The Wrong Kind of Fire: Luke 9:51-56
Introduction: Zeal Without Knowledge
We live in an age that despises righteous judgment. Our culture has elevated an effeminate, therapeutic tolerance as the highest virtue, and so the very idea of calling down fire on anyone for anything is considered the height of primitive barbarism. But at the same time, this same culture is shot through with its own vindictive, petty, and vicious forms of judgment. They cancel, they deplatform, they ruin men's lives over a decade-old joke, and they do it with a self-righteous fury that would make a Puritan blush. They hate God's fire, but they love their own.
Into this confusion, the Christian must walk with care. We are commanded to love our enemies, and we are also given psalms that call for God to break the teeth of His enemies. We are told that vengeance belongs to the Lord, and we are also told that the magistrate bears the sword as God's minister of wrath. We follow a Savior who rebuked His disciples for wanting to call down fire, and who also cleansed the Temple with a whip. So which is it? Are we to be passive and gentle, or are we to be militant and confrontational? The answer, as always, is that we are to be biblical. We must have our zeal shaped by the Word of God, not by our own fallen impulses or the spirit of the age.
This passage is a master class in the difference between carnal, vindictive zeal and true, righteous indignation. James and John, the "Sons of Thunder," see their Lord dishonored, and their immediate, gut reaction is to reach for the biggest weapon they can think of: heavenly fire. They had the right protective instinct, but it was untutored, unsanctified, and ultimately aimed at the wrong target in the wrong way. They wanted to use God's power to settle a personal score, to vindicate their own honor which they had wrapped up in Jesus. But Jesus did not come to vindicate the fragile egos of His followers. He came to save the world by laying down His own life.
Here we learn a crucial lesson about the nature of the Kingdom. The Kingdom of God does not advance through displays of raw, coercive power. It advances by the power of the cross, by resurrection life, by the patient preaching of the gospel, and by the slow, steady work of discipleship. The fire that Jesus came to cast on the earth was not the fire of Elijah, but the fire of Pentecost. And before that fire could fall, He first had to be consumed by the fire of God's wrath on the cross. James and John wanted a shortcut to glory, but the way to glory is always, always the way of the cross.
The Text
Now it happened that when the days for Him to be taken up were soon to be fulfilled, He set His face to go to Jerusalem; and He sent messengers on ahead of Him, and they went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for Him. But they did not receive Him, because He was journeying with His face toward Jerusalem. And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, "Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?" But He turned and rebuked them, [and said, "You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them."] And they went on to another village.
(Luke 9:51-56 LSB)
The Resolute Savior (v. 51-53)
We begin with the solemn determination of the Lord Jesus.
"Now it happened that when the days for Him to be taken up were soon to be fulfilled, He set His face to go to Jerusalem; and He sent messengers on ahead of Him, and they went and entered a village of the Samaritans to make arrangements for Him. But they did not receive Him, because He was journeying with His face toward Jerusalem." (Luke 9:51-53)
Luke marks a pivotal moment in his narrative. The time of Christ's "being taken up" is approaching. This phrase encompasses His entire glorification: His suffering, death, resurrection, and ascension. The cross is not a tragic accident; it is the fulfillment of a divine timetable. In response, Jesus "set His face to go to Jerusalem." This is a Hebrew idiom of resolute, unshakeable determination. He is not meandering; He is on a mission. He is marching toward His own enthronement, and the path to that throne runs directly through Golgotha.
On the way, He sends messengers into a Samaritan village. This in itself is a sign of grace. The animosity between Jews and Samaritans was ancient and bitter. The Samaritans had a rival temple on Mount Gerizim and a corrupted version of the Pentateuch. For a Jewish teacher to seek lodging with them was an extension of fellowship. But this grace is rejected. Why? "Because He was journeying with His face toward Jerusalem." Their rejection was not personal in one sense; it was theological and political. They saw His journey to Jerusalem as a validation of the Temple worship they had repudiated. Their hatred for Jerusalem was greater than their hospitality. They rejected the King because He was going to the city of the King. This is how deep-seated religious and ethnic pride works. It makes men cut off their nose to spite their face. They would rather reject God's salvation than admit they were wrong about the location of a building.
The Sons of Thunder (v. 54)
The disciples' reaction is immediate and fiery.
