According to John 4 we may experience and enjoy Christ as the gift of God, the Messiah, and the Savior of the world.
In verse 10 the Lord Jesus said to the Samaritan woman, “If you knew the gift of God...you would have asked Him, and He would have given you living water.” In verse 14 He spoke to her again about the water that He gives. From these verses we see that Christ is the gift of God. Our thirst can be quenched only by the living person of Christ, the Son of God, who has been given to us by God.
Christ has been given to us by God. John 3:16a says that God so loved the world, that is, sinful, fallen people, that He gave His only begotten Son, His expression, that they might obtain His eternal life to become His many sons and be His corporate expression for the fulfillment of His eternal New Testament economy. God’s giving us His Son was not done in a simple way but in His Divine Trinity.
Christ, the gift of God, imparts the living water—the water of life (Rev. 21:6; 22:1). The water of life signifies God in Christ as the Spirit flowing Himself into His redeemed people to be their life and life supply.
In John 4:14 the Lord Jesus said that the water that He gives us becomes in us a fountain of water gushing up into eternal life. This verse indicates that the Triune God flows in the Divine Trinity in three stages: the Father as the fountain, Christ the Son as the spring, and the Spirit as the river. We need to see that the Triune God is flowing through the Father, Christ the Son, and the Spirit into us. Whenever we drink of this water, it becomes a fountain in us. We all should say, “The fountain is in me!” This fountain emerges as a spring, and the spring flows out as a river for the New Jerusalem. As the spring of living water, Christ quenches our thirst, satisfies us, makes us happy, and becomes our pleasure.
According to John 4:14, the flowing Triune God is “into eternal life.” The Greek preposition translated as into is rich in meaning. Into here means issuing in, or to be, to become; thus, it speaks of destination. The eternal life is the destination of the flowing Triune God. A fountain is in us springing up as a river into a destination. This destination is the eternal life as the totality of the divine life. Just as our human life has its totality and a living person is the totality of the human life, so also the eternal life has its totality and the totality of the divine life is the New Jerusalem. The eternal life eventually will be the New Jerusalem. Thus, into eternal life means into the New Jerusalem.
We must have something flowing into the divine New Jerusalem in order for us to arrive there. When God in Christ as the Spirit flows into us, He flows with us. He will flow us into the New Jerusalem to be the New Jerusalem. Thus, the New Jerusalem is the issue of God’s flowing in three stages. All three stages are in us; we have the fountain, the spring, and the river within us at the same time. The Father is the fountain as the source, Christ the Son is the spring, and the Spirit is the flowing river, and this flowing issues in the eternal life, which is the New Jerusalem as the destination of the flowing Triune God.