I’m led to believe that it is the nature of fire to totally consume all within its reach, indiscriminately. And when it is unable to consume anything else, it consumes itself.
Also many of those who were now believers came, confessing and divulging their practices. And a number of those who had practiced magic arts brought their books together and burned them in the sight of all. And they counted the value of them and found it came to fifty thousand pieces of silver. So the word of the Lord continued to increase and prevail mightily.
Acts 19:18-20
Here’s my train of thought on the matter. Water drowns. Saturates, dissolves. The earth swallows, also consumes but ‘integrates’ – that is, like water, it takes in what is buried or submerged.
Unlike other elements, fire totally destroys by consuming, leaving ashes, next to nothing behind. While water and earth re-create chemical composition, fire simply… ‘un-creates’.
The Law of Conservation of Mass states that mass is neither created or destroyed in chemical reactions. I think you can see fire as the closest exception to that Law, as all that is not reduced to mere ash is… well, vaporized.
I’m no chemist, I’m no physicist, I’m no scientist… but I feel that these same brethren who ‘had practiced magic arts’ in the Scripture I just read had a similar idea of this nature of fire. They burned their books, all fifty thousand pieces of silver worth.
They burned the books, to totally destroy them.
As you know I’ve been reading through the first books of the Old Testament, and this does include punishments for those who break the Law. And off the top of my head, the punishments mentioned can be grouped into those punishable by exile (being ‘cut off from God’s people’), being stoned, or – you guessed it, being burned with fire.
In fact, and I apologize, because I went straight to punishment, a crucial part of the Tabernacle of the Old Covenant was the altar, where offerings of grain and livestock were burned completely. I’m not quite there yet (meaning I’m not finished with reading through the Pentateuch) but I do remember that the scapegoat could be one of few exceptions of what the priests would do with sacrifices.
I’m sure everything else was burned. Totally destroyed.
Now going back to the punishments… I apologize again, because I wanted to be precise. Or, okay, I was a little lazy. I wanted to know which sins exactly were punished by burning, and I asked ChatGPT to look it up for me.
For now I ruled out the ones which the AI gave the expectation that ‘while burning was not specified as an exact punishment, it is implied in other translations that it is’… and all that remained were sins related to idolatry and adultery.
Simply put, the idols were burned… and with regards to adultery, it was more directed to incest. I mean, an exact act which warranted burning was in Leviticus 20:14: “If a man takes a woman and her mother also, it is depravity; he and they shall be burned with fire, that there may be no depravity among you.”
Another specific verse where burning is stated is in Leviticus 21:9: “And the daughter of any priest, if she profanes herself by whoring, profanes her father; she shall be burned with fire.”
In going through all of this, I’m led to think that all depraved and profane things are to be burned… and sacrifices were burned for the profanity and the depravity of the people in the Old Covenant.
I suppose, generations later, and one covenant later, our brothers and sisters who came to believe in Christ burned their books of magic arts… would it be for their profanity and depravity?
If this was the case, then why was Christ crucified, and not burned for our profanity and depravity?
To answer that, I’m led to this verse:
For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.
John 3:17
Christ did not only come to totally destroy sin, profanity and depravity… Friends, if that was all He set out to do, then I’m thinking that’s the same as merely condemning the world.
No, friends, the way I see it, Christ addressed our state by BECOMING sin – to the point that all our trespass, and consequently all that we were was all His trespass. I believe that the crucified Christ is a reminder of how the world might be saved – THROUGH Him, not merely BY Him.
For at the cross we see His body, and we are reminded that by His body He took our death, and by His blood He gave us life. See, that’s the thing – Christ didn’t just come to totally destroy death, but ALSO to totally reconcile us, so we would have total, ETERNAL Life.
And every priest stands daily at his service, offering repeatedly the same sacrifices, which can never take away sins. But when Christ had offered for all time a single sacrifice for sins, he sat down at the right hand of God, waiting from that time until his enemies should be made a footstool for his feet. For by a single offering he has perfected for all time those who are being sanctified.
Hebrews 10:11-14
The Old Covenant sacrifices could never take away sins, while Christ’s single offering has perfected for all time we (I’m claiming all in the body of Christ as ‘those’) who are being sanctified.
