Luke 3:15-18
(Matthew 3:11-12; Mark 1:7-8)
Suggested further reading: Acts 10:44-48; 15:7-11
One effect of a faithful ministry is to set men thinking (v. 15).
The cause of true religion has gained a great step when people begin
to think. Thoughtlessness about spiritual things is one great feature
of unconverted man. It cannot be said, in many cases, that they
either like or dislike the gospel. They do not give it a place in their thoughts.
Let us always thank God when we see a spirit of reflection
on religious subjects coming over the mind of an unconverted
man. Consideration is the high road to conversion. Thinking, no doubt,
is not faith and repentance. But it is always a hopeful symptom.
A faithful minister will always exalt Christ (vv. 15-16). A
true man of God will never allow anything to be credited to him, or
his office, which belongs to the divine Master. He will follow
Paul's adage (2 Cor. 4:5). To commend Christ dying and rising again
for the ungodly, to make known Christ's love and power to save
sinners, this will be the main object of his ministry. He will be
content that his own name is forgotten so long as Christ crucified is
exalted. A minister who is really doing us good will make us think more
of Jesus every year we live.
There is an essential difference between the Lord Jesus and
even the best and holiest of his ministers. An ordained man can
administer the outward ordinances of Christianity with a prayerful
hope that God will graciously bless the means which he himself has
appointed. He can preach the gospel faithfully to their ears, but
he cannot make them receive it into their consciences. He can
apply baptismal water but he cannot cleanse their inward nature.
Christ alone can do this by the power of the Holy Spirit (v. 16). It is
his peculiar office to do it, and it is an office which he has deputed to
no child of man.
There must not only be the work of Christ for us, but the work
of the Holy Spirit in us. There must not only be a title to heaven by
the blood of Christ, but a preparedness for heaven wrought in us by
the Spirit of Christ. This is the baptism of the Spirit.
For meditation: Baptism in water washes the body, baptism in
the Spirit washes the heart (Acts 15:8-9).
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