THE SPIRITUAL FIRE that burns in the life of a believer is not there because the believer took some spiritual sticks and matches and then proceeded to light his own inner campfire. That flame is there because that believer wandered too close to God! Or, more accurately, God wandered too close to that believer. In fact, our worship of God is not simply from us drumming up enthusiasm for God, our worship is there because, at some point in the past, God revealed to us a miniscule inkling of His glory. And now we want more!

When Israel saw the massive pillar of fire that pierced the night sky (Exodus 13:21-22), it must have been a confidence building and awe inspiring sight. As they wandered in the desert, all their present strength and future hope were banked on this ever-present vision of God’s supreme glory and fearsome might. And when the people of Israel moved from place to place, the first thing that the other nations saw was not a humdrum banner weakly flickering in the wind, they saw the towering inferno of God’s “pinky finger.” That sight would have made anyone take pause!

But for the contemporary Christian, the question that we face is this: what is our vision of God? Or more precisely, how do we view Jesus Christ? Is he, for example, our exalted pillar of fire (“I am the light of the world”) or is he just a humble, beaten-up peasant who does little to inspire courage in our lives? Is he at one with the holy Godhead or is he just a “gifted” mortal? Is he the lion or is he solely the lamb? Since we are called to pattern our lives after Jesus Christ, the answers to these questions are of utmost importance. If we view him as a pacifist with no inkling of holiness, judgement, and authority, we will live our lives in cowardice and with constant accommodations to injustice and sin. On the other hand, if we forget his humility and humanity, we lose the tenderness, compassion, and love that vividly marked his life.

In our time, there has been a crisis in our image of Jesus. We all have tended to define Jesus as who we want him to be instead of who he really is. Theologians call this exercise of defining the person, nature, and role of Jesus as our Christology. And if our Christology is not based on an accurate biblical portrayal of Christ, then our lives will veer towards compassion without moral conviction or towards judgement without essential joy. True Christianity lies in a precarious balance—between hatred for sin (especially personal sin) and forgiveness for those who sin against us, between passionately upholding justice and offering unmerited mercy, and between the hard rod of discipline and the tender hand of compassion. Very few Christians (especially me) live this difficult balance very well. We tend to be hard on those who should deserve compassion and compassionate on those who should be rebuked. But Jesus lived this pattern perfectly. To the woman caught in adultery, he demonstrated God’s forgiveness (“neither do I condemn you”) and God’s unyielding holy standards (“go now and leave your life of sin”). When he encountered the Pharisees, he rebuked them and asked them how they expected to escape the damnation of hell. And when Jesus encountered a prostitute (who probably believed that she deserved the damnation of hell), he offered breathtaking grace.

The entire life of Jesus is marked with this amazing and divine balance. Even towards the end of his ministry, his betrayal, trial, torture, and crucifixion—which we normally view as something that Jesus passively had to endure—were marked by complete sovereignty (“your will be done”) and authority (“into your hands I commit my spirit”). In Acts 2:23, Peter said this about Jesus to the people who crucified him, “This man was handed over to you by God’s set purpose and foreknowledge; and you, with the help of wicked men, put him to death by nailing him to the cross.” Nothing that had happened to Jesus on the cross was by accident. And those people who meant evil by crucifying Jesus unwittingly played right into God’s ordained plan for redemption.

When Jesus was dying on the cross and writhing in pain, he had every right to express unbridled holy judgement and turn Golgotha into a raging “pillar of fire.” All he’d have to do to unleash this consuming fiery was to display the “pinky of God.” Instead, he revealed something much more earthshaking and powerful—grace and forgiveness.