The Fire That Doesn't Burn

I sometimes wonder what it would look like if Amazon started selling indulgences.

“SoulPrime™ — Skip the wait for forgiveness!

One-click grace, Prime-eligible!”

Basic Mercy ships in three to five business days, or upgrade to Prime Grace™ for instant absolution with angelic delivery.

And in the fine print: “No refunds after death. Terms subject to divine sovereignty.”

We laugh — and we should.

But then I have to ask, isn’t that what we try to do sometimes?

Find an easier way to feel clean?

A quick checkout for the soul?

Grace can’t be ordered or shipped.

It was already delivered — once for all — on a cross.

And that’s where the real fire fell: the fire that doesn’t burn.

I once met a man who worked the furnaces in a steel mill on the south side of Chicago. He said the heat had a voice. When the doors slid open, the blaze didn’t just glow; it spoke. It hissed at the rust, roared at the scrap, and turned what was crooked into something straight. He told me, “You don’t just fix metal here, you redeem it. But you never want to be on the wrong side of the flame.”

Most people understand that without a theology class. Somewhere deep in us we know there is a fire in the universe that is more than heat. It’s holy. It’s the “no” of a righteous God to everything that destroys His children. And because we know that, religions across the world have invented ways to manage it—rituals, candles, prayers, penances—insurance policies for the soul. Somewhere in that tangle, the Western church imagined a hallway between earth and heaven, a place to finish the cleansing for those who died in God’s grace but still smudged with earth. They called it purgatory. It wasn’t born from hatred of God; it was born from the fear of meeting Him unprepared.

I understand that fear. I’ve looked in the mirror enough to know there are smears a quick rinse won’t remove. Words I wish I could recall, thoughts that wandered where I don’t want to confess, moments I loved myself more than the One who first loved me. If heaven is pure and I am not, how will I stand there? That’s the honest question purgatory tried to answer.

But before we go there, let me walk you down a German street five centuries ago. A monk in black is listening to a sound he can’t bear anymore. It’s the jingle of coins in a wooden box and the chant of a Dominican friar named Johann Tetzel. The man has set up shop like a traveling carnival of religion. He preaches fire hot enough to blister a crowd. He paints purgatory in colors that make old men cry and children cling to their mothers. Then he lifts his voice and boasts, “As soon as the coin in the coffer rings, the soul from purgatory springs.”

What a business model. Weaponize fear. Monetize forgiveness. Offer a discount on pain. He wasn’t selling second chances to rebels determined to run from God. He was selling hope to grandmothers who missed their husbands and farmers who buried their babies. He was selling relief to sons who couldn’t sleep for thinking about their father’s temper and what that might mean on the other side. He was selling to people just like us—people who knew about the furnace and wondered if there was any way to face it and live.

They called it an indulgence, a purchase order on mercy. The money helped raise the marble of St. Peter’s in Rome. But one sad monk named Martin Luther heard the sales pitch and something broke. He didn’t start with rage. He started with a question. Then another. Then ninety-five of them, nailed to a church door in a little town called Wittenberg. Those nails were not the end of the world; they were the beginning of one. And under every question you could hear the same aching refrain: If forgiveness can be bought, what did the cross buy?

Now, friend, I’m not here tonight to throw stones across five hundred years. I’m here to say something gentler and truer and nearer: indulgences didn’t die with Tetzel. We still buy them—only we use different currency. We trade a week of better behavior for a lighter conscience. We tip heavy at lunch and call it kindness to quiet the memory of a sharp tongue. We promise God we’ll do better next time and slip a little spiritual coupon onto the counter of heaven. We tell ourselves we’re paying something down. And the cross—God help us—becomes a receipt.

Listen to me with love: when forgiveness is for sale, grace becomes a commodity, and the cross becomes a transaction. But Calvary was never a transaction. It was an invasion of mercy. It was God saying, “Stand back from the furnace. I’m going in.”