Matthew 3:12, commentary and pictures

John's warning belongs to his wilderness call to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand, spoken pointedly to the unrepentant Pharisees and Sadducees yet stirring the whole nation to confession, baptism and fruits meet for repentance.
The mightier One coming after him is Christ as judge, who holds the fan in His hand to thoroughly purge His threshing floor, gathering the wheat into the garner while burning up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
Descent from Abraham, religious privilege, outward forms and even baptism cannot give holiness or shelter from wrath, but genuine repentance proved by obedience, righteousness and mercy marks the wheat and distinguishes it from mere profession that is as chaff.
The Lord will soon thoroughly purge His floor in a fearful sifting and shaking of the church, where faithful and unfaithful long mingled are separated by crisis, trial and testing of motives until only the genuine remain.
That gathering looks to the harvest at the close of the age, when the faithful bound by truth are sealed for the heavenly garner and the wicked bound with the world are left for burning, while God delays to cleanse His people of selfishness and injustice that they may meet Him in peace.

John's Wilderness Message

Matthew 3:12 belongs to the preaching of John the Baptist in the wilderness of Judea, where he called the people to repent because the kingdom of heaven was at hand. Under that call people confessed their sins, were baptized, and submitted to what was taught as essential for receiving an inheritance in that kingdom. It announced the work of the mightier One coming after John, who would make a complete separation, gathering and saving the wheat and destroying the chaff, which no human effort can prevent from being fulfilled. Genuine repentance under that preaching proves itself by bringing forth good fruit in good works.

The warning was spoken pointedly to the Pharisees and Sadducees who came to his baptism without repentance and without bearing fruits of righteous living. Their claim to descent from Abraham could not give them holiness or spare them from judgment, and they must receive Christ and come to true repentance with obedience to the commandments of God. That startling, stern yet hopeful call stirred the whole nation and cut to the heart unlearned peasants and fishermen, Roman soldiers, chieftains, tax-gatherers, priests of the Sanhedrin, Pharisees and Sadducees, and Herod himself. It rebuked even kings for iniquity.

John did not speak in a whispering voice or bear a smooth message, nor did he preach fancifully to attract a large congregation. He told the plain truth of the situation, with something in it that brought people out to hear him, and his message became more and more pointed and uncompromising even though it cost him his life. It was given plainly and pointedly so that the people would not be deceived. That same pointed warning still applies to men connected with God's institutions who have rejected light and chosen their own perverse way, who hate reproof and refuse to follow the light given to direct their feet, and who unless converted will become decoys to lead souls away by undermining confidence and planting seeds of doubt and questioning.

John expected the Messiah to judge immediately and decisively, separating the righteous from the wicked, gathering the righteous and destroying the wicked with fire. He pictured this judgment as the overthrow of human pride and power, expecting the Lord to reveal Himself through fire as in Elijah's day, with political deliverance. That expectation of immediate judgment did not match the way Jesus carried out His mission.

The same message is to be echoed and reechoed now through cities and towns and villages and in the highways and byways as a loud cry and present testing truth: Prepare the way of the Lord, repent for the kingdom of heaven is at hand, bring forth fruits meet for repentance. With the axe laid to the root, every tree without good fruit is hewn down and cast into the fire, while the mightier One comes to baptize with the Holy Ghost and with fire, having His fan in hand to thoroughly purge His floor, gather His wheat into His garner, and burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire. This close, cutting Scripture is to awaken hearts as in 1843 and 1844, bringing conversion shown by giving up idols and costly ornaments. Its work is to call minds to heed the true issues for this time rather than exchanging the evidences of truth for fallacies and satanic scientific presentations, and to call people to live in this world the life that measures with the life of God, serving God with full purpose of a renewed heart sanctified and made holy by the cleansing blood of Jesus Christ, without turning aside to side issues. That direct rebuke of sin and call to repentance is to be given just prior to the second coming of Christ in the clouds of heaven to prepare a people to stand in the great day of the Lord, by men who have beheld God until self is lost sight of.

Fan, Floor and Fire

The mightier One who comes after John is Christ, who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire and who exercises authority as the coming judge to separate people as a farmer separates grain from chaff. He gathers the wheat into the garner while He burns the chaff with unquenchable fire, and that work distinguishes those who belong to Him from those who do not. His authority is to separate and gather the faithful while bringing judgment upon the wicked, calling for repentance shown by good fruit because ancestry alone cannot save. The fan is in His hand, and He thoroughly purges and cleanses His threshing floor, making a complete separation in gathering and saving the wheat and destroying the chaff. No human effort can prevent this word from being fulfilled.

