John 4:6 Commentary and Bible Study

This is the first reference of this kind in the Gospel of John. The Lord’s weariness, or if you like, the Lord’s exhaustion! What an astounding thing, what an astonishing thing, that the second person of the triune Godhead, the Lord of glory should enter into human flesh, and voluntarily submit himself to its limitations, and know exhaustion and fatigue. He had another purpose, but he knew great weariness and frailty and thirst, fatigue, weakness. He never had a horse, except the occasion he rode symbolically into Jerusalem mounted on a mule. He never had a carriage; he never had a chariot; he never had anything splendid of that kind. Man fell in paradise, in the Garden of Eden. He was called to live obediently before God, and in surroundings of perfection he failed. Christ came, and in surroundings of sinfulness and sore temptation he must live a perfect life, a life so perfect and so pure that its virtues could be imputed to our account to secure the glories of an eternal reward forever. He must live a life which was so perfect that he could qualify to be our sin-bearer, to atone for all our sin, and bear away our punishment on Calvary’s cross. He knew weariness and human limitations to prove his humanity. He had to be subject to human infirmity and sensitivity. We know he has truly become human and has faced the same circumstances that we face yet without sin. He had to feel our pain on Calvary’s cross. His divinity sustained him, but it did not dilute his pain one little bit. What astonishing, voluntary, self-limiting love! Out of love for us Christ came and was so humiliated.‘It was about the sixth hour.’ No doubt according to Roman reckoning. Most likely what is in mind is 6pm, when things were getting cooler. The women would come to draw water.