Again, how shallow is the common view of “fire” as only or chiefly a penal agent. “Fire, in Scripture, is the element of ‘life’ (Isa 4:5), of ‘purification’ (Matt 3:3), of ‘atonement’ (Lev 16:27), of ‘transformation’ (2 Pet 3:10), and never of ‘preservation alive’ for purposes of anguish.” And the popular view selects precisely this latter use, never found in Scripture, and represents it as the sole end of God’s fiery judgments! If we take either the teaching of Scripture or of nature, we see that the dominant conception of fire is of a beneficent agent. Nature tells us that fire is a necessary condition of life; its mission is to sustain life; and to purify, even when it dissolves.
Fire is the sign, not of God’s wrath, but of his Being. When God comes to Ezekiel there is a “fire unfolding itself” (Ezek 1:4, 27), and “the appearance of fire” (Ezek 8:2); Christ’s eyes are a flame of “fire” (Rev 1:14); and seven lamps of “fire” are the seven Spirits of God (Rev 4:5). So a fiery stream is said “to go before God”; his throne is fiery flame, its wheels are burning fire (Dan 7:9, 10); his eyes are lamps of fire (Dan 7:10, 6); he is a wall of fire (Zech 2:5); at his touch the mountains smoke (Ps 104:32); and God’s ministers are a flame of fire (Ps 104:4; Heb 1:7). It is not meant to deny that the divine fire chastises and destroys. It is meant that purification, not ruin, is the final outcome of that fire from above, which consumes—call it, if you please, a paradox—in order that it may save. For if God be love, then by what but by love can his fires be kindled? They are, in fact, the very flame of love; and so we have the key to the words: “Your God is a consuming fire” and “Your God is a merciful God” (Deut 4:24–31). So God devours the earth with fire, in order that finally all may call upon the name of the Lord (Zeph 3:8–9)—words full of significance. So Isaiah tells us of God’s cleansing the daughters of Zion by . . . the spirit of burning (Isa 4:4)—suggestive words. And, so again, “By fire will the Lord plead with all flesh” (Ps 66:16). And Christ coming to save, comes to purify by “fire” (Mal 3:2).
These words bring us to the New Testament. There we find that “fire,” like judgment, so far from being the sinner’s portion only, is the portion of all. Like God’s judgment again, it is not future merely, but present; it is “already kindled,” i.e., always kindled: its object is not torment, but cleansing. The proof comes from the lips of our Lord himself. “I am come to send fire on the earth” [Luke 12:49], words that in fact convey all I am seeking to teach, for it is certain that he came as a Saviour. Thus, coming to save, Christ comes with fire, nay, with fire already kindled. He comes to baptize with the Holy Ghost, and with fire. Therefore it is that Christ teaches in a solemn passage (usually misunderstood, Mark 9:43) that every one shall be salted with fire. And so the “fire is to try every man’s work.” He whose work fails is saved (mark the word saved), not damned “so as by fire,” for God’s fire, by consuming what is evil, saves and refines. The ancient tradition that represents Christ as saying, “He that is near me is near fire,” expresses a vital truth. So Malachi, already quoted, describes Christ as being in his saving work “like a refiner’s fire.” And so, echoing Deuteronomy 4:24–31, we are told that “our God is a consuming fire,” i.e., God in his closest relation to us: God is love: God is spirit: but “our God is a consuming fire”—a consuming fire, “by which the whole material substance of sin is destroyed.” When, then, we read that “coals of fire” go before God (Ps 18:12–13), we think of the deeds of love, which are “coals of fire” to our enemies (Rom 12:20). Thus, we who teach hope for all men do not shrink from, but accept in their fullest meaning, these mysterious “fires” of Gehenna, of which Christ speaks (kindled for purification), as in a special sense the sinner’s doom in the coming ages. But taught by the clearest statements of Scripture (confirmed as they are by many analogies of nature), we see in these “fires” not a denial of, but a mode of fulfilling, the promise—“Behold, I make all things new” [Rev 21:5].