João 7:38

Some commentators believed that the end of Jesus’ statement did not occur at the end of this verse but after "Me." [Note: E.g., Brown, 1:321.] They saw Jesus saying, "If any man is thirsty, let him come to Me, and drink he who believes in Me." This view results in the antecedent of "his innermost being" or "him" being Jesus rather than the believer. This view makes Jesus the source of the living water, which is biblical. However the punctuation in the NASB and NIV probably represents the better translation. [Note: See Carson, The Gospel . . ., pp. 323-25.]

The antecedent of "his innermost being" or "him" is probably the believer rather than Jesus. This does not mean that Jesus was saying that the believer was the source of the living water. The living water is a reference to the Holy Spirit elsewhere in John, and it is Jesus who pours out the Spirit as living water (John 4:14). Jesus spoke elsewhere of the living water welling up within the believer (John 4:14). The idea is not that the Spirit will flow out of the believer to other believers. We are not the source of the Spirit for others. It is rather that the Spirit from Jesus wells up within each believer and gives him or her satisfying spiritual refreshment. Water satisfies thirst and produces fruitfulness, and similarly the Spirit satisfies the inner person and enables us to bear fruit. The Greek expression is ek tes koilias autou (lit. from within his belly). The belly here pictures the center of the believer’s personality. It may imply the womb, the sphere of generation. [Note: Tasker, p. 109.]

There is no specific passage in the Old Testament that contains the same words that Jesus mentioned here. Consequently He must have been summarizing the teaching of the Old Testament (cf. Exodus 16:4; Exodus 17; Numbers 20; Nehemiah 8:5-18; Psalms 78:15-16; Isaiah 32:15; Isaiah 44:3; Ezekiel 39:29; Joel 2:28-32; Zechariah 14:8). One writer believed Jesus had Ezekiel 47:1-11 in view. [Note: Zane C. Hodges, "Rivers of Living Water-John 7:37-39," Bibliotheca Sacra 136:543 (July-September 1979):239-48.] In these passages the ideas of the Spirit and the law sustaining God’s people as manna and water converge. Jesus claimed that He alone could provide the satisfying Spirit. This was an offer of salvation.