Friday, April 16, 2021
Paul commanded the Ephesian church to “be filled” with the Spirit of God. The way this sentence is constructed denotes the author’s intent to communicate the idea that this filling is to be continuous. It is not a one-time event.
John’s baptism, however, was different. The washing of physical water can only ever signify something greater that happens in the infinite, so it’s not like it would behoove us to make pilgrimage back to the baptismal every time we screw up. In my case, I should never leave the water. And what kind of life is that?
The beauty of how God designed things is stunning when you take it in for what it really is. Yes, we are to make repentance a lifestyle—we are to continually humble ourselves before God and others, asking forgiveness where the light shines on our errors (which are still, even for the believer, many). But the baptism we continually seek has nothing to do with water—repentance for us is not a dead end but a continual freshening with fire.
In the fire of God, the chaff is burned away, revealing the inner miracle of the seed and all the potential for life God designed into it.
In the fire, that which cannot be burned is made pure, and we see even our desires being renewed in Christ, until we want what He wants, and not just superficially but with all our hearts. This continual process of baptism—of washing with spiritual fire—is the essence of miraculous transformation, and only God could mastermind something this good.
We see God’s faithfulness in the continual, process-joined, good order of this baptism. Priceless treasures aren’t just thrown into the fire in the hope that they could be refined. Instead the fire is brought near to them by the Master, they are carefully and skillfully worked by the flame, even continually washed by it, and in the process they release even their inmost impurities. The smith reforms and remakes their every detail, and the flame burnishes the precious. What results is nothing like the vessel that first felt the flame. Now it glows in the heat and the light forever, and forever it is changed.
This is a little bit of what the Kingdom is like.