And while the verbiage for that second line (perfected those who are being sanctified) is a message on its own, I would have us notice how, with regards to the priests of the Old Covenant, the issue of sin is the focus; while with Christ, participant of the New Covenant, and our High Priest, the issue is not of sin, but of our being sanctified and perfected.
I bring all of this up only to reiterate that we have not merely been saved BY Christ, but THROUGH Him – He does not just GIVE us salvation, He IS our Salvation. He IS our Life… and He is, therefore, our timeless, eternal Life – that is, Life integrated in our past, in us as we are in Him in our present, and with us into the future, and beyond.
We have been saved THROUGH Christ, which implies that we have eternal Life, as Christ lives forever. Therefore, there is truth to when He says that HE is the Bread of Life, we who believe in HIM would have streams of living water gush forth from our bellies, and if that isn’t enough, He is the Way, the Truth, AND the Life.
Through Christ who not merely GIVES us Life but IS our Life, we have been reconciled to God – the same One who appeared to Moses by way of a burning bush (“behold, the bush was burning, yet it was not consumed.“Exodus 3:2)
Through Christ who not merely GIVES us Life but IS our Life, we have the Holy Spirit poured out upon us – The same One that appeared unto the disciples in the upper room at Pentecost (“tongues as of fire appeared to them, distributed among them, and rested on them.”Acts 2:3).
And lest we forget. This is the same Christ who was with Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego. Christ, who not merely GIVES us Life but IS our Life, was with these three who were thrown into the furnace made seven times hotter (“But I see four men unbound, walking in the midst of the fire, and they are not hurt; and the appearance of the fourth is like a son of the gods.” Daniel 3:25)
Because of sin our fate was to die – to be burned, and totally destroyed… But praise be to God! For Christ, the Son of God, has saved us through His everlasting Life!
By the goodness of God (that is: the grace of our Father, the finished work of the Son, and the power of the Holy Spirit), we can walk in the midst of the fires of this reality, and we will not be hurt, nor will we be consumed. The Holy Spirit has rested on each of us, much so that we can make our bed in Sheol, and He is STILL with us – ALWAYS with us.
One last thing.
In previous writings I spoke of how Christ was the living Word. He was righteous and therefore adherent to all the rigors of the Law in the Old Covenant (‘without sin’, Hebrews 4:15).
Christ was so skilled and adept to the Law and the Scriptures, to the point of quoting it to resist and rebuke all we could ever be tempted of (Matthew 4). Finally, Christ presented the bottom line of the Law at the Sermon of the Mount, and speaking on the perfection of God, and our futile attempts to be adherent, because we were not righteous, but sinners.
And Jesus stretched out his hand and touched him, saying, “I will; be clean.” And immediately his leprosy was cleansed.Matthew 8:3
I ended my sharing of this insight by sharing Matthew 8:1-3, where this same Jesus, who was the fulfillment of the Law, encountered a leper, the lowest in the Law.. and, being fully aware of the situation, He still chose to lovingly respond to him: “I am willing, be clean.”
One thing that I forgot to point out here was that before He even said those words, He ‘stretched out his hand and touched him’.
According to the Law as stated in Leviticus 13-14, a leper is unclean, and anyone who touches even the garments of a leper is also unclean – But look! Christ was not made unclean… It was the leper who was made clean!
Friends, we have Christ – and I say, for the nth time, that He does not merely GIVE us Life, but He Himself IS our Life. He IS our Salvation.
We are saved in Christ, who has us as we have Him, much so that as He was not impacted by the furnace made seven times hotter, nor was He stricken with leprosy, so we will never be permanently burned or afflicted by sin and death…
We are saved through Christ, who is with us and so close to us that no fire could ever cause us to be ‘un-saved’… but we will be the ones who walk in the midst of the fire made seven times hotter, knowing that we have a Holy Spirit that burns brighter than it all.
This was a fun article to write, and I hope you enjoyed it as much as I wrote it. True, there were a lot of other things I wanted to add, and even more that I may have missed out on… but I think this will do for now, until we think about it all again.
What a pleasure to know that Christ is our Salvation, present even here and now, no matter how great the fires are burning. Let us continue to trust in the One who has us shining, even in the flames.
Thank You for everything, Father. Thank You, for Jesus.
God bless us all.
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