Article October 28, 2013 Issue

The cleansing touch of 'living waters'

For the Lesson titled “Everlasting Punishment” from October 28 - November 3, 2013

Kathleen Collins

You might say that the title of this week’s Christian Science Bible Lesson, “Everlasting Punishment,” is a hot topic! At least it is for those who fear fire and brimstone at a final judgment. But will God at any point cast off His own children? No, answers Christian Science—God and the real man are inseparable. No matter how far we may feel we’ve fallen from God, good, we can leave behind that clinging sense of sin and be assured that “the eternal God is thy refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms” (Deuteronomy 33:27, Golden Text). 

Mary Baker Eddy writes in her book Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures, “The design of Love is to reform the sinner” (p. 35, citation 14). The Christ is the catalyst of that reform: “If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous”
(I John 2:1, cit. 6). “Advocate” (paraklētos in Greek, translated “comforter” in the Gospel of John) means “defender” or “one who pleads another’s cause.” The Christ is our powerful ally, whose healing touch reaches all. The stories in this Lesson of the Samaritan woman at the well and the man at the pool of Bethesda prove that “Love is impartial and universal in its adaptation and bestowals” (Science and Health, p. 13, cit. 17).

The Samaritan woman was taken aback when Jesus spoke to her (see John 4, cit. 13). Not only was it taboo for him to talk with an unknown woman, but there was a schism between the Jews and the Samaritans in spite of their ancestral bonds. The Samaritans maintained that God had chosen Mount Gerizim as His holy place, and they had built a shrine there, but the Jews destroyed it, fiercely claiming that only Jerusalem could have a temple. Jesus’ answer? We must worship God “in spirit and in truth” (verse 24), not at a particular place.