December 1, 2010

who gets burnt?

I'm still stuck on Jesus' baptizing us with the Holy Spirit and fire because, it seems to me, that many of our brothers and sisters in Christ don't hear what JBap is really saying. "He will gather his wheat into the granary, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire."

We don't really get what Jesus is saying because we buy our flour already milled and our cereal already puffed. We hear this warning and think, "Thanks be to God that I'm good grain and those other people are the chaff."

But that is not an accurate understanding because in every stalk of wheat there is both good grain and chaff. The threshing floor is the place where the two are separated by the process of winnowing. The grain is stirred up in some way (maybe by a winnowing fork) and the light chaff blows away while the heavier grain falls back to the floor. The grain is kept, and the chaff, well the chaff is properly disposed of (often these days it becomes livestock feed).

All of that to say this: I am both good grain and chaff, and so are you. Nobody is just good grain or just chaff. We all have goodness within us and we all have sin within us. The key to humility is realizing this fact, and the key to repentance is asking for God's help in winnowing out the bad and keeping the good.

So, to answer my earlier question, Who gets burnt? We all do, but it is a fruitful process in the end.

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