Our God is a Consuming Fire

The inspiration behind this post comes from sitting in front of my fireplace on a rainy and cold Saturday. Watching the fire and its sparks got me thinking of Hebrews 12:29, For our God is a consuming fire.

I love that verse, our God is a consuming fire. He is so amazing that He consumes the hearts and the lives of those He touches. He first loved us; we did not love Him (1 John 4:10). He drew near to us; we did not draw near to Him. When we finally experience His touch and taste and come to realize that the Lord is good, we at last seek after Him. When we get hold of the depth of the cross of Calvary we experience the glorious joy of being filled with the Holy Spirit. Such is a heart set on fire for the living God, Jesus Christ.

To consume is to eat or drink-up; to use up, to spend; to devour; and to burn up. This is precisely what the Lord does to our soul when He reveals His love toward us, in that, while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us (Romans 5:8). God melts our hearts with His goodness, which causes us to see the error of our ways and brings us to repentance.

And yet, as beautiful and fascinating as fire may be, fire is also scary and can be deadly.

For the LORD thy God is a consuming fire, even a jealous God. Deuteronomy 4:24

Understand therefore this day, that the LORD thy God is he which goeth over before thee; as a consuming fire he shall destroy them, and he shall bring them down before thy face. Deuteronomy 9:3

Just as the Lord gets a hold of the meek and feeble soul and fills Him with His might, the Lord will devour and do away with the haughty soul who does not come to repentance and chooses the path of sin.

But the fearful, and unbelieving, and abominable, and murderers, and whoremongers, and sorcerers, and idolaters, and all liars, shall have their part in the lake which burneth with fire and brimstone. Revelation 21:8

Fortunatley for the believer, the two last verses of Hebrews 12 read as follow:

Wherefore we receiving a kingdom which cannot be moved, let us have grace, whereby we may serve God acceptably with reverence and godly fear: For our God is a consuming fire. Hebrews 12:28-29

Those with godly fear receive Chirst’s salvation which was given to all men by grace (Ephesians 2:8) and rather than being consumed into everlasting fire shall be saved from such torment and will experience everlasting joy and peace with Jesus Christ their King.

Blessed be the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, which according to his abundant mercy hath begotten us again unto a lively hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, To an inheritance incorruptible, and undefiled, and that fadeth not away, reserved in heaven for you. 1 Peter 1:3-4