They Started on Somebody Else's Report and Did Not Stay There

He knows exactly whose report he is running on.

It is his grandfather's, mostly, and then two men from that building, one of whom is dead, and if he is honest about it there is a specific sermon from when he was fourteen that is doing more work than any of them.

That is not a complaint. Every one of those people was telling him the truth as far as he can determine, and he has no evidence against any of it, and he is not looking for any.

What he has is an awareness of the structure. He believes it on report, and he knows this, and he suspects that a faith held on report is a different class of object from one held first hand, and that he has never had the second kind.

There is a whole town in John 4 in exactly that position, and they say so out loud to the person who told them, and what they say sounds rude and is not.

The first wave believed on her testimony

Here is how it starts, and John is explicit about the mechanism.

And many of the Samaritans of that city believed on him for the saying of the woman, which testified, He told me all that ever I did. (John 4:39, King James Version)

For the saying of the woman. That is the cause. Their belief has a route and John writes it down without any qualification.

And notice what her testimony consisted of. Not doctrine. Not an argument. One thing that had happened to her, reported in a sentence: he told me all that ever I did.

So a town moves on the strength of one person's account of an encounter, which is an entirely ordinary way for this to happen and is how it has happened to nearly everybody who has ever believed anything.

You are believing by a route Scripture records without a word of criticism. John 4:39 names the saying of the woman as the cause, and it is by the Spirit, John 16:14, who takes what is Christ's and shows it, that any report lands as anything at all.

Then two days of ordinary proximity

What happens next is unremarkable and it is the whole method.

So when the Samaritans were come unto him, they besought him that he would tarry with them: and he abode there two days. And many more believed because of his own word. (John 4:40-41)

He abode there two days. Nothing is described. John does not record a single thing that was said in those two days, no sermon, no miracle, no event.

Two days of being in the same place. That is all the text gives us, and the result is many more believed because of his own word.

Which tells you what the transition from report to first hand actually consists of, and it is disappointing to anybody hoping for a mechanism: it consists of time spent in proximity to Him, with nothing dramatic recorded.

You are able to move from report to first hand by ordinary proximity. John 4:40 gives two days with nothing recorded in them, and it is by the Spirit, John 14:16, who is given to abide with a person continually.

What they say to her face

And then the sentence, and it is the reason this passage is in this category.

And said unto the woman, Now we believe, not because of thy saying: for we have heard him ourselves, and know that this is the Christ, the Saviour of the world. (John 4:42)

Not because of thy saying.

Said to her face, by people she brought. It reads harshly in English and it is not harsh; it is a report about a change of grounds, and it is the best possible outcome of what she did.

She had not been trying to make them dependent on her. Nobody who tells somebody about Christ is aiming to remain the reason. The whole purpose of a testimony is to be superseded, and the moment they say this to her is the moment it worked.

I would put that beside a grandfather, or a man from that building who is dead now. Nothing about moving from their report to first hand is a betrayal of them. It is the outcome they were after.

You are able to move off somebody's report without that being a betrayal of them. John 4:42 has the town saying it to the face of the person who brought them and treats it as the good ending, and it is by the Spirit, Romans 8:16, that the witness is borne to a person directly.

The invitation in the Psalms is an experiment

If two days of proximity is the method, the Psalms give the shortest possible version of the instruction.

O taste and see that the LORD is good: blessed is the man that trusteth in him. (Psalm 34:8)

Taste. It is a first-hand verb, and it is deliberately the most direct sense available. Nobody can taste something on somebody else's behalf and nobody can be told what a thing tastes like in a way that substitutes for tasting it.

And it is imperative. It is not: consider whether the LORD is good. It is an instruction to run an experiment, and the experiment is available to somebody who is currently on report, because it does not require them to first stop being on report.

That is why the physical action on this page is what it is. Saying it out loud, alone, in your own words, is not a proof of anything. It is a taste, and Scripture treats a taste as a legitimate way in.

You are invited to a first-hand verb rather than to a better report. Psalm 34:8 says taste and see, which nobody can do on anybody's behalf, and it is the Spirit who searches the deep things of God, 1 Corinthians 2:10, and reveals them.

Report is not the opposite of real

It is worth saying the other half, because this article could be misread as an argument against how anybody was taught.

So then faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God. (Romans 10:17)

Faith cometh by hearing. That is the ordinary route, stated as doctrine, and hearing means somebody was talking.

So the report is not the problem and it is not a lesser version. It is the appointed method, and everybody who has ever believed anything got in that way, including the apostles, who heard it from a man and then from each other.

What John 4 adds is not a replacement for the report. It is that the report is designed to hand a person on to the Person, and a man who is troubled by the structure is not describing a defect, he is describing the halfway point of something that was always going somewhere.

You are on the appointed route rather than a deficient one. Romans 10:17 says faith cometh by hearing and names it as the mechanism, and it is by the Spirit, 1 Corinthians 12:3, that anybody says Jesus is Lord at all.