Question: In your May newsletter you quoted J. C. Ryle that sound theological teaching includes ...

July 1, 1998

TBC Staff

Question: In your May newsletter you quoted J. C. Ryle that sound theological teaching includes “lifting up the Brazen Serpent....” What does that mean? I have always wondered why God would have Moses put a serpent (surely the symbol of Satan) on a pole for the children of Israel to look upon in order to be healed. What is your understanding of this incident?

Response: God told Moses to make a brazen serpent, put it on a pole and to instruct the people who had been bitten with deadly serpents that whoever looked to that serpent on the pole would be healed.

Christ told Nicodemus, “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life” (Jn:3:14-15). Nicodemus, like the Jews in John:12:31- 34, knew that to be “lifted up” meant to be crucified. Christ was telling Nicodemus that, as it was in the case of the uplifted brazen serpent, all those who would look in faith to Him lifted up on the cross would be saved.

But why would Christ, the Lamb of God, the fulfillment of the Old Testament sacrifices for sin, liken His lifting up to that of the brazen serpent upon the pole? Although Satan is “that old serpent, called the Devil” (Rv 12:9), the brazen serpent was not a symbol of Satan. The “fiery serpents” were sent among the people because they had sinned grievously (Nm 21:5-7). The serpents were God’s judgment, bringing death for sin. The brazen serpent symbolized both sin and God’s judgment upon it—but more than that, the fact that through judgment there would be salvation. Paul writes, “For he [God] hath made him [Christ] to be sin for us, [he] who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Cor:5:21.)

Isaiah prophesied concerning the coming Messiah, “Yet it pleased the LORD to bruise him; he [the LORD] hath put him to grief: when thou [the LORD] shalt make his soul an offering for sin...” (Is 53:10). God punished His Son for the sins of the world and Christ somehow paid the infinite penalty demanded by God’s infinite justice.

Christ was punished as though He were the very sin we have all committed. Sin had to be fully judged or we could not be saved. God can’t merely make a bookkeeping entry in heaven and wipe the slate clean for all of us. The penalty prescribed by His own righteous and infinite justice had to be paid. But in Christ, God’s judgment upon sin became our salvation. This is the message of the brazen serpent lifted up in the midst of Israel, which is fulfilled in Christ on the cross, not only for Israel but for the “sins of the whole world” (1 Jn:2:2).

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