most significant uses of water imagery in the Bible surrounds baptism. The use of water during baptism symbolizes both a spiritual cleansing and a passage from death to new life (Col. 2:12). Undoubtedly part of this symbolism harks back to the ancient thought of water as the abyss, a symbol of death (see SEA OF GALILEE). More than that, it symbolizes cleansing from sin and resurrection to eternal life. John the Baptist, Jesus’ cousin, compared his ministry of water baptism to that of Jesus who baptizes with the Holy Spirit (John 1:33; Acts 1:5; 8:38; 10:47; 11:16). Christ’s sacrificial love relationship with the church is also characterized by a cleansing water (Eph. 5:26; Heb. 10:22).
Baptism represents plunging into the abyss—dying to self—and rising to new life.
Living Water
Since water is an essential element to life, its meaning throughout Scripture often illustrates eternal life given by God. In a hymn of praise, the prophet Isaiah records, “With joy you will draw water from the springs of salvation” (12:3). Jesus dramatically expanded this image of saving water while talking to the Samaritan woman beside the well. Explaining the difference between normal well water and “living water,” Jesus told the woman, “Everyone who drinks this water will become thirsty again. But those who drink the water that I will give them will never become thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give them will become in them a spring that gushes up to eternal life” (John 4:13–14).
Jesus is the water of life, the one who satisfies our longings.
Jesus called himself “living water,” a reference both to the refreshing springs of water that were highly prized in arid Israel and to Jeremiah’s prophecy: “My people have done two things wrong. They have abandoned me, the fountain of life-giving water. They have also dug their own cisterns, broken cisterns that can’t hold water” (2:13). Water is symbolic of the spiritual growth and satisfaction that comes from following God. Those who are led by the LORD “become like a watered garden and like a spring whose water does not stop flowing” (Isa. 58:11). For all those who are spiritually thirsty, God offers the Holy Spirit as the “water of life” that will spring up within the believer and flow out to others (John 4:13–15; 7:37–38; Rev. 21:6; 22:1, 17). Jesus announced the same truth and declared himself to be the Messiah: “On the last and most important day of the festival, Jesus was standing in the temple courtyard. He said loudly, ‘Whoever is thirsty must come to me to drink. As Scripture says, “Streams of living water will flow from deep within the person who believes in me”’ ” (John 7:37–38).
Some of the most powerful water imagery appears in John’s vision of the end times. In the pages of Revelation, Jesus is at last pictured in his full glory, having a voice “like the sound of raging waters” (1:15). During these final days, John reveals, the Good Shepherd will lead believers to “springs filled with the water of life, and God will wipe every tear from their eyes” (Rev. 7:17). The symbolic connection of water with eternal life carries through to the final words of the Bible, which triumphantly declare, “Let those who are thirsty come! Let those who want the water of life take it as a gift” (Rev. 22:17).
Key Verse
Jesus answered her, “Everyone who drinks this water will become thirsty again. But those who drink the water that I will give them will never become thirsty again. In fact, the water I will give them will become in them a spring that gushes up to eternal life.” (John 4:13–14)