Make a saraph and mount it on a pole,
and if any who have been bitten look at it, they will live.
The bronze serpent lifted up in the desert was in the same shape as the fiery serpents that bit and even killed those who grumbled against the Lord in the desert. Yet it was this very statue that was the proximate cause of healing for those who were poisoned by the real serpents. It was not something that was beautiful or desirable, but something that was superficially repulsive in the way that the original problem was repulsive. People suffering from the bite of serpents were not eager to look upon one more serpent. But there was an important difference in how they interacted with the bronze serpent. Rather than being bitten by it they were called to look upon it, and in doing so to acknowledge the dire consequences of sin, but now in a form tamed, immobile, and harmless.
And just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert,
so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.
Jesus came into a world that had not ceased grumbling against God and his prophets. He found the poison of the saraph serpents continued to afflict the mankind. And these serpents were sin, and the poison that issued from them was death, and all of its symptoms and consequences. And so, just as Moses condemned the power of the serpents, so too did Jesus condemn sin and death itself.
By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh (see Romans 8:3).
Jesus himself was lifted up on the cross in the likeness of sinful flesh, and sin was condemned in him so that those who looked upon him with faith might be healed of sin and given new life.
And again another Scripture says, “They will look on him whom they have pierced.” (see John 19:37).
The cure was possible only by way of acknowledging the depths of the problem This only happened by seeing the ramifications of sin for one who was entirely innocent, entirely pure. We were not permitted to merely evade the serpents, or to find them removed and no longer biting. We instead watched as sin did its very worst, and yet was itself defeated.
“Death is swallowed up in victory.”
“O death, where is your victory?
O death, where is your sting?” (see First Corinthians 15:54-55)
In the cross we see a different kind of beauty than what we more readily perceive by our senses. We see in the cross the beauty of perfect love poured out for us, with nothing held back. We see a different sort of glory than we perceive in worldly triumphs and victories. But there see glory there to behold nonetheless, and a true victory. The resurrection of the Lord is a crowning of and manifestation of this glory, but there is a sense in which we get closer to the truth of the meaning behind it by gazing upon him whom we have pierced because it is there that we see that the lengths to which love was willing to go for our sakes.
Because of this, God greatly exalted him
and bestowed on him the name
that is above every name,
that at the name of Jesus
every knee should bend,
of those in heaven and on earth and under the earth,
and every tongue confess that
Jesus Christ is Lord,
to the glory of God the Father
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