#for god is a consuming fire
Some people attempt to share the gospel message by making a “sales pitch” for Jesus. The temptation in evangelism is to make the message seem as attractive as possible, and to minimize the difficulties involved in making a genuine decision to walk with the Messiah. Often the appeal is made along the lines of the ego’s self-interest. Jesus is put forth as a solution to life’s problems, a panacea for the worries of life, a blessing for your love life, etc. “Believe in Jesus – because it works for you! You’ll be amazed by the results! God will bless you and you’ll find happiness and contentment at last!"
Unless we are careful, using an approach like this can make a subtle appeal to the flesh, to the all-too-human desire for personal satisfaction, happiness, and even pride. But Jesus never made a "cheap sale” of His message and mission. He never appealed to the flesh as a reason for following Him. On the contrary, he repeatedly stated the cost of discipleship and warned of being hated for his sake. “For the gate is narrow and the way is hard (i.e., τεθλιμμένη, "oppressive”) that leads to life, and those who find it are few" (Matt. 7:14). Indeed, Jesusoften intentionally offended people when they encountered him. Far from making it easy to believe, Jesus regularly put up stumbling blocks when people approached Him. He never was a “people pleaser” and He never apologized for speaking the truth, just as He never sought the crowd’s approval nor sought a “market” for His mission. Even less did Jesus seek the approval of the status quo, that is, the religious establishment of the Jews or the political establishment of Rome.
In short, Jesus’s life was scandalous to human beings and their various conceits. Encounters with him were always “tests” that evoked one of two responses: offense or faith. For example, Jesus scandalized his family (Matt. 12:48), his community (Matt. 13:54-57, John 6:42), the gawking crowd (John 6:26-30), various religious seekers (Mark 10:17-22), the religious establishment (Matt. 15:12), the political establishment (Luke 13:32), and even His own followers (John 6:61). His question is always, “Who do you say that I am?” People either were offended at Him or accepted Him, but Jesus made it impossible for them to be indifferentabout Who He was.
John J. Parsons
The Holy Spirit renews us in baptism through His godhead, which He shares with the Father and the Son. Finding us in a state of deformity, the Spirit restores our original beauty and fills us with His grace, leaving no room for anything unworthy of our love. The Spirit frees us from sin and death, and changes us from the earthly men we were, men of dust and ashes, into spiritual men, sharers in the Divine Glory, sons and heirs of God the Father– who bear a likeness to the Son and are His co-heirs and brothers, destined to reign with Him and to share His glory. In place of earth, the Spirit reopens heaven to us and gladly admits us into paradise, giving us even now greater honour than the angels, and by the holy waters of baptism extinguishing the unquenchable fires of hell.
We men are conceived twice: to the human body we owe our first conception, to the divine Spirit, our second. John says: “To all who received Him, who believed in His name, He gave power to become children of God. These were born not by human generation, not by the desire of the flesh, not by the will of man, but of God.” All who believed in Christ, he says, received power to become children of God– that is, of the Holy Spirit, and to gain kinship with God. To show that their parent was God the Holy Spirit, he adds these words of Christ: “I give you this solemn warning, that without being born of water and the Spirit, no one can enter the kingdom of God.” [But through that same Spirit, He has given us both the power and means to accomplish this.]
Visibly, through the ministry of priests, the [water of the baptismal] font gives symbolic birth to our visible bodies. Invisibly, through the ministry of angels, the Spirit of God, whom even the mind’s eye cannot see, baptizes into Himself both our souls and bodies, giving them a new birth. Speaking quite literally, and also in harmony with the words of water and the Spirit, John the Baptist says of Christ: “He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and with fire.” Since we are only vessels of clay, we must first be cleansed in water and then hardened by spiritual fire – for God is a consuming fire. We need the Holy Spirit to perfect and renew us, for spiritual fire can cleanse us, and spiritual water can recast us as in a furnace, and make us into new men.
Saint Didymus of Alexandria
