Luke 12:49

Luk_12:49

I am come to send fire on the earth

The fire of contention; or, the trouble that follows the gospel

1.

There may be dissension betwixt the good and the good; and hereof is the devil the author. It is the enemy that sows those tares. Christ came not to send this fire, yet He wisely tempers it to our good.

2. There may be dissension betwixt the wicked and the wicked; and hereof also is Satan author. He sets his own together by the ears, like cocks of the game, to make him sport. Hereupon he raised these great heathen wars, that in them millions of souls might go down to people his lower kingdom, Hereupon he draws ruffian into the field against ruffian, and then laughs at their vainly spilt blood. All the contentions, quarrels, whereby one evil neighbour vexeth another, all slanders, scoldings, reproaches, calumnies, are his own damned fires.

3. There is a dissension between the wicked and godly; nor yet is Christ the proper and immediate cause of this. For if it be possible, as much as lieth in you, live peaceably with all men (Rom_12:18).

4. There is an enmity betwixt grace and wickedness, a continual combat between sanctity and sin; and this is the fire Christ came to send.

He is to some a living stone, whereupon they are built to life; to others a stone of offence, whereat they stumble to death.

I. The FIRE is discord, debate, contention, anger, and hatred against the godly.

(1) Debate is like fire; for as that of all elements, so this of all passions, is most violent.

(2) Contention is like fire, for both burn as long as there is any exhaustible matter to contend with. Only herein it transcends fire--for fire begets not matter, but consumes it; debate begets matter, hut not consumes it.

(3) As a little spark grows to a great flame, so a small debate often proves a great rent.

(4) As fire is proverbially said to be an ill master but a good servant, so anger, where it is a lord of rule, is a lord of misrule; but where it is subdued to reason, or rather sanctified by grace, it is a good servant. That anger is holy that is zealous for the glory of God.

II. The FUEL whereon this fire works is the good profession of the godly. LESSON

1. That we have need of patience, seeing we know that the law of our profession binds us to a warfare; and it is decreed upon that all that will live godly in Christ shall suffer persecution. When fire, which was the god of the Chaldeans, had devoured all the other wooden deities, Canopis set upon him a caldron full of water, whose bottom was full of holes artificially stopped with wax; which, when it felt the heat of that furious idol, melted and gave way to the water to fall down upon it, and quench it. The water of our patience must only extinguish this fire; nothing but our tears, moderation, and sufferance can abate it. But this patience hath no further latitude than our proper respect; for in the cause of the Lord we must be jealous and zealous.

2. That we must not shrink from our profession, though we know it to be the fuel that maintains this fire.

3. That we think not much of the troublous fires that are thus sent to wait upon the gospel.

4. That we esteem not the worse of our profession, but the better. It is no small comfort that God thinks thee worthy to suffer for His name. This was the apostles joy, not that they were worthy, but that they were counted worthy to suffer shame for Christ (Act_5:41).

5. Seeing the fuel is our integrity--and this they specially strike at--let us more constantly hold together, confirming the communion of saints, which they would dissolve. (T. Adams.)

The gospel a fire

We must look for a Scriptural use of fire which shall have some bearing upon the subject of division and discord as caused by the gospel. We find such a use in the very idea of kindling. If the gospel was a mere tame and spiritless influence, a mere soothing and stroking down of human faults and passions, a mere palliative and balsam for the wounds and sufferings, for the wrongs and woes of fallen nature, it would have differed in many other respects from the thing which Jesus Christ brought us from heaven; but certainly and most evidently in this, that it would have caused no strifes and no contentions, no violences and no discords. It is because the gospel is first and above all else a fire, enkindled and sparkling, pervading and transforming the whole body and substance of the being to which it is effectually applied, that it brings with it this irritating, this provoking, this exasperating influence upon every bystanding and surrounding being which repudiate, and we will have none of it. It needs but a little reflection to make all hearts echo the statement. There are those in this day who tell us that the real gospel is a mere enforcement or suggestion, or, if you will, revelation of charity. We ask what is meant by charity, and we find that it is a sort of easy going tolerance for all creeds and all religions, a good-natured live and let live for all the philosophies, and all the philanthropies, and all the superstitions, and all the idolatries which have entered into the heart of man, as the truth and the whole of truth, the duty and the whole of duty, whether toward God or toward man. Now at present we are only concerned to say so much as this, that if the gospel had thus entered the world, if this had been the idea of it as Christ and the apostles preached it, it would have raised no hostility; it could not possibly have had the history which we know Christianity has had, as flinging abroad upon the earth division or a sword; and for this simple reason that it would not have had in it one single characteristic of fire. Men would have been perfectly willing under Nero or Domitian to let Christians alone, if they would only have glided about among their contemporaries as men whispering peace and safety, hinting at a new divinity, one among many, each having some claim, and none having an exclusive claim to the belief and faith of mankind; a new divinity to occupy one niche of a crowded and world-wide pantheon--Jesus and the resurrection. Athens would have let this alone; Rome would have let this alone; human nature would have made room for this, because it would have put oil or water in the place of fire; because it would have been a mere religion of negatives and platitudes, stirred by no storm and brightened by no ray. I came to cast fire upon the earth, and although fire has many beautiful and many comforting aspects, this is in virtue of a quality which makes it also, and before all else, penetrating and exploring, consuming and purifying, a power, first, formidable and destructive; then, secondly, an influence brightening and warming, cheering and comforting. It is thus with the sign, it is thus, also, with the thing signified.

I. THE GOSPEL A FIRE IN THE HEART. The gospel, entering a heart, begins with kindling. There is much in that heart. We speak not only of hearts which the Lord suddenly opened at Philippi or Corinth to listen to the preaching of a new faith, when all round and all antecedent had been Jewish or Pagan; we speak of hearts to which gospel sounds, whether of word or of worship, are but too familiar, and we say that, even in these, if a new reality is ever by the grace of God given to the gospel, there is much fuel ready for the burning, much as to which the gospel would be nugatory if it did not burn up--probably many known sins, certainly a multitude of frivolities and vanities, which to let alone would be to say peace where there is none; which to let alone would be to live the life in the sleep of death, but which to assail is to bring a sword between soul and spirit, to proclaim war to the knife against many inveterate habits, and to cause a revolution in the most cherished tenacities of the being; and it is just in proportion as this first office of fire is faithfully and effectively done that any other can be safe or even true. Thoroughness in yielding ourselves to the purifying, is the condition alike of the illuminating and the warming, and the comforting. It is just where the fire is not allowed to consume that it refuses to burn brightly for companionship or for cheering.

II. THE GOSPEL A FIRE IN THE WORLD. This, which is the real struggle of the gospel in the heart, is also its real struggle in the world. If the gospel would begin and end with comforting, it would be welcomed everywhere; if it would settle down as a mere pleasant guest in the chamber and at the social table, making all easy all round, saying or sounding as if it said, Live as you list and all shall be peace at the last, nothing could be more popular; then it would have the promise, in commonest parlance, of two worlds--the life that is and the life that shall be. It is this uncompromising character, this call for decision and for a whole heart, this demand for a life wholly given, in purpose and affections to the Lord who bought it, which makes the gospel a sword for such as will not have it for a fire; and yet, brethren, it is just this uncompromising character which makes it a power, and which makes it a charm, and which makes it a gospel. Oh, we could any of us construct a religion which should cry peace when there is none; we could any of us make a gospel, using a few phrases and elements of the real one, which should be accommodating, and which should be complimentary, and which should be plausible, and which, therefore, should be fashionable; and which, just in the same degree, would leave every sore festering, and every woe desolating, and every vice and crime destroying, of the old Adam and of the fallen and of the sin-spoilt man. But what should we have done, when we had done all this to perfection? We should not have evoked one grand heroism such as lies at the bottom even of the ruined humanity; we should not have evoked one echo from the slumbering temple of the God-made man; we should have done nothing whatever towards the actual want, and the real hunger, and the one despair of the soul, which feels that its true wretchedness is separation from God, and that its true cure would be the getting back home. I am come to send fire on the earth. So Jesus speaks; and we, who have one breath of God in us, feel that fire is the element wanting. We want the water of cleansing, and we want the wind of scourging, and we want the earthquake of demolishing; and oh, what we want above all, is the fire which does all these things, and which yet adds to them all the grace of transforming, and the grace of kindling, and the grace of inspiring, and the grace of enabling, and the grace of the new life. It is the fire which has made Christianity great; it is not the mere washing with the water of a new innocence; it is not the light of the lamp of information even as to the mysteries of grace and redemption: it is the enkindling of Christian souls with the fire of love, and the fire of zeal, and the fire of an out-spoken boldness, and the fire of even an impatient and intolerant hatred of misery and wickedness. It is this which has done great things in the earth in the name of Christ and God; it is this which has demolished idols; it is this which has at last toppled down slavery; it is this which has made missionaries strong, and martyrs brave, and churches militant; it is this which has provoked indeed the rage of the world and devil; but it has also shown enemies, open and secret, that greater is He that is with us than he that is in the world. I am come to send fire upon the earth, and what would I, but that it were already kindled? It is kindled now. Ages and generations have lived in the blaze of that fire, and Christ, who knows what is in man, loves that fire better than the tame sluggishness, the lifeless torpor, the false peace which prevails everywhere where that fire comes not. Already kindled! Is it kindled round us? Is it kindled in us? Are we a stagnant, torpid, lifeless multitude? or, are we of the kindled, inspired, living, and life-breathing few? For few still are they in whom this Spirit of God is, not for selfish comfort, but for inspired power. Let us hazard some little, let us encounter some little, that we may please Him who said--Oh, that it were already kindled, because He loved the fire rather than the chill, because He loved the enthusiasm rather than the half-heartedness. (Dean Vaughan.)

The fire which Christ kindles on earth

1. A fire which warms what is cold.

2. Purifies what is impure.

3. Consumes what is evil. (Van Oosterzee.)

The controversy which Christ has brought on earth

1. How we are to wish for it.

2. How we are to fear it.

3. How we are to endure it. (Schenkal.)

Suffering, a baptism

For the Christian a threefold baptism is necessary.

1. The water baptism of sprinkling.

2. The spiritual baptism of renewal.

3. The fire baptism of trial. (Van Oosterzee.)

The discord which Christ has brought upon earth

1. A surprising phenomenon, if we look at--

(1) The King (Psa_72:1-20.).

(2) The fundamental law of the kingdom of God (Joh_13:35).

2. An explicable phenomenon if we direct our eye to

(1) The severity of the gospel.

(2) The sinfulness of the human heart.

3. A momentous phenomenon. This strife is a proof of the high significance, and means for the establishment, the purification, and the victory of Christianity. (Van Oosterzee.)

The truth in the Church

I. Let us consider THE DESIGN OF OUR LORDS ADVENT, AS HERE ANNOUNCED BY HIMSELF. Indeed, each peculiar aspect in which our Lords work is viewed by Him is a characteristic variety, which tends both to enlarge and rectify our views on the subject. When He contemplates His work in relation to the fallen condition of our race, His announcement of His design is this--I am come to seek and to save the lost. When He views it in relation to the redemption He was to accomplish, He speaks of it as being a ransom price for many. When He views it in its relation to God, His exclamation to the Father is I have come to glorify Thee on the earth. When He viewed it in regard to Himself, His representation was, that He had come into this far country to get Himself a kingdom. And when He viewed it in relation to the world at large, He announced Himself as the Light of the world--as a light to lighten the Gentiles--as the Bread that came down from heaven, of which if a man eat he will never die --as having living Water to bestow, of which whosoever drinketh shall never thirst as Him who had come not to call the righteous but sinners to repentance. In all these representations the same great idea is either expressed or shadowed forth-namely, that the mystery of our Lords incarnation and life and passion had no other design, nothing less than the undoing of all that sin had produced in our world--that out of that dark and formless chaos into which the whole spiritual creation here had been thrown, He might produce a new order of things, where for man there should be purity, dignity, and joy; and for God, the re-establishment in glory and in majesty of His full authority over the heart and the conscience of man. The announcement of our Lords passion and work given in the passage before us, belongs to the last of the classes above enumerated; those, namely, in which its general bearings on the ignorant, the guilty creatures of our race, is proclaimed. In the Old Testament prophecy, the advent of the Messiah had been described as an event which should result in the purging away from the Church of God of all filth, by the spirit of burning; in the utterance of the prophetic voice it had been foretold of the Messiah, that He should sit as a refiner and purifier of silver, to purify the sons of Levi, and purge them like gold and silver, that they should offer unto God an offering in righteousness. In these passages the idea of purification and refinement is most distinctly brought before us by the symbolic language in which the design of the Messiahs mission is described; and it is in reference apparently to the same idea, applying to Himself this description of the Messiah, that our Lord uses the words now before us. By some interpreters, indeed, their application has been restricted to those dissensions and fiery controversies which the religion of Christ has, through the hostility of mankind, been instrumental in producing in our world. And to this they have been led by the allusion our Lord Himself makes to these dissensions in subsequent verses of this chapter. But this interpretation can hardly be admitted, for these dissensions and controversies are not necessary, far less essential, parts of our Lords work, but clearly the results springing out of the evil state of mans heart, and it cannot be to the collateral and accidental results of the circumstances among which He comes, that our Lord alludes I am come to send fire on the earth. It does appear a very weak and impotent interpretation of such an assertion to represent it as meaning nothing more than the quarrels among men, which may be its result. By the fire here spoken of, which our Lord had said He came to send on the earth, is to be understood that purifying, remodelling, renovating power which He came to diffuse through the mass of our race. He came not merely to deliver a message, and to do by it an appointed work, but by means of that message and in consequence of that work, to set the world on fire. He came to revolutionize the world by infusing into it a new element of spiritual life and activity. In short, to melt and fuse the whole fabric of earthly relations, that out of its elemental parts His plastic hand may construct a more perfect form of being, and thereby cover this earth which God has made with a race of beings worthier of Him who made them, and of that fair and fertile world which He has given them to inhabit. This great change which our Lord had come to commence finds its basis in His sacrificial work; and the means by which it is to be carried forward are the promulgation of the mighty truths connected with that work. So long as sin remains, evil, and gloom, and sorrow, must overhang our earth: but let sin be removed, and the removal of the cause will be followed by the cessation of all the evils the presence of that cause has occasioned and perpetuated. Now the only way in which sin can be removed from the conscience of the man by whom it has been committed, is by his being fully forgiven all the guilt of sin, and perfectly cleansed of all the pollution of sin, by God. But will God, can God, thus purify the sinner? The answer comes to us from the cross of Christ. The fire which consumed the sacrifice upon that mystic altar was fiercer than the fire of Tophet; but it was a fire that cleanses, that brings renovation and purity to a world of polluted and perishing sinners. As it was necessary that this fire should be kindled first on the altar of atonement, so it is only as our torch is irradiated on that altar, that we can spread the sacred flame through the world. The only means by which we can hope to ransom and purify our fallen race, is by making known to each individual of it the great facts and doctrines connected with the sacrificial work of Christ. All other means will prove inefficient. Thus is this doctrine adapted to the great objects for which it was designed. The religion of Jesus Christ has been sent forth by its great Author, as a mighty fire, to purify and remodel the world. In accomplishing this great work, Christianity begins with individuals, and by successive conquests over the corruptions and guilt of individual souls, advances to the salvation of multitudes, and the renovation of the race. The fire which Christ sent into the world is to enwrap the whole world in its purifying blaze; but then it i§ to do so only by being kindled in heart after heart, and warming and sanctifying home after home. And wherever this sacred fire is experienced, it will stretch forth its lambent flame to fasten on new objects, and accomplish new transformations. It comes not like the lightning, appearing suddenly in the east, and darting instantaneously to the west. It comes with a slow, steady, and advancing flame. At first its light falls amidst the corruptions of some solitary path; but gradually it extends its light, and heat, and purifying influence, until, passing into a mighty conflagration, it encircles whole countries and continents. As she advances to the accomplishment of her purpose, and attainment of her triumph, she must, of necessity, come into collision with much that men have been accustomed to value and to revere. Many of the forms of social life, many of the bulwarks of earthly policy, many of the institutions of human intercourse, are the mere offspring of sensual taste and habits, or, at the best, mere artificial contrivances for the effecting of a compromise between the good and the evil that are strangely mixed up in the tissue of our mortal life. Every advance Christianity makes in our world must be connected with conflict. Not a single bosom is surrendered to her occupancy without a struggle.

