Reflections on Matthew 3:12

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.

When I read this verse, Revelations comes to mind. Too many to mention, but a list can be found here (amongst verses from other books of the bible). How amazing it is that John the Baptist uses this parallel of harvesting wheat to describe God’s judgement.

Understandably, he probably chose this parallel to simplify in a way that the people of that time could understand it better.  The wheat itself being harvested, the chaff would be something that’s normally discarded.

But when one breaks it down further, and really looks into what chaff actually is; it’s the husk of the seed.

So if one were to look at this on a deeper level, John could also simply be saying that by repenting, we shed the husk, our sins, or to look at this in a modern way, the things that keep us attached to the world.

A while back, in one of the services, our Pastor talked of being in the world but not of it. Explaining that although we are physically present in the world, if we are focused on Christ, then we are not of the world, we’re not part of its value system. The subject can also be found here.

And so this is what comes to mind also when I read Matthew 3:12. As we follow Christ, then we are the seeds, free of the husk, the chaff.

Have you discarded your husk?