The wheat are those gathered into His garner, storehouse, and heavenly garner. They are the saved, repentant, fruitful, genuine, and faithful, distinguished from the rest by belonging to Him. The chaff are burned up with unquenchable fire, and that burning signifies judgment and destruction by fire. They are the destroyed, unrepentant, and false, separated from the wheat by the thorough purging of the threshing floor.

That burning points to a coming judgment by fire that will cleanse the earth of moral corruption. As the flood destroyed by water despite unbelief and mockery, so the promised fire will come despite dismissal of the warning. Those who believe and obey receive pardon and shelter from the coming wrath.

Repentance, Fruit and Renewal

No lineage, national standing, religious rank, profession of faith, ceremonial sacrifice, or outward rite can impart holiness, cleanse the heart, or shield anyone from judgment. Descent from Abraham availed nothing for the Pharisees and Sadducees who came without repentance, and their failure to bear right fruits left them exposed to the purging of the threshing floor. Even baptism administered by the saintliest men cannot make clean those who lack inward change, for profession without fruit is of no saving value.

What avails is genuine repentance that proves itself by bringing forth good fruit in good works, righteous living, obedience to God's commandments, and discernment of the Lamb to whom the sacrifices pointed. That call belongs to the message preparing people for the coming of the mightier One, who makes a complete separation no human effort can prevent, gathering and saving the wheat and destroying the chaff. To reject that testimony and refuse Christ is to stand among the unrepentant and unfruitful.

The fruit that marks wheat and God's commandment-keeping people in daily life is justice, benevolence, mercy, and love of God. Transformed lives show it further in kindness, honesty, fidelity, and care for the needy. Profession of piety without such fruit is like chaff destined for the fire of destruction and does not secure a place in Christ's kingdom.

Wheat are those whose hearts have received the regenerating work of the Holy Spirit through the baptism of the Holy Ghost, bringing forth fruit meet for repentance and works of righteousness. Those without that renewing power are chaff among the wheat, however much outward form and ordinance they observe. In the coming day Christ will purge His floor and distinguish between him that serves God and him that serves Him not.

His presence reveals sin, His coming tests every person's work and searches the secrets of the heart, and His truth separates hearers as wheat is separated from chaff. Only those willing to be purged from sin can enter fellowship with Him, while the corrupt in heart cannot abide in His presence. When truth exposes sin and calls for change, reproof, and a self-denying life, those too self-sufficient to accept correction turn away and walk no more with Him, while those who receive it are gathered as wheat. True grace endures the trial, and the upright desire to know their standing before God rather than refuse examination, cherish sin, or rest in vain confidence.

Every person faces a life-and-death decision to receive Christ, believe and obey, keep the commandments of God, and turn for salvation to the Author and Finisher of faith. God gave His only Son as an infinite sacrifice so that whoever believes will not perish but have everlasting life, for He wants to save everyone. Those who will not come to Him for life remain as chaff to be consumed with unquenchable fire, and it pains the heart to see how much chaff there is and how many eyes are blinded to the Bible's many predictions of His coming while the call still sounds to repent because the kingdom of heaven is at hand.

Baptism does not save those who merely claim to be God's children while keeping their own dispositions. Those baptized are to live in newness of life, humble, meek and lowly in Christ's character, free from careless worldly living. Those who do not let truth refine and sanctify them will be dealt with as chaff unless they awaken and are converted.

Final Harvest and Gathering

The gathering of the wheat is the harvest at the close of the Christian age and dispensation and the harvest of the earth, when the latter rain ripens the harvest for God's garner. At that time the gifts of the Holy Spirit, which accompanied the sowing of the gospel at the beginning of the age, are revived and manifested in fullness. At the harvest of the earth those for whom others have labored and prayed are gathered into the heavenly garner. Then Christ is satisfied as He sees the fruit of His travail.

