What Must We Leave Behind

"I baptize you with water for repentance. But after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor, gathering his wheat into the barn and burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire."

Paul says in Romans 6 that baptism is like being buried with Christ and then being raised to walk in newness of life. The old is gone and behold the new life is seen. The old was washed away in the flood.

John describes baptism from Jesus as two-fold, Holy Spirit baptism and also fire. The refiner’s fire which burns away all impurities leaving pure, refined gold. But then Jesus is God. His baptism certainly would be far more encompassing than the symbolic act that believers follow to publicly profess their faith.

What is it that we need to leave in the baptism pool? What are the habits, thoughts, behaviors, values, and possessions that should be burned away with “unquenchable fire?”

For the believer, the question is, does this only happen at salvation when Jesus provides the Holy Spirit, or is it only at baptism when we are immersed as an outward symbol of our inward faith, or is it instead an everyday process of laying whatever we are carrying onto the threshing floor so that all that is valuable can be separated out, and all that is chaff can be burned away.

All that I hold in my hands and my heart must be constantly held up to the master’s scrutiny so that he can continue to do his work in me. I must release all, so that only what is useful can be continued. If I hold anything back, I have determined it to be more important than my Lord and Savior. I have reserved it from his judgment and thus created my own.