Focus: The Seventh Man

Text: Jh.4:18

"For thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that saidst thou truly."

The woman of Samaria came into contact with Christ and the story of her life changed for good. The past story of her life was a disaster until she met with Christ.

She's been with five husbands, and now she's with the sixth man. Who knows the kind of hell she went through in the hands of five husbands, one after another. They all took away from her. She must have felt reduced and decimated. Life had been nothing but sad stories with her. Her memories of the past were terribly unpleasant. She went to the Well alone. In my village, women go in groups to the streams to fetch water both in the morning and in the evening, and so it was in the Middle East. She was a lonely woman - exhausted and depleted, used and abused, battered and broken, dismembered and isolated, tortured and traumatized. 

Her world was never together; things had fallen apart in her life. She felt stigmatized and isolated. It is possible that the five men all died one after another, or that they each used and dumped her. She was left alone. She was a lonely lady in a crowded world. She looked like a social misfit. Amid all that, she was still a religious woman - a church lady with so much religion in her mouth. Over the years she had developed religious and traditional biases. She was still talking religion and mentioning the name of God.

The King James Version tells us that she came to the Well at the sixth hour - that's 12 noon. Mark the time - the 6th hour. Remember that she had been with five husbands, and then the sixth man who was not actually her husband. The sixth man could have been another male-user, an uncle, or still a family member who welcomed and gave her space to share with him. But the fact remains that five men had come and gone, and now she was living with the sixth man.

The number six reminds us of the six days of creation in Genesis. There was need for the seventh day to make perfect the process. The number seven is a perfect number. Jesus Christ came into the woman's life as the seventh man. Jesus Christ came to give her what all the six men in her life could not give her. Jesus Christ gave her soul rest and filled her life with meaning. The six men took from her, but Jesus Christ gave to her. The Lord Jesus Christ saw her past and present, and also saw into her empty soul. The Lord perfected, integrated and harmonized her life. The Lord opened the Well of living waters in the inner recesses of her being. The Lord elevated her life and gave her reason to live. She left her water pot, ran back to the city and evangelized the people, telling them about Christ. Her joy knew no bounds. 

She embraced Christ totally and engaged herself in a soul-winning mission for Him. Through Christ she recovered her self-worth and reason for existence.

The woman of Samaria represents all of us, both men and women, and Jesus Christ, the seventh man in her life, is our man. He is every woman's man and every man's man, too. He doesn't dehumanize us. He doesn't victimize us. He doesn't terrorize us. He doesn't look down on us. He doesn't denigrate us. He doesn't intimidate us. He doesn't stigmatize us. He doesn't use and dump us. We matter to Him. In fact He became one of us and identified with our humanity. He died on the cross to save us from eternal damnation. We are forever connected to Him through faith, and thereby privileged to collect from His bottomless treasure-house all that we have need of for as long as we shall live. In Him we live, move and have our being. He is our life, peace, and hope. He is the seventh man for all of us.

by Bishop Moses E. Peter