Water, living water, is a picture of life, purity, nourishment, and joy throughout the Scriptures. When God made the world, He filled it and beautified it with springs, creeks, rivers, and lakes. When Jehovah gave His people the Law, He called them to sanctify their homes and their hearts with “running water” (Leviticus 14:6). In John 4, our Lord Jesus pointed the woman at the well to the “living water” that would satisfy her thirst forever. In the final verses of the Bible, the Spirit and the Bride invite any thirsty soul to “take the water of life freely” (Revelation 22:17).

Is it not fitting that the Lord Himself draws important analogies between the purity of marriage and the blessings of water? Let’s consider two such passages where the connection between water and marriage is made.

Wives Are Springs of Water to Their Husbands

According to Proverbs 5:15, “Drink waters out of thine own cistern, and running waters out of thine own well.” The context of this reference is a warning to the young man of the dangers of the strange woman. A loving, satisfying marriage should be to a Godly man as having his own private cistern full of clear, cold, refreshing water. 

In Bible times, as it is today, water was a precious commodity. Many people had to draw water at a common well in the center of town. But some private citizens, at great labor and expense, dug their own private wells or built cisterns to collect and hold rainwater. Wells and cisterns provided pure, fresh drinking water year-round, even when surrounding pools and streams might run dry. 

Wives, you are able to meet your husband’s physical desires and needs righteously—in a way that no other woman on earth can ever do. You are a special source of pleasure and satisfaction to him that is priceless. Keep yourself pure for him. Husbands, value and cherish the pure, refreshing blessing that God has given to you in your wife. Together, this intimacy should be reserved and kept for each other and no one else.

Husbands “Cleanse” Their Wives by the Washing of the Water of the Word 

In Ephesians 5:25–26, Paul wrote to husbands, “Husbands, love your wives, even as Christ also loved the church, and gave himself for it; That he might sanctify and cleanse it with the washing of water by the word.” Just as Christ washes His people in the living water of truth, so also husbands should “sanctify and cleanse” their wives by the consistent application of the Word of God.

The daily cleansing of water is necessary for our bodies; so too is the daily cleansing of Scripture necessary for our souls. Where there is sin and impurity, there is no fellowship with God nor with one another. Just as a house can have a distasteful odor in the air from a lack of regular cleaning, so many homes that lack spiritual purity have an offensive odor due to the neglect of consistent cleansing of personal sin in the family members.

How is your marriage? Is it washed each day in the Word of God and through prayer? Husbands, do you take your responsibilities seriously? Do you open the Bible daily with your wife and children God has given you? Do you pray with them and for them? When was the last time that you as the loving leader of your home inquired of God about the state of the souls that He has placed under your care?

Bring your family to the fountain of cleansing. Rejoice in the promises extended by the invitation of God Himself in Isaiah 55:1, “Ho, every one that thirsteth, come ye to the waters.”