Thursday, December 16, 2010

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit

Matthew 3:11-12 (ESV)
"I baptize you with water for repentance, but he who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. [12] His winnowing fork is in his hand, and he will clear his threshing floor and gather his wheat into the barn, but the chaff he will burn with unquenchable fire.”
He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire. I find it curious given John’s word’s here that so many model their idea of baptism off of what John the Baptist was doing. John is clear, Jesus baptism is going to be different than mine. It will be accompanied by the Holy Spirit. This isn’t to say that Jesus doesn’t baptize with water. He does. Baptism implies water unless another liquid is mentioned. In fact what John is doing here is saying “the baptism you are looking for, the one prophesied by Ezekiel :” I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleannesses, and from all your idols I will cleanse you. [26] And I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you. And I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh. [27] And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes and be careful to obey my rules. [28] You shall dwell in the land that I gave to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. (Ezekiel 36:25-28 (ESV) that baptism the one with water and the Holy Spirit is the one the guy coming after me will do.
And so it is that when Jesus sprinkles clean water on us through his called servants, with the word he has given us, then we are made clean from our idols, and we are given a new heart, and a new spirit, and his spirit is given to us. John’s baptism doesn’t do this, but Christ’s baptism does.

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