364. Consuming Fire
Hebrews 12:29 For our God is a consuming fire.
That God is a consuming fire is really a good promise for us, while it is at the same time a terrifying threat. Of course, it is a threat in that the believer, and the unbeliever if he will listen, should “fear” God because of his sins. Sin will never in any sense please God and He will not tolerate sin or overlook it. By the nature of who God is He must, and He will, always consume sin with the fire of His holiness. Fire shoots out from the Holy Presence of God and consumes the sinner. One among many examples in the Bible is the fire that consumed Nadab and Abihu, the first priests, for offering strange fire before the Lord in His Tabernacle. The believer fears God and does not want to grieve the Holy Spirit. There is this negative side of “consuming fire” that curbs the coarse outburst of sin, which would destroy the world as in the days of Noah.
That God is a consuming fire is a positive promise in this sense: God will surely punish all sin wherever it is found. And He did. God the Father punished and judged sin definitively and forever at the cross of Jesus Christ, His Son. That eternal punishment and judgment was administered to our sin when we believed and were baptized. Thank God for that judgment. Our sin has been consumed in the fire of Calvary. (If a person does not believe the Son he shall not see life, but “the wrath of God remains on him.” John 3:36.) Then all sin and evil will be eternally consumed in the eternal fire of the Final Judgment. This consuming fire is for us Great News. It is another way of saying that our Sin is truly gone, for God took it away with a consuming fire. God gave us another metaphor for looking at the life, death, and resurrection of Jesus Christ.
Fire is a wonderful promise. John the Baptist promised that Jesus would baptize believers with the Holy Spirit and with Fire. The Spirit is a fire living and burning within us. He is continually consuming sin within. Sins are always being forgiven. That is a promise we can live with; it regenerates new life daily.