John 4:31Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

He persuades them to despise every labor and to set concern for the salvation of those being saved above care for the body. For according to the prophet’s word, “Cursed is he who does the work of the Lord negligently” (Jer 48:10).

Therefore, to teach us that at such times especially the Lord was accustomed to fast, the Evangelist introduces the disciples asking Him and, as it were, begging Him.

They ask that He would eat at least a little of what had been bought, as necessary food. For “they had gone away into the city to buy food” (Jn 4:8), which they now brought with them.

“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me” (Jn 4:34). Likewise, the very drink for that woman was the fulfillment of the will of Him who sent Him.

Therefore He said, “I thirst; give Me a drink” (Jn 4:7). That is, He was asking that she cultivate faith in herself, and He would drink her faith and place her in His own body.

For His body is the Church. He Himself says, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me” (Jn 4:34).

His Spirit contemplated the actions of divine truth in the soul of the woman, in the inhabitants of the city, in the country, and in the whole world.

He had in view the worldwide spread of the teaching whose beginnings He was now offering to a poor woman. He already saw before Him the harvest from the seeds that He was now casting into the depths of the earth.

Therefore, in answer to the disciples’ amazement, the Lord said, “I have other food of which you do not know.” That is, what gives food to My spirit makes Me forget bodily food.

“My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work.” That is, I sow the seed from which the Kingdom of God must spread throughout all mankind.

Then He depicts for them in a parabolic comparison what He wished to say about the work of God begun among the Samaritans.

Perhaps, looking on one side at farmers scattered through the fields and engaged in sowing, or at the grain rising in the fields, and on the other at the crowds coming out of the city to Him at the woman’s call, the Lord spoke.

You say that the harvest will come no sooner than in four months. In relation to nature this is true. But now it is otherwise in spiritual matters.

When the time has come, the seed is only just being sown, and already the harvest begins. Lift up your eyes, He says, indicating the crowds of Samaritans coming out, and see how these fields are already ready for harvest.

At the same time, contemplating in spirit that He would leave the earth before the full harvest began, and that He would have to entrust His disciples with completing this harvest, the Lord prophetically foretells it to them.

This present harvest lay before them, and He would rejoice in it together with them. The sower and the reaper would rejoice. They would reap what had been sown.

Thus the Lord was already hinting to them at His departure from them and at His approaching death, which was preceded by the still nearer death of His Forerunner.

His word had fallen into the soul of the Samaritan woman and quickly set her aflame with faith in Him. This word, passed on by her to her fellow citizens, had moved them to come to Him.

Seeing the crowd of townspeople coming to Him, He rejoiced that the seed He had cast was already beginning to bear fruit. Therefore, when the disciples offered Him food to satisfy His hunger, He answered that His food was to do the will of Him who sent Him.

Then, pointing to the Samaritans coming toward Him, He said, “You say that the harvest will come after four months. But I say to you, look at this field approaching us, how it has become white and ripe for harvest.

“I will send you to reap what has been sown by Me. You who reap will receive a reward, for you will gather fruit for eternal life.

“You will rejoice while gathering the harvest, although you yourselves did not sow. But the One who sows the word of God will also rejoice with you that what He sowed has borne fruit.”

When grain is sown in the earth, it most often happens that the one who reaps, that is, gathers the fruits, is the one who also sowed. For he sowed for himself.

But when the word is sown, the spiritual harvest almost always falls to others. The one who sowed rejoices that others gathered the fruits of his sowing, since he sowed not for himself but for others.

Therefore, in relation to the spiritual field, it is entirely true that one sows and another reaps.

He continues, “Do you not say, There are still four months, and then comes the harvest? But I say to you, lift up your eyes and look at the fields, for they are white and ready for harvest.”

“Do you not say”: these words themselves show that Jesus is setting forth a popular saying. In the language of the people He expresses to the disciples His joy that whole crowds of Shechemites are coming to Him, some believing and others ready to believe.

He had only recently sown spiritual seed in the heart of the Samaritan woman, and behold, the field is already ripe: the inhabitants of Sychar with changed hearts.

In other cases too, the Savior often compared the Gospel to seed and the conversion of souls to harvest: Mt 9:37 and following; Mt 13:3 and following; Mk 4:26 and following; Lk 8:5 and following.

In Palestine wheat was sown in November and at the beginning of December. In February the grain is already as high as ours is in May.

In the month of Nisan, corresponding to our April, the firstfruits of barley were brought. Christ Jesus took the image for His thought from the green field surrounding Him.

This is important for determining the periods of the Savior’s life. From this it is evident that from Pascha, in April, until the beginning of February, Jesus remained in the land of Judea; Jn 3:22; Jn 4:3.

When the disciples had gone into the city to buy food, they saw their divine Teacher wearied and weakened from the journey, thirsty and hungry. Therefore, in their zeal, they hasten to offer Him food.

But the Lord Jesus is God, and at the same time man. He is the ideal toward which every ordinary mortal must strive, though of course never attaining it.

Yet in this striving, man draws near to God and fulfills His holy will.

In the form and being of man, the Lord Jesus shows in Himself the highest image of human nature. In this nature, thought subdues the body and rules over bodily weaknesses and needs.

Drawing His disciples from earthly cares to heavenly things, He indicates to them that "man shall not live by bread alone" (Mt 4:4).

He explains and reveals to them that mystery of man's spiritual life which creates martyrs, ascetics, and all those who leave earthly things in order to follow the Lord. The Lord is the Truth (Jn 14:6).

Compare also Athanasius the Great, cited above concerning Jn 4:21-24.

In all these, who surrender their earthly desires and earthly body to the Lord, bodily weakness is joined to astonishing greatness of spirit.

This spirit is strong not by its own power, but by the power of God. It is strong when it does the will of God and gives up its earthly life and enjoyments, in order to magnify and glorify God's name.

In this case, as in many others, "His disciples did not understand this at first, but when Jesus was glorified, then they remembered" (Jn 12:16).

The beloved disciple recorded all this "that you may believe... and that believing you may have life in His name" (Jn 20:31).

Here we see how the God-man, wearied and weakened according to His humanity, causes the spirit to triumph over the flesh in man.

"My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me, and to accomplish His work."

The weakness of human strength disappears. The demand of nature to strengthen itself with food recedes into second place before the greatness of the work.

To this work "the man Christ Jesus" (1 Tim 2:5) gives Himself, in order to fulfill the work of the God-man and the will of God.

Human thought and the loving human heart fulfill the thought of God. Here in Samaria, God's thought draws crowds of foreigners to God.

For soon, very soon, they will replace before God the people once chosen. God's thought, embodied in the Lord's human thought, builds the Church of Christ.

So too does God's love, burning in the God-man's love for all mankind. It opens to all humanity, in faith in the Lord Jesus, endless prospects of perfection.

And who will dare deny that Christian society has taken possession of the world precisely because it is Christian?

The final aim of the God-man, who fulfills God's thought, is the eternal happiness of the human soul.