Playing With Fire

Walking over the nearly vacant concrete slab sobered my thoughts– its pattern of linoleum tiles now open to the sky and mostly covered with ash. In the center of the slab crouched a twisted tangle of steel that less than twenty-four hours ago led to a second floor. This distorted and crumpled spiral staircase stood as the lone remnant of what had recently been home to a dozen-plus college students. Nearly all of their personal possessions now existed only in the past, and they were desperately searching for new living accommodations.

Late on the night before, my roommates and I jolted to attention with an insistent knocking on our door. The young man urgently alerted us that a small neighboring apartment building was burning, and they desperately needed our help. We attempted to gather our wits about us and we rushed out the door into the cold January night. The acrid smell of burning wood ambushed our senses as we neared the scene of the fire.

Though clouds of smoke billowed from the roof and eaves of the wooden A-frame structure, fire was not yet visible. A fairly large group of other guys had already assembled there from the surrounding apartments, but no one seemed to know what to do. Finally, one guy yelled out instructions to the rest of us, and we formed a chain of men from the front of the apartment where the smoke seemed to be concentrated, out to a vacant spot of frozen ground a hundred feet away. Someone inside the apartment pushed out the two small windows and screens and started handing belongings to the men stationed outside. Possessions quickly moved from hand-to-hand down the line, to be stacked on thin snow in the staging area. A random heap of clothing, small furniture, LP records, and books began forming.

Although we worked with remarkable efficiency and speed, the fire outpaced us, and the smoke and heat drove out the two inside. They crawled out the windows and moved away from the front of the building, as did the rest of the line.

To a man, the developing sight held us in awe and all conversation ceased. The increasing heat and gravity of the situation compelled the several dozen men to back farther away from the building. The flames visibly asserted themselves, and grew in size and intensity with every passing second. In half a minute the whole interior was engulfed in yellow and orange incandescence. Another minute, and the entire glass end wall of the A-frame began shattering, pane by pane. Other unknown objects within started to pop, bang, and explode in the unimaginable heat. With the glass wall gone, a column of pure flame, twenty-five feet in diameter and a hundred feet long, blasted out horizontally and then curved upward, high into the star-filled, black sky.

In thirty minutes more, it was all over. The entire structure dramatically collapsed into a heap of red coals, with some flames still making their claim on the remaining fuel. We could only watch, in silence.

Fire is a dramatic and sobering process. Walking across that ash-covered slab the next day, I realized the fleeting nature of material objects and, though no one had died in the blaze, the precarious state of our own physical existence. I didn't understand until several years later the significance of an even more profound fire.

The history of Israel, those descending from the patriarch Jacob, is littered with their experience of the "consuming fire" of their God. From the generation-long wanderings of Israel in the desert, to the prophets Isaiah, Jeremiah, and Joel, the fire of God blazed from time to time. Why would God be so dangerous, and why would He visit this sort of horrific violence on those He called "His People?"

I think back to my elementary school days, when we first learned about the science of fire. Our teacher instructed us how fire was like a triangle– that it required three different things: air (oxygen), heat (energy), and fuel. Oxygen and heat alone will not produce a fire, as a fuel is required in the mix.

In the context of the "fire of God," the holy nature of God is, perhaps, like the oxygen. God breathes out His holiness. His holy breath stirred life into Adam. And the words we use in reference to the third Person of the Godhead, the Holy Spirit, literally means the Holy Breath, or Holy Wind.

And, perhaps, the energy of God's righteous justice is like the fire's required heat. We often speak in the vernacular of "feeling the heat" when someone rightly accuses or judges us. These two alone (holiness and justice), however, are not sufficient to kindle the fire of God's wrath. While God's justice and holiness are intrinsic characteristics of the Divine, His wrath is not.

The "consuming fire" of God is a particularly flagrant form of wrath. For this wrath to burn, it requires something from us. We provide the final third, and necessary, side of the triangle. While He provides the holiness and justice, we provide an abundant (and, it seems, unending) supply of the fuel, which is our "flesh"– our sin nature.

The early missionary Paul, after starting a church in Corinth, writes them a letter, taking them to task for various problems in their midst. At one point in the letter he states the result of their (and our) fleshly, sinful living:

"Now if any man builds on the foundation (which is Jesus Christ) with gold, silver, and precious stones, or with wood, hay, and straw, each man's work will become evident; for the day will show it because it is to be revealed with fire, and the fire itself will test the quality of each man's work. If any man's work which he has built on it remains, he will receive a reward. If any man's work is burned up, he will suffer loss; but he himself will be saved, yet so as through fire."         (1 Corinthians 3:12-15 NASB)

In the same way that physical wood, hay, and straw are highly flammable materials, making excellent fuels, their spiritual counterparts, when combined with the holiness and justice of God, cannot help but ignite a divine conflagration. God's wrathful anger is a result of the tragic collision between His righteous and holy justice and our rebellious sin.

And just as decades of overgrowth in wilderness areas produce a more intense and more uncontrollable wildfire, extended periods of avoiding God's examination of our lives will end the same way. Rather than a small and limited grass fire, the blaze will devour everything in its horrifying path. For our own sakes (and the sake of others), we need to keep short accounts with our eternal Judge, not because He is malevolent or cruel, but because He is holy and just.

Paul further exhorted the Corinthians that the result of their building with precious and long-lasting, (spiritual/eternal) materials would accompany them into eternity. Just as physical gold, silver, and gems are not fuel and will not support fire, so their spiritual analogues will not kindle God's fire.


Dear Holy and Righteous Lord, help us to live our lives upon the precious foundation of Christ, and to not store up for ourselves fuel, which Your holiness and justice will ultimately burn to oblivion. Help us, instead, to build with those precious and eternal materials supplied generously by Your Son, and offered to us daily by Your Spirit. 

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>>> (except for quotations) All text and images are Copyright, Bill Brockmeier, 2015. All rights reserved.