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‘I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: … He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.’
Mat_3:11
I. A preparation.—Repentance is not Christianity. It is only the preparation for Christianity. Look at the History. When St. John came preaching Repentance, the Jews imagined that he might be the Christ. So they sent to ask him if it were so. And what was his answer? He told them—No. That he only baptized unto Repentance: and, therefore, he was not the Christ, but only the Forerunner of the Christ: for that, when Christ came, His Baptism should be quite a different thing—namely, with the Holy Ghost and with Fire. Repentance is a great thing in its operation on the soul, cleansing it like water. But true living Christianity is a much greater thing, something keener and far more searching. Water may cleanse, but Fire burns up utterly all that has defiled:—Fire and the Holy Ghost; the Fire to consume all that remains of natural corruption;—the Holy Ghost to infuse a new and God-like principle of action.
II. God renews.—The real work of Religion in our hearts is not any work of ours done upon ourselves, but is a real supernatural action of God upon us, making us something which we could not be without it. We repent; but God renews us, i.e. God makes us over again. And just as God is more powerful than we are, so God’s part in our restoration to goodness is a far greater one than our own. This part in our religion is a divine work and such as none but God could do. It is truly a miracle. Repenting is only our smoothing the way for Christ to come into our souls. True religion is holiness, and holiness is a supernatural work of the Living God.
Illustration
‘John the Baptist’s ministry has caused some difficulty to students of Scripture. It has seemed to stand between the two Testaments, as if it belonged to neither. Perhaps John best described his office when he spoke of himself as the friend of the Bridegroom, who stood and rejoiced to hear the Bridegroom’s voice. And yet it seems to me that the ministry of John the Baptist corresponds in all its essential features to the ministry of the evangelist to-day. It is true that the ministry of the evangelist is to point to the Saviour who has come, and that the office of John the Baptist was to point to a Saviour who was coming: “Behold the Lamb of God, which taketh away the sins of the world.” But he preached the same message, for “repentance toward God and faith toward our Lord Jesus Christ” (Act_20:21), may he truly termed the summary of John the Baptist’s preaching then, and the Christian evangelist’s now.’
‘He that cometh after me is mightier than I.’
Mat_3:11
I. A sanctified ambition.—It is not ambition, it is discipline of ambition, which needs to be preached among men. If you come into close contact with any one man, however distinguished, whose life has been actuated throughout by an ambitious purpose, you will, I believe, bear me out in saying that for all his eminence there is in him an element which grates upon the finer feelings of the Christian nature. There is always the danger that he who seeks his own advancement at the cost of others will spread sorrow throughout the world. I would not say to you, ‘Fling away ambition,’ yet I will say, ‘Fling away all that is base and sordid and self-seeking in ambition.’ It is the chastened, sanctified ambition, not ambition at all costs, that needs to be enjoined upon your mind.
II. Strength of character.—It is a mistake to suppose—and the Baptist’s history shows it—that the man who is free from the ignominy of being jealous must be a weak, pliable character. That was not the character of the Baptist. He was strong, as he showed when he constantly rebuked vice, as in the case of Herod Antipas. He was strong in his endurance of the suffering that he was called to bear from one whose vice he had rebuked, and yet he, who could constantly speak and patiently suffer for the truth’s sake, was the man whose high glory it is to have recognised the intrinsic superiority of the Lord, to have spoken of himself as only ‘a voice crying in the wilderness,’ a runner, going before to clear the way for One greater than himself, and it will be well if you and I lay to heart the lesson of the Baptist’s example.
III. The Divine Example.—When we speak of self-sacrifice, of self-effacement, we go back to the divine example of Him Who was so high and became so low, Who left the heaven of His father’s glory that He might suffer and die upon earth. We can never wholly forget, if indeed we can never wholly obey, a motive to be content with the lower room, to acquiesce in the rising of others above ourselves, and to love the work which God permits us to do, above any possible reward of doing it. Let us, then, bethink us of the example of John the Baptist, and still more of the example of Him to whom the Baptist so willingly gave place; let us concede no more than the second place in our own thoughts to our personal interest and advantage; let us yield the first place unreservedly to Him.
—
Bishop J. E. C. Welldon.
Illustration‘It has not been my experience that the preaching of ambition as a duty is greatly required among men. I think there is plenty of self-seeking, plenty of the desire to rise above others, and of the effort to get on at the cost of sacrifice of our fellow men. Those who have been engaged in the training of the young are aware how much pains it is the fashion to take, to teach them that they must struggle for success, that they must aim at winning prizes, that they must set before themselves the love of distinction. And yet the only ambition which is praised in the Gospel is, first, the ambition to keep the faith of Jesus Christ; next the ambition to be acceptable in the sight of the divine Lord; and, last and strangest of all, the ambition to be quiet.’
‘He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.’
Mat_3:11
I. Guided by fire.—This manifestation is not altogether new in the providence of God. (Abraham’s sacrifice in the wilderness; Moses on Horeb; the pillar of fire that went before the Lord’s people in the wilderness. These were all guided by fire.)
II. Inspired by fire.—Let me place before you three considerations. There never will be a new Bible, but there will be many new readings of it. You open your Bible and you read it. But you never read like that before. It used to be ink and paper; now, as you read it, it is fire. Where does the inspiration come from? Is the Book newly inspired? No, but you are.
III. Purified by fire.—There never will be a new Saviour. ‘Jesus Christ the same yesterday, to-day, and for ever.’ But one day you looked at Him through your tears, and He seemed to you altogether new, and the Holy Ghost had fallen upon you and shown to you that you were altogether unlovely, and that your Saviour was altogether lovely. It was not that the Saviour was new, but God had given you a new and a purified heart. The fire of heaven has fallen upon you and purified your heart.
IV. Baptized by fire.—There will be no new Church. The Church is a very old Church; its altar was set up in the eternity of God. In the beginning it was baptized with the Holy Ghost and with fire at Pentecost. That is the Church, the Pentecost Church, the Christian Church. There is no other. ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost, the Holy Catholic Church,’ no new Church, no other Church. What does it all mean? If you are baptized, you are baptized into the one Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church. I know you might go away and say, ‘But is not your idea and your explanation of the Holy Ghost’s Church a little vague? We want something more definite.’ Would you ask me to draw a line round the operations of the Holy Ghost? You ask too much. ‘I believe in the Holy Ghost; the Holy Catholic Church; the Communion of Saints; the Forgiveness of sins; the Resurrection of the body, and the life everlasting.’ I believe that which I cannot define.
The Rev. A. H. Stanton.