ニューイングランドの母校から、イースターへ備えて日々のみことばの味わい　その2

Day 2: March 26

Symbols of the Suffering Servant: A Bronze Serpent
John 3:11-16; Numbers 21:4-9

Can bronze be better than gold? Maybe not athletically, but bronze can be better than gold spiritually. That’s a lesson the Israelites learned in the wilderness. A golden calf that they thought would be their salvation ended up causing their destruction, yet a bronze serpent that symbolized their destruction ended up causing their salvation.

What makes this strange incident something more than an antiquarian curiosity is how Jesus identifies himself with that bronze serpent. In the course of his conversation with Nicodemus about what it means to be “born again,” Jesus explained in John 3:15, “‘As Moses lifted up the bronze serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life.’”

It’s amazing that one of the least-known incidents in the Bible is the basis for the best-known verse in the Bible, John 3:16, “God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.” What does a bronze serpent have to do with God’s love for the world? With both we are to look to the curse for the cure.

Numbers 21 relates how the Israelites were grumbling in the wilderness, accusing God of bringing them out of Egypt to die. As always, human rebellion brings divine judgment. In this case in the form of poisonous snakes biting people and causing them to die. When the people repented, the Lord instructed Moses to make a bronze model of a snake, then to lift it up on a pole so that whoever looked at it would live. By looking at what they deserved, judgment and death through a snake, the Israelites were reminded that the Lord was giving them what they did not deserve, forgiveness and life.

They needed to look to the curse for the cure, because only by curing the curse would they truly be saved. However, a bronze serpent couldn’t fully cure the curse, but pointed to something even more unexpected that could—a wooden cross. Jesus identified with our curse by being lifted up on the cross, so that if we identify with him, we don’t have to suffer the ultimate curse our rebellion deserves, eternal separation from God.

As you consider the cross this week, are you looking to the curse for the cure? Are you trusting in the One who was lifted up on it—then lifted up from the grave? Seeing is believing, revealing eternal life, God’s love for the world.

David A. Currie, Ph.D.
Dean of the Doctor of Ministry Program and Ockenga Institute; Associate Professor of Pastoral Theology