Consuming Fire

First Series – Sermon Two

Original by George MacDonald

Paraphrase by Dale R. Howie

 

God loves His children with complete devotion, desiring only their good. His consuming fire is not something to fear but something to welcome, for it is the fire of Love that burns away everything that keeps us from Life. Only when all that is "other" has been consumed are we truly free and finally at Home with the Father.

The truth that God is love, all love, and nothing other than Love is the only hope we have. MacDonald makes it clear that God is not a permissive or enabling Father. He will not simply overlook or excuse the darkness that holds us in bondage, nor will He magically remove it without our participation. Therefore, all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that separates and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed.

For MacDonald, God's judgment is not opposed to His love—it is the very expression of it. Love refuses to leave His children imprisoned by the false self. In the consuming fire of Love, with our willing participation, everything that is unlike Him is burned away until nothing remains but the child He has always known. As long as corruption and darkness cling to us, God stands against them because He is for us. He opposes our selfish selves so that, in MacDonald's words, He can be always and entirely for us!

 

Outline

Sermon Question: What is the consuming fire?

 P1 - Love – Nothing is relentless but love!

    P2 - Fire of Love – God's fire is the fire of holy love.

        P3 - A Partial Revelation – God reveals Himself as we are able to receive Him.

            P4 - Revelation of Fire – The fire reveals God's opposition to evil.

       T - The Coming Revelation – The fire reveals God's opposition to evil.

        R3 - What is to be Feared – God's fire destroys the false self.

    R2 - Outer Darkness – Life without God is the true darkness.

R1 - Home – Love's final work is to bring us Home.

  

Hebrews 12:29 NAS

 

"For our God is a consuming fire."

  

Love

Question: Why is love relentless?

Nothing is relentless but Love! The affection that yields to self-interest is weak and imperfect. Compromised, it is no longer pure devotion, but a mixture—an alloy of self-giving and self-interest. When love remains steadfast under pressure, it is love giving itself, never retreating from its helpful purpose. Love never begrudges a blessing, and even less does it answer a prayer that would harm the one who asks. Love is single in purpose—pure, unwavering, and unchanging.

True devotion is never satisfied with anything less than purity. Love seeks its fullest expression in beauty, for beauty not fully expressed is lacking in loveliness. Love spends itself creating more love, that love itself might multiply. It moves toward perfection, not because love is lacking, but because those receiving it are still growing into its fullness.

It was Love that created us.

Therefore, even human love, in its corresponding relation to its divine source, continues creating beauty through its own self-giving.

There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and love is ever climbing toward its consummation, when love shall fill and inspire the universe—imperishable and divine.

Therefore, all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that separates and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed.

"Our God is a consuming fire."

At first, these words seem severe. Yet the severity lies not in Love, but in everything that resists it.

Absolute truth is not difficult because it is complicated, but because we cannot yet see it. It may take centuries of struggle, effort, longing, and aspiration before reality becomes clear. Yet once we finally see it, it appears so plain that we wonder how we ever lived without it. That we did not understand it sooner was simply because we could not yet see it. To see the truth, to know it, and to understand it are one and the same.

This love is what we grope for in our darkness, driven by a hunger we scarcely understand. Our crying is the painful awareness of its absence and the longing to fulfill its mysterious need. As our hearts awaken, darkness and emptiness begin yielding to the light of its truth.

One glimpse of divine love and we stand face-to-face with the living heart of eternal Life.

For this vision of His love God has been laboring from the very beginning. This simple awakening is the climax of life. Once we receive it with the wonder of a child, we cannot help wanting others to see what we have seen. We long for everyone to recognize what God has been revealing through creation, history, science, poetry, and every beautiful thing His hands have made.

For this He patiently works while even one soul's eyes remain closed, while one child-heart is still held captive, while one life has yet to discover that this Love—this Consuming Fire—is the very Life of God.

So let us return to the apostle's words, for they crown this truth with what MacDonald beautifully called a "lovely terror."

"Our God is a consuming fire."

 Answer: Because love never gives up on the beloved.

 

The Fire of Love

Question: Why is God compared to fire?

"Therefore, let us be grateful for receiving a kingdom that cannot be shaken, and thus let us offer to God acceptable worship, with reverence and awe; for our God is a consuming fire."

We have received a kingdom whose very nature cannot be shaken. Let us therefore receive the grace to serve our God—the Consuming Fire—with holy reverence and awe. Not with the fear that draws back in self-interest and lack, but with the humble surrender of our thoughts, desires, and loves before Him.

