"Take care, lest you forget the covenant of the LORD your God, which he made with you, and make a carved image, the form of anything that the LORD your God has forbidden you. For the LORD your God is a consuming fire, a jealous God." - Deuteronomy 4:23–24
"But you have come ...to Jesus, the mediator of a new covenant, and to the sprinkled blood that speaks a better word than the blood of Abel. 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." - Hebrews 12:22–29
One of God's most often ignored attributes also happens to be the most consistently seen throughout the entirety of Scripture, and that is His power manifested in the form of His jealousy. This topic is often broached alongside the notion of the "consuming fire" of God's wrath that destroys His enemies and the enemies of His children.
What's worth noting, however, is that the Hebrew word translated as consumed is super common and can mean a variety of things depending on context- anything from devour to nourish. What I'm getting at here is this- the consuming fire, the wrath, the jealousy of the Lord is given a poor reputation and tends to make people feel insecure and uncomfortable. It convicts us. It humbles us. And it should, because it helps us view the state of our hearts through the lens of Christ's hatred for sin, and that shows all the more how powerful His mercy on us truly is. We cannot know grace, and we cannot know love, if we ignore how much Jesus hates His enemy.
For those of us in Christ Jesus, the consuming fire of His presence is not a destroyer, it is a nourisher. We must understand that we are not told "God is wrath" but that He has wrath, and justly so. We are told, however, that God is love (1 Jn 4:16), and thus we see that everything He does must flow from that. Love is not an attribute, it is Who He is.
The wrath of our God serves as an encourager to us because He wages war against wages war on us, defeats what threatens our soul, and overcomes the death of the physical body and the powers of hell. And the fact of the matter is, sanctification does two things simultaneously within us. When we yield to His desires, He stirs in us a love for what He loves, but that must also come with a hate for what He hates. Think of it this way, if you have a friend who is in the midst of a serious war on lies, anxiety, or on depression, whatever the case may be, can you truly love them deeply if you don't hate the evil you see threatening them?
If you don't hate the enemy that tries to steal, kill, and destroy your friend, do you love them?
In the same way, if Jesus doesn't hate the powers of hell with every fiber of His being, does He love you?
And now you see why the consuming fire of the wrath of God is truly a beautiful gift for us, His beloved. The same burning passion that enabled Jesus to storm the gates of hell and take the keys of death and hades is the same burning passion that protects you on a daily basis. It is the same burning passion that longs for your heart because it is His deep love for you from which His anger flows. His pursuit over seeing you safe stirs in Him an anger like nothing else against anything that attempts to take you away from His embrace.
That is why every struggle you face during your lifetime you can place confidently at the feet of your risen Lord in prayer because you know His response will not be indifference to your problems, but a consuming, nourishing love for you, and a consuming, devouring hatred for what threatens you.
The love of Jesus sanctifies first and foremost because that is the posture of His gentle and lowly heart, but rest assured in the knowledge of Who not only fights for you with fevered, jealous protection but has already overcome all of it.
"For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified." - Hebrews 1-:14
If God's wrath intimidates us and makes us squirm, we must examine our hearts and wonder if it is because we doubt the gravity the blood of the Lamb has over our entire identity and our posture before the living God. This isn't too shocking because we tend to condemn ourselves more than Jesus does. But know this-
God. Is not. Angry. With you.
His presence is not a threat to us, it is the safest place we could be.
“...the Son of God, who has eyes like a flame of fire, and whose feet are like burnished bronze." - Revelation 2:18
As everything in Scripture is intentional, we must note how God chose to reference His consuming fire in Jesus- His eyes. It is said that the eyes are a window into the soul, so what a lovely paradox that the Son of God described His very heart as gentle and lowly, yet His eyes are like a flame of fire. Eyes that see all blemishes but hands that are willing to touch and heal every single one with the same passion that simply loves you.
To conclude, my purpose in sharing this is to allow you to see, just in a tiny little way, that our God is worthy of our adoration and worship, and if we choose what aspects of Him make us comfortable and ignore the rest, that's not adoration. That is forming a carved image to behold and blinding yourself from the reality that Jesus cannot simultaneously love you and be indifferent to sin. An indifferent savior is none at all. No, we serve a passionate Savior, and that is a beautiful thing.
The eyes of Jesus are jealous for the person He created you to be, and they consume the darkest parts of you to ensure that are who you are becoming. And it is in holding the holiness of that gaze that we will, at last, see and be forever changed by the One in whom our soul was created to love.
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