The end brings a fearful work of selection and binding that demands the whole mind and attention, separating wheat from tares with the wheat sealed for the heavenly garner. There are two bundled companies and two outcomes: the wicked bound together for burning, and the faithful bound together by truth and sealed by the third angel for the heavenly garner. The chaff are the whole world bound in bundles ready to burn, captive to Satan's delusion and headed for destruction, carried with lightning speed to perdition as on a train conducted by Satan in the form of an angel of light, aided by his agents in different offices, given over to strong delusion to believe a lie that they may be damned. The wheat are a little company traveling a narrow pathway in an opposite direction, firmly united and bound together by the truth in bundles or companies, bound and sealed by the third angel for the heavenly garner, a small company on the narrow path, care-worn from severe trials and conflicts yet triumphant with victory nearly won.

God delays judgment and thoroughly sifts and cleanses His people so that those who claim His name can prepare to meet Him in peace. The chaff to be removed are selfish, covetous, fraudulent, and unjust principles and other corrupt principles, and those who claim God must be changed in character, cleansed of them, and practice righteousness and show the principles of heaven to enter His city and kingdom. When Christ comes He purges His floor and separates the faithful from the wicked, and His coming tests every person's work and searches the secrets of the heart. True grace endures this trial, and the upright want to know their standing before God, while refusing trial or self-examination reveals cherished sin and vain confidence will not withstand God's testing. At the day of God those who continue in an ungodly course are separated out and consumed like chaff, leaving nothing, while the wheat is gathered.

Sifting Within the Church

The Lord with fan in hand will soon thoroughly purge His floor in the hastening days of purification of the church, when God will have a people pure and true. This is a fearful, mighty sifting and shaking soon to take place, a work of selection and binding in which the wheat is sealed for the heavenly garner and which demands the whole mind and attention. In it the strength of Israel will be measured and the true strength of God's people tested and revealed, testing purposes and motives so that many prove to be chaff of no value rather than wheat. It is a personal proving of brethren in conflict with the tempter and sin, where standing firm, advancing instead of retreating, and fighting faithfully decides whether one is precious grain of wheat or chaff.

This cleansing removes moral defilement from the church, like a farmer separating wheat from chaff, and its time is coming soon though not stated exactly. He begins with the heart so the whole character may be changed, thoroughly cleansing His floor and gathering His wheat into His garner while removing corrupt practices and preserving those who are His. The chaff to be removed is selfish, covetous, fraudulent and unjust principles, including deceitful dealings in trade and in institutions, and those who claim His name must be changed in character and practice righteousness to enter His kingdom. Such injustice rejects God's authority and imperils interest in Christ's atonement and redemption, while the separation removes what is unfit and makes the church an honor to His name.

If other means fail to arouse sleeping professed people, God will let heresies come in among them to sift them and separate chaff from wheat. Those heresies separate the faithful from those not firmly grounded in truth, exposing them.

Faithful and unfaithful may be so closely mingled in church and institution that they cannot be distinguished until crisis, test and trial come. Then those represented by chaff are driven away while those represented by wheat remain, and God uses the testing to accomplish good. Those who have not valued the light or lived by it are separated from God's people while the genuine remain and grow strongest even as iniquity causes many to lose love, and those who cling to Him He can turn from a wrong course to keep His way.

The shaking distinguishes genuine godliness and Christ's righteousness from outward profession, worldly conformity and unfaithfulness, even where a place appears to contain only rich wheat. The test includes pressure to obey human demands rather than God's commandments, and hidden faithful people will then be revealed. It distinguishes faithful workers from those whose influence harms God's work and unsettles His people, the wheat gathered while the chaff is carried away and burned.

Amid prevailing moral darkness and the prevailing spirit of antichrist where the godly cease and the faithful fail and ease-loving souls are engulfed in general ruin, this brings cheering hope. God Himself takes charge of the flock where shepherds are not true and does not leave it wholly dependent on human instrumentalities, so true Christians remain even where there are no faithful ministers. When Jehovah's floor is sifted the overflowing scourge passes through the earth but God helps His people, so Satan's apparent victories do not daunt the faith of the pure and holy and false brethren are separated from the true in severe trial. When the church is brought low by trial and oppression and unfaithful teachers bring weakness and waning faith, God rises mightily to defend His people and by signal deliverance more abundantly exalts the tried and true. The church may appear about to fall but it remains, and this terrible ordeal purifies the remnant and reveals those who are loyal and true.

God's people contain chaff as well as wheat, some who associate with the church yet remain aligned with the world, whose influence weakens the church. There are those who claim to believe the truth yet do not practice it and thereby injure God's cause, showing by unholy actions that truth was not received into heart and life. In the time of refining as the end approaches they will either be converted and sanctified through obedience to the truth or be separated from God's people and share the world's reward.

