Why It's Good News

He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire. His winnowing fork is in his hand to clear his threshing floor and to gather the wheat into his barn, but he will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.”  And with many other words John exhorted the people and proclaimed the good news to them. - Luke 3:15-18

Yesterday we looked at how the people in the first century were looking for a Messiah who would do their will (and more specifically would slaughter their enemies). For obvious reasons, that’s not particularly good news in the true sense.

But John the Baptist emphasizes that those who connect with this Messiah will experience baptism both by the Spirit and fire, and that they will experience being refined like grain into both the kernel and the chaff. Note that there aren’t good people (who get the Spirit and are the kernel) and bad people (who get the fire and are the chaff). Nope, that’s not it. What John is saying is that each of us, when we come to the Messiah Jesus, will have to face our own refining because in each of us is both good and bad, health and unhealthy, beauty and brokenness.

And that’s good news!

At last, we don’t have to have enemies. Remember that Jesus didn’t treat anyone as his enemy, even though they treated him that way. So in this new world (this reconstruction of what first century Jews believed), John shows how all people have good in them, all people are redeemable, and no one is to be vilified. Isn’t that amazing? (especially given our current political climate!)

And the really good news is that there’s a Messiah who treats people this way - who values us all, who is at work redeeming us all, and who is not interested in making us his enemies

Spend some time today giving thanks for this really good news.