Matthew 3:12 Whose fan is in his hand, and he will throughly purge his floor, and gather his wheat into his garner; but He will burn up the chaff with unquenchable fire.
John promises that Jesus will do two things for us: gather and burn. One sounds beneficial; the other not so much. The image of harvesting and gathering the wheat and letting the chaff blow away and be burned is familiar enough even though we may not have seen such activity ourselves.This is what will happen at the end of the age when the harvest of souls occurs at Jesus’ Return. The useful fruit that has been grown and ripened over the year will be gathered into the garner. The useless chaff will be burned with fire. In 1 Corinthians 3 the promise is that we all go through the fire of death and Judgment, wherein gold, silver, precious stones will be purified and wood, hay, straw burned away. Our Lord will save in us that which will last forever.
The Lord is promising to work out this process in our daily lives as well using the image of pruning and burning grapevine branches to grow more fruit. He saved us for good works that we should walk in them. Our purpose is to bear fruit, and God will have His way. We may notice that chaff and branches are not necessarily bad things, but even so-called “good works” done in the flesh get in the way of genuine fruit, and so must be purged. The process hurts, but we must still go through fiery trials for the testing of your faith produces steadfastness. Thank God for the purging and burning promise and for the process that molds us closer into His image that produces fruit that lasts. “Count it all joy when you meet various trials.”