Of Snakes and Salvation

March 2, 2018

A friend recently enlightened me on a Scripture text that for years had puzzled me. It’s the story in Numbers 21 where the people of Israel were grumbling (again!), so God sent venomous snakes through the camp. When people began to die from snakebite, they begged Moses to do something. Moses in turn, went to God who told him to fashion a bronze snake and put it on a pole. It says, “anyone who had been bitten would look at the snake and be healed.” To my ear, it sounds like a bit of superstitious mumbling-jumbo. If this story were anywhere but in the Bible, Christians would scoff at it as some pre-scientific fairy tale. What do we do with such a story? Well, it might help if we looked at it theologically. This is what my friend did, in a masterful way.

This isn’t a bit of fodder for the gullible; it belongs in the category we call myth. A myth is not the same as a fairy tale. A myth is a story that conveys deep truth in story form. In this case, the people were sinning by complaining again that God wasn’t doing enough for them. That in itself is a pretty serious charge. Ingratitude is the seedbed of a multitude of venomous sins, including selfishness, jealousy, envy, hatred, pride...the list goes on. Making people gaze at a bronze snake on a pole meant they had to confront the biting, deadly talk of which they were guilty. The most difficult part of conversion is confrontation with who we really are. We avoid looking at our sins at almost any cost. Blame parents, blame government, blame spouse...any scapegoat will do. We just don’t want to look at the real culprit—our own sins.

In the third chapter of John’s Gospel, Jesus references this text when he tells Nicodemus that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up. The Cross of Christ, like that wilderness serpent, forces us to confront our sins. Jesus wasn’t just a good teacher; he was more than a healer and preacher. He was the sacrifice for our sins. The Cross is God’s judgment on all human endeavor; it is God confronting our biting, venomous ingratitude and sense of entitlement. May we gaze steadily upon that Cross, and let it convict us of our sin, so that we might be saved.

Tonight, I am thankful for my friend’s insight into Scripture, and for this lesson reminding me that if I want God to change me, I must first allow him to reveal to me what is wrong. Confronting reality is the first step to transformation.