II. I have now to direct your attention for a little to OUR KORDS EXPRESSION OF ARDENT DESIRE FOR THE COMMENCEMENT OF THAT WORK WHICH HE THUS CAME INTO THE WORLD ACCOMPLISH: I am come to send fire on the earth: I would that it were already kindled! If you examine the chronology of the gospel history, you will find that the discourses of which my text forms a part were delivered by our Lord within a very short time--three or four weeks, at the very utmost, of His crucifixion. As Heuttered these words, then, He had His sufferings full in view, and was in the immediate prospect of entering upon those scenes of unparalleled agony through which He passed to the accomplishment of His work. With the feelings that then occupied His bosom these words are in full harmony. The considerations which thus induced our Saviour so ardently to desire the accomplishment of His work are to be sought, doubtless, in the consequences that were to result from the accomplishment of that work; and though these can never be present to our minds with the force that occupied His, yet it may be permitted to us without presumption to institute an inquiry into these considerations, and the effect it may be supposed they would have in causing Him thus to long for their realization. Allow me, then, to refer to a few of the consequences of the kindling of that fire the Saviour came to send upon the earth.

1. And first, the diffusion of Christianity stands closely connected with the promotion of the Divine glory in the world. In consequence of the prevalence of sin, the glory of God, as manifested in this portion of His universe, has been fearfully obscured.

2. In the diffusion of Christianity, our Lord traced the fulfilment of His own gracious purpose to men, and the success of His own work in their behalf; and this prospect naturally prompted the desire expressed in the words before us. When our Lord became incarnate, and entered on the work of His humiliation, it was in order that by means of that work He might bring to pass the design and purpose which had eternally occupied the Infinite mind. Is it to succeed, or is it to fail? He anticipated the joy of the angels, as they witnessed sinner after sinner converted unto God. He foretasted--a foretaste peculiar to Himself--the joy of bringing many sons unto glory. And as all these prospects in bright manifestation and in firm assurance pressed on His view, who can wonder that His bosom should have thrilled with ardent desire, and His cry should have been with regard to that fire, by which these results were to be secured--I would that it were already kindled?

3. Our Lord saw in the extension of Christianity, a vast increase to the purity and moral goodness of the world; and this filled His mind with delight and intense desire that the work were already begun. To a mind possessing any degree of intellectual vigour, and not altogether destitute of right moral feeling, the state of a thinking, accountable, and immortal being like man, lying under the polluting, degrading, destroying power of sin, cannot fail to raise emotions of the deepest pain. And knowing that in that purifying fire He had come to send on the earth was to be found the only real and effectual remedy for this sad state of things, who can wonder that His sacred bosom should have expanded with an ardent desire which gave itself vent in the exclamation--I would that it were already kindled!

4. The bearing of His religion on the happiness of mankind must also have actuated the Saviour in desiring its speedy and steady diffusion. When we cast our eye over the condition of our race, we behold man universally engaged in the eager pursuit of happiness, often baffled in the pursuit, and constrained in disappointment of spirit to exclaim--Who will show us any good? But in the gospel of Jesus Christ there is a panacea for mans ills, and an antidote for mans sorrows. Wherever it spreads, the people that sat in darkness see a great light, and upon them that dwelt in the region of the shadow of death, a light shines.

5. The force of these considerations is greatly enhanced by the fact, that the triumphs of Christianity are progressive, and that her conquests are perpetual. All nations shall be blessed in Christ, and all nations shall call Him blessed. Nor shall this continual extension of territory in any degree endanger the stability of the kingdom itself. With many earthly empires the shouts of their victorious arms have passed into the knell of their approaching doom. Rome fell through the vastness of her dominions, and the very multitude of her conquests. Spain fell from her proud preeminence among the nations of Europe, from the time that her chivalry gained for her new empires on the other side of the Atlantic. And Britain, invincible within her own sea-bound shores, has ere now found the same defeat in consequence of the wide extent of her foreign possessions. But no such contingencies threaten the empire of Christ. However vast, or however far it spreads, the eye of Omniscience watches over it, and the arm of Omnipotence secures its safety. It is emphatically and absolutely an everlasting kingdom. All things else with which man has to do are destined to decay. Amidst the ruins of earthly kingdoms, amidst the dissolution of the terrestrial system, amidst the wild crash of worlds it shall remain unshaken and unharmed; the Lord thy God, the Lord thy lawgiver, the Lord thy judge, He will save thee! How glorious the prospect thus expanded before us! What a gush of exhilarating and triumphant emotion is it calculated to excite in every renewed and holy mind! With what feelings of unutterable delight must it have been associated in the mind of the Redeemer, who could view it in all its vastness, and appreciate it in all its glory! and with what earnestness must He have entertained the desire that the fire by whose sacred flame all this was to be effected were already kindled! Oh, my hearers, let us see to it that the fire burns in our own bosoms, and that there it is carrying forward its salutary work. God forbid that we who are seeking the spread of the gospel throughout the world, should either be destitute of its power, or but slightly influenced by its spirit. The times in which we live, demand that we should be men of earnestness, energy, and perseverance. Those, sirs, are not times for the mere idleness of religious profession, for the more refinements and enjoyments of Christian association. (W. L. Alexander, D. D.)

The fire of contention

Upon a close examination of the text, and a comparison with the following verses, there can be no doubt whatever, that the sending fire upon earth, indicates nothing less than what it at the first glance appears to import, namely, the production of great and violent contention and animosity. When the religion of a crucified Saviour was originally made known to the world, greatly varied: even within a single family circle, was the reception which it met with. Some, when they had heard the word, received it with joy, and cried out, with the Ethiopian, See, here is water; what doth hinder me to be baptized? While others, only observing of the preacher of Jesus and the Resurrection, He seemeth to be a setter forth of strange gods, persisted in their ancient course, and loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil. Placed in such circumstances, it was almost impossible for the Christian members of a household, with whatever circumspection and caution they might walk, to avoid giving offence. Though they kept silence, and refrained even from good words, their conduct was a tacit reproach to their connections. When they refused to offer the drink-offerings of those dumb idols, or to make mention of their name with their lips, they sufficiently declared their opinion of those that did it, as of men labouring under gross delusion. Now we may observe how sensitive to the slightest apparent contempt of their opinions the spiritually ignorant and superstitious are. Again, the Christians could not, on any terms, partake of the pleasures which their unconverted friends chiefly esteemed; many of them were unclean, and many of them were cruel, teeming with all abomination and pollution. They were compelled, therefore, to stand aloof in their festivities, and as children of light, to have no communion with the works of darkness. This must, according to all experience and observation of the characteristics of weak and vicious men, have contributed in no small degree to engender a spirit of bitterness. The slave of vice cannot bear the eye that looks mournfully on his evil indulgences. Finally, Christianity incapacitated the professor from attaining to many worldly honours and emoluments, and hence another struggle while a parents ill-judging affection endeavoured to impose upon a child conformity to existing iniquities, that his prospects in this life might not be blighted, and the other as resolutely persisted in the determination to witness a good confession before men, lest his prospects in eternity should suffer a much more fatal blight. How soon such contentions might call into action the most malignant passions of the heart, may be judged from examples nearer to our own times, in which a rational resistance to unreasonable, though originally kind desires, has stirred up the most inveterate hostility. But in all this we only see the natural consequences of a pure and undefiled religion coming in contact with the evil passions of mans unconverted heart. There was nothing hostile to the peace of the world in Christianity itself, and it became the innocent cause of much disquietude and tumult, merely because man would not suffer man to enjoy liberty of conscience. (W. H. Marriott, M. A.)

The gospel as afire

How often we have found the air on a summers day hot, oppressive, and stagnant, Not a breath of wind stirs the leaves which hang parched or weltering in the burning rays of the sun. The very birds are silent, as though unable to breathe. Suddenly the thunder peals, and the great rain-drops patter upon the ground. Then the storm bursts forth in all its fury. Flash succeeds flash with startling rapidity, the thunder rocks the very buildings in which we are sheltered, and the rain descends in a fierce deluge. At length the storm ceases, and then what a change has passed over the scene! Before, there was a peace; but it was the peace of inanimation and death; now there is a peace, but it is the peace of blessed life. The air is cool and fresh, the trees assume their verdant hues, the flowers give forth their sweetest fragrance, the birds make the groves echo again with their glad melody; in a word, all nature is peaceful with a deep exuberant vitality. And so with the gospel; it arouses men from their deadly lethargy, producing sorrow, distress, and anguish; but after this there comes a peace, even the peace of God, which passeth all understanding. (O. Spenceley.)

Fire purifies

I remember, some years ago, when I was at Shields, I went into a glass-house; and, standing very attentive, I saw several masses of burning glass of various forms. The workman took a piece of glass and put it into one furnace, then he put it into a second, and then into a third. I said to him, Why do you put it through so many fires? He answered, Oh, sir, the first was not hot enough, nor the second; therefore we put it into a third, and that will make it transparent. (G. Whitefield.)

An aggressive gospel

Fire is the life and the light of the world, and, as a symbol, deserves to be studied. Its power has never been ascertained. Every effort made to subdue it is attended with the consciousness of its unconquerable nature. It melts iron, burns marble, changes granite into dust, feeds on wood, evaporates water; and yet, when properly used and ministered unto, it is the health and life of the world. Such is the gospel. Receive it into the soul, and it changes the miser into the benefactor, the slothful into the diligent, and the lukewarm into the fiery apostle who, like Jeremiah, finds a fire in his bones which will consume if it finds not vent.

1. The purpose is avowed--I am come to send fire. Not to bring, but send.

2. This fire is sent. It is here, and is yet to be more manifest.

3. The outlook is one of endeavour. Christ is organizing for victory.

4. The urgent need of the Church to receive this fire.

5. Instead of being alarmed when the gospel produces excitement, we are to look for it.

6. Christ longs to have the fire kindled.

7. Behind every fervent prayer is the unreached desire of Christ.

8. The plan is fixed, the fire is to be kindled in the individual heart. (J. D.Fulton, D. D.)

The question of Christian missions stated and explained

I. THE MISSION OF CHRIST WAS UNDERTAKEN FOR THE MOST IMPORTANT ENDS.

1. To present an atonement to the Divine government for the sin of man.

2. To overthrow the rebellious power which had usurped the dominion of this world.

3. The redemption of innumerable multitudes of our race from the consequences of their apostasy.

4. The formal assumption and complete discharge of His mediatorial characters.

II. THESE ENDS COULD ALONE BE PROSECUTED AT A MOST PAINFUL EXPENSE.

1. We cannot conceal the fact that Christianity may affect political systems.

2. It is further admitted that Christianity must produce a variety of innovations.

3. Very unnatural divisions in society have apparently been fomented by Christianity.

4. Christianity must be viewed in connection with those persecutions which it has experienced.

5. Christianity has drawn forth some acts, on the part of its adversaries, which have more effectually exposed the depravity of human nature than any other occasion could have admitted.

6. The religion of Jesus Christ has very frequently been perverted to designs most estranged from its character, and abhorrent to its spirit.

7. The augmentation of moral responsibility has necessarily attended the establishment of Christianity.

III. THE IMPORTANCE OF THESE ENDS JUSTIFIED THE VAST EXPENSE NECESSARY TO THEIR ACQUISITION.

1. Here, then, we find an apology for our warmest zeal and firmest courage, in extending Christianity. We but imbibe the spirit and follow the steps of our Exemplar.

2. And here, too, we learn that this unconquerable temper, this inexpressible ardour, is of the first importance in every department of missions. Nothing half-hearted should be betrayed in our institutions at home, or efforts abroad.

3. In this spirit of unshrinking courage, and unabating ardour, let us proceed. We carry the commission of Him who came to send fire on the earth. We may blow the flame, we may spread the conflagration; what will he, if it be already kindled? All must yield to the gospel of Christ or be consumed by its progress. (R. W. Hamilton, D. D.)

Fire--the want of the tinges

I. CONSIDER THE HISTORY OF THE GOSPEL.

1. It begins with a revelation, contained in the Bible. Bending over the page, we are struck with the extraordinary doctrines herein revealed. As we believe the doctrine of Divine love, we feel it to be a truth which sets the soul on fire with joy, gratitude, and love.

2. I have commenced the history of the gospel with the book; but, remember, the gospel does not long remain a mere writing; it is no sooner thoroughly read and grasped than the reader becomes, according to his ability, a preacher. We will suppose when a preacher whom God has truly called to the work proclaims thin gospel, you will see for a second time that it is a thing of fire. Observe the man! If God hath sent him, he is little regardful of the graces of oratory; he counts it sheer folly that the servants of God should be the apes of Demosthenes and Cicero; he learns in another school how to deliver his Masters message. He comes forward in all sincerity, not in the wisdom of words, but with great plainness of speech, and tells to the sons of men the great message from the skies. The one thing of all others he abhors, is to deliver that message with bated breath, with measured cadence, and sentences that chill and freeze as they fall from ice-bound lips. I would not utter too sweeping a sentence, but I will venture to say that no man who preaches the gospel without zeal is sent of God to preach at all.

3. In tracing this history of the gospel, I would have you observe the effect of the preaching of such a one as I have described. While he is delivering the truth of a crucified Saviour, and bidding men repent of sin and believe in Christ, while he is pleading and exhorting with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, do you see the fire flakes descend in showers from on high! One of them has dropped just yonder and fallen into a heart that had been cold and hard before; observe how it melts all that was hard and iron-like, and the tears begin to flow from channels long dried up.

4. Opposition is aroused next. There is no good doing if the devil does not howl.

II. Secondly, LET US STUDY MORE CAREFULLY THE QUALITIES OF THE GOSPEL AS FIRE.

1. First, fire and the gospel are notable for ethereal purity.

2. The gospel is like fire, again, because of its cheering and comforting influence. He that hath received it finds that the cold of this world no longer pinches him; he may be poor, but the gospels fire takes away the chilliness of poverty; he may be sick, but the gospel gives his soul to rejoice even in the bodys decay; he may be slandered and neglected, but the gospel honours him in the sight of God. The gospel, where it is fully received into the heart, becomes a Divine source of matchless consolation. Fire, in addition to its warmth, gives light. The flaming beacon guides the mariner or warns him of the rock: the gospel becomes to us our guide through all the darkness of this mortal life; and if we cannot look into the future, nor know what shall happen to us on the morrow, yet by the light of the gospel we can see our way in the present path of duty, ay, and see our end in future immortality and blessedness. Life and immortality are brought to light by the gospel of Jesus Christ.

3. A third likeness between the gospel and fire is its testing qualities. No test like fire. That piece of jewelry may seem to be gold; the colour is an exact imitation; you could scarcely tell but what it was the genuine metal. Ay, but the melting pot will prove all; put it into the crucible, and you will soon see. Thus in this world there are a thousand things that glitter, things which draw admirers, that are advocated in the name of philanthropy and philosophy, and I know not what beside; but it is wonderful how different the schemes of politicians and the devices of wise men appear when they are once put into the fining pot of the gospel of Jesus Christ.

4. A further parallel between the gospel and the fire lies in their essential aggressiveness.

5. Our religion is like fire, again, because of its tremendous energy and its rapid advance. Who shall be able to estimate the force of fire? Our forefathers standing on this side the river, as they gazed many years ago upon the old city of London wrapped in flame, must have wondered with great astonishment as they saw cottage and palace, church and hall, monument and cathedral, all succumbing to the tongue of flame, tit must be a wonderful sight, if one could safely see it, to behold a prairie rolling along its great sheets of flame, or to gaze upon Vesuvius when it is spouting away at its utmost force. When you deal with fire, you cannot calculate; you are among the imponderables and the immeasurables. I wish we thought of that when we are speaking of religion. You cannot calculate concerning its spread. How many years would it take to convert the world? asks somebody. Sir, it need not take ten minutes, if God so willed it; because as fire, beyond all reckoning, will sometimes, when circumstances are congenial, suddenly break out and spread, so will truth. Truth is not a mechanism--and does not depend upon engineering. God may, when He wills it, bring all human minds into such a condition that one single text such as this, This is a faithful saying, and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, may set all hearts on a blaze. Vainly do we reckon the missionary costs so much, and only so many can therefore be sent. Ay, but God works most by weakest means full often, and sometimes achieves by his poorest saints works which He will not perform by those who have every visible appliance.

