CLEANSING AND BURNING
‘I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance: … He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost, and with fire.’
It is not too much to say that many people think and speak as if Repentance were, of itself, what they call a title to Heaven. Bui nowhere in Holy Scripture does Repentance—in the sense in which we are now using the word—stand for more than the beginning of a living religion. It is always ‘repent and’—do this or do that.
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” (Acts 20:21), may he truly termed the summary of John the Baptist’s preaching then, and the Christian evangelist’s now.’