He is the Life of all, and because He is pure, He will have us be pure.

His kingdom is immovable because there is nothing weak within it. It belongs to an eternal realm of divine life and truth. Therefore, our worship should be as pure as the kingdom itself. He will shake heaven and earth until only what cannot be shaken remains.

Only what is eternal will endure. Such is the nature of God—so wonderfully pure that His fire destroys everything unlike Himself. It is not that the fire consumes us because we fail to worship perfectly. Rather, it burns away everything that is "other." When its work is complete, the same fire that once purified us becomes our highest awareness of life—the very presence of God Himself.

When evil—the only thing truly consumable—has been destroyed, those who live within His unshakable kingdom will behold God's nature face-to-face. His splendor will be seen with holy and everlasting admiration. Such knowledge comes not from witnessing His power but from knowing His character. Then everything that remains is gathered into one beautiful whole. In such a soul, wonder and the simplest love become one.

Yes, the fear and awe of God cause a man to flee—not from God, but from himself. Not from Him, but to Him, his very Father, in terror lest he should do God or his neighbor wrong.

"Let brotherly love continue."

These simple words express the grace by which we serve God acceptably.

To love our brother is to worship the Consuming Fire.

The image of the consuming fire first appears in the fire that burned upon the mountain in the Old Testament. It formed part of God's revelation to Israel. Yet even there it was not new. The same fire had already appeared to Moses in the bush that burned without being consumed, where he removed his sandals because the ground had become holy.

The New Testament writers return to this image, not to change its meaning, but to deepen it.

The fire could reveal only what the people were capable of receiving.

What else could a nation of slaves have seen except terror and destruction? Their souls still carried the rust of Egypt's chains. The smell of its kitchens lingered in their nostrils. They would almost rather have returned to slavery than surrender the food they loved. How then could such a people imagine purification through fire? They possessed no experience by which to understand such a thought.

Had they imagined purification at all, the suffering involved would have overshadowed its purpose. They could not yet hear a message from God that was not clothed in terror. Fear was all they understood. They had never worshiped a god they did not fear.

Was Mount Sinai merely a display meant to frighten people into obedience, as a harsh nurse frightens children?

Or was it a true revelation of God?

If it was not a true revelation, then it was no revelation at all. Either the story is false, or the display was nothing more than a political invention of Moses. Those who know Moses will never believe the latter. Those who reject revelation have little reason to accept the former.

But if God truly revealed Himself there, then He revealed something real.

God does not wear masks.

He shows His face.

He would never speak from a flaming fire if fire were foreign to His own nature. The blazing fire revealed something true about Himself. Even if His children misunderstood what they saw, He would never frighten them with a lie.

Answer: Because His love purifies rather than destroys.

 
A Partial Revelation

Question: Why did God reveal Himself through fear at Sinai?

It was a revelation—but only a partial one, a true image, though not yet the final vision.

No revelation of God can ever be anything but partial. If a revelation could only be true by revealing everything, then revelation itself would be impossible, and sonship would lose its meaning. What other than a partial revelation could even the highest spiritual condition of humanity receive from an infinite God? A revelation is not untrue because it is incomplete. Its partial nature is due, not to God, but to us, the receivers. A partial revelation is more understandable than one beyond our grasp. In fact, the simpler revelation may reveal far more than the fuller one, for what exceeds our understanding often reveals nothing at all.

God's revelations are always invitations to grow. They awaken us to what we do not yet see and gently draw us toward maturity. A false revelation would work against both our humanity and our experience of God. A true revelation awakens within us the desire to know Him more because it first reveals how little we yet understand.

Israel stood here as a people at one of the lowest points in their history. Could they have received anything other than a partial revelation—a revelation of fear? How else could they have responded? They stood before something utterly opposed to everything they believed about themselves. They thought it good to worship a golden calf. Given where they were, they were right to be afraid.

Better to stand trembling before the flaming presence of God than bow before the idol below. Fear is nobler than sensuality. Fear of God is better than no God—far better than a god made with human hands.

Yet even this fear was only the beginning. Hidden within it was something far greater. Worship born only from fear can never satisfy the heart of God. Only worship in Spirit and Truth can do that. Still, even these first beginnings were precious in His sight. God always relates to us, not merely as we are, but as we shall be. More wonderfully still, He sees us as we are becoming—growing toward the very image in which He created us.