6. Once more, the gospel resembles fire in this, that it will ultimately prevail.

III. Lastly, if the gospel be thus like fire, LET US CATCH THE FLAME.

1. If this fire shall really burn within us, we shall become from this very moment fearless of all opposition. That retired friend will lose the strings which bind his tongue; he will feel that he must speak as God shall bid him; or if he cannot speak, he will act with all his might in some other way to spread abroad the savour of Immanuels name. That coward who hid his head, and would not own his profession, when the fire burns, will feel that he had rather court opposition than avoid it.

2. If we catch this flame we shall, after having defied all opposition, weary utterly of the mere proprieties of religion which at this present time crush down like a nightmare the mass of the religious world.

3. If we shall catch this fire, we shall not only become dissatisfied with mere proprieties, but we shall all of us become instant in prayer. Day and night our soul will go up with cries and moanings to God, O God, how long, how long, how long? Wilt Thou not avenge Thine own elect? Will not Thy gospel prevail? Why are Thy chariots so long in coming? Why doth not Christ reign? Why is not the truth triumphant? Why dost Thou suffer idolatry to rule and priestcraft to reign? Make haste, O God, grasp Thy two-edged sword and smite, and let error die and let truth win the victory! It is thus we shall be always pleading if this fire burns in our spirits.

4. This will lead us to eager service. Having this fire in us, we shall be trying to do all we can for Christ. (C. H. Spurgeon.)

The fire Christ kindles

I. Here we have one of those statements of Christ which have been and still is made use of by superficial, ill-disposed unbelievers, IN ORDER TO BRING HIM AND HIS RELIGION INTO DISCREDIT. If all His many statements, declarations, and utterances, which inculcate love and good-will to mankind, leave them cold and indifferent; those which speak of the destructive tendency of His religion inflame them with hatred and malice towards Him, and the object of His life and work. As soon as they hear that Christ Himself said, I am come to send fire on the earth, and again, Think not that I am come to send peace on earth, I am come not to send peace, but the sword, their anger is uncontrollable. With an air of righteous indignation, they exclaim, All this Christs followers have faithfully carried out to the detriment of mankind. To justify their assertion, they refer us to the persecution and bloodshed instigated and perpetrated by those who bore His name, and strenuously maintain that all was done in His name and by His authority. These implacable enemies of Christ and His religion do not shrink from making Christ Himself responsible for all the cruel and barbarous deeds wrought at one time or other by professing Christians. They have indeed the testimony of history on their side, where all such cruelties and inhumanities have been recorded and transmitted to posterity. But we have a right to demand of those who sit in judgment over others, not to be so unjust as to make Christ and His religion responsible for them. We shall, no doubt, at once be told to read our text, for in it Christ expressly says that He came to send fire on the earth; and we shall be asked to read further on, where He says that He did not come to send peace on earth, but the sword. Of course Christ speaks of fire and the sword, but by no means in the sense His enemies or mistaken friends would have it. In the ordinary life fire need not be a destructive element, nor the sword a weapon with which to kill others; for fire has also many very useful qualities, it imparts heat and light, and the sword is wielded to defend and uphold justice. That Christ employs these figuratively, and as such representing forcibly great and important spiritual truths, there is not a shadow of doubt. The fire He means is no other than His holy love, kindling within man a sacred flame of devotion for everything good, true, and just; and the sword He speaks of is no other than the Spirit of God, who wields the mighty word of God.

II. CHRISTIANITY IS FIRST OF ALL A DESTRUCTIVE POWER BEFORE IT CAN BE THAT WHICH IT IS IN REALITY AND TRUTH, VIZ., A DIVINE POWER TO RENEW AND SANCTIFY MAN. It would not have been a Divine power for the spiritual good of man had it not such a twofold tendency and effect; for as man has become despoiled by sin, Gods holy love manifested in Christ has first of all to destroy this pernicious element in him before it can effectually accomplish its Divine mission for him. The fire Christ kindles in the heart of fallen, sinful man is meant to consume all ungodliness and unholiness, all the idols that may be enshrined there; and if our own will and consent allow this work to be effected, the sacred fire of love, of devotion to God and our fellow-men, will be kindled in the purified and sanctified temple of our heart. If Christs love is, however, obstinately resisted, the unholy fire will remain burning within man, never to be extinguished. Christs fire, however, destroys, in order to rebuild within us a glorious temple crowned with the inscription, Holiness unto the Lord.

III. If Christianity were only a destructive power, we could have gladly dispensed with it, for there are enough of such powers and agents at work in nature and society, in the individual and among nations. THE PRIME OBJECT OF CHRISTIANITY IS, FORTUNATELY FOR THE HUMAN RACE, NOT TO DESTROY MANS LIFE, BUT TO SAVE IT; not to separate man from man, but to unite all men closely and intimately by one bond of love as brothers of one common Father in heaven. Christianity, as a new life-giving power, only destroys that which hinders mans growth in holiness, godliness, and righteousness, thus retarding his spiritual development and progress heavenwards. The holy fire burning on the altar of a believing Christians heart not only consumes all impurity in him, but kindles a sacred flame of love and devotion in him towards God and the true well-being of his fellow-man. (A. Furst, D. D.)

Missionary enthusiasm

This fire which our Lord came to send was a Divine enthusiasm inspired by His Spirit for the glory of God, for the highest good of man--an enthusiasm enwrapping like flame the faculties of soul and body, transfiguring weak and commonplace natures by the purifying and invigorating energy of a supernatural force. I can do all things, said St. Paul, through Christ that strengtheneth me. This enthusiasm has, undoubtedly, many other outlets, many other effects. The missionary spirit is one of its chief, its noblest manifestations--the spirit which burns to carry the name and kingdom of Christ wherever there are souls to be saved and blest. What, then, let us ask, are the elements which go to make up the missionary spirit? Or, rather, what are the convictions by which the sacred flame is kept alive within the soul? There are, I apprehend, three main elements, three ruling and inspiring convictions, at the root of missionary enthusiasm.

1. Of these, the first is a deep sense of the certainty and importance of the truths of the gospel. The apostles were the first missionaries, and we see in their writings how deeply they felt both the importance and the certainty of their message. St. Paul speaks of preaching among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ. St. Paul prays that the Ephesians may have the eyes of their understanding so enlightened as to know what is the hope of their glory, and what the riches of their calling and their inheritance among the saints. St. Pauls language has sometimes been spoken of as hyperbolical and inflated, but only so because the great living facts which were so present to the apostles soul are hidden from the soul of the speaker. If, my brethren, it be indeed true that the everlasting Son of God left the glory which He had with the Father before the world was, and took our poor nature upon Him, and had a human mother, and lived on this earth for thirty-three years, and then died in pain and shame to rise from death, to rise from the grave in which He was laid, to return, still robed in the nature in which He had died and risen, to the glories of His heavenly home--if this be a fact, it is trivial to speak of it as an important fact. It distances in point of importance everything else that has occurred in human history. What in the world are all the triumphs, all the failures, all the humiliations, all the recoveries, of which human history speaks, in comparison with this? What heart have we to dwell on them when we have really stood face to face in spirit with- the incarnation and the passion of the Son of God? This is what men like Xavier or Martin have felt; and this sense of the overwhelming importance of the facts of redemption has not, in the cases of these eminent missionaries, been weakened by any suspicion whatever, created by a sceptical atmosphere of thought around them, about the truth of the facts. The apostles had had no doubts about the facts. I know whom I have believed, cries St. Paul. We have not followed cunningly devised fables, protests St. Peter. We were eye-witnesses of His majesty. That which we have seen and heard, says St. John, declare we unto you, for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and declare unto you that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested unto us. In the mind of the apostles the truths of the Christian revelation centred, every one of them, in the living person of Christ--God and man; and an utter devotion to His person, based on a profound conviction of the reality in detail and as a whole of those truths, was at the root of that spirit of enterprising charity which went forth to convert the world. In the heart of those first missionaries, as so constantly since, the crucified Son of God whispered daily, hourly, that He might keep alive within them the sacred flame: Behold what I have borne for thee! What hast thou done for Me?

2. And the second conviction which goes to make up missionary enthusiasm is a sense of the need which man has of revealed truth. The apostles were possessed by this element also of that sacred flame which Christ came to send upon the earth. The apostles did not invest contemporary heathenism with that halo of false beauty which has been more or less fashionable in Christendom ever since the renaissance. They saw in heathendom the kingdom of darkness. Its material civilization, its splendid literature, its vast organizations civil and military, its social and political traditions, were nothing to them or less than nothing. We know, said St. John--we know that we are of the truth, and the whole world lieth in wickedness. All that is of the world, the lust of the flesh and the lust of the eyes and the pride of life, is not of the Father, but is of the world, and the world passeth away and the lust thereof. The highest civilization, so termed, was in St. Pauls eyes just as much in need of the gospel as the rudest types of savage life. He had as much to do for the cultivated heathens who listened to him on the Areopagus of Athens as for the wild heathens of the Mediterranean islands, who after their rude fashion showed him no little kindness when he was saved from his shipwreck, for he saw everywhere error and sin-error which obscured the real nature of God and the true destiny and the highest interest of man--and sin which made man Gods enemy, the antagonist of Gods uncreated nature as the perfect being. The conviction that those who were not in Christ were lost--lost unless they could be brought to Him to be illuminated, to be gifted with a new nature, to be washed, to be sanctified, to be justified before the presence of the All-holy--this was the second element of conviction which urged the apostles onwards through the world to convert it--which urged them on even to martyrdom.

3. And the third conviction that goes to make up the missionary spirit is a belief in the capacity of every man for the highest good--for salvation through Christ. Intellectual dulness, want of imagination, want of what people have taken to calling lately sweetness and light, want of moral fervour and quickness--these are not barriers. Doubtless some minds, some natures--I would rather say some souls--present more points of contact with the gospel than do others. Some, I admit, present very few indeed; but no child of Adam is so constituted as to be incapable of receiving the truth which is necessary to his highest good; and the true missionary knows that if he can only get deep enough beneath the surface, beneath the crust of habit formed by sensuality, by indifference, by prejudice, he will at length find a home for truth--he will at length find that which will respond to it in the secret spring of the soul. Nelson used to tell young midshipmen who were entering the navy that they ought to look forward, every one of them, as a matter of course, to commanding the channel fleet, or at least to commanding a line-of-battle ship. And this faith in general capacity for success is still more necessary in the Christian missionary. He looks upon every child of man as bearing within him capacities for the highest greatness--capacities which have only to be roused and developed by the assured grace of God. Now, this faith in humanity--in what it may be made by grace--is assailed in our days on the ground that character and circumstances are, after all, too imperious to be set aside--that they, as a matter of fact, make us what we are--that it is folly to think of overruling them by any doctrine or secret influence that can be brought to bear. And this is not a new idea. The learned physician Galen, who wrote in the third century of the Christian era, and who as a heathen was strongly prejudiced against the Church of Christ, remarks with reference to the education of children, The cultivator can never succeed in making the thorn bear grapes, for the nature of the thorn is, from the first, incapable of such improvement. And then he goes on to say that if the vines which are capable of bearing such fruit be neglected they will either produce bad fruit or none at all. Here Galen marks out what, in his opinion, could really be done with human nature--certainly we must remark, within very narrow limits indeed--and what, in his opinion, it is folly to attempt. Tertullian, an eminent Christian writer of the period, in his treatise on the human soul, admits that the bad tree will bring forth no fruit if it be not grafted, and that the good tree will produce bad fruit unless it be cultivated. So much for nature, but then Tertullian proceeds, And the stones will become the children of Abraham if they be formed to the faith of Abraham, and the generation of vipers will bring forth fruits meet for repentance if they expel the poison of malignity. For such, he says, is the power of Divine grace which, indeed is more powerful than nature. The heathen Celsus probably expressed a general opinion among his friends when he said it was literally impossible to improve a man who had grown old in vice before his conversion. Cyprian, who was afterwards Bishop of Carthage and a martyr for Christ, had taken, he tells us, exactly the Fame view of the impossibility of changing natural habit. How he learnt the power of Gods grace he tells us in a most remarkable passage of one of his extant letters. Receive, he says to his correspondent, that which must be experienced before it can be understood. When I lay in the darkness, in the depths of the night, when I was tossed hither and thither by the billows of the world, and wandered about with an uncertain and fluctuating course, I deemed it a matter of extreme difficulty that any one could be born again--could lay aside what he was before, while his corporal nature remained what it was. How, said I, can there be so great a transformation as that a man should all at once lay aside what is innate from his very organization, or, through habit, has become a second nature? How should a man learn frugality who has been accustomed to luxuries? How should he who has been clad in gold and purple condescend to simple attire. The man who has been surrounded with public honours take to privacy, or another exchange admiring troops of dependents for voluntary solitude? The allurements of sense, I said to myself, are surely very tenacious. Intemperance, pride, anger, ambition, lust--these must, when once indulged, they must perforce, retain their hold. So I said to myself, for I was, in truth, entangled yet in the errors of my former life, and did not believe that I could be freed from them; and so I complied with the vices that still cleaved to me, and in despair of amendment submitted to my evil inclinations as if they were part of my nature. But when the stain of my former life had been washed out by the laver of regeneration, a pure and serene light was poured into my reconciled heart. When the second birth received from heaven through the Spirit had changed me into a new man, things formerly doubtful were confirmed in a wonderful manner. What had been closed before became open before my eyes; what had been dark was now illuminated; power was given to do what had seemed difficult; the impossible had become possible. I can see now that my former life, being of fleshly origin and spent in sin, was a life of earth. The life which the Holy One has kindled in me is a life from God. This testimony has been re-echoed since by thousands and thousands of Christians and, therefore, the barriers of habit enshrined within venerable traditions which the Christian missionary encounters to-day in China or in India, however serious they may be as practical obstacles, are not really insurmountable. By and by the gospel leaven will surely begin to ferment, and then these vast, ancient, complicated societies will heave and break till they open a way to the influences of the gospel, if not so swiftly, yet as surely, as do the uncultivated New Zealanders and Polynesians. To doubt this is to lose faith, if not in the gospel, at least in humanity--in the capacity of every being for coming to the highest truth, for coming to God in Christ. (Canon Liddon.)

The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Luk 12:49-53. I am come to send fire on earth — Our Lord concludes his charge to his disciples with foretelling the divisions that should be occasioned by his gospel. See on Mat 10:34. As if he had said, After all that I have done and spoken to promote peace and love, so opposite is my doctrine to the prejudices and the lusts of men, and such are the violent contentions that my gospel will occasion, through the wickedness of those among whom it is preached, that it will seem as though I came to kindle a fire on earth, that should produce destructive and wide-spreading desolation. And what will I, if it be already kindled —

Τι θελω, ει ηδη ανηφθη, which Dr. Campbell renders, What would I, but that it were kindled? which is, according to the Vulgate, quid volo, nisi ut accendatur? It is justly observed by Dr. Whitby, that ει, here rendered if, sometimes signifies that; as Act 26:23, where ει παθητος Χριστος, is properly rendered, that Christ should suffer and that he should rise; and it is also a particle, of wishing: so Num 22:29, ει ειχον μαχαιραν, I wish I had a sword; Isa 48:18, ει ηκουσας, O that thou hadst hearkened; Psa 81:13, ει ο λαος μου ηκουσε, O that my people had hearkened, &c.; Luk 19:42, ει εγνως, O that thou hadst known! The sense, therefore, of this passage is, “I come to deliver to the world a doctrine which will incense the world against me and my followers, and subject us to great sufferings, signified in Scripture by fire, and will baptize me in my own blood; but yet I am so far from being moved from prosecuting my Father’s pleasure, by the prospect of them, that I wish the time of my suffering were at hand, and my gospel were preached to the world.” Of the baptism here spoken of, see on Mat 20:23. And how am I straitened — Πως συνεχομαι, how am I pressed in spirit; (see Act 18:5;) till it be accomplished. He longed for the time when he should suffer and die, having an eye to the glorious issue of his sufferings. The words allude to a woman in travail, that is pained to be delivered, and welcomes her pains, because they hasten the birth of the child, and wishes them sharp and strong, that the work may be cut short. Christ’s sufferings were the travail of his soul, which he cheerfully underwent, in hope that he should by them see his seed. Isa 53:10-11. So much was his heart set upon the redemption and salvation of man. Suppose ye that I am come to send peace on earth — By subduing all the nations of the world into one great monarchy, under the Jews, and establishing that temporal tranquillity and prosperity which you expect should attend the Messiah’s kingdom? I tell you nay, but rather division — For notwithstanding that my gospel is the gospel of peace, proclaiming peace between God and man, and enjoining all that embrace it to follow peace with all men; yet it will be so opposed and perverted, that, instead of peace and unity, discord, strife, and division will be frequently occasioned by it. For from henceforth — On account of the introduction of my religion, there shall be five in one house divided, &c. — Contentious heats and animosities will frequently arise in families; that part of the family which does not obey the gospel opposing and persecuting the part which obeys it. And this shall be the case even when those families consist of persons who stand in the nearest relations to each other; the father, for instance, differing with the son, and the son with the father. It may be proper to observe here; so many prophecies of the Old Testament speak of the peaceful state of the Messiah’s kingdom (see Psa 72:7; Isa 2:4; Isa 11:6-9; Isa 65:25) “that it is hard to say how Christ could completely answer the character of the Messiah if he should never establish peace, even universal peace, on earth. But the error of the Jews lay in supposing he was immediately to accomplish it; whereas the prophecies of the New Testament, especially those contained in the book of Revelation, show, and those of the Old Testament most plainly intimate, that this prosperous state of his kingdom was not only to be preceded by his own sufferings, but by a variety of persecutions, trials, and sufferings, which should in different degrees attend his followers, before the kingdoms of the earth became, by a general conversion, the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ.” — Doddridge.

Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

CRITICAL NOTES

Luk_12:49. I am come.—Rather, “I came” (R.V.). The tense refers to the historical fact of the Incarnation. Note in this the consciousness of pre-existence, as also of a heavenly origin in the last clause of the verse. Fire.—As a symbol of discord and violence. What will I, etc.—It is difficult to make out the precise meaning of the words. Probably the best rendering of them is—“And what will I?” (what do I desire now?) “O that it were already kindled!”

Luk_12:50. A baptism.—Cf. Mat_20:22. To be plunged or immersed in sufferings. Straitened.—Pressed, distracted. Cf. Joh_12:27. A premonition of Gethsemane and Calvary.

Luk_12:51. Division.—Mat_10:34 has “a sword.”

Luk_12:52. For from henceforth.—A better reading is, “For there shall be from henceforth five in one house divided,” etc. Three against two, etc.—I.e., the younger generation against the older.

Luk_12:53. The father, etc.—The five members of the household are here specified: father, mother, son, daughter, and daughter-in-law.

Luk_12:54. To the people.—Rather, “to the multitudes”; from which we would understand that the preceding words had been specially addressed to the disciples. He warns them also that the time is critical, upbraids them with spiritual blindness, for not being able to see it (Luk_12:54-57), and urges them to make, each one, at once, his peace with God (Luk_12:58-59). A cloud. Perhaps, rather, “the cloud,” the well-known prognostic of rain (1Ki_18:44). In Palestine the rains come up from the Mediterranean. Straightway.—Rapid and certain conclusion as to the weather.

Luk_12:55. South wind.—Coming across the desert. Heat.—Rather “a scorching heat” (R.V.).

Luk_12:56. Hypocrites.—The insincerity lay in the fact that they chose not to see signs which were equally visible with those of the weather. “Among these signs were miracles (Isa_35:4-6); the political condition (Gen_49:10); the preaching of the Baptist” (Matthew 3) (Farrar).

Luk_12:57. Yea and why.—“Even apart from signs, from the declaration of prophets, ye might, from what ye hear and see, recognise the signs of the times, and the person of the Messiah in Me” (Bloomfield).

Luk_12:58. When thou goest, etc.—The figure is that of coming to an agreement with a creditor on the way to the court. Officer.—The gaoler, lit. “the exactor,” whose duty it was to compel payment of the debt.

Luk_12:59. Mite.—The smallest Greek coin then in use.

MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Luk_12:49-59.

The Signs of the Times.—The fact that in the mission and work of Christ upon earth a new epoch in the world’s history had opened was clearly realised by the Saviour Himself; it was, however, but imperfectly comprehended by His disciples, and quite hidden from the people at large. In this section of the gospel history Jesus gives expression to His own feelings of concern at the greatness of the work given Him to do, and the sufferings through which alone He could bring it to a successful issue. He then forewarns the disciples of the sharp conflict between faith and unbelief which would result in every community where the gospel was preached; and, finally, He upbraids the multitude with the spiritual blindness which prevented their recognising the significance and solemnity of the times in which they were living.

I. The actual state of matters so far as it concerned Himself (Luk_12:49-50).—The conflict with the Pharisees was an indication of a widespread war between the forces of good and evil, which was to result from His work on earth. The fire-brand had been cast upon the earth, and from it a great conflagration would ensue. He had kindled in the hearts of the disciples a love of heavenly things, which they were to spread abroad; and all the efforts of the earthly-minded would be directed to oppose and extinguish it. And He recognises that one of the results of this conflict will be sufferings and death for Himself; nay, He realises the fact that His passion is needed for completing the work which He came to earth to accomplish. Without the cross His teachings and His miracles would fail to produce the great change on human society which it was His purpose to effect. This utterance of His strikingly illustrates the union in Him of the human and the Divine natures. With genuinely human feelings He shrinks from the conflict, but with Divine knowledge and love He anticipates the results that will flow from His self-sacrifice, and longs for it to be accomplished. These mingled feelings recur in a more intense form at a later period of His life (Joh_12:27; Mat_26:38), but were never entirely absent from His mind during the whole period of His public ministry. The fact that He so clearly foresaw the sufferings and death which were attached to His redeeming work brings into clearest relief His love for mankind and His devotion to the will of the Father.

II. The disciples forewarned of their participation in the strife (Luk_12:51-53).—They were probably anticipating the erection of a Messianic kingdom, characterised by peace and prosperity of a material kind, and needed to be prepared for a very different state of matters. Peace was not to be the first and immediate result of His work, if by peace was to be understood comfortable outward conditions of life. The peace which He bequeathed to His disciples was a state of heart: being delivered from bondage and fear, and reconciled to God. The relation which Jesus sought to establish between Himself and all who accepted Him as their Lord and Saviour was higher and more sacred than any other, and acknowledgment of His unique claims was certain to lead to conflict, not only between Himself and the world, but between the members of human society. Men would begin to distinguish themselves as adversaries and subjects of His kingdom. And it is one proof of the profound significance of Christ’s work in the world that this strife should spring up wherever the gospel is preached. Men feel that they have to do with One whose claims override all others and extend to every department of life; and if these claims are not accepted they provoke resistance. And every one who accepts Christ as Lord and Master needs to keep in mind that He insists upon absolute devotion to Himself, even if this means the rupture of the nearest and dearest ties that bind him to his fellows.

III. The multitude upbraided for their blindness and heedlessness (Luk_12:54-59).—Jesus now turns to the people at large, who do not realise the gravity of the circumstances in which they are placed, and who are plunged in carnal security and impenitence. He upbraids them with their blindness to the importance of the crisis, and urges them to take advantage of the time which yet remains to them for making their peace with God. He contrasts the shrewdness and prudence which they display in the ordinary affairs of life with their slowness to comprehend the things that concern their spiritual welfare. The real explanation of the discrepancy is that they are interested in things that concern their earthly welfare, but are indifferent to their highest welfare. A sinful heart means a darkened understanding (cf. Rom_1:21; Eph_4:18). The very appearance of Christ upon the earth pointed to the necessity of reconciliation with God: it was to effect this that He came, and therefore indifference to Him and to His teaching meant exposing oneself to the greatest danger. All who heard Him had the opportunity of becoming reconciled to Him whom they had offended, and whose claims they could not of themselves satisfy. Let them beware of allowing the day of grace to pass, and of compelling God to deal with them according to the strict demands of justice.

SUGGESTIVE COMMENTS ON Luk_12:49-59

Luk_12:49-53. The Conflict.—My conflict hastens apace; Mine over, yours begins; and then let the servants tread in their Master’s steps, uttering their testimony entire and fearless, neither loving nor dreading the world, anticipating awful wrenches of the dearest ties in life, but looking forward, as I do, to the completion of their testimony, when, after the tempest, reaching the haven, they shall enter into the joy of their Lord.—Brown.

The Critical Nature of the Time.—The critical nature of the time

(1) as concerned Jesus Himself—Luk_12:49-50,

(2) as concerned the disciples (Luk_12:50-53). “Is it a time,” said Elisha to the faithless Gehazi, “to buy lands and oxen, when the hand of God is on Israel?”—that is to say, when the Assyrian is at the gates of Samaria? Jesus speaks in the same way to the disciples about Him, “Is it a time for the believer to propose, as the aim of his life, the peaceful enjoyment of worldly property, at the moment when the great conflict is about to begin?”—Godet.

Luk_12:49. “Fire on the Earth.”—By “fire” here we are to understand the higher spiritual element of life which Jesus came to introduce into this earth, with reference to its mighty effects in quickening all that is akin to it, and destroying all that is opposed. To cause this element of life to take up its abode on earth, and wholly to pervade human hearts with its warmth, was the lofty destiny of the Redeemer.—Brown.

The Gospel a Fire.—Our Lord says here, in the plainest way, that while the object of His coming is to give peace, the effect of His coming will too often be to send fire on earth.

I. The text calls the gospel a fire.—A fire is a power. How fire spreads, glows, rages, devours! When the gospel is called a fire, we mean not a name, an idea, a poor faint, creeping thing, which may be disregarded and let alone, but a great, active, at last a victorious and irresistible force. Never suppose that the gospel is an insignificant or despicable thing.

II. There are hearts and places in which the gospel is not a fire.—There are families where the gospel in the heart of one causes discord and division. The only alternative must be the backsliding of the one, or the conversion of the rest. So long as the gospel is not a power, it is not a fire; it causes no breach and no division. Therefore we are constrained to wish for such signs of its working. The fire is the sign of the peace. If there be no fire, the gospel will be a mere balm, a mere soporific, a mere lullaby of the soul.

III. What is the lesson of the text for each of us?—Is the concord of our homes due to the gospel? Is serving Christ the secret of family union? Let the fire be a fire of cleansing, and a fire of quickening, and a fire of devotion. Is your home disorganised? What has divided you? Was it the fire of the gospel which severed? Are you intolerant of the devotion and service which others render to Christ? It must needs be that the gospel divides; but woe to them by whom that division comes! We do not wish to spread division by the gospel; but even if this be the effect, we recognise there one of the signs of the work of grace. Division is a sign that life is there. It means an end to fatal lethargy. It is the work of the ministry to bring the gospel home. It is something to have it preached in our churches; it is more to have it preached, even to dispeace and division, in our homes.—Vaughan.

“Already Kindled.”—The disciples having falsely imagined that, while they were at ease and asleep, the kingdom of God would come, Christ declares, on the contrary, that there must first be a dreadful conflagration, to kindle the world. And as some beginnings of it were, even then, making their appearance, Christ encourages the disciples by the very consideration that they already feel the power of the gospel. “When great commotions,” says He, “shall already begin to kindle, this is so far from being a reason why ye should tremble, that it is rather a ground of strong confidence; and, for my own part, I rejoice that this fruit of my labours is visible.”—Calvin.

“To send fire.”—“Everything fertile in results is rich in wars” (Renan). The fire when it burns on all sides consumes chaff and straw, but purifies silver and gold.

Luk_12:50. The Passover before the Passion.—Jesus expresses with perfect candour the emotion that fills His mind. The thought of the terrible suffering He is to endure is before His mind, and weighs upon Him like a nightmare until it is over. The first evidence of this feeling is in this passage; a second time it comes to view while He is in the temple (Joh_12:27)—“Now is My soul troubled; and what shall I say?” A third time it breaks forth in all its vehemence in the garden of Gethsemane.

The Secret of the Saviour’s Earnestness.—

1. His belief in a Divine commission.

2. His belief in the solemnity of time. We, too, however, have a mission to fulfil, and our time for fulfilling it is appointed and proportioned by God. If these convictions possessed our souls, would they not kindle a Christlike earnestness?

(1) They would dispel the delusions of time.

(2) They would overcome the hindrances to submission.

(3) They would break down the impediments of fear.—Hull.

Luk_12:51-53. The Gospel an Occasion of Division.

I. The fact that the gospel of Christ shall be the occasion of division and contention in the world is easily verified. The heart of every believer is an example. The history of the gospel in every country into which it has been introduced establishes it.

II. The causes of the division. Hatred of the truth; hatred of a holiness which rebukes sin; hatred of authority such as the gospel claims.

III. Results of this division. The world is convinced of sin. The faith and patience of believers are called forth and strengthened.

Luk_12:51. “Peace.”—This saying may distress weak minds; for

(1) the prophets everywhere promise peace and tranquillity under the reign of Christ, and

(2) Christ is our peace (Eph_2:14), and the very office of the gospel is to reconcile us to God. But we must remember that this peace is associated with faith, and exists only in the hearts and consciences of the godly. The corrupt nature converts the inestimable gift into a most destructive evil.

The Result of Christ’s Coming.—Our Lord speaks not of the intention with which He came into the world, but of the sad result of His coming, which was to be (owing to the corruption of man’s fallen nature) strife and division.

Luk_12:52. Strife Sometimes Better than Peace.—Better is strife, when it brings one near to God, than peace, when it separates one from God.—Gregory Naz.

Luk_12:54-59.—Two Great Faults:—

I. Blindness, in not being able to discern the significance of this time, as they did the signs of the natural heavens (Luk_12:54-56).

II. Want of prudence in not repenting and becoming reconciled to the law of God while yet there was time (Luk_12:57-59).

Luk_12:57-59. The True State of the Case.—Why do ye not discern of yourselves your true state—that which is just—the justice of your case as before God? You are going (the course of your life is your journey) with your adversary (the just and holy law of God) before the magistrate (God Himself); therefore by the way take pains to be delivered from him (by repentance and faith in the Son of God), lest he drag thee to the judge, and the judge deliver thee to the exactor, and the exactor cast thee into prison.—Alford.

Luk_12:58-59. “When thou goest,” etc.—Our Saviour seems to say: In a merely temporal matter, you are careful to act thus prudently. While the day of mercy yet lasts, should you not discover the like anxiety to avail yourselves of it? through Me to obtain deliverance from the wrath of God, before it be too late?—Burgon.

The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.

b. Luk_12:49-59

49I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled [how much do I wish that it were already kindled!15]? 50But I have a baptism to be baptizedwith; and how am I straitened16 till it be accomplished! 51Suppose ye that I am cometo give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather [only] division: 52For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two againstthree. [They shall be divided, father against son17]53The father shall be divided against the son, and the [om., the] son against the [om., the] father; the [om., the] mother against the [om., the] daughter, and the [om., the] daughter against the mother; the [om., the] mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the [om., the] daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law. 54And he said also to the people, When ye see a [the18]cloud rise out of the west, straightway ye say, There cometh a shower; and so55it is. And when ye see the south wind blow [blowing], ye say, There will be heat;56and it cometh to pass. Ye hypocrites, ye can discern the face of the sky and of theearth; but how is it that ye do not discern this time? 57Yea, and why even of yourselves58judge ye not what is right? When [For as] thou goest [proceedest] with thine adversary to the magistrate, as thou art in the way, give diligence that thou mayest be delivered from him; lest he hale [drag] thee to the judge, and the judge deliver theeto the officer, and the officer cast thee into prison. 59I tell thee, thou shalt not depart thence, till thou hast paid the very last [even the last] mite [λεπτόν].

EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL

Luk_12:49. I am come.—To the question in what connection this part of the Saviour’s discourse stands with what immediately precedes, the neutiquam cohœrent (Kuinoel) is certainly, it seems to me, the simplest possible answer. At least the method in which Olshausen and others give the connection of the ideas, is in our eyes excessively forced. But if we insist on having some connection, then the view of Meyer, “that the greatness of the responsibility, Luk_12:48, as well as the whole momentousness of the previously demanded faithfulness, is still more strengthened by the difficulty of the state of things, Luk_12:49, and so is meant to be made the more palpable to the disciples,” is perhaps the most simple.

