The simple verse of John 3:30 represents baptism through the fire of the Holy Spirit. In Matthew 3:11, John the Baptist foretold baptism by fire: “As for me, I baptize you with water for repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, and I am not fit to remove His sandals; He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire”.
This baptism is like the refining fire of Malachi 3:2, Zechariah 13:9, Isaiah 1:25, and Daniel 12:10. The fire purifies and removes impurities. When gold is pure after having been refined, there is a death to impurity and life to purity. So it is with the Holy Spirit’s baptism of fire in our souls. The Holy Spirit brings death to sin and the old nature and life to the new nature unto righteousness and holiness.
If there is anything this current age of easy-believism and evangelism based on felt-needs has exposed, it is our need for something more than a profession. We must be baptized in the fire of the Holy Spirit. Christ must increase in our lives, and the old nature representing sin and self must decrease.
How is Christ to increase and are we to decrease? How does zeal for Christ burn in us and the Refiner’s fire eliminate our impurities?
1. Christ must increase and we must decrease in our worship of God. Was this not the point of the scene in John 2:13-17? How are we to understand these verses today? We must not make the church service nor ourselves the point of worshipping God. Rather, like the shoshben, the pastor and anyone in the role of a worship leader is merely a facilitator or mediator to bring people to God. This is the very role of the priest from the Old Testament. The priest stood between the people and God to mediate justification by faith, obedience of the law, and the administration of God’s justice. You and I are priests, and we do serve in a mediator role. Exodus 19:6, 1 Peter 2:5, Revelation 1:6 As such, worship of God must never be about us or about enriching ourselves. Christ must be the central focus in our worship. Our selection of music in church services is perhaps one of the most significant areas in which we can weaken our worship of God. Much of modern music is focused on how the individual responds to the music itself, and this places ourselves as the object of worship. There is little difference between making ourselves the object of worship through our selection of music and the scene in John 2:13-17. Christ is decreasing, and we are increasing.
2. Christ must increase and we must decrease in our administration and expansion of the church which represents Christ’s kingdom on earth. The Roman Catholic Church in the years leading up to the Reformation embodied increasing the individual and decreasing Christ. Church leaders, especially, were corrupt and placing money ahead of spiritual purity and truth. The Reformation aimed to right these wrongs. Over the last 50 to 75 years, the church in the United States has gone down a similar path. Ideological and political goals, false teaching, and misplaced evangelism efforts focused on the individual have become prominent, resulting in increasing the individual and decreasing Christ. As a result, the church itself is physically decreasing. An individual local church and the church at large increases when Christ is the central focus of our worship, purity, and outreach. To turn around the decline of the church, we must restore Christ-centered evangelism, eliminate ideological and political goals, and dispense with false teaching. Each of these areas represent doubt in the power of God and the substitution of our own aims and objectives. Christ must increase, and we must decrease.
3. Spiritual purity and entire sanctification must revolve around and be rooted in Christ. We must become more and more Christ-like, which requires the continual increase in entire sanctification. That the first three chapters in the gospel of John involve new birth, spiritual purity, and our new nature when we become children of God points to the significance of our entire sanctification. As a kingdom of priests and a holy priesthood before God, we must be pure and holy to serve in the administration of His kingdom. Because it is God’s kingdom, He sets the guidelines and expectations for how we are to administer His kingdom. Blamelessness before God has been a requirement since Genesis 17. Even before that, Noah was described as blameless in Genesis 6:9. Christ must increase and we must decrease if we are to achieve spiritual purity and entire sanctification. When we relax this requirement for ourselves such as by excusing sin, we are increasing and Christ is decreasing.
4. Christ must increase and we must decrease to demonstrate the humility required in our fear of God and in our Christ-likeness. Philippians 2:5-8 instructs us, “Have this attitude in yourselves which was also in Christ Jesus, who, although He existed in the form of God, did not regard equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied Himself, taking the form of a bond-servant, and being made in the likeness of men. Being found in appearance as a man, He humbled Himself by becoming obedient to the point of death, even death on a cross.” In the King James Version, verse 7 reads that Christ “made himself of no reputation”. Christ placed our interests ahead of His own, and to demonstrate our devotion to Christ, we must place His interests ahead of our own. We must decrease, and Christ must increase.
For John the Baptist, serving in the role of the shoshben and facilitating the marriage of the church to Christ explains the preparations he made. For example, we see John the Baptist early in his ministry baptizing, which represents purity, and calling to repentance. When we view John the Baptist in this way, we see that he placed little importance upon himself. Consider, for example, his outward attire and diet. He abased himself, so that Christ was of central focus. John the Baptist did not teach his own message, water down Christ’s message, or misconstrue God’s law. John the Baptist was faithful to Scripture, lived in a way to remove himself from focus, and lived to point others to Christ.
We would do well at this point to recall the words of Romans 8:12-17: “So then, brethren, we are under obligation, not to the flesh, to live according to the flesh— for if you are living according to the flesh, you must die; but if by the Spirit you are putting to death the deeds of the body, you will live. For all who are being led by the Spirit of God, these are sons of God. For you have not received a spirit of slavery leading to fear again, but you have received a spirit of adoption as sons by which we cry out, ‘Abba! Father!’ The Spirit Himself testifies with our spirit that we are children of God, and if children, heirs also, heirs of God and fellow heirs with Christ, if indeed we suffer with Him so that we may also be glorified with Him.”
Not living according to the flesh represents the decrease of ourselves. The flesh must die and with it the sin nature, the old self, must also die. We must be putting to death the deeds of the body. Through the Holy Spirit, we have received a new nature which enables us to live according to the Spirit. When we live according to the Holy Spirit, Christ is increasing.
None of this we can do on our own power. All our righteousness and holiness is enabled only through the Holy Spirit and is a result of the new nature imparted to us only through the Holy Spirit. We know, however, that it is all possible, though only through the Holy Spirit.
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