Luke 12:49 Commentary and Bible Study

Christ has come into the world, he says, in order to bring fire on the earth. What sort of fire? Obviously metaphorical fire, but fierce fire nonetheless. Some think the fire refers to his own sufferings on the cross, but the context both before and after suggests otherwise. This fire can be understood as a description of division between believers and unbelievers. The same division has been spoken of in the preceding parable, between the faithful and the unfaithful servant. The statement in verse 51 is parallel – ‘Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth? I tell you, Nay; but rather division’ – and sheds light on the more obscure saying of verse 49. Taken this way, it is the fire which is expounded in verses 51-53, a fire that burns between people who oppose each other because of the gospel. Not that believers are hostile to the unbelieving world. In one sense they are ready to suffer all things in order to try to win this lost world for Christ, but they are against the world in the sense that they will not compromise with the world’s standards, or live by its principles. From the world’s side the enmity is outright enmity. The world persecutes the church with great ferocity. Israel was not openly a divided society, even though believers and unbelievers lived alongside each other. Both went together to the place of worship, and both counted themselves as the people of God.But with the coming Christ a new dispensation would be brought into being, in which God called his true people out into a recognisable body, and this would cut across all social structures. So there is fire to be kindled, which is not yet kindled. Why not yet? Because it will not be kindled until the baptism with which Christ must be baptized is accomplished. The knowledge of what he would suffer was with him. How did he deal with it? He says, ‘and what will I, if it be already kindled?’, as the KJV renders it. This is a literal translation, but the words are somewhat hard to understand. They could be interpreted to mean, ‘If that fire which I came to bring, were already kindled, it would not be against my will.’ But they seem rather to express his longing for Calvary to be completed, to have passed through that terrible ordeal, and to have it behind him; the translation must agree with the thought of the next verse. The Greek has a question mark, but some render it as a very intense wish: ‘O that it were already kindled!’ (Gill); ‘How I wish it were already kindled!’ (NKJ), ‘Would that it were already kindled’ (RSV). Understood this way, Christ is speaking of the great cost to him of giving his life on the cross. But although it will cost so much, it will bring about a situation on earth in which the lines of division between believer and unbeliever are much more clearly drawn. He likens it to fire being unleashed on earth.