Matthew 3:11 I indeed baptize you with water unto repentance, but He who is coming after me is mightier than I, whose sandals I am not worthy to carry. He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire.

In this case, John is speaking of Jesus.  Jesus is the One who baptizes with the Holy Spirit and with fire.

To be baptized, we know, means being fully immersed.  The word baptize was used at that time to describe the pickling process.  The idea behind baptism in pickling is that a small cucumber would be fully immersed in a container until it was saturated from within to without. No part of the pickle would be left out of the pickling solution. The process would alter the entire pickle.

So if we think about it, the idea of Holy Spirit baptism is about being overwhelmed by Holy Spirit transformation and endowing power.

Jesus told the disciples after His resurrection and just before His ascension to wait for the promise of the Father, which is the Holy Spirit, to come before going out to be His witnesses.  They thought they were prepared to be His witnesses after seeing and being with Jesus after His resurrection.  But Jesus knew they needed to go in the power and anointing of the Holy Spirit.  He told them to wait until they were baptized with the Holy Spirit.  They were baptized with the Holy Spirit, and cloven (Divided) tongues of fire were seen over their heads, and they spoke in another language praising God and then went on to turn the world upside down.

So that puts some perspective on being baptized with the Holy Spirit, but what is the fire about?

Obviously, it cannot mean fire in the most literal sense, even though cloven tongues of fire were witnessed over the 120 in that upper room that day, as that is the only record of that particular occurrence of tongues of fire.  But when we think of fire in the spiritual sense, we are brought to altars where sacrifices occur.

The fire was used to offer up sacrifices.  Sacrifices represented surrender and were required for purification.  Once the sacrifice was offered, the sin requiring the sacrifice and fire was purged.  Thus the ones represented by the sacrifice were considered clean and free.

For the fire to occur, there had to be surrender.  Jesus’ surrender first initiated the fire He spoke of.  Think about the sacrifices of lambs before Jesus for a moment.  What lamb ever walked up to a priest with a knife, jumped on the sacrificial altar, and stretched out its neck to be slaughtered?

Jesus knew He would be sacrificed and killed in a horrible way.  Yet He offered Himself freely.  Jesus was a knowledgeable, willing sacrifice.  Jesus surrendered Himself completely to the will of the Father.  The cross was the altar, and fire for Jesus was the culmination of the Father’s will in His death and resurrection.  It would be His greatest act of surrender to the will of the Father.

For us, the altar and fire involve full surrender to the Holy Spirit so that we might walk in the will of God according to the Spirit.  The desire of Jesus is not only that we are saturated in the Holy Spirit and endued with His power, but that we also are engulfed by the fire of surrender that brings us into the complete will of God for our lives.

Knowing and doing the will of God is not something you can do of your own accord and in your own strength.  To embrace all God has for you, you need the Holy Spirit and fire Jesus promised to baptize you with.  I encourage you today to be filled and saturated with the Holy Spirit and fire.  Be found in full surrender to God, in full assurance of faith in His love and trusting in His goodness, ready to do anything He shows you is His will for you to be and to do.