"And when His disciples James and John saw this, they said, 'Lord, do You want us to command fire to come down from heaven and consume them?'" (Luke 9:54 LSB)
You have to almost admire the audacity. James and John don't just want to see their enemies punished; they want to be the ones to do it. "Do You want us to command fire?" They saw themselves as deputies of divine wrath. And they even had a biblical precedent in mind. The full text in some manuscripts adds, "just as Elijah did" (cf. 2 Kings 1). Elijah called down fire on the soldiers of a wicked king who had rejected God's prophet. From a certain flat-footed, literalist perspective, the parallel seems obvious. Here is God's great Prophet, rejected by unbelievers. Time to call in the airstrike.
This is the error of zeal without knowledge. Their hearts were in the right place, wanting to defend the honor of their Lord. But their theology was askew. They failed to understand the radical shift in redemptive history that was occurring in the person of Jesus. Elijah operated under the Old Covenant, a covenant that often displayed God's immediate, temporal judgments as a sign of His holiness and power over the nations. But Jesus was inaugurating the New Covenant, a covenant of worldwide gospel proclamation and patient long-suffering. The time for final judgment had not yet come. This was the time for mercy.
Their spirit was also wrong. This was not a dispassionate desire to see God's justice done. This was a fleshly, prideful, vindictive anger. They were insulted. Their plans were disrupted. Their Master was snubbed. And their response was to want to see a whole village of men, women, and children incinerated. This is what happens when our personal honor gets tangled up with God's honor. We start to think that every slight against us is a slight against God that requires immediate, spectacular retribution.
The Spirit of the Son of Man (v. 55-56)
Jesus' rebuke is sharp and instructive. It reorients their entire worldview.
"But He turned and rebuked them, [and said, 'You do not know what kind of spirit you are of, for the Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them.'] And they went on to another village." (Genesis 9:55-56 LSB)
Jesus turns and rebukes them. He tells them they do not know what spirit they are of. They thought they were operating in the spirit of Elijah, the spirit of righteous zeal. But Jesus tells them they are animated by a different spirit altogether. It was a spirit of personal vengeance, of worldly power, of fleshly impatience. It was a spirit that did not align with His own spirit and mission.
He then defines His mission at His first advent. "The Son of Man did not come to destroy men's lives, but to save them." This is a foundational statement. Jesus' first coming was a mission of rescue, not of judgment. He came to bear the fire of judgment Himself, so that others would not have to. He came to be consumed on the cross so that villages of Samaritans could hear the gospel and be saved. John would later write that God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved (John 3:17). There is a day of judgment coming, a day when Christ will return with fire to judge the living and the dead. But that was not this day. This was the day of salvation.
This does not mean we abandon the imprecatory psalms or the biblical doctrine of God's wrath. Not at all. It means we must learn to distinguish between times and seasons, and between God's prerogatives and our own. We are to pray for God to bring His justice, but we are to do so in submission to His timing and His methods, leaving vengeance in His hands. We are not to take up the thunderbolts ourselves. Our primary weapon in this age is not fire from heaven, but the gospel of peace.
And what is the result? "And they went on to another village." This is the quiet, anticlimactic, and profound conclusion. They did not argue. They did not get a display of power. They simply moved on. The Kingdom of God does not force its way in. The messengers of the King preach the gospel, and if it is rejected, they shake the dust off their feet and go to the next town. The judgment for that rejection is real, but it is reserved for the last day. Our job now is to preach, to love, to persuade, and when rejected, to move on to more fertile ground.
Conclusion: The Fire We Should Desire
James and John wanted the wrong fire, at the wrong time, for the wrong reasons. They wanted the fire of judgment to fall on others. But the fire they needed was the fire of Pentecost to fall on them. And it did. After the resurrection and ascension, this same John who wanted to burn a village would write more about the love of God than any other apostle. This same James would be the first of the apostles to be martyred, laying down his life for the gospel of grace (Acts 12:2).
What changed them? They finally understood the mission. They understood that the fire of God's wrath had been poured out completely on Jesus at the cross. Because He was consumed, we are not. Because He was destroyed, we can be saved. And having been saved, we are now sent out not with lightning bolts, but with a message of reconciliation.
The spirit of James and John is alive and well in the Church today. We see it on the right, in a pugnacious, angry fundamentalism that seems to delight more in condemning sinners than in saving them. We see it on the left, in a social justice rage that wants to burn down the whole structure of society in the name of a counterfeit compassion. Both are animated by a spirit that knows not Christ.
The spirit of Christ is different. It is a spirit that is resolutely set on the cross. It is a spirit that is willing to be rejected, to be misunderstood, to be dishonored, for the sake of the mission. It is a spirit that seeks to save lives, not destroy them. And it is a spirit that, when confronted with a hard-hearted and hostile world, does not call for fire. It preaches the gospel, and then it goes on to the next village.