From fire without to fire within

I was brought up hearing the message of salvation clearly and repeatedly, week after week, in such an unmistakable way that classic gospel texts like John 3:16, Romans 3:23 and 1 Timothy 1:15 are etched on my psyche to this day. And I am eternally grateful for that.

I heard a lot of preaching that painted fiery pictures of hell in such a way that every hearer was anxious to run to the cross of Christ for rescue. I was left in no doubt that I had an urgent need to ‘be saved’, and I’m very glad about that.

The problem was – and I don’t think this is unique to my upbringing – that I knew what I was saved FROM, but I was less clear on what I was saved FOR. The gospel was presented, almost exclusively, as a rescue act which left me wondering what God’s ultimate plan for me looked like.

I knew there was a heaven, but the thought of sitting on a cloud playing a harp forever did not fill me with relish! That is why Romans 8 has become such an inspiration to me. Paul tells us that God’s ultimate plan for us has nothing to do with learning a percussion instrument, and everything to do with the Christ who saved me. He is not just my rescuer, He is my vision for living.

God’s ultimate desire for you and me is not simply to rescue us from the fire, but to put a new fire in us. A pulsating vision that will occupy us from here to eternity: ‘for those whom God foreknew he also predestined to be conformed to the image of his Son, in order that he might be the firstborn among many brothers’ (Rom. 8:29).

God’s vision is so enormous, and so detailed, that His ‘foreknowing’ and ‘predestining’ us reveals a plan that God has been putting in place for a very long time – to make us like Jesus. Before God threw a star into space, He had already planned to make you and me like the Son of His love. That was his ‘end game’, to quote a famous Marvel movie. And Philippians 1 fills us with confidence that, whatever struggles, sins and failures we face on the way, God will ‘complete the good work he began in us’.

I John 3:1 says the remarkable words, ‘when we see him we shall be like him.’ That is a verse my father, now struggling with dementia, quotes to me every phone call. He will instantly be transformed one day from dementia to Christlikeness. What a glorious vision God has for all those who trust in Him.

Not just to save us from the fire, but to fill us with a new fire. The more you meditate on who Christ is, the more glorious this vision becomes to you, and we echo John’s words in our hearts, ‘whoever has this hope in him (the hope of being transformed into the likeness of Jesus on the Last Day) purifies himself, just as he is pure’ (1 John 3:3).

The sign that we have truly grasped God’s extraordinary plan for our lives of making us like Christ – the perfect God/Man, and ‘altogether lovely’ one – is that we are ‘purifying ourselves’. That daily struggle of putting sin to death and growing in the fruit of the Spirit – which Philippians 1 refers to as ‘working out your salvation with fear and trembling’ – has the most glorious goal. ‘When we see him, we shall be like him, for we shall see him as he is.’ There is enough fuel in that vision to light up a thousand lives.