For God made Christ, who never sinned, to be the offering for our sin, so that we could be made right with God through Christ.

2 Corinthians 5:21

One bright blue day a farmer and his daughter went walking.

He owned 150 acres of field and the flowing amber waves of wheat were a calming invitation for an early morning excursion. After a good hour of walking through the chest high stalks of grain, they decided to head home. But the farmer soon noticed that a line of black ominous clouds were approaching. It was not a rainstorm, for the sky was still a beautiful blue; but to his horror he saw that his crops were on fire and an army of devouring flames were heading their way.

“Daddy, what do we do?” The daughter cried. “We’re going to die!”

They didn’t have much time because fire in a wheat field travels fast. The farmer knew that there was no way they would outrun the blaze especially with the strong wind that was pushing the deadly flames quickly toward them. A thought came to his mind. “Here darling, take my matches and we need to set a large area on fire around us.” “But why?” She cried, “That won’t help us, it is just more fire?”

“Trust me,” the farmer insisted. After they lit a large patch, they let it burn down-wind from them. After a short 10 minutes, a giant dark circle of charred grain stalks were left still smoldering leaving behind black dirt and burnt stubble. The farmer wiped his sweating brow as the flame was swiftly pushing away from them by the strong wind. 

“How does that help us dad? The other line of fire is still coming our way! I’m really scared!”

The farmer grabbed his daughter’s hand and moved her to the middle of the burn circle. “Just hold tight and wait.” As they stood in the middle of the barren section they watched the massive fire get closer and closer to them. “Dad, it’s way to close, I can even feel the heat,” the girl whimpered as she hid her face in her dad’s embrace.

“Don’t worry my dear, we will be fine. Just watch.” As he squeezed his daughter’s hand tight he noticed how the hungry fire stopped right at the border of the already burnt land. “Look my dear, since the patch we are standing on has already been swallowed by the flame, there is nothing left to burn. We are safe!”

Sure enough, just like it was under command, the angry blaze danced just around the edge of black circle, pressed back by an invisible barrier the fire couldn’t come closer. Soon the orange wall and black cloud moved down the large expanse of the field leaving a trail of blackened soil behind.

“Daddy, we’re safe now, right?”

“Yes my girl, we are safe.

___________

“Something is terribly wrong and it must be put right.” So says the theologian as they look upon the problems with the world. It is as if a fire is blazing, people are being consumed by the flames of wickedness they set on fire. As Billy Joel says, “We didn’t start the fire, it was always burning since the worlds been turning!” Hosea 4:1-3 says if you look close you can see destruction everywhere from violence, adultery and rape, to murder and injustice. That is why the land is wasting away.

So who is going to make things right? Isaiah 1 :24-25 says…

“Therefore the Lord says, the Lord of hosts, the Mighty One of Israel…’I will turn my hand against you and will smelt away your dross as with lye and remove all your allow.’”

The New Testament calls God’s work the refining fire. A divine burning to remove the dross of sin. Hebrews 12:29 says “our God is a devouring fire.”

But why so serious? Why so severe?

Can’t God just turn a blind-eye away and let bygones be bygones? Sure people sin, but he is God and he can learn to forgive and forget, can’t he? Alexander Solzhenitsyn, a man who endured years of Stalin’s evil Gulag death camps, answers this question for us when he says, “If only it were all so simple! If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds, and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”

Evil and sin are not one time actions and events, it is a state of being. A power that binds and permeates everything. As Fleming Rutledge writes, “So long as we live in this fallen world, we are simul justus et peccator (saint and sinner simultaneously), until the destruction of the ‘old Adam’ is completed as God makes all things new.”

In other words, God cannot just forgive and forget because fallenness remains. There needs to be a remedy to get rid of it, to cut off it’s head, to smite it dead. As another person has once stated, “Peace without justice (payment) is an illusory peace that sets the stage for vengeful behavior later on.” Payment needs to be made, judgment needs to make things right. And God is the only one big enough to do it.

But how?

God decided, as Fleming explains it, “to place himself under his own sentence. The wrath of God has lodged in God’s own self. Perfect justice is wrought in the self-offering of the Son, who alone of all human beings was perfectly righteous. Therefore no one, neither victim nor victimizer, can claim any exemption from judgement on one’s own merits, but only the merits of the Son.”

Sin is an infection, not merely a legal infraction. So salvation must be more than a judicial decree. There must be a payment big enough to satisfy the offended, God’ wrath, and a solution deep enough to offer cleansing from Sin, Jesus’ blood. The cross offered both. Jesus was made sin for us, he was the solution. Romans 5:9 could not be any clearer, “Since we have now been justified by his blood, how much more shall we be saved from God’s wrath through him!”

When the fire of God was sent our way, His perfect justice allowed himself to be burnt first. Now, those who accept Jesus’ payment as their own, can stand on his, “giant dark circle of charred grain stalks that are still smoldering.” Faith stands in the circle of God’s grace.

There is a haunting picture in the last chapter of the book of Isaiah where those who rebelled against God and refused to repent are left to devouring flames. Listen to the language, “For the worms that devour them will never die, and that burns them will never go out.” Terrifying passage. But in Psalm 22:6, there is a prophecy and prediction about the cross that Jesus will mount to take away our sins. In that passage Jesus is described like this, “I am a worm and not a man. I am scorned and despised by all!” He became the object of mankind’s utter humiliation, the worm that is being devoured was him. God’s eternal fire was set ablaze on his life for us.

So are you standing on him by faith? Will you escape the coming wrath? Psalm 50:3-4 is still coming our way, “Our God approaches, and he is not silent. Fire devours everything in his way, and a great storm rages around him. He calls on the heavens above the earth below to witness the judgment of his people.” There is a way out. But if you don’t take it, you will not survive.

Here are two questions to ponder:

1. How does the opening illustration describe the work that Jesus did on the cross?
2. Why isn’t this message popular? Don’t you think the whole world would want a way out from God’s devouring fire?