Rev.1:12-14 – Then I turned to see the voice that was speaking with me. And after turning I saw seven golden lampstands; and in the middle of the lampstands I saw one like a son of man, clothed in a robe reaching to the feet, and wrapped around the chest with a golden sash. His head and His hair were white like white wool, like snow; and His eyes were like a flame of fire.
I think the thing that shocked those who were close to Jesus when He was here on earth was the uniqueness of His humility as a man and the overwhelming sense of eternity and God’s power that was always with Him. He would walk on water and fall asleep in a boat, or feed thousands of people with a boy’s lunch and settle for a lone fig when He was hungry. He formed the universe with His words but was at a loss for words as a baby in a manger. When John saw Jesus on the Isle of Patmos he saw the fire of lightning flashing from His eyes. How could this be the same one who wept outside of Lazarus’s tomb? Here is how Eugene Peterson describes this contrast seen in Christ.
“And He is purifying: “His eyes were like a flame of fire”. A host of biblical images accumulate in the fire-flaming eyes of the Son of Man: pillar of fire, burning bush, altar fires, fiery furnace, fiery chariots. Fire penetrates and transforms. Holiness gets inside us and when it gets inside us it changes us. Christ’s gaze cleanses and purifies. He doesn’t look at us, He looks into us. We are not a spectacle to Christ, we are invaded by Him. “He is a consuming fire, that only that which cannot be consumed may stand forth eternal. It is the nature of God, so terribly pure that it destroys all that is not pure as fire….he will have purity. It is not that the fire will burn us if we do not worship thus; but that the fire will burn us until we worship thus; yea, will go on burning within us after all that is foreign to it has yielded to its force, no longer with pain and consuming, but as the highest consciousness of life, the presence of God.”
This eternal nature of God is what our hearts long for. Just hearing about Jesus and how to apply His principles in our day to day will never quench the longing of our soul. We long for the fire, that’s the way we are wired. That day on the Isle of Patmos was a good one for John, He was alone and probably tired and hungry on the prison isle he lived on. This encounter with the One with fire in His eyes was exactly what John needed. Not only was John changed that day but everyone who reads about that encounter on the beach is deeply effected as well.
