Wheat and chaff

”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." Matthew 3:12

I occasionally wonder how hard I can push someone toward a life of faith in Christ without alienating them. John the Baptizer painted, in this scripture from Matthew, what I believe to be, a very prophetic image of Jesus’ return. John announced that Jesus was bringing the way and the truth (of God’s Kingdom) to mankind, and made it quite clear that some were going to accept it and some weren’t, and furthermore that those who didn’t would face dire consequences.

Jesus spent a relatively short time here on earth showing and telling his message of redemption and salvation and relaying in every manner understandable to those of the time and now the hope of eternity and the price of rejecting it. And all the while the reality of his message was there, "As for the person who hears my words but does not keep them, I do not judge him. For I did not come to judge the world, but to save it.” John 12:47.

The message that I take from all this is that I need to be authentic, be serious, and be bold. The next to last thing I want to do is push someone away from discovering Christ, but the worst thing would be to allow them to die without ever having known about him. One of the most often misquoted sayings of Jesus is, “Do you think I came to bring peace on earth? No, I tell you, but division.” Luke 12:51 Taken out of context is sounds completely contrary to virtually everything else Jesus ever said, but the true meaning is that no matter how much love I pour into the mission of bringing all to Christ, some of people are destined to be wheat and some chaff. I surely don’t want to be responsible for chaff that could have been wheat.

Bless you brothers, live this day in peace, in His Word.