Wheat vs. Chaff

Posted by Lisa Laree to Beer Laha Roi

I'mma gonna need you to work with me just a bit on that image...it's soybeans, not wheat, because I didn't have any photos from wheat harvest.  But the principal still applies.


Doing the 3 + 1 reading today; I was in Matthew 3, reading the words of John the Baptist:

...after me will come one who is more powerful than I, whose sandals I am not fit to carry.  He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.  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. (Matt 3: 11b-12, NIV84)

With my hellfire-and-brimstone background, I had always read that as wheat = godly folks, chaff  = unrepentant folks.  But today, I saw something different there.

As a farm kid, I was intimately acquainted with produce.  Wheat was one of my faves; take the head of ripe wheat, roll it around in your hand to knock the kernels out of the husks, then pour the stuff in your hands back and forth between your hands, blowing on it to blow the chaff away.  Then munch the nutty wheat kernels.

As I read that passage today, I got the image of doing just that as a kid.  And I suddenly realized something.

The wheat and the chaff are produced by the same stalk.

Think about that for a minute.

This ain't about wheat vs. tares (good crop vs weeds; that's discussed elsewhere)...this is about what the good crop produces.

And I can tell you from experience that sometimes those wheat heads don't have much grain in them.  The pods where the grain should grow come up empty.  Husks...but no grain.

Think about that for a minute.

Now let me bring in a companion passage, which occurred to me on the heels of that little thought...

...the fire will test the quality of each man's work.  If what he has built survives, he will receive his reward.  If it is burned up, he will suffer loss; he himself will be saved, but only as one escaping through the flames.  (1 Cor 3:13b-15)

Suddenly, I wondered...what if John wasn't talking about saved vs. unsaved at that point at all, but about what God's people do with themselves?  In the context of the baptism of fire...maybe that wasn't a shift in subject but a description.  Baptized with fire and everything that's not fruit burns up.

Including what looked like fruit but really wasn't.

Produce fruit in keeping with repentance (Matt. 3:8).

Am I really producing fruit for the kingdom, or merely husks that look like fruit but are really only chaff?