Dana Owens

The Greek word for sin is hamartia, meaning “failing to hit the mark.” Hamartia could easily be translated as a mistake or failure. As we all know, both mistakes and failures are redemptive. In this context, Jesus proclaimed that “I have not come to call the righteous but sinners.”

They claimed to believe in Jesus, they even claimed to experience his presence in their daily lives, and they further claimed to have met Jesus! Yet, the way they lived did not change at all.

“You can’t see the forest for the trees.” This often means that people fail to see the larger picture, because they are focused on a small and narrow spot. According to Emanuel Swedenborg, people are innately focused on the materialistic and physical way of living and being, and thus are not capable of perceiving the spiritual reality within which their true existence resides.

It seems that there is definitely something special about being Jesus’s disciples, because they were given the secrets of the kingdom of heaven, while others were not. The disciples symbolize the spiritual preparedness for the spiritual journey.

Jesus not only engages in conversation with the Samaritan woman, but also leads her to the teaching of spiritual truth about eternal life. But why her?

Being “born again,” which sounds impossible when taken literally, focuses on the transformation of human mentality (or spirituality), while being “born from above” focuses on the necessity of acknowledging the truth that life is from God, and we are just vessels that receive and contain the life from God.