Sifting
Sifting
SIFTING.The vb. sift (Gr. , fr. , a late word for a sieve) occurs only in Luk 22:31. Two varieties of sieve were used for separating the finer particles of substances from the grosser (see art. Agriculture). Scripture refers to the sieve and the process of sifting only rarely (Isa 30:28, Amo 9:9, Luk 22:31), but is full of the idea of sifting. In this process the methods of different industries join to give force to the metaphor which they supply. Of these farming is the chief, with its floors, fans, etc. (Mat 3:12, Luk 3:17). The preparation of wine also enters in with its emptying from vessel to vessel (Jer 48:11). The refining of metals (Isa 1:25, Mal 3:2 f.), too, contributes to the contents of the idea of sifting. All these moralize it. It concentrates on character. St. Peter and his fellow-disciples [plur. ] are sifted; Pharisees strain out gnats (Mat 23:24); evil work avoids the sifting of the light (Joh 3:20). The ministries of John, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit (Joh 16:8), all have this traitthey sift men. Yet Jesus is Himself sifted by Satan, whose findings are nil (Joh 14:30), while, also, the disciples are not above the Master. As the wheat in the sieve is shaken backwards and forwards, and thus the refuse separates itself from the grain, and falls out; so Satan wishes to trouble you and toss you about (by vexations, terrors, dangers, afflictions) in order to bring your faithfulness to me to decay (Meyers Luk 22:31).* [Note: Note that the point of the comparison lies in the shaking. Satan aims at destruction; Jesus is thinking of purification as the real result. Christ comes with His fan to get rid of chaff (Mat 3:12); Satan sifts in order to get rid of wheat. For, as Thomas Fuller says somewhere, when Satan comes with his sieve, he desires to find the chaff and not the wheat.] The case of St. Peter is not singular. St. Paul underwent the process (Php 3:7, 2Co 6:4 ff.). The sifting is a law of life. All the Fathers chastenings are with a view to sift His children as wheat. It is of the essence of the ways of God with men alike in providence and grace. Its place in that economy is among the final, not initial, processes. Readier and rougher means of grace have their earlier day; this is a delicate, even final, means of dealing with the finest of the wheat.
Literature.Ecce Homo, ch. vi.; Bushnells New Life, sermon on Spiritual Dislodgements; Longfellows The Sifting of Peter.
J. R. Legge.