Following Jesus’ encounter with the woman at the well (the biblical setting for an engagement scene), John says “Many Samaritans from that town believed in him because of the woman’s testimony, “He told me all that I ever did” (John 4:39).

For those with sentimental views of love and a tighter-than-the-Bible views of the Gospel, Jesus’ confrontation with the woman loses its punch. He didn’t just deliver the bad news “we are all sinners” or talk about her failure to glorify God though both are true. In love, he spoke to her sin while she was trying to hide it from him. He’s talking about living water, and she if she doesn’t directly know Solomon’s comparison of clean water to sexual fidelity and delight (Prov. 5:15-20), she certainly knew the connotation.

Teachers often note the racial lines Jesus crossed talking to the Samaritan woman, and he did cross those lines. But he also crossed the line to point out this woman’s sexual corruption straight up the middle. She had had five husbands and was shacked up with her latest man. Christ’s kind and frank confrontation frees her, and what caused many of her countrymen to believe was this testimony. They did not believe because Jesus was a magic-man who somehow figured out her secret sins. He told her what she had done, and how to be free of it, in all mercy and love. This woman was notoriously immoral like any woman who has had five husbands, and what a testimony–someone who didn’t pridefully or scornfully shame her, but took the time to tell her the truth! All who would turn others away from not just sin, but their sins, must do likewise.