Consumed by Fire
As a boy, I used to make fishing sinkers from lead-head nails that I melted using my father’s kerosene blow torch. I loved watching the surface start to soften then melt into a liquid pool of metal. When that had happened, I would get a stick and scrape across the molten lead and reveal the bright metal that hid below the surface. I wasn’t aware of it at the time, but I was refining the lead each time I melted it and scraped off the burned impurities. The fire didn’t burn the lead, but it did consume the impurities. All that was left for me to do was scrape the dross away.
I’ve had a number of discussions over the past 6 months that have focused on metaphors used in the Bible. One common metaphor was fire. The first mention in the Bible is the covenant that God made with Abraham (Gen 15:17), and the last is the Revelation 8:5 where the angel throws fire from God’s alter onto the earth. Between those two stories there are many other references to fire, with the most famous being
- the story of Moses and the burning bush,
- the three men in the fiery furnace,
- the tongues of fire on the day of Pentecost
In many, if not most of the discussions I was part of, the primary view of fire was a destroyer. Given that many of the references to fire in the Bible are associated with God, I wonder if this has shaped our view of God, and why some people see God as a destroyer, and Jesus is the saviour who saves us from God’s destruction.
Some people see God as the destroyer, and Jesus’ self-sacrifice on the cross as our means of escape from God’s fiery judgement. Jesus effectively becomes our fire insurance policy protecting us from an angry God.
Given that the Bible says Jesus is the visible image of the invisible God, then why are we willing to keep a judgemental and punishing image of God, when nothing in Jesus’ life lines up with that view? I want to suggest a different perspective.
God’s fire spoken of throughout the Bible is a purifying fire which only destroys the impurities. The Bible also says that we are made in God’s image, so we know that we are not the impurities which will get consumed in the fire. Remember the story of the men in the fiery furnace? They didn’t get burned, they didn’t even smell of smoke. The only things that were consumed were the bonds that kept them from being free.
God is interested in our freedom, we were made to be free. Free to love, free to live in all that God has for us. Our bonds are what God consumes in the fire, God is setting us free to be who we were created to be. God’s fire is not for our punishment or judgement, it is for our freedom.
PRAYER From Symeon Metaphrastes (900 – 987)
I am communing with fire. Of myself, I am but straw but, O miracle, I feel myself suddenly blazing like Moses’ burning bush of old…. You have given me your flesh as food. You who are a fire which consumes the unworthy, do not burn me, O my Creator, but rather slip into my members, into all my joints, into my loins and into my heart. Consume the thorns of all my sins, purify my soul, sanctify my heart, strengthen the tendons of my knees and my bones, illumine my five senses, and establish my wholly in your love.
Amen.
- God is Hiding in Plain Sight - 10 December 2024
- Consumed by Fire - 13 August 2024
- Attitudes, Actions and Outcomes - 14 June 2024