Every step along that journey, however small, belongs to God's patient work within us. Each stage prepares us for the next in His lifelong work of transformation. One path leads downward into destruction; the other upward into sainthood. So this revelation, though incomplete, was nevertheless true. It called Israel upward. It awakened the highest response they were then capable of making and prepared them for greater revelations still to come.

 Answer: Because the people could receive no more than that at the time.

 

Revelation of Fire

Question: What was the fire really revealing?

But this revelation of fire remains true in an even higher sense. It is as real to the rejoicing saint as it is to the trembling sinner. The saint simply sees farther into its meaning and understands more clearly what the fire accomplishes. The image does not need to be discarded but unfolded, for every new revelation reveals more of the Father's heart than the one before.

While we continue identifying ourselves with our sin, we mistake it for who we are. To surrender it feels as though we ourselves would cease to exist. How then can we understand that this Consuming Fire is actually our Savior? That it is the living Word which pierces between our true self and the evil that has attached itself to us? That it kills the sin while giving life to the sinner? Can it comfort anyone to hear that God loves them enough to burn them clean? Can this cleansing by fire appear to us as anything other than what it often feels like—a painful process?

We do not naturally want to be made clean, nor do we willingly embrace the suffering that purification requires. How then can anyone do otherwise than fear such a God? Yet even here the revelation reaches beyond our fear. Mount Sinai was not crowned with vengeance. God stood against sin because, for the moment, sin and the sinner appeared inseparable. Was not God ready to do to them even what they feared, though with another motive and a different purpose than they were capable of imagining? He is against sin insofar as sin and we remain one. He is against this false self—against our selfish desires, aims, and hopes—so that He can be always and altogether for us.

The trumpet split the thunder. Lightning flashed across the darkness. Fire blazed upon the mountain. Yet these visible terrors were only faint images of what God feels toward evil itself. They revealed His complete opposition to everything that destroys His children. Even then, His purpose was never destruction but mercy. What they experienced as terror was mercy wearing the only form they were yet able to receive. These signs restrained a people who knew little beyond slavery and fear, leaving room for grace to begin its quiet work. They were meant to reveal that evil—not the fire—is the fearful thing.

The fire itself was their hope.

Had Israel been able to see this, they would have rushed toward the trumpet instead of longing for the music around the golden calf. They would have recognized that the Consuming Fire was calling them out of slavery and into freedom. But they were not yet ready. That is why Sinai was necessary. It was a true revelation, though only a partial one.

Answer: God's complete opposition to evil and His unwavering love for His children.

 
The Coming Revelation

Question: How did Jesus complete the revelation?

Even Moses, the great leader of Israel, was not yet ready to understand the fullness of God's revelation. His love for the people was genuine. His willingness to have his own name blotted from the Book of Life for their sake revealed the depth of his compassion. Yet even this noble act showed that he still misunderstood the heart of God. Moses thought God needed to be appeased, imagining Him less tender than himself. He had not yet seen that God Himself is the Reconciler, the Redeemer, desiring not the sacrifice of His creatures but the sacrifice of the heart.

Moses could not yet know that one day the very descendants of these people would reject and crucify the Son of God. They would crown Him with thorns and put Him to death. Yet this same Son would bear their griefs and carry away their sorrows, and He continues to bear them still.

Instead of accepting the sacrifice of one of His creatures to satisfy His justice or defend His dignity, God gave Himself entirely for them. Jesus was doing His Father's will, laying down His life and suffering death—not so that we would never suffer, but so that our suffering might become like His and lead us into the Father's perfect love.

Here the revelation reaches its summit. Everything has been leading us to this one breathtaking truth:

God is Love—all Love, and nothing other than Love.

The selfish heart cannot truly believe this, for if it could, it would only twist and misuse it for its own purposes. But the loving soul, burdened by wrong teaching or by a partial truth pretending to be the whole truth, hears these words differently. It hears them, understands them, and rejoices—not because they are easy to believe, but because somewhere deep within, it recognizes them as the truth it has always longed to hear.

 Answer: He showed us the Father's heart of perfect love.

 

What Is to Be Feared

Question: What should we really fear?

When we say that God is Love, are we telling people that their fear of Him is unfounded?

No. Much of what they fear will indeed happen—and more besides. The mystery is not that The mystery is not that God's fire changes from judgment to love. The mystery is that the fire never changes. What changes is us. The sinner fears the fire because he mistakes his false self for his true one. The saint welcomes that same fire because he has begun to discover that it destroys only what God never created him to be. Yet beyond those fears lies a divine purpose they cannot escape. God's consuming love works alongside our individuality, preserving the person He created while destroying everything that keeps us from becoming ourselves.