Truth Tested and Applied

The separating of wheat from chaff is the separating of pure biblical truth from the errors that people and Satan have mixed with it, and the fruitful and true is gathered while what bears no fruit to God's glory is fit for the fire of His wrath. Diligent, prayerful study of Scripture with wisdom from heaven and the help of the Holy Spirit enables the seeker to separate divine commands and truths about redemption from human inventions and misrepresentations. Clear spiritual sight is needed to distinguish the truth of God's Word from deceptive science, for true faith in Christ bears good fruit in righteous words and works, while mere profession of belief or acceptance of deceptive practices is not sound faith.

The wheat is the Word of life, the truth sustained by the Word of the living God, given by those who have learned that His Spirit and life are in His Word. The chaff is fictitious statements and weak, tottering theories, human theories and sensations of would-be teachers who have not received that eternal element in the heart and who try to get something new to create a sensation. When earnest searchers lift the heart to God for the aid of the Spirit and ministers give the Word of life, the Spirit stamps truth on the mind so the people discern the precious from what is tame and expressionless, in fulfillment of the promise left with the disciples, but teaching mixed with human theories is not the pure wheat to be sown and will be exposed when the harvest comes.

Mixing what is false or self-made with divine truth is dangerous, for truth must have a clear, powerful effect on character or it is made ineffective and denied in practice. Righteous and unrighteous principles, the precious and the worthless, can be mixed but must not be confused, for Satan blends them so that sin appears less offensive. The righteous may associate with the wicked to restore truth and help save them, but only by relying on God's grace and resisting unrighteousness, and this discernment belongs with receiving the Holy Spirit who shapes practical life and with recognizing Christ's divinity and atonement, while His church is to resist corrupting influence by keeping the principles of heaven rather than adopting the world's customs.

Preaching is to give the people pure, well-winnowed truth rather than a mixture burdened with unnecessary material. Gospel work must do more than cut down the crop, for workers must make personal efforts to gather the wheat from the chaff and bind it for the garner, caring for those reached by preaching and bringing them into the gathered harvest.

God separates the chaff from the wheat by sorrow, adversity, reproach, afflictions, crosses, temptations and varied trials, shaking everything that can be shaken in thoroughly purging His floor. The chaff is selfishness, love of worldly pleasure, evil passions and pride in character, and afflictions are sent to test and prove and to show these evils exist so they can be overcome through His strength and grace. This refining and sanctifying work makes partakers of the divine nature who have escaped the corruption in the world through lust, and fits them for gathering into the heavenly garner. The Lord calls for a people whose spirit, words and deeds bear good fruit, and while those who dishonor Him and do not change will face punishment for their sins, if they repent He sees their helplessness and has pity on them.

The winnowing is also a cleansing of the churches from deceptive ideas devised by Satan and misleading unsanctified ideas that unsanctified hearts are ready to receive. Contrasted with truth, error is weak chaff that can be left to die without attention. The warning calls people to wake from false security and seek the Lord with confession and repentance.

The same separation distinguishes what is sacred from what is cheap and common, which self-centered ideas and opinions mix and make difficult to separate, a revealing process that had come to Battle Creek and was not yet finished. It also pictures God preparing the wheat for His garner by distinguishing those who remain faithful from those who depart from the faith, while errors among workers do not make the ministry itself contemptible.

In practical life sound, worthwhile learning is grain, while vanity, pride and selfishness fostered in a child's mind are chaff, and parents are accountable in the judgment for fostering pride and selfishness rather than guiding children toward good character. In the school, children and youth who reject discipline and spread insubordination are the chaff soon separated from the wheat, while those trained to respect authority are preserved from their harmful influence. Worldly entertainments are chaff compared with the rich spiritual feast Christ offers, and the soul is urged to choose the wheat and share in the marriage supper of the Lamb. False visions are chaff in contrast with genuine messages from God, and crediting these spurious visions can uproot confidence in true messages and lead away from the truth. Even the solemn message of saving grace and warning can become mingled with much chaff through great display in preaching the gospel and great outlay in representing health reform, which makes an impression not in harmony with the work, whereas the good news must be carried everywhere in the spirit of Christ's life of self-denying service, with neatness, order and thoroughness in every line, but with economy and without extravagant expense.