Elijah's water kindles fire; grace offered, excuses made

Elijah was not terrified when a chariot of fire and horses of fire came to him; he longed for the journey upward, and so he dared those fearful things. With great joy he mounted the flaming vehicle while still living in the flesh. But you are not about to mount a chariot of fire; you are about to ascend to heaven through water and the Spirit—and you do not run to the call? Elijah showed the power of baptism at the altar of whole burnt offerings, when he consumed the sacrifice not with fire but with water. By nature fire and water are at war with each other, but when the water was mystically poured over the altar a third time, it became the starting point for the fire and kindled the flame as if it were oil. “Take jars,” he says, “and pour water on the whole burnt offering and on the pieces of wood.” And he said, “Do it a second time,” and they did it a second time. “Do it a third time,” and they did it a third time (1 Kings 18:33-34). The word shows that through baptism the one who comes forward is made a member of God's household, and that pure, heavenly light shines forth in the souls of those who approach through faith in the Trinity. If I were distributing gold to the church, you would not say to me, “I will come tomorrow, and tomorrow you will give it.” You would demand the distribution at once, pressing me, and you would be annoyed at any delay. But since the great giver is offering you not the fine color of matter but the purity of your soul, you invent pretexts and count up excuses when you ought to run to the gift. What a wonder! You are renewed, without being melted down; you are reshaped, without being broken; you are healed, without suffering pain—and you do not reckon the grace. If you were a slave of human beings, and freedom had been proclaimed for slaves, would you not have gone to meet the lady, hiring advocates and pleading with judges, so that by every means you might be delivered into freedom? Surely you would even have accepted a slap on the face—the last blow a slave receives—to be rid of the abuses that would follow. But now you are a slave, not of human beings, but of sin, and the herald calls you to freedom, to release you from captivity, to make you a fellow citizen with the angels, to show you as a son of God adopted through grace, and an heir of the good things of Christ—and you still say it is not yet the time for you to receive what is being given. What wicked obstacles! What shameful, endless busyness! How long will pleasures last? How long will luxuries last? We have lived a long time for the world; let us live from now on for ourselves. What is worth as much as the soul? What weighs equally with the kingdom of heaven? Who is a more trustworthy counselor to you than God? Who is wiser than the wise one? Who is more helpful than the good one? Who is closer to you than the Creator? It did not benefit Eve to obey the serpent's counsel rather than the Master's. What absurd words! “I have no leisure to be made well; do not show me the light yet; do not unite me to the King yet.” Is this not what you are saying outright? Or rather, things even more irrational than these. If your name had been written in the public debt records, and a cancellation of debts had been announced to those who owed, and then someone tried out of malice to keep you from sharing in that pardon, you would be outraged and you would cry out that he was robbing you of your portion of the common grace.