His wrath consumes what we mistakenly call ourselves so that the true self, created by God, may finally appear. That true self comes forth with a far greater awareness of life than ever before, bringing with it all the blessings we once tried to find apart from God. To our surprise, we discover that for the very first time we are fully ourselves.

The weary, selfish, suspicious old man has passed away. The new man has emerged. What we once believed ourselves to be has vanished, while everything God planted within us remains—purified, strengthened, and filled with hope. The glory that cannot be shaken endures. Everything eternal remains, while everything temporary, even death itself, is consumed.

Such is the law of nature and the law of God: the destructible must perish so that the eternal hidden within it may remain.

The voices of corruption constantly surround us. They drown out the quieter voice speaking from within, calling us through the everlasting doors. Often we cannot distinguish between them, even though our true nature already belongs to eternity. The corruption must be burned away—or at least begin to burn away—before we can fully participate in eternal life. Then, when the divine fire has consumed the flesh and everything corruptible has been destroyed, we shall discover ourselves pure and whole.

Many a person's works are consumed so that, through their loss, the person himself is set free—saved, "yet so as through fire." Gone in the smoke are all our petty titles, our imagined superiority, and the little kingdoms we built for ourselves. The fire delivers the one who yields to its burning because it destroys only what can be destroyed.

But if we continue clinging to what is passing away, the burning reaches deeper and deeper into our souls until it finds the very roots of the lies that enslave us—the falsehoods that so often disguise themselves as truth.

The one who loves God, though not yet made pure, welcomes the fire. Fire embraced is not always torture. Often it appears simply as light, though it remains the Refiner's fire. The Consuming Fire is the active expression of God's purity and love—the very creative energy by which He makes all things new.

Without cleansing there can be no new creation. Without purification there can be no redemption. Whatever is not of God is corruptible, and corruption cannot inherit incorruption.

The one whose deeds are evil fears the fire. Yet the burning comes whether we fear it, deny it, or welcome it. Escape is impossible because Love is relentless.

Love is a Consuming Fire.

And we will not come out until we have paid the last penny.

Answer: Clinging to the false self instead of trusting God's love.

 

Outer Darkness

Question: What is Outer Darkness?

If we resist the purifying work of God—the Consuming Fire of Love—a terrible fate awaits us, and its day will surely come.

Outer darkness awaits those who hate the fire. What dreadful confusion will seize the one who has cared so little for God, even though his very existence has always been in Him. All along, God has upheld him, delighted in him, and patiently taught him. Every good thing in life has been God's gift. Even when we have not known it, He has been quietly giving Himself to us.

When God withdraws, He is as absent as He can be without destroying the one He loves. The man becomes aware of life at the very edge of his being—without support, without refuge, without purpose, without joy. He longs only to escape himself, yet cannot.

Then, in his agony, he listens for the faintest sound of life beyond the door. If only the distant cries of suffering humanity should reach him through the darkness, he would gladly rush into the very heart of the Consuming Fire, exchanging the terror of emptiness and unbearable isolation for the painful hope of life once again.

Our imagination cannot exaggerate the horror of existence without God. It is the place of living death—the image of a fire without light, darkness made visible by its own black flame.

Yet even there God has not abandoned His child.

His face may be turned away, but His hand still holds fast. His heart no longer beats within the man's heart, yet He continues sustaining him by His fire. This fire goes on searching and burning, just as it does in the highest saint, consuming everything that is "other" until we are pure, even as He is pure.

The same fire feared by the sinner is the fire welcomed by the saint. It has never changed. Only our understanding has.

And at last, O God, You will cast Death and Hell themselves into the lake of fire—even into Your own consuming Life.

Then death itself shall die forever.

"And Hell will pass away, and leave her dolorous mansions to the appearing day."

Answer: The misery of life apart from the joy of God's presence.

 

Home

Question: Where is God's fire leading us?

Then indeed we shall be one.

All our brothers and sisters—every one of them—will finally trust in You, the Consuming Fire. Burned clean, we shall all be brought Home.

If the distant cries of one soul could turn heaven itself into sorrow for us, can a man then be more merciful than God? Can mercy alone be the one glory that is not infinite? Could a brother love his brother more than the Father loves His own? Could Christ, our elder Brother, love His brothers less than we hope to love ours?

Would He not go to any length to save one brother more?