Luk_12:49. Send fire on the earth.—The question is, what fire the Saviour here means. The answer that we have here to understand a fire of controversy, appears indeed to be the most admissible, but has, however, this difficulty, that then Luk_12:51 is really only a weak repetition of that which has been already said in Luk_12:49. If πῦρ is entirely the same with μάχαιρα, Mat_10:34, and διαμερισμός, Luk_12:51, it cannot then be well conceived that the Saviour could have unconditionally wished the kindling of such a fire. On the other hand, there is not the least reason for here, with many of the fathers and some modern expositors, immediately understanding the fire of the Holy Spirit, for which βαλεῖν would certainly have been no very fitting expression. It is best, without doubt, to proceed from the general signification of the metaphorical expression, and to understand the extraordinary movement of mind which Christ should bring to pass when His Gospel should everywhere be proclaimed, comp. Luk_24:32. As fire has on the one hand a warming and purifying, but on the other a dissolving and destroying, force, not otherwise is it with the manifestation of Christ, of which the Gospel bears testimony. It is, however, by no means to be denied that the Saviour has in mind the latter rather than the former side of the fact. It does not, however, come into the fullest prominence until Luk_12:51. Division had already been effected by the Saviour’s advent, but the fire was not to blaze up in its full power until after His death and His exaltation.

Καὶ τί θέλω εἰ ἤδη ἀνήφθη; The general interpretation (Kuinoel, Bretschneider, De Wette, who appeal to Mat_7:14): “How much I could wish that it were already kindled,” has the signification of εἰ against it. Better Schleiermacher: “And what more do I wish if it is even already kindled?” But it will best agree with the character of the discourse if we with Grotius and Meyer translate: “And what will I? Would that it were already kindled!” This wish, however, the Saviour does not cherish only because between now and the kindling of this fire lay His near and bitter Passion in the midst, which must first be endured (Meyer), but rather because, besides the harmful and ruinous, the salutary force of the fire also stands before His view, and because He knows that only through these flames can all impurity be purged away from the earth.

Luk_12:50. A baptism to be baptized with.—Over against the heavenly fire which He sends, stands the earthly water of the suffering which previously to that must roll entirely over Him.—To be baptized.—An image of the depth and intensity of this suffering, like a baptism performed by immersion. Comp. Mat_20:22; Joh_1:33.—How am I straitened, πῶς συνέχομαι.—As far from being only a pressure of longing and desire (Euth. Zigab., De Wette) as from meaning merely, “oppressed by anxiety and fear” (Meyer and others); on the other hand the one must be joined with the other. Without doubt there is here a συνοχὴ καρδίας, not less than Joh_12:27; 2Co_2:4, and whoever in this human reluctation of the Lord against His suffering finds any cause of offence, places himself in a Docetic position. But in the heart of the holy Son of Man such a shrinking back from suffering, and the wish that it might already have been overcome, could not arise without His feeling at the same time the pressure of a love which must be baptized with this baptism, only because it itself has willed it. A similar union of anxiety and longing we see in the woman, Joh_16:21, who when her hour comes is seized with fear and anguish, and yet in the midst of this fear feels love and inward longing soon to press her child to her heart.

Luk_12:51. Suppose ye.—Comp. Mat_10:34-36. It was only perplexity on the part of some expositors when they believed that here the language respecting the consequence of the Saviour’s manifestation was used exclusively ἐκβατικῶς, not τελικῶς. On the other hand, we may say that the Saviour here speaks not of the highest and ultimate, but yet of a very essential purpose of His manifestation on earth, which, however, was in its turn to be a means for the attainment of a higher end, of a peace, namely, which could be attained through this strife alone. The division which the Saviour brought on earth was and is so general, that He in a certain sense could say of Himself that He establishes nothing less than (ἀλλ̓ ἤ) discord. This phenomenon is so far from being surprising and fortuitous, that, on the contrary, it has been foreseen and will be met, not as something good and desirable in itself, but as the only way in which He could erect His kingdom of peace here below upon an immovable foundation. An analogous representation, see Luk_2:34; Joh_9:39. Even because Christ is the Sun of Righteousness, it cannot but be that torches of strife and funeral pyres should be kindled by its fiery glow. When the Holy One of God comes into personal contact with an unholy world, a shock and strife is inevitable, and that not only against Him personally, but also among men themselves, inasmuch as these begin to distinguish themselves into adversaries and subjects of His kingdom.

Luk_12:52. Five in one house.—Here also is the mention of the uneven number five peculiar to Luke, as in the statement of the number of sparrows, Luk_12:6. When three stand against two and two against three, it is so much the more difficult to bring them together again. The holiest bonds are torn asunder, and as well in the male as also in the female sex does our Lord count friends and enemies, who on account of Him oppose one another. “Non additur gener, nam hic aliam constituit familiam.” Bengel. For the whole representation, compare the prophetical utterance, Mic_7:6. Only when the Saviour appears as the Prince of Peace can the disharmony between the three on the one hand and the two on the other hand be lastingly over.

Luk_12:54. And He said also to the people.—Luke justly remarks that here the address of the Saviour to the disciples breaks off. What now follows is more adapted to the mixed throng of His listeners, among whom there were found also enemies and those of Pharisaical views. According to Mat_16:1 seq., the Saviour directed the next following censure very particularly against the Pharisees and Sadducees; the expressions, however, in the two Evangelists are more or less different. If we are disposed to demonstrate the connection with the previous section, we may find it in this, that the Saviour now proceeds to the statement of the source from which so much discord and misunderstanding flow as He had just described; namely, the failure to recognize the signs of the times, which unequivocally enough pointed to the Messianic kingdom.

A cloud.—The cloud which rose out of the west, on the side of the sea, was regarded as the sign of approaching rain, see 1Ki_18:44, while the south wind was considered as a sign of heat to be expected, Job_37:17. The here-mentioned καύσεν is undoubtedly that glowing heat which was produced in Palestine by the south wind. In the LXX = קָדִים. In most mournful contrast with the sound intelligence of these weather-prophets, which in daily life at once decides (εὐθέως), and whose prophecies also commonly are fulfilled, stands the general blindness in reference to that which was infinitely more momentous and quite as easy to discover.

Luk_12:56. Ye hypocrites.—We cannot mistake the fact that here towards the end, the discourse again visibly inclines towards its point of departure. Very fittingly could the Saviour address the people in a mass thus, if we consider how deeply the leaven of the Pharisees had already penetrated into their minds. Since they were capable of distinguishing the face of the sky as well as that of the earth (Joh_4:35), it could only be from a lack of good-will that they left wholly unnoticed the rain and the vital warmth which in these days had been imparted, in the kingdom of God. What lies nearest to the heart of man his understanding judges best; but since the advent of a spiritual kingdom of God was to them essentially indifferent, they do not account it even worth the trouble of giving heed to these signs in the moral world, which so convincingly afforded proof that the fulness of the time had arrived. The Saviour, on the other hand, will have His contemporaries become meteorologists in the spiritual sphere, and therefore He afterwards also rebukes them that they did not know the time of their visitation, Luk_19:44.

Luk_12:57. Of your own selves, ἀφ̓ ἑαυτῶν, Luk_21:30. There was lacking to them, as appears from what precedes, the gift necessary for clearly distinguishing in the spiritual sphere what was right (κρίνειν, secernere). When they discerned the face of the sky and the earth (Luk_12:56), they did this indeed ἀφ̓ ἑαυτῶν, independently, without any necessity that it should first have been told them by another. So did it beseem them in other relations also to apply the standard of a natural science of truth and duty, without always first awaiting the inspiration of their spiritual guides.—Luk_12:58-59 the Saviour makes a special case in which they could apply such a κρίσις ἀφ̓ ἐαυτῶν, while He leaves it to their own understanding and conscience themselves to make a profitable application of the here-given rules to much higher and weightier concerns.

Luk_12:58. For as.—Γάρ here introduces the statement of the special case, by the delineation of which the Saviour more particularly explains His meaning. Comp. Mat_5:25-26. He presupposes that they are with their adversary (ἀντίδικος) on the way to their legitimate ruler (ἅρχων), as appears from Luk_12:59, because a controversy had arisen about an unpaid debt; and if they now should persevere even to the end in the way of litigation, the consequences were very easy to be foreseen. The adversary with whom one cannot reconcile himself drags (κατασύρῃ) the debtor before the righteous judge (κριτής), and he, after he has ascertained the claim of debt to be well established, delivers the accused to the bailiff, who throws him into prison (πράκτωρ, exactor, executor, a legally appointed functionary of the Roman tribunals, whom Matthew has designated only in general as ὑπηρέτης). And there must one remain, until even the very last and least portion of the debt in its last item is paid. Matthew mentions τὸν ἔσχατον κοδράντην, Luke still more strongly τὸν ἔσχ. λεπτόν. The last farthing equals half a quadrant.—How much mischief, therefore, does one prevent, and how fully he acts in his own interest, when he comes to terms with such an ἀντίδικος, enters into a satisfactory compromise before the last decisive step is taken! Δὸς ἐργασίαν, a Latinism, perhaps as a Roman formula of law sufficiently familiar to Theophilus.

The Saviour, therefore, here urges His hearers in their own interest to placableness, and will have them by such a conduct show that they are in a condition ἀφ̓ ἑαυτῶν to κρίνειν τὸ δίκαιον. Considered by itself alone the admonition has, therefore, the same intention as in the parallel passage in Matthew, only with the distinction that with Luke the juridical form of the process is brought out somewhat more in detail. If one inquires now in what connection this exhortation, Luk_12:57-59, stands with the previous verses, Luk_12:54-56, we acknowledge that we have not found in one of the interpreters an answer perfectly satisfactory to us. The thread connecting the different parts of Luke 12 becomes looser in proportion as the chapter hastens towards its end. In general, we may say that the Saviour here urges His hearers no longer to allow themselves to be so much led in their judgment by others as they had hitherto done, in consequence of which they also did not recognize the signs of the times, Luk_12:54-56, but to see more with their own eyes. This His meaning He elucidates by an example, Luk_12:58-59; but neither in the letter nor the spirit of His words is a single proof contained that this example must be interpreted as a parable, and that He wishes thereby to admonish them to repent betimes, “because the Messianic decision is so near, that they may not be exposed to the judgment of Gehenna.” (Meyer.) It is wholly arbitrary to see in the ἀντίδικος an allusion to the devil (Euth. Zigab.), to the poor (Michaelis), God (Meyer), or even to the law (Olshausen), and in the φυλακή to see a representation of Gehenna. Nothing but the craving to find in Luk_12:57-59 a congruous conclusion to a well-connected discourse has here put the expositors on a false track. The Saviour, however, presents not a single proof for the opinion that He here is urging them on allegorically to repentance, and according to the representation of Mat_5:25, this saying has an entirely different sense. It is, without doubt, better, in case of necessity, to give up making out the connection which undoubtedly exists (Kuinoel, De Wette), which we, moreover, have by no means done, than to find under the simple sense of the words a deeper significance which no one amongst the first hearers, without a more particular intimation of the Saviour, could have found therein.

DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL

1. As the Saviour has first admonished His disciples to watchfulness and faithfulness, the remaining part of His discourse, so far in particular as it is addressed to the Apostles, has such a direction as to prepare them for many kinds of strife and troubles, and to take away the scandal which they might otherwise have found when His cause, instead of overcoming, should be suppressed and opposed. The cause of this strife lay at least in part in the unreceptiveness and earthly-mindedness of the people, who neglected to give heed to the signs of the times, and, like blind men, slavishly followed their spiritual guides, instead of seeing with their own eyes.

2. In this whole utterance of our Lord, as far as it stands in direct relation to His own personality and kingdom, we see a striking revelation on the one hand of His truly human, on the other hand His truly Divine, nature. With a genuinely human feeling He shrinks back from His suffering and longs for the beginning of the conflict. But with Divine knowledge He calculates at the same time the consequences of the combat, and utters forth the indispensable necessity of His baptism of suffering, if the fire were really to be kindled upon earth.

3. Already more than once have we heard the Saviour speak with heavy-heartedness and deep feeling of His approaching Passion, but here is the first revelation of this genuinely human reluctance to enter upon the approaching conflict, which afterwards returns in heightened measure, Joh_12:27; Mat_26:38. This inner sorrow and pressure of love also constitutes a part of His hidden history of suffering.

4. It is one of the strongest arguments for the entirely unique significance of the personal manifestation of our Lord, that He calls forth such a discord in the sphere of humanity. The strongest sympathy or antipathy does He arouse, but in no case apathy. So much strife and blood the Gospel could never have caused, had not men been deeply persuaded on both sides that here there was to do with the Highest and Holiest.

5. The recognition of the signs of the times is one of the most sacred obligations which our Saviour imposes on all those who wish to be capable of passing an independent judgment on the concerns of His kingdom. However, the blindness of His contemporaries still shows itself continually under all manner of forms. Men who in the sphere of the natural life display a singular measure of sound understanding, are, and that in large numbers, dulness and unreceptiveness itself, when it comes to the distinguishing of light and darkness, truth and illusion, from one another in the spiritual sphere. A sad proof of the power which the corruption of the sinful heart exercises upon the darkened understanding. See Rom_1:18; Eph_4:18.

HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL

The fire which Christ kindles on earth: 1. A fire which warms what is cold; 2. purifies what is impure; 3. consumes what is evil.—Suffering, a baptism.—For the Christian a threefold baptism necessary: 1. The water-baptism of sprinkling; 2. the spiritual baptism of renewal; 3. the fire-baptism of trial.—The intensity of anguish and love with which the Saviour foresees His approaching Passion.—The discord which Christ has brought upon earth: 1. A surprising phenomenon, if we look, a. at the King, Psalms 72, b. at the fundamental law of the kingdom of God, Joh_13:35; John 2. an explicable phenomenon if we direct our eye, a. to the severity of the Gospel, b. to the sinfulness of the human heart; 3. a momentous phenomenon, a. this strife is a proof of the high significance, b. and means for the establishment, the purification, and the victory of Christianity.—The proclamation of the conflict excited by His appearance a proof: 1. Of the infallible omniscience; 2. of the holy earnestness; 3. of the infinite love of our Lord.—Of all false peace the King of the kingdom of truth makes an end.—The fire kindled in the old earth no curse but a blessing.—Even our nearest earthly kindred we must, in case of need, deny for Christ’s sake.—The spiritual world also, like the kingdom of nature, has its signs.—The noticing of the signs of the times a duty: 1. Commended by heavenly Wisdom 2. forgotten by sinful blindness.—The Saviour will have one judge independently what is true and good.—How our own interest urges us to the duty of placableness.—There comes a time in which the law is left to run its course, and every hope of grace is cut off.

Starke:—Canstein:—When the Gospel is preached in right earnest, it is as if a conflagration breaks out, which every one runs to quench, and thereby is faith proved.—Quesnel:—Jesus had ever His suffering before His eyes; His love to the cross shames the effeminacy and delicacy of Christians, who are so unwilling to suffer.—Three against two; so was it in Abraham’s house: Abraham, Sarah, and Isaac against Hagar and Ishmael.—There is hardly a house in which the evil are not mingled with the good and the good with the evil.—Brentius:—Between the kingdom of Christ and of Satan no peace exists, not even in eternity; let no one, therefore, give himself any fruitless trouble to bring it about.—Bibl. Wirt.:—Man, discern the time of grace, which to discern is indeed not difficult.—The proving of spiritual things is a duty even of the simple.—Cramer:—It is better to compose matters of controversy by friendly dealing and brotherly reconciliation, than by the sharp law and sentence of the judge, 1Co_6:7—In hell there is no payment possible, therefore the plague of the same will have no end.

Heubner:—If all reforming and heating of people’s heads is wrong and illegal, then Christianity would be the most illegal of anything; but everything depends upon whether the revolutionizing and incendiarism comes from selfishness or from God.—Even he who is already resolved to duty feels, nevertheless, shrinking of heart till the conflict is fought out.—When tempests approach thee, strengthen thyself in Jesus.—What is great and noble requires severe conflict.—The false judging of Jesus is our own fault.—Ehrenberg:—Fire as the power: 1. Of separating; 2. of consuming; 3. of warming.—Tholuck:—“Of what fire does Christ speak here? Is it that which has just now been kindled in the Evangelical Church?” With reference to the separation of the Lutheran from the United Church (in the second volume of his Sermons, p. 412 seq.).—Schenkel:—The controversy which Christ has brought upon earth, how we have: 1. To wish for it; 2. to fear it; 3. to endure it.—T. Muller:—The destroying might of Christianity: 1. In the outer; 2. in the inner, world.

