I. The Holy Spirit is fire. Fire all over the world has been taken to represent the Divine energy. Even in heathendom, side by side with the worship of light, was the worship of fire. Though the thought was darkened and marred, wrongly apprehended, and ferociously worked out in ritual, it was a true thought for all that. And Scripture has from the beginning used it. There is a continuous chain of symbolism, according to which some aspect of the Divine nature, and especially of the Spirit of God, is set forth to us as fire. The question then is, What is that aspect? The fire of God's Spirit is not a wrathful energy, working pain and death, but a merciful omnipotence, bringing light, and joy, and peace. The Spirit which is fire is a Spirit which giveth life. So the symbol, in the special reference in the text, has nothing of terror or destruction, but is full of hope, and bright with promise.
II. Christ plunges us into this Divine fire. I presume that scarcely any one will deny that our Version weakens the force of John's words, by translating " withwater, withthe Holy Ghost," instead of inwater, inthe Holy Ghost. Christ gives the Spirit. In and by Jesus you and I are brought into contact with this cleansing fire. Without His work it would never have burned on earth; without our faith in His work it will never purify our souls.
III. That fiery baptism quickens and cleanses. (1) Fire gives warmth. Christ comes to kindle in men's souls a blaze of enthusiastic Divine love, such as the world never saw, and to set them aflame with fervent earnestness, which shall melt all the icy hardness of heart, and turn cold self-regard into self-forgetting consecration. (2) Fire purifies. That Spirit, which is fire, produces holiness in heart and character, by this chiefly among all His manifold operations, that He excites the flame of love to God, which burns our souls clear with its white fervours. This is the Christian method of making men good first, know His love, then believe it, then love Him back again, and then let that genial heat permeate all your life, and it will woo forth everywhere blossoms of beauty and fruits of holiness, that shall clothe the pastures of the wilderness with gladness.
A. Maclaren, Sermons Preached in Manchester,2nd series, p. 227.
References: Matthew 3:11. Homiletic Magazine,vol. x., p. 99. Matthew 3:11-16. S. A. Tipple, Expositor,1st series, vol. ix., p. 81.