John 4:13-14,28-29,34 NASB95 Jesus answered and said to her, “Everyone who drinks of this water will thirst again; [14] but whoever drinks of the water that I will give him shall never thirst; but the water that I will give him will become in him a well of water springing up to eternal life.” [28] So the woman left her water pot, and went into the city and said to the men, [29] “Come, see a man who told me all the things that I have done; this is not the Christ, is it?” [34] Jesus said to them, “My food is to do the will of Him who sent Me and to accomplish His work.”
Jesus said that His food was to do the will of the Father and accomplish His work. In the context of the story of the woman at the well, the Father’s work was to let her know that He knew everything that she had ever done and that Jesus was there to quench her thirst so that she would never have to do those things again. He wasn’t there to condemn her. He was there to heal her broken soul. He didn’t ask her if she was sorry for all the things that she had done out of her fallenness. He simply wanted her to know that He knew it all and had a gift for her: the gift of inclusion in the all-satisfying eternal life of Jesus.
Her story is your story in my story. The work that Christ came to accomplish in our lives was to let us know that God knows everything we’ve ever done and has sent His Son, not to condemn us or to ask us to plead for forgiveness, but to quench our thirsting hearts so completely that we would never be compelled to do those self-destructive things again. This is the gospel.