Footnotes:

[15][Luk_12:49.—Τί θέλω εἰ ἤδη ἀνήφθη; Van Oosterzee takes it thus: What do I wish? Would that it were already kindled! This gives essentially the same sense as the rendering proposed above, but, as Bleek and Meyer remark, it is a less natural turn of expression. The use of εἰ for ὅτε, when the object of the wish is less confidently expected, or known not to exist, is sufficiently well established. I will cite one example, adduced by Meyer from Sir_23:14 : θελήσεις εί μὴ ἐγεννήθης.—C. C. S.]

[16][Luk_12:50.—Norton translates this: “what a weight is on me till it be accomplished!”; which, though paraphrastic, appears to express the sense very exactly.—C. C. S.]

[17]Luk_12:53.—According to the most probable reading, that of Lachmann and Tischendorf, διαμερισθήσονται, with B., D., [Cod. Sin.,] T., U., cursives, Schid., Vulgate, Copt., Itala, and several fathers. The singular of the Recepta was spontaneously suggested by the immediately following substantives. Symmetry, however, requires the verb. [In allusion to Tischendorf’s and Lachmann’s joining διαμερισθήσονται with the previous clause.—C. C. S.]

[18][Luk_12:54.—That is, the usual cloud brought by the prevailing west or northwest wind.—C. C. S.] The original τήν appears to have been inadvertently omitted in A., B., [Cod. Sin.,] L., X., Δ., and cursives, on account of the preceding ἴδηTE. (Meyer.)

Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Luke

FIRE ON EARTH

Luk 12:49.

We have here one of the rare glimpses which our Lord gives us into His inmost heart, His thought of His mission, and His feelings about it. If familiarity had not weakened the impression, and dulled the edge, of these words, how startling they would seem to us! ‘I am come’-then, He was, before He came, and He came by His own voluntary act. A Jewish peasant says that He is going to set the world on fire-and He did it. But the triumphant certitude and consciousness of a large world-wide mission is all shadowed in the next clause. I need not trouble you with questions as to the precise translation of the words that follow. There may be differences of opinion about that, but I content myself with simply suggesting that a fair representation of the meaning would be, ‘How I wish that it was already kindled!’ There is a longing to fulfil the purpose of His coming and a sense that something has to be done first, and what that something if, our Lord goes on to say in the next verse. This desirable end can only be reached through a preliminary painful ordeal, ‘but I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened till it be accomplished.’ If I might use such an incongruous figure, the fire that is to flash and flame through the world emerges from the dark waters of that baptism. Our Lord goes on still further to dwell upon the consequence of His mission and of His sufferings. And that, too, shadows the first triumphant thought of the fire that He was to send on earth. For, the baptism being accomplished, and the fire therefore being set at liberty to flame through the world, what follows? Glad reception? Yes, and angry rejection. Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, nay! but rather division.’ The fire, the baptism, and the sword; these three may sum up our Lord’s vision of the purpose, means, and mingled result of His mission. But it is only with regard to the first of these that I wish to speak now.

I. The fire which Christ longed to cast upon the earth.

Now, opinions differ as to what is meant by this fire Some would have, it to mean the glow of love kindled in believing hearts, and others explain it by other human emotions or by the transformation effected in the world by Christ’s coming. But while these things are the results of the fire kindled on earth, that fire itself means not these effects, but the cause of them. It is brought before it kindles a flame on earth.

He does not kindle it simply in humanity, but He launches it into the midst of humanity. It is something from above that He flings down upon the earth. So it is not merely a quickened intelligence, a higher moral life, or any other of the spiritual and religious transformations which are effected in the world by the mission of Christ that is primarily to be kept in view here, but it is the Heaven-sent cause of these transformations and that flame. If we catch the celestial fire, we shall flash and blaze, but the fire which we catch is not originated on earth. In a word it is God’s Divine Spirit which Christ came to communicate to the world.

I need not remind you, I suppose, how such an interpretation of the words before us is in entire correspondence with the symbolism both of the Old and New Testament. I do not dwell upon the former at all, and with regard to the latter I need only remind you of the great words by which the Forerunner of the Lord set forth His mighty work, in contrast with the superficial cleansing which John himself had to proclaim. ‘I indeed baptize you with water, but He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire.’ I need only point to the Pentecost, and the symbol there, of which the central point was the cloven tongues, which symbolised not only the speech which follows from all deep conviction, but the descent from above of the Spirit of God, who is the Spirit of burning, on each bowed and willing head. With these analogies to guide us, I think we shall not go far wrong if we see in the words of my text our Lord’s great symbolical promise that the issue of His mission shall be to bring into the heart of the world, so to speak, and to lodge in the midst of humanity which is one great whole, a new divine influence that shall flame and burn through the world.

So, then, my text opens out into thoughts of the many-sided applications of this symbol. What hopes for the world and ourselves are suggested by that fire? Let us stick to the symbol closely, and we shall then best understand the many-sided blessings that flash and coruscate in the gift of the Spirit.

It is the gift of life. No doubt, here and there in Scripture, fire stands for a symbol of destroying power. But that is a less frequent use than that in which it stands as a symbol of life. In a very real sense life is warmth and death is cold. Is not respiration a kind of combustion? Do not physiologists tell us that? Is not the centre of the system and the father of all physical life that great blazing sun which radiates heat? And is not this promise, ‘I will send fire on the earth,’ the assurance that into the midst of our death there shall come the quick energy of a living Spirit which shall give us to possess some shadow of the immortal Being from which itself flows?

But, beyond that, there is another great promise here, of a quickening energy. I use the word ‘quickening,’ not in the sense of life-giving, but in the sense of stimulating. We talk about ‘the flame of genius,’ the ‘fervour of conviction,’ about ‘fiery zeal,’ about ‘burning earnestness,’ and the like; and, conversely, we speak of ‘cold caution,’ and ‘chill indifference,’ and so on. Fire means love, zeal, swift energy. This, then, is another side of this great promise, that into the torpor of our sluggish lives He is waiting to infuse a swift Spirit that shall make us glow and flame with earnestness, burn with love, aspire with desire, cleave to Him with the fervour of conviction, and be, in some measure, like those mighty spirits that stand before the Throne, the seraphim that burn with adoration and glow with rapture. A fire that shall destroy all our sluggishness, and change it into swift energy of glad obedience, may be kindled in our spirits by the Holy Spirit whom Christ gives.

Still farther, the promise of my text sets forth, not only life-giving and stimulating energy, but purifying power. Fire cleanses, as many an ancient ritual recognised. For instance, the thought that underlay even that savage ‘passing the children through the fire to Moloch’ was, that thus passed, humanity was cleansed from its stains. And that is true. Every man must be cleansed, if he is cleansed at all, by the touch of fire. If you take a piece of foul clay, and push it into a furnace, as it warms it whitens, and you can see the stains melting off it as the fire exercises its beneficent and purifying mastery. So the promise to us is of a great Spirit that will come, and by communicating His warmth will dissipate our foulness, and the sins that are enwrought into the substance of our natures will exhale from the heated surface, and disappear. The ore is flung into the blast furnace, and the scum rises to the surface, and may be ladled off, and the pure stream, cleansed because it is heated, flows out without scoriae or ash. All that was ‘fuel for the fire’ is burned; and what remains is more truly itself and more precious. And so, brother, you and I have, for our hope of cleansing, that we shall be passed through the fire, and dwell in the everlasting burnings of a Divine Spirit and a changeless love.

The last thought suggested by the metaphor is that it promises not only life-giving, stimulating, purifying, but also transforming and assimilating energy. For every lump of coal in your scuttles may be a parable; black and heavy, it is cast into the fire, and there it is turned into the likeness of the flame which it catches and itself begins to glow, and redden, and crackle, and break into a blaze. That is like what you and I may experience if we will. The incense rises in smoke to the heavens when it is heated: and our souls aspire and ascend, an odour of a sweet smell, acceptable to God, when the fire of that Divine Spirit has loosed them from the bonds that bind them to earth, and changed them into His own likeness, We all are ‘changed from glory to glory even as by the Spirit of the Lord.’

So I think if you take these plain teachings of this symbol you learn something of the operations of that Divine Spirit to which our Lord pointed in the great words of my text.

II. And now I have a second thought to suggest-viz., what Christ had to do before His longing could be satisfied.

He longed, but the longing wish was not able to bring that on which it was fixed. He had come to send this divine fire upon the earth; but there was something that stood in the way; and something needed to be done as a preliminary before the ultimate purpose of His coming could be accomplished. What that was, as I have already tried to point out, the subsequent verse tells us. I do not need, nor would it be congruous with my present purpose, to comment upon it at any length. We all know what He meant by the ‘baptism,’ that He had to be baptized with, and what were the dark waters into which He had to pass, and beneath which His sacred head had to be plunged. We all know that by the ‘baptism’ He meant His passion and His Cross. I do not dwell, either, upon the words of pathetic human shrinking with which His vision of the Cross is here accompanied, but I simply wish to signalise one thing, that in the estimation of Jesus Christ Himself it was not in His power to kindle this holy fire in humanity until He had died for men’s sins. That must come first; the Cross must precede Pentecost. There can be no Divine Spirit in His full and loftiest powers poured out upon humanity until the Sacrifice has been offered on the Cross for the sins of the world. We cannot read all the deep reasons in the divine nature, and in human receptivity, which make that sequence absolutely necessary, and that preliminary indispensable. But this, at least, we know, that the Divine Spirit whom Christ gives uses as His instrument and sword the completed revelation which Christ completed in His Cross, Resurrection, and Ascension, and that, until His weapon was fashioned, He could not come.

That thought is distinctly laid down in many places in Scripture, to which I need not refer in more than a word. For instance, the Apostle John tells us that, when our Lord spoke in a cognate figure about the rivers of water which should flow from them who believed on Him, He spake of that Holy Spirit who ‘was not given because that Jesus was not yet glorified.’ We remember the words in the upper chamber, ‘If I go not away, the Comforter will not come unto you, but if I depart I will send Him unto you.’ But enough for us that He recognised the necessity, and that here His baptism of suffering comes into view, not so much for what it was itself, the sacrifice for the world’s sin, as for that to which it was the necessary preliminary and introduction, the bestowment on humanity of the gift of the Divine Spirit. The old Greek legend of the Titan that stole fire from heaven tells us that he brought it to earth in a reed. Our Christ brings the heavenly fire in the fragile, hollow reed of His humanity, and the reed has to be broken in order that the fire may blaze out. ‘How I wish that it were kindled! but I have a baptism to be baptized with.’

III. Lastly, what the world has to do to receive the fire.

Take these triumphant words of our Lord about what He was to do after His Cross, and contrast with them the world as it is to-day, ay! and the Church as it is to-day. What has become of the fire? Has it died down into grey ashes, choked with the cold results of its own former flaming power? Was Jesus Christ deceiving Himself? was He cherishing an illusion as to the significance and permanence of the results of His work in the world? No! There is a difference between B.C. and A.D. which can only be accounted for by the fulfilment of the promise in my text, that He did bring fire and set the world aflame. But the condition on which that fire will burn either through communities, society, humanity, or in an individual life, is trust in Him that gives it, and cleaving to Him, and the appropriate discipline. ‘This spake He of the Holy Spirit which they that believe on Him should receive.’

And they that do not believe upon Him-what of them? The fire is of no advantage to them. Some of you do as people in Swiss villages do where there is a conflagration-you cover over your houses with incombustible felts or other materials, and deluge them with water, in the hope that no spark may light on you. There is no way by which the fire can do its work on us except our opening our hearts for the Firebringer. When He comes He brings the vital spark with Him, and He plants it on the hearth of our hearts. Trust in Him, believe far more intensely than the most of Christian people of this day do in the reality of the gift of supernatural divine life from Jesus Christ. I do believe that hosts of professing Christians have no firm grip of this truth, and, alas! very little verification of it in their lives. Your heavenly Father gives the Holy Spirit to them that ask Him. ‘Covet earnestly the best gifts’; and take care that you do not put the fire out-’quench not the Holy Spirit,’ as you will do if you ‘fulfil the lusts of the flesh.’ I remember once being down in the engine-room of an ocean-going steamer. There were the furnaces, large enough to drive an engine of five or six thousand horsepower. A few yards off there were the refrigerators, with ice hanging round the spigots that were put in to test the temperature. Ah! that is like many a Christian community, and many an individual Christian. Here is the fire; there is the frost. Brethren, let us seek to be baptized with fire, lest we should be cast into it, and be consumed by it.

END OP VOL. I.

Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

THE FIERY BAPTISM

Luk 12:49-53. “I came to send fire on the earth, and what do I wish if it is already kindled?” This is none other than the fiery baptism of Pentecost, which Jesus came to send on the earth, thus inaugurating a new era in the kingdom of grace. “I have a baptism to be baptized with, and how am I straitened until it is perfected!” Here is an allusion to the baptism of blood which awaited Him on Calvary. “Do you think that I came to send peace on the earth? I tell you, Nay, but division; for there shall be five in one house divided; two against three, and three against two shall be divided; the father against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against the daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against the mother-in-law.” You see here, from the connection, that division follows, as a logical sequence, the baptism of fire. When people get sanctified wholly, they become out-and-out for God, who leads them in different ways, pursuant to His blessed will. Consequently, division will be the result. There is only one way to have harmony, and that is for all to get the fiery baptism. The grip of Satan is so tight that he is almost certain to hold some of the members of a family or a Church. In that case there will always be division, as holiness can not harmonize with carnality.

William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

12:49 I have come to set the world on fire: Jesus’ ministry radically changed the status quo, bringing judgment on the wicked and purifying the righteous (see 3:16-17; 9:54; 17:29; Deut 4:24; Amos 5:6; Heb 12:29).

Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Luk 12:49. Πῦρ, fire) A fire which is to be wished for, the fire of spiritual ardour. [The love of God.—V. g.] See ch. Luk 3:16; Mat 10:37, compared with what precedes and follows. The Lord continues His former discourse, which calls men from earthly to heavenly things; and gradually returns to those subjects which He had been speaking of before the interruption. See Luk 12:13; Luk 12:12.—βαλεῖν) viz. from heaven, to send.—εἰς τὴν γῆν, on or into the earth) That fire is not natural to the earth [not sprung of earth]: therefore He does not say, ἐν τῇ γῇ, in earth [the distinction is lost by Engl. Vers. rendering both “on earth”], as in Luk 12:51.—τί θέλω, what will I) The Present, I will, I wish, for I would, I would wish, is appropriate to a thing much wished for and sure to be accomplished: What further need I wish, if (when) the fire be already kindled? The conflict preceded the kindling of the fire. It was kindled on Pentecost: Acts 2.

Bengel's Gnomon of the New Testament — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1860) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Luk_12:49 f. The sequence of thought is found in this, that the whole of that earnest sense of responsibility, which characterizes the faithfulness just demanded, must be only infinitely intensified by the heavy trials of the near future, which the Lord brings vividly before His view.

πῦρ] Fire, is a figurative designation, not of the Holy Spirit, as most of the Fathers and others, including Bengel, will have it, nor of the word of God with its purifying power (Bleek); but, as is manifest from Luk_12:51 ff., of the vehement spiritual excitement, forcing its way through all earthly relations, and loosing their closest ties, which Christ was destined to kindle. The lighting up of this fire, which by means of His teaching and work He had already prepared, was to be effected by His death (see ἀπὸ τοῦ νῦν, Luk_12:52), which became the subject of offence, as, on the other hand, of His divine courage of faith and life (comp. Luk_2:35). The expression itself βαλεῖν ἐπὶ τ. γῆν proceeded from the consciousness of His heavenly origin. Comp. Mat_10:34.

