I’ve been reading and meditating on the Pentateuch (first 5 books of the Bible) and I just read the passage in Exodus where God descends upon the mountain in fire, thunder, and lightening. Interestingly, the focus of this section is on fearing the Lord but not being afraid of the Lord. It is coming close, but not too close. As I was meditating upon this reality, I came to the conclusion that my upbringing has created too great a flipancy in my relationship with God. In other words, I never really had the sense of God as a consuming fire, even as that imagery was sometimes used to talk about my purification.

Let me take a stab at why this was. I think a lot of evangelicals are functionally Marcionites. Marcion was a second century heretic, who accepted Jesus but reject the God of the Old Testament. In doing so, he rejected the Old Testament itself. While evangelicals have never done this explicitly, I think we tend to do it implicitly. We read the Old Testament for prophecy about Jesus, for historical information about Israel, and for the Psalms and Proverbs, but generally, we do not believe it speaks meaningfully into our lives today (I always laugh when I hear pastors, who almost never preach from the Old Testament, suddenly act like Old Testament scholars when they preach about money – tithing specifically!).

Rather than rejecting the Old Testament, we tend to bracket it to obscurity. Instead of grasping Christ as the key that unveils these Scriptures, we relegate them to merely affirming everything we already believe about Christ. It is interesting, that when the New Testament does affirm that God is a consuming fire, it is no less concerned with our reverence, but states, “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” (Heb. 12:28-29).

Importantly, this same author states,

“Since then we have a great high priest who has passed through the heavens, Jesus, the Son of God, let us hold fast our confession. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to sympathize with our weakness, but one who in every respect has been tempted as we are, yet without sin. Let us then with confidence draw near to the throne of grace, that we may receive mercy and find grace to help in time of need.”

We are called to draw near, but that nearness doesn’t somehow undermine the reverence and “fear of God” we must maintain in his presence. What are your thoughts? Did you have a similar experience growing up? Has your God lost his “consuming” nature?