The Bronze Serpent

In a few sentences in John 3, Jesus directs our attention back to a short, but important, event in Num­bers 21.

Serpents in the wilderness

The situation is not unlike others: the people reject God, He punishes them, they cry out for deliverance, He saves them. This time their sin was a general complaint about their condi­tions and “this light bread.” They were rejecting God’s deliverance of them from Egypt, and the means provided for their sustenance. In response, the Lord sends deadly serpents, a vivid portrayal of their denial of Him — a real-life enactment of their sin, their spiritual state.

They cry out for help because they fear not the bites of the serpents in themselves, but the inevitable conse­quence, death. So Moses is instructed by God to make a bronze representa­tion of what inflicted the deadly bite, a serpent, and place it on a pole.

They then had to change their fo­cus from the fear of death, their eyes toward the dust, to faith that they would live by acknowledging the problem when they looked at the bronze serpent held aloft on the pole. Those who did that were healed. Note: They looked in faith for healing, not that they would be healed by what was on the pole, but that by acknowledging their sin and repenting, God’s mercy would heal them.

A pointer to the cross

Jesus’ words direct us to an anal­ogy that we might otherwise not have drawn or seen. “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up…” (in. 3:14 all quotes NI V).

Again we see people subject to sin and death, their focus on the dust. Since Adam and Eve, human nature (“the flesh”) has rejected and contin­ues to reject the salvation of God (His deliverance from Egyptian darkness and provision of the bread of life). Through the bite of sin, death appears inevitable. God in His mercy again intercedes and this time we have Jesus on the “pole.” What does he repre­sent? We saw that the bronze serpent was a direct representation of what afflicted the people and caused death, and the same is true of the cross. Jesus’ crucifixion was a physical en­actment, the culmination of his spiri­tual “putting to death” of human na­ture and its tendency to sin.

Just as the people had looked to the bronze serpent on the pole, so we look to Jesus and see that human na­ture was overcome (“…by his death he might destroy him who holds the power of death — that is, the devil — and free those who all their lives were held in slavery by their fear of death” [Heb. 2:14-15]). By allying ourselves with him who overcame it, we open ourselves to God’s grace and healing. “For God so loved the world he gave his one and only son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16). God heals us, as He healed the Israelites, when we look in faith to Jesus, and He gives us the promise of immortal­ity, life everlasting (Rev. 21:3).

Maintaining our focus

We not only ally ourselves spiritu­ally with Jesus, but by the physical act of baptism we symbolically crucify our old self with him “that the body of sin might be done away with” and so we are “dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus” (Rom. 6:6,11).

Because sin is an ongoing chal­lenge in our lives, we have to make sure that we have the right focus, that we are looking at all times — at hu­man nature destroyed, and the mind of the Spirit triumphant. God’s grace can then be poured out on us. We check our focus every time we par­take of the bread and of the wine, when we remind ourselves that we ally ourselves with Jesus, with the subjugation of human nature, and that we seek a relationship with God. “Therefore, brothers, we have an ob­ligation — but it is not to the sinful nature, to live according to it. For if you live according to the sinful na­ture, you will die, but if by the Spirit you put to death the misdeeds of the body, you will live, because those who are led by the Spirit of God are sons of God” (Rom. 8:12-14).

When we partake of the bread and wine, we may, and should, dwell on the depth of Jesus’ sufferings, but our final focus should be on the purpose of those sufferings and death. The bread and wine represent Jesus’ put­ting to death of human nature and its tendency to sin, and therefore living to God. We think about our sinful state at the breaking of bread, but, again, this should not be the endpoint of our meditation — we should then go on to reaffirm our allegiance to Jesus, looking in faith to God for heal­ing and grace. We are then able to go forward into another week with the right focus and faith in God’s love.