Such is the Love of our Father. His Consuming Fire has never been the enemy of His children. It has always been working to free us from everything that keeps us from becoming who He created us to be.

So let us come to You, O God, our Consuming Fire. Remind us that You never burn more than we can stand. You refine; You do not destroy. Though You seem to slay us, still we will trust You. We will trust You even where there is no promise we can yet see, believing that whatever means Your love employs, it is always leading us Home.

For in the end we shall receive the blessing with those who have not seen and yet believed.

Answer: Where is God's fire leading us?

Sermon Answer: The relentless love of God burning away everything that keeps us from Life.

 

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Continue your Quest . . .

Next Sermon - Higher Faith

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CLIFF NOTES WITH MACDONALD’S ORIGINAL QUOTES

 

LOVE

 “Nothing is inexorable but love.”

 “There is nothing eternal but that which loves and can be loved, and love is ever climbing towards the consummation when such shall be the universe, imperishable, divine.”

 “Therefore all that is not beautiful in the beloved, all that comes between and is not of love's kind, must be destroyed.”

 “But when once he does see it, it is so plain that he wonders he could have lived without seeing it. That he did not understand it sooner was simply and only that he did not see it. To see a truth, to know what it is, to understand it, and to love it, are all one.”

 “To see one divine fact is to stand face to face with essential eternal life.”

 

FIRE OF LOVE

 

“Yea, the fear of God will cause a man to flee, not from him, but from himself; not from him, but to him, the Father of himself, in terror lest he should do Him wrong or his neighbor wrong.”

 “They had no worship for any being of whom they had not to be afraid. Was then this show upon Mount Sinai a device to move obedience, such as bad nurses employ with children? a hint of vague and false horror? Was it not a true revelation of God?”

 

A PARTIAL REVELATION

 

“It was a revelation, but a partial one; a true symbol, not a final vision.”

 “Fear is better than no God, better than a god made with hands.”

 “For he regards men not as they are merely, but as they shall be; not as they shall be merely, but as they are now growing, or capable of growing, towards that image after which he made them that they might grow to it.”

 “And calling forth the best of which they were now capable, so making future and higher revelation possible, may have been a true one.”

 

REVELATION OF FIRE

 

“How can they understand that the lightning word is a Saviour—that word which pierces to the dividing between the man and the evil, which will slay the sin and give life to the sinner? Can it be any comfort to them to be told that God loves them so that he will burn them clean. Can the cleansing of the fire appear to them anything beyond what it must always, more or less, be—a process of torture?”

 “And is not God ready to do unto them even as they fear, though with another feeling and a different end from any which they are capable of supposing? He is against sin: in so far as, and while, they and sin are one, he is against them—against their desires, their aims, their fears, and their hopes; and thus he is altogether and always for them.”

 

THE COMING REVELATION

 

“For so he would think to appease God, not seeing that God was as tender as himself, not seeing that God is the Reconciler, the Redeemer, not seeing that the sacrifice of the heart is the atonement for which alone he cares.”

 “Who, instead of accepting the sacrifice of one of his creatures to satisfy his justice or support his dignity, gave himself utterly unto them, and therein to the Father by doing his lovely will; who suffered unto the death, not that men might not suffer, but that their suffering might be like his, and lead them up to his perfection;”

 “May it not then hurt to say that God is Love, all love, and nothing other than love?”

 “If the selfish man could believe it, he would misinterpret it; but he cannot believe it. It is not possible that he should. But the loving soul, oppressed by wrong teaching, or partial truth claiming to be the whole, will hear, understand, rejoice.”

 

WHAT IS TO BE FEARED

 

“The wrath will consume what they call themselves; so that the selves God made shall appear, coming out with tenfold consciousness of being, and bringing with them all that made the blessedness of the life the men tried to lead without God. They will know that now first are they fully themselves.”

 “If still he cling to that which can be burned, the burning goes on deeper and deeper into his bosom, till it reaches the roots of the falsehood that enslaves him—possibly by looking like the truth.”

 “The fire shows itself sometimes only as light—still it will be fire of purifying. The consuming fire is just the original, the active form of Purity,—that which makes pure, that which is indeed Love, the creative energy of God.”

 

OUTER DARKNESS

 

“And that fire will go searching and burning on in him, as in the highest saint who is not yet pure as he is pure.”

 

HOME

 

“Shall a man be more merciful than God? Shall, of all his glories, his mercy alone not be infinite? Shall a brother love a brother more than The Father loves a son?—more than The Brother Christ loves his brother? Would he not die yet again to save one brother more?”