Notes on the Symbolic Use of Water in Scripture

             Ezekiel 47 describes a river flowing out of the temple. (Compare Isa. 44:8; Zech. 14:8; Joel 3:18; Revelation 22:1-2; 21:22) (Note: The Kingdom of God and the Kingdom of Heaven refer to God’s rule and order, not a place specifically.)

             Ezekiel saw a river flowing out of the temple—the southern end of the eastern threshold—and it healed the sea. John’s vision of the New Heaven and the New Earth reveals “the river of the water of life, bright as crystal, flowing from the throne of God and of the Lamb…” (Rev. 22:1) The leaves of the trees growing along that reiver “were for the healing of the nations” (Rev. 22:2).

             Jesus told the Samaritan woman: “Whoever drinks of the water that I will give him will never be thirsty forever. The water that I give him will become in him a spring of water welling up to eternal life. (John 4:14 cf. John 7:37-39; Rev. 21:6; Isa. 12:3)

             John made much of the concept of water in his Gospel and first epistle. At Jesus’s crucifixion he records:

 “But one of the soldiers pierced his side with a spear, and at once there came out blood and water. He who saw it has borne witness…” (John 19:34,35)

             And in First John 5:6-8 we read:

 “This is He who came by water and blood—Jesus Christ; not by the water only but by the water and the blood. And the Spirit is the One who testifies, because the Spirit is the truth. For there are three that testify: the Spirit and the water and the blood; and these three agree.”

             Jesus said we must be born of “the water and the Spirit” (John 3:5). And this new birth came through the sacrifice of God’s Son (the blood) (John 3:14-16). The water, then, appears to be the life of God that is applied to the believer by the Spirit in virtue of Christ’s shed blood for the believer’s sins.

             This water of life flows from Christ—the true Temple of God (Rev. 22:1-2 cf. John 2:21)—and grows deeper and more powerful the farther it flows (Ezek. 47:3-5). The water gives life wherever it goes (Ezek. 47:9), and it nurtures the Tree of Life that heals the nations (Rev. 22:1-2).

             So water is used in a highly symbolic way in Scripture—in prophecy, in the Apocalypse, and in the writings of John in general. It pictures the life of God imparted to the believer in Christ in virtue of Christ’s atoning blood. That life of God becomes a spring of life that refreshes and revives the believer throughout his earthly life and into his eternal life in the kingdom of heaven.