καὶ τί θέλω κ.τ.λ.] It is the usual and the correct view, held also by Kuinoel, Olshausen, de Wette, Bleek, which interprets: and how earnestly I wish, if (that) it were already kindled! ἐπισπεύδει γὰρ τὴν ἄναψιν τούτου τοῦ πυρός, Theophylact. Regarding the τί, see on Mat_7:14. Moreover, the usus loquendi of εἰ with θέλω (instead of the more confident ὅτι, as with θαυμάζω, etc.; see on Mar_15:44) is not to be disputed. See Sir_23:14 : θελήσεις εἰ μὴ ἐγεννήθης; Herod. ix. 14, also vi. 52: βουλομένην δὲ εἴ κως ἀμφότεροι γενοίατο βασιλέες. Accordingly, there is no sufficient reason for the view of Grotius, which disjoins the utterance into question and answer: And what do I wish? If it should be already kindled! This is less simple, and fails to bring out the correspondence between the expression in question and the parallel exclamation in Luk_12:50. The particle εἰ is used not merely with the optative (see Pflugk, ad Eur. Hec. 836), but also with the indicative in the imperfect and aorist in the sense of utinam, dummodo; in the latter case the non-accomplishment is known to the person who utters the wish. Comp. Luk_19:42; Jos_7:7; Grotius in loc.; Klotz, ad Devar. p. 516; in the Greek prose writers it is usual to find εἴθε or εἰ γάρ in such a sense. Bornemann takes τί for cur, and εἰ as ἐπεί: et cur ignem volo in terram conjicere, cum jam accensus sit? remota quaestione: non opus est accendam. But without considering the extremely insipid thought which is thus expressed, Luk_12:52 in this way requires that the kindling of the fire should be regarded as still future. This, moreover, is in opposition to Ewald: and what will I (can I be surprised), if it be already kindled?

Jesus entertains the wish that the fire were already kindled, because between the present time and this kindling lay His approaching grievous passion, which must still first be undergone; see Luk_12:50.

Meyer — Critical and Exegetical Commentary on the New Testament — English translation by Peter Christie, edited by Frederick Crombie (T&T Clark, 1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Luk 12:49-53 . Not peace but division (Mat 10:34-36 ). This section is introduced by no connecting particle. Yet there is a certain affinity of thought. Strict fidelity demanded under penalties, but fidelity not easy; times of fierce trial and conflict awaiting you. I forewarn you, that ye may be forearmed.

Luk 12:49 . πῦρ : the fire of a new faith, or religion, a burning enthusiasm in believers, creating fierce antagonism in unbelievers; deplorable but inevitable. βαλεῖν , used by Mt. in reference to peace and war, where Lk. has δοῦναι . τί θέλω εἰ , etc., how much I wish it were already kindled; τί = ὡς and εἰ after θέλω to express the object of the wish, as in Sir 23:14 ( θελήσεις εἰ μὴ ἐγεννήθης , you will wish you had not been born).

The Expositor's Greek Testament, edited by W. Robertson Nicoll (1897–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

After having thus followed the natural course of the conversation, Jesus returns to the thought from which it had started, the vanity of earthly goods. He shows how this truth directly applies to the present situation (Luk 12:49-53).

Vers. 49 and 50. The Character of the immediate Future.—“I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I if it be already kindled? Luk 12:50. But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!”—“Is it a time,” said Elisha to the unfaithful Gehazi, “to receive lands and cattle when the hand of God is upon Israel,” that is to say, when Shalmaneser is at the gates of Samaria? Is it a time for the believer to give himself up to the peaceable enjoyment of earthly goods when the great struggle is beginning? The Church is about to be born; Israel is about to perish, and the Holy Land to be given over to the Gentiles. Such is the connection, too moving to be expressed by a logical particle, which is implied by the remarkable asyndeton between Luk 12:48-49. Πῦρ βάλλειν, strictly, to throw a firebrand. Jesus feels that His presence is for the earth the brand which is to set everything on fire. “Every fruitful thing,” says M. Renan, “is rich in wars.” Jesus understood the fruitfulness of His work. The expression I am come, which Jesus frequently uses in the Syn., finds its only natural explanation in His lips in the consciousness which He had of His pre-existence. The fire in question here is not the fire of the Holy Spirit, as some of the Fathers thought. The sequel proves that it is the spiritual excitement produced in opposite directions by the coming of Jesus, whence will result the διαμερισμός, the division, described from Luk 12:51 onwards. Two humanities will henceforth be in conflict within the bosom of every nation, under every roof: this thought profoundly moves the heart of the Prince of peace. Hence the broken style of the following words. The εἰ may be taken in the sense of that, which it often has, and τί in the sense of how: “How I wish that this fire were already burning!” (Olshausen, De Wette, Bleek.) But this meaning of the two words εἰ and τί, and especially of the second, is not very natural. Accordingly Grotius, Meyer, etc., have been led to admit two propositions,—the one forming a question, the other the answer: “And what will I? Oh that it only were already kindled!” The sense is radically the same. But the second proposition would come too abruptly as an answer to the preceding. Ewald recurs to the idea of a single sentence, only he seeks to give to θέλω a meaning which better justifies the use of εἰ: “And of what have I to complain if it be already kindled?” This sense does not differ much from that which appears to us the most natural: “What have I more to seek, since it is already kindled?” This saying expresses a mournful satisfaction with the fact that this inevitable rending of humanity is already beginning, as proved by the event recorded Luk 12:1-12. Jesus submits to bring in war where He wished to establish peace. But it must be; it is His mission: “I am come to...”

Meantime this fire, which is already kindled, is far yet from bursting into a flame; in order to that there is a condition to be fulfilled, the thought of which weighs heavily on the heart of Jesus: there needs the fact which, by manifesting the deadly antagonism between the world and God, shall produce the division of which Jesus speaks between man and man; there needs the cross. Without the cross, the conflagration lighted on the earth by the presence of Jesus would very soon be extinguished, and the world would speedily fall back to its undisturbed level; hence Luk 12:50. The δέ is adversative: “But though the fire is already kindled, it needs, in order that it may blaze forth, that...” The baptism in question here is the same as that of which Jesus speaks, Mat 20:22 (at least if the expressions analogous to these are authentic in that passage). Jesus certainly makes an allusion to His baptism at the hands of His forerunner, which included a consecration to death. The figure is as follows: Jesus sees Himself about to be plunged into a bath of flame, from which He shall come forth the torch which shall set the whole world on fire.

The Lord expresses with perfect candour the impression of terror which is produced in Him by the necessity of going through this furnace of suffering. Συνέχεσθαι, to be closely pressed (straitened), sometimes by the power of love (2Co 5:14); elsewhere, by that of conflicting desires (Php 1:23); here, doubtless, by mournful impatience to have done with a painful task. He is under pressure to enter into this suffering, because He is in haste to get out of it. “A prelude of Gethsemane,” says Gess in an admirable passage on this discourse. Here, indeed, we have the first crisis of that agony of which we catch a second indication, Joh 12:27: “Now is my soul troubled, and what shall I say?” and which is breathed forth in all its intensity in Gethsemane. Luke alone has preserved to us the memorial of this first revelation of the inmost feelings of Jesus.

After this saying, which is a sort of parenthesis drawn forth by the impression produced on Him by the thought in the preceding verse, He resumes at Luk 12:51 the development of His declaration, Luk 12:49.

Vers. 51-53. The Picture of the Future just declared.—“Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, nay; but division. 52. For from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two, and two against three. 53. The father shall be divided against the son, and the son against the father; the mother against the daughter, and the daughter against the mother; the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law, and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.”—Δοκεῖτε, suppose ye, is no doubt aimed at the illusion with which the disciples flattered themselves, yet hoping for the establishment of the Messianic kingdom without struggles or sufferings (Luk 19:11). Jesus does not deny that peace should be the final result of His work; but certainly He denies that it will be its immediate effect.

The simplest solution of the phrase ἀλλ᾿ ἤ is to take it as an abbreviation of οὐχὶ ἄλλο ἤ: “Nothing else than...”

Vers. 52 and 53 describe the fire lighted by Jesus. By the preaching of the disciples, the conflagration spreads; with their arrival, it invades every family one after another. But “the fifth commandment itself must give way to a look directed to Him....Undoubtedly it is God who has formed the natural bonds between men; but Jesus introduces a new principle, holier than the bond of nature, to unite men to one another” (Gess, p. 22).

Even Holtzmann observes that the five persons indicated, Luk 12:52, are expressly enumerated, Luk 12:53: father, son, mother, daughter, daughter-in-law. Matthew (Mat 10:35) has not preserved this delicate touch; are we to think that Luke invented this nice precision, or that Matthew, finding it in the common document, has obliterated it? Two suppositions equally improbable.—᾿Επί indicates hostility, and with more energy in the last two members, where this prep. is construed with the acc.; probably because between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law religious hostility is strengthened by previous natural animosity.

Frédéric Louis Godet — Commentaries on Luke, John, Romans, and 1 Corinthians — English translation (T&T Clark, Edinburgh, 1870s–1890s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

The Gospel is the only cause of peace between the goodly, and so is it the occasion of great trouble among the wicked.

Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain. Text via Bolls.life.

to send--cast.

fire--"the higher spiritual element of life which Jesus came to introduce into this earth (compare Mat 3:11), with reference to its mighty effects in quickening all that is akin to it and destroying all that is opposed. To cause this element of life to take up its abode on earth, and wholly to pervade human hearts with its warmth, was the lofty destiny of the Redeemer" [OLSHAUSEN: so CALVIN, STIER, ALFORD, &c.].

what will I, &c.--an obscure expression, uttered under deep and half-smothered emotion. In its general import all are agreed; but the nearest to the precise meaning seems to be, "And what should I have to desire if it were once already kindled?" [BENGEL and BLOOMFIELD].

Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

Verse 49. I am come to send fire] See this subject largely explained on Mt 10:34, &c. From the connection in which these words stand, both in this place and in Matthew, it appears as if our Lord intended by the word fire, not only the consuming influence of the Roman sword, but also the influence of his own Spirit in the destruction of sin. In both these senses this fire was already kindled: as yet, however, it appeared but as a spark, but was soon to break out into an all-consuming flame.

Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

(49) I am come to send fire on the earth.—There is a strange unique abruptness in the utterance. We are compelled to assume a pause, a moment’s thought, as in one whose gaze looks out into the future, and who at once feels its terrors and yet accepts them. The fire which He came to send is the fire of judgment which shall burn up the chaff (see Note on Mat_3:12), the baptism of fire which shall purify and cleanse as well as destroy. The Son of Man knew that this, with all its terrors, was what He came to work. If the fire was already kindled, if judgment was already passed upon the unfaithful stewards and the servants who knew their Lord’s will and did it not, why should He wish to check it? What other wish or will was right for Him than that it should complete what it had begun, even though it brought not peace, but a sword—not union, but division?

A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

49. I am come to send fire on the earth] St John had preached “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire” and that “He should burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” The metaphor is probably to be taken in all its meanings; fire as a spiritual baptism; the refining fire to purge gold from dross, and bum up the chaff of all evil in every imperfect character; and the fire of retributive justice. There is a remarkable ‘unwritten saying’ of Christ, “He who is near me is near the fire,” which is preserved in Ignatius, Origen, and Didymus.

what will ], if it be already kindled?] Rather, how I would that it had been already kindled! (as in Sir_23:14). It may also be punctuated ‘what will I? O that it were already kindled!’ For the fire is salutary as well as retributive; it warms and purifies as well as consumes.

The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

But I have a baptism to be baptized with,.... Not water baptism, for he had been baptized with that already; nor the baptism of the Spirit, which he had also received without measure; though the Ethiopic version reads it actively, "with which I shall baptize", referring doubtless to that; but the baptism of his sufferings is meant, which are compared to a baptism, because of the largeness and abundance of them; he was as it were immersed, or plunged into them; and which almost all interpreters observe on the text, and by which they confess the true import and primary signification of the word used; as in baptism, performed by immersion, the person is plunged into water, is covered with it, and continues awhile under it, and then is raised out of it, and which being once done, is done no more; so the sufferings of Christ were so many and large, that he was as it were covered with them, and he continued under them for a time, and under the power of death and the grave, when being raised from thence, he dies no more, death hath no more dominion over him. This baptism he "had", there was a necessity of his being baptized with it, on his Father's account; it was his will, his decree, and the command he enjoined him as Mediator; it was the portion he allotted him, and the cup he gave unto him: and on his own part, he obliged himself unto it, in the counsel and covenant of peace; for this purpose he came into this world, and had substituted himself in the room and stead of his people; and it was necessary on their part, for their sins could not be atoned for without sufferings, nor without the sufferings of Christ; moreover, the promises and prophecies of the Old Testament concerning them, made them necessary:

and how am I straitened until it be accomplished: these words express both the trouble and distress Christ was in, at the apprehension of his sufferings as man; which were like to the distress of persons, closely besieged by an enemy; or rather of a woman, whose time of travail draws nigh, when she dreads it, and yet longs to have it over: and likewise they signify, his restless desire to have them accomplished; not that he desired that Judas should betray him, or the Jews crucify him, as these were sins of theirs; nor merely his sufferings as such; but that thereby the justice of God might be satisfied, the law might be fulfilled, and the salvation of his people be obtained: and this eager desire of his, he had shown in various instances, and did show afterwards; as in his ready compliance with his Father's proposal in eternity; in his frequent appearances in human form before his incarnation; in sending one message after another, to give notice of his coming; in his willingness to be about his Father's business, as soon as possible; in rebuking Peter, when he would have dissuaded him from all thoughts of suffering: in going to Jerusalem on his own accord, in order to suffer there; in his earnest wish to eat the last passover with his disciples; in the joy that possessed him, when Judas was gone out, in order to betray him; in stopping in the midst of his sermon, lest he should overrun, or outslip the time of meeting him in the garden, Joh 14:30 in his going thither, and willingly surrendering himself up into the hands of his enemies; and in cheerfully laying down his life: all which arose from the entire love he had for the persons he died for; and because it was his Father's will, and his glory was concerned herein, and his own glory also was advanced thereby; moreover, his death was the life of others, and the work required haste.

John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.

49 I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?

Ver. 49. To send fire on the earth] That is, that persecution that is evangelii genius, guardian of the gospel, as Calvin wrote to the French king, and dogs at the heels the preaching of the truth.

And what will I if it be already kindled?] As if he should say, Let it kindle as soon as it will, I am contented; I know much good will come of it.

John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I am, come ... - The result of my coming will be that there will be divisions and contentions. He does not mean that he came “for” that purpose, or that he “sought” and “desired” it; but that such was the state of the human heart, and such the opposition of people to the truth, that that would be the “effect” of his coming. See the notes at Mat 10:34.

Fire - Fire, here, is the emblem of discord and contention, and consequently of calamities. Thus it is used in Psa 66:12; Isa 43:2.

And what will I ... - This passage might be better expressed in this manner: “And what would I, but that it were kindled. Since it is “necessary” for the advancement of religion that such divisions should take place; since the gospel cannot be established without conflicts, and strifes, and hatreds, I am even desirous that they should come. Since the greatest blessing which mankind can receive must be attended with such unhappy divisions, I am willing, nay, desirous that they should come.” He did not wish evil in itself; but, as it was the occasion of good, he was desirous, if it “must” take place, that it should take place soon. From this we learn:

That the promotion of religion may be expected to produce many contests and bitter feelings. That the heart of man must be exceedingly wicked, or it would not oppose a work like the Christian religion. That though God cannot look on evil with approbation, yet, for the sake of the benefit which may grow out of it, he is willing to permit it, and suffer it to come into the world.

Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

I am come to send fire on the earth. By this fire, some understand the light of the gospel, and the fire of charity and divine love. Others, the fire of trials and persecutions. (Witham) --- What is the fire, which Christ comes to send upon the earth? Some understand it of the Holy Ghost, of the doctrine of the gospel, and the preaching of the apostles, which has filled the world with fervour and light, and which was signified by the flames of fire which appeared at the descent of the Holy Ghost upon the apostles. My words, says the Lord, in Jeremias, (Chap. xxiii. 29.) are as a fire, and as a hammer, that breaketh the rock in pieces. Others understand it of the fire of charity, which Christ came to enkindle upon the earth, and which the apostles carried throughout the whole world. But the most simple and literal opinion seems to be, the fire of persecution and war. Fire is often used in Scripture for war: and our Saviour declares in St. Matthew that he is come to bring the sword, and not peace; that is, the doctrine of the gospel shall cause divisions, and bring persecutions, and almost an infinity of other evils, upon those who shall embrace and maintain it. But it is by these means that heaven must be acquired, it is thus that Jesus Christ destroys the reign of Satan, and overturns idolatry, superstition, and error, in the world. So great a change could not be made without noise, tumult, fire, and war. (Calmet)

George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).

