The snake is one of the most feared of all creatures. In some areas, people have tried to exterminate them, but there are billions of them left to crawl under our homes and come into contact with mortal man on a daily basis.
They may have a sort of beauty to them, yet they carry the reputation of having “the sting of death.” Some do not, of course, but most of us have trouble remembering how to distinguish the deadly from the harmless so we fear them all.
There is a lesson here for us if we see the snake as reminding us of the sinful world around us. The things of this world look so inviting, so good to the eye and we have trouble telling which parts of it will kill us. We are told that, “Friendship with the world is being an enemy of God” (James 4:4). And, “Love not the world, neither the things that are in the world. If any man love the world, the love of the Father is not in him” (I John 2:15).
The lesson of changing its skin
Let us take another lesson from the snake. We see it sheds its skin and leaves its old one behind. It no longer lives in it and never returns to it to try it on again. Snakes shed their skins as they grow. They can no longer live in the old one so they leave it behind much as we do garments that we outgrow.
Now we are baptized and have died to our old way of life, shedding the life that once held us captive. We are alive with Christ and able to grow and shed many more of our worldly lusts. Let us take a good lesson from this crawling creature we all fear so much and die to the old man and live to the new.
And let us not forget our Father has spoken that the serpent’s seed will one day perish.
“And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed; it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel” (Gen. 3:15).
The Origin of the Organic World – Part One