CRITICAL INSIGHTS ON THE SALVIFIC INTERACTION BETWEEN OUR LORD JESUS CHRIST AND THE SAMARITAN WOMAN BESIDE JACOB'S WELL

Implicitly, the interaction between the woman of Samaria and Christ beside Jacob's well at Sychar transformed her personality. Hence, she ceased to be a prostitute. She became sexually chaste as a married woman nay a remarried woman. Again, the interaction between both of them was quite a lengthy one, a near epic discourse. The interaction as a near-epic discourse implies that it is loaded with lots of insights: divine insights, intercultural insights in relation to Samaritans and Jews, insights on interpersonal relationship cum transgender interaction. All of these insights need to be expounded. They need to be expounded for the purpose of unearthing the underlying value-adding philosophies of life embedded in them as well as the Gospel ideals equally incorporated in them. These aspirations constitute the specific objectives of this paper. Hopefully, realising the objectives of the paper would serve to largely improve Christians' interpersonal relationships with God and other individuals, as well as their immediate and extended neighbours. To effectively realise the foregoing specific objectives of the paper, its analysis section anchors chiefly on critical and logical modes of thinking as the roots of critical discourse analysis (CDA). Major insights unearthed analytically from the passage (John 4:1-45) are as follows: Christ is indisputably the Saviour of the World, and the Messiah or the Redeemer as severally evident in the passage. God's foremost divine attributes of omnipotence, omniscience and omnipresence do not permit Him to be confined to any specific place of worship, most contrary to the impression created by the Samaritan and Jewish religiocultural practices which at the time of Christ limited worshipping Him to the mountain and Jerusalem, respectively. The woman's expressive polite attitude to Christ suggests overtly that, socio-culturally in Samaria, it is in the place of women, generally, to defer to men just as Christ's request for water from her collapses the wall of discrimination or enmity between Jews and Samaritans. As Christologically asserted in the passage, God is Spirit and by His divine nature, the epitome of truth. Consequently, those who worship Him should and must worship Him in spirit and truth. Saved or redeemed souls or children of God by redemption should and must be Christ-like at all times and places in all situations and at every occasion.