The Fire That Already Burned

In August 1949, a crew of fifteen smokejumpers parachuted into Mann Gulch, Montana, to fight what seemed like a routine wildfire. But the blaze turned on them, racing uphill at terrifying speed. With seconds to spare, foreman Wagner Dodge did something no one had ever seen — he struck a match and set fire to the grass directly at his feet. As his small blaze consumed the fuel around him, he lay face down in the fresh ashes. The massive wildfire roared over him and passed. He survived because he placed himself where the fire had already burned. There was nothing left for the flames to consume.

The rest of his crew ran from the fire. Twelve men died on that hillside.

Peter tells us that Christ suffered once for sins, the righteous for the unrighteous, to bring us to God. Like Dodge's escape fire, Christ entered the full fury of judgment and death — not to escape it, but to exhaust it. He passed through death and came out alive on the other side, risen and seated at the right hand of the Almighty with every authority and power in submission to Him.

Baptism, Peter says, is our way of stepping onto that burned ground. Not a washing of the body, but the pledge of a clear conscience — a declaration that we stand where Christ has already stood, in the place where judgment has spent itself completely. The fire has nothing left to claim.