Some of the ancients here by fire understood the Holy Ghost, or the preaching of the gospel, with those flames of love and holy affections which that causeth in the hearts of good people; but this interpretation cannot but be looked upon as strained to those who compare this verse with Luk 12:51-53, and the parallel text in Mat 10:34-36. By

fire here therefore is to be understood the dissension or division mentioned Luk 12:51, with all those persecutions, wars, &c. which are the effects of it. A prediction or threatening of persecutions or wars, or any kind of troubled state of things, is often expressed in holy writ under the notion of fire, and water, or a flood, for though fire and water are opposite in their qualities, yet they both agree in the common effect of consumption, wasting, and desolation. Christ saith he came to send it, because he foresaw this would be a certain consequent, though not a proper and natural effect, of the preaching of the gospel. Christ may be said to come to send a fire, in the same sense as he that is employed in the removal of a filthy dunghill may be said to come to send a stench; his design is to carry the muck away, and in due time he will have done it, but in the mean time it sends out a much greater stench than before it was stirred.

And what will I, if it be already kindled? Not to take notice of what critical authors say about the signification of the particles or the phrase here used, I take the true sense to be, I desire nothing more than that it were already kindled; nor was this any more inconsistent with the goodness and holiness of Christ, than for a goldsmith to wish the fire was kindled that should separate the dross from the pure metal, or than for Christ to desire that his floor were thoroughly purged. Christ doth not desire the fire for the fire’s sake, but for the make of that effect it would have, in separating in his church the good from the bad; it was a thing he saw would be through the opposition the world would give to the preaching of the gospel, before his gospel would obtain in the world; I would, saith he, that what they do they would do quickly, that they would spit their venom, that my Father might make their wrath to praise him. Whereas some interpret it indicatively, as if the fire were already begun, ει ηδη ανηαφη can hardly be no interpreted.

Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.

49. I am come—At this my first advent.

To send fire—As (Mat_10:34) he had come to send a sword. See our note on that and its following passage.

What will I—What can I will or purpose but to accept it?

If it be already kindled—If the fierce wrath of my enemies, which must result in my death, be already burning. If it be so, I must endure the dread agony.

Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I am come to send fire on the earth. It is still the same train of thought that the Master pursues a train which had been only slightly diverted by Peter"s question. The text, so to speak, of the whole discourse was "the strange attraction which riches possess for men, and the palsying effect which this attraction, when yielded to, exercises over the whole life." The Master"s argument was as follows: "Beware of covetousness; let your attachment to earthly possessions sit very lightly on you all; and as for you, my disciples, do you have nothing to do with these perishable goods." And here, with an abrupt solemnity, probably the voice changing here, and ringing with an awful emotion, he enforces his charge to the disciples with the words, "I am come to send fire on the earth." "My stern, sad work is to inaugurate a mighty struggle, to cast a firebrand on the earth. Lo, my presence will stir up men you will see this in a way none now dream of; a vast convulsion will rend this people asunder. In the coming days of war and tumult, what have you, my disciples, who will be in the forefront of this movement, what have you to do with earthly goods? Toss them away from you as useless baggage. The pioneers of the army of the future, surely they must be unencumbered in the war, which is about to break out; for remember, "I am come to send fire on the earth. " And what will I, if it be already kindled? better rendered, how I would that it had been already kindled! That is to say, "How I wish that this fire were already burning!" (so Olshausen, De Wette, Bleek, and Farrar). Through all the woe, however, the Redeemer could see, shining as it were through a dark cloud, the unspeakable glory and blessedness of his work. But this fire could not be kindled into a flame until something had happened. The cross must be endured by him; till then his work was not finished; and in his pure human nature it is with stammering tongue and trembling pen we speak or write here he felt, we believe, the bitter stinging pain of dread expectation of what was coming. With this onlook he was weighed down, we know, at times; witness especially the Gethsemane agony. He goes on to say

Vers. 49, 50. Spiritual strenuousness.

Our Lord"s life deepened and enlarged as it proceeded, like a great and fertilizing river. And as conflict became more frequent and severe, and as the last scenes drew on, his own feeling was quickened, his spirit was aflame with a more ardent and intense emotion. We look at the subject of spiritual strenuousness

I IN VIEW OF OUR LORD"S PERSONAL EXPERIENCE. In these two verses we find him passing through some moments of very intense feeling; he was powerfully affected by two considerations.

1. A compassionate desire on behalf of the world. He came to the world to kindle a great fire which should be a light to illumine, a heat to cleanse, a flame to consume. Such would be the Divine truth of which he came to be the Author, especially as it was made operative by the Divine Spirit whose coming should be so intimately associated with and should immediately follow his life work. (see Luk_3:16 Act_2:3) As he looked upon the gross and sad darkness which that light was so much needed to dissipate, upon the errors that heat was so much required to purify, upon the corruption that flame was so essential to extinguish, his holy and loving spirit yearned with a profound and vehement desire for the hour to come when these heavenly forces should be prepared and be freed to do their sacred and blessed work.

2. A human lounging to pass through the trial that awaited him. "But there was not only an interval of time to elapse, there was a period of solemn struggle to be gone through, before that fire would be kindled. There was a baptism of sorrow and of conflict for himself to undergo, and how was he "straitened" in spirit until that was accomplished! Here was the feeling of a son of man, but it was the feeling of the noblest of the children of men. He did not desire that it should be postponed; he longed for it to come that it might be passed through, that the battle might be fought, that the anguish might be borne. Truly this is none other than a holy human spirit with whom we have to do; one like unto ourselves, in the depth of whose nature were these very hopes and fears, these same longings and yearnings which, in the face of a dread future, stir our own souls with strongest agitations. How solemn, how great, how fearful, must that future have been which so profoundly and powerfully affected his calm and reverent spirit!

II IN VIEW OF OUR OWN SPIRITUAL STRUGGLES. We cannot do anything of very great account unless we know something of that spiritual strenuousness of which our Lord knew so much.

1. We should show this in our concern for the condition of the world. How much are we affected by the savagery, by the barbarism, by the idolatry, by the vice, by the godlessness, by the selfishness, which prevail on the right hand and on the left? How eagerly and earnestly do we desire that the enlightenment and the purification of Christian truth should be carried into the midst of it? Does our desire rise to a holy, Christ-like ardor? Does it manifest itself in becoming generosity, in appropriate service and sacrifice?

2. We may show this in our anxiety to pass through the trial-hour that awaits us. Whether it be the hour of approaching service, or sorrow, or persecution, or death, we may, like our Master, be straitened until it be come and gone. Let us see that, like him, we

(1) await it in calm trustfulness of spirit; and

(2) prepare for it by faithful witness and close communion with God in the hours that lead up to it. C.

The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

I am come to send fire - To spread the fire of heavenly love over all the earth.

John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.

The dissension caused by the Gospel:

v. 49. I am come to send fire on the earth; and what will I, if it be already kindled?

v. 50. But I have a baptism to be baptized with; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished!

v. 51. Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division;

v. 52. for from henceforth there shall be five in one house divided, three against two and two against three.

v. 53. The father shall be divided against the son and the son against the father, the mother against the daughter and the daughter against the mother, the mother-in-law against her daughter-in-law and the daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law.

See Mat 10:34-36. The Gospel is to some people, whose minds the god of this world has blinded, a savor of death unto death, 2Co 2:16. It brings a fire of controversy which results in fierce trials and conflicts for the believers. The sooner this fire therefore is kindled, the better it will be for the faithful. And it is not as if Jesus would go out unscathed while His followers must bear the many crosses that are laid upon them because of their discipleship. The baptism of His last great Passion looms up before Him with such a threatening aspect that He is pressed on every side, both with fervent desire and with fear on account of the last ordeal. And so the disciples must not live in the foolish hope and idea that they will escape the same or a similar ordeal. Contention, dissension, strife, enmity will follow the preaching of the cross at all times, causing divisions even in the midst of the most closely knit households. Friendships of long years’ standing, the most intimate ties of blood-relationship have been disrupted because of opposition to the Gospel. This the believers of all times should know, lest. , they be offended. They dare not expect their lot to be more pleasant than that of their Lord.

Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Our Saviour in these verses declares what will be the accidental event and effect, but not the natural tendency, of his religion; so that we must distinguish between the intentional aim of Christ’s coming, and the accidental event of it. Christ’s intentional aim, was to plant, propagate, and promote, peace in the world; but through the lusts and corruptions of men’s natures, the issue and event of his coming is war and division; not that these are the genuine and natural fruits of the gospel, but occasional and accidental only.

Hence learn, that the preaching of the gospel, and setting up the kingdom of Christ, though it be not the genuine and natural cause, yet it is the accidental occasion of all that war and tumult, of all that dissension and division, of all that distraction and confusion which the world abounds with: I am come to send fire on the earth. He is said to send the fire of dissension, because he foresaw this would be the certain consequence, though not the proper and natural effect, of the preaching of the gospel. There was another fire of Christ’s sending, the Holy Spirit; this was a fire to warm, not to burn, or if so, not men’s persons, but corruptions; but that seems not to be intended in this place.

Observe farther, the metaphor by which Christ sets forth his own sufferings; he styles them a baptism: I have a baptism to be baptized with. There is a threefold baptism spoken of: a baptism with water, a baptism of the Spirit; both these Christ had been baptized with: but the third was the baptism of blood: he was soon to be drenched and washed in his own blood, in the garden, and on the cross; and he was straitened or pained with desire, like a woman in travail, until his sufferings were accomplished.

William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

49. I am come to cast fire on earth. Conflict and persecution. This was the effect of preaching the gospel. It aroused opposition. See notes on Matt. 10:34–37. If it is already kindled. The conflict had already begun. The enemies were seeking his death.

B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.

Connecting Statement:

Jesus continues to teach his disciples.

I came to cast fire upon the earth

"I came to throw fire on the earth" or "I came to set the earth on fire." Possible meanings are 1) Jesus has come to judge people or 2) Jesus has come to purify believers or 3) Jesus has come to cause division among people. (See: Metaphor)

how I wish that it were already kindled

This exclamation emphasizes how much he wants this to happen. AT: "I wish very much that it was already lit" or "how I wish that it had already begun" (See: Exclamations)

I have a baptism to be baptized with

Here "baptism" refers to what Jesus must suffer. Just as water covers a person during baptism, suffering will overwhelm Jesus. AT: "I must go through a baptism of terrible suffering" or "I must be overwhelmed by suffering as a person being baptized is covered by water" (See: Metaphor and Active or Passive)

But

The word "but" is used to show that he cannot cast the fire on the earth until after he goes through his baptism.

how I am distressed until it is completed

This exclamation emphasizes how distressed he was. AT: "I am terribly distressed and will be so until I complete this baptism of suffering" (See: Exclamations)

translationWords

fire

baptize

unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.

49. πῦρ ἦλθον βαλεῖν ἐπὶ τὴν γῆν. ‘I came to cast fire on the earth.’ The “send fire” of the A.V[269] is from the Vulg[270] mittere. St John had preached, “He shall baptize you with the Holy Ghost and with fire,” and that “He should burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.” The metaphor is probably to be taken in all its meanings; fire as a spiritual baptism; the refining fire to purge gold from dross, and burn up the chaff of all evil in every imperfect character; and the fire of retributive justice. There is a remarkable ‘unwritten saying’ of Christ, “He who is near me is near the fire,” which is preserved in Ignatius, Origen, and Didymus.

[269] A.V. Authorised Version.

[270] Vulg. Vulgate.

τί θέλω εἰ ἤδη ἀνήφθη. ‘How I would that it had been already kindled!’ (as in Sir 23:14). It may also be punctuated, ‘What will I? O that it were already kindled!’ For the fire is salutary as well as retributive; it warms and purifies as well as consumes. In this idiom—(εἰ with the indicative to express a wish known by the speaker to be impossible)—εἴθε and εἰ γὰρ are more common in classical Greek. Winer, p. 562.

Cambridge Greek Testament for Schools and Colleges (Cambridge University Press, 1896; 21 vols, various authors incl. Carr, Maclear, Plummer, Farrar, Lumby, Moule, M. R. James, Simcox) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

49-53.] The connexion appears to be this:—the immense and awful difference between the faithful and unfaithful servants brings our Lord to the ground of that difference, and its necessary development in the progress of His kingdom on earth.

49. πῦρ] It is extraordinary that the official announcement of the Baptist (ch. 3:16)—αὐτὸς ὑμᾶς βαπτίσει ἐν πν. ἁγ. καὶ πυρί—connected with the mention of a baptism here,—with the promise Act 1:5, and the appearance Act 2:3, so strikingly expressed as διαμεριζόμεναι γλῶσσαι ὡσεὶ πυρός,—have not kept the Commentators in general (Bleek is an exception) from falling into the blunder of imagining here that the fire is synonymous with, and means no more than, the discord and division which follow. The fire is, the gift of the Holy Spirit,—the great crowning result of the sufferings and triumph of the Lord Jesus. To follow this out in all its references belongs to another place: see notes on Mar 9:49, and Act 2:3. This fire, in its purifying and separating effects on the mass of mankind, causes the διαμερισμός afterwards spoken of.

The construction of τί θέλ. εἰ ἤδ. ἀν. has been ever a matter of dispute, while the meaning is on all hands nearly agreed. The three prevalent explanations of it are: (1) which is Origen’s (), and is adopted by Grot., and defended by Meyer [formerly] and Stier,—making εἰ = εἴθε, and rendering, and what will I? would that it were already kindled! Certainly thus there is nothing forced in the construction; we have εἰ for ‘utinam’ joined with aorist in Jos 7:7;—but the abrupt short ejaculation seems unlike the usual character of our Lord’s discourses. It is true the structure of Joh 12:27 affords an instance of a similar question, καὶ τί εἴπω; … and under similar circumstances, of His soul being troubled. (2) which Theophyl., Kuinoel, Olsh., De Wette, Bleek, &c. [so Meyer, edn. 5, see Moulton’s Winer, p. 562, note 3] adopt, taking τί = ὡς, as some do, adopting that reading, in Mat 7:14 (but see note there), and εἰ = ὅτι, and rendering, How I wish that it were already kindled! But here we have serious difficulties of an idiomatic kind:—τί is apparently never thus used—and εἰ only after words of wondering, being grieved, &c.: see Mar 15:44.

(3) That of , Beza, &c., and the E. V., ‘What will I, if it be already kindled?’ i.e. τί πλεῖον θέλω ἐὰν ἀνήφθη; τί πλεῖον ἀναμένω ἐν τῷ κόσμῳ; Euth. This also presents no constructional, but a very great contextual difficulty; for by ver. 50 it evidently was not yet kindled; and even if this were overcome, the expression, evidently a deep one of personal anxiety (and be it remembered Who said it), would be vapid and unmeaning in the extreme.

All things then being considered, I prefer the first explanation.

Henry Alford, The Greek Testament (1849–1861) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

49-58. The discourse seems to return to its starting-point (vv. 1-2). Christ’s teaching inevitably provokes opposition and a vision between those who accept it and those who reject it. There is no parallel in Mt. or Mk. to vv. 49, 50.

49. Πῦρ. First for emphasis. “It is fire that I came to cast upon the earth.” The context seems to show that the fire of division and strife is meant: or, comparing 3:16, we may understand the fire of holiness, which excites hostility and controversy. Ignis ille non est nativus terræ (Beng.). Εἰς κρίμα ἐγὼ εἰς τὸν κόσμον τοῦτον ἦλθον (Joh 9:39: comp. 3:19).

καὶ τί ωέλω εἰ ἤδη ἀνήφθη; A passage of well-known difficulty, the translation of which remains doubtful. With this punctuation we may follow AV. and RV., “What will I, if it be (is) already kindled?” the meaning of which is not clear: comp. LXX of Jos 7:7. Or, with De Wette, Weiss, and many others, “How I wish that it were already kindled!” which does rather serious violence to the Greek. Or, with Origen, Meyer, etc., we may punctuate, καὶ τί θέλω; εἰ ἤδη ἀνήφθη. “And what will I? Would that it were already kindled!” (Win. 53:8. c, p. 562); which is rather abrupt and harsh: but comp. 19:42 and Joh 12:27. Perhaps the first is best, meaning, “What more have I to desire, if it be already kindled.” The next verse does not imply that it is not kindled; and the history of Christ’s ministry shows that it was not kindled, although not to the full extent. Comp. Psa 78:21. Christ came to set the world on fire, and the conflagration had already begun. Mal 3:2. Comp. the constr. in Ecclus. 23:14.

International Critical Commentary — older volumes (1896–1929), various authors — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.

Fire. A spiritual impulse which shall result in the divisions described in the following verses.

Marvin R. Vincent, Word Studies in the New Testament (1887–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.