“As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that every one who believes in Him may have eternal life.”
— John 3:14

We need to be deeply impressed with the Lord’s word here. As a man, Jesus became the “Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world” (John 1:29, 36). But He also had to become a “serpent” to deal with the serpentine nature in our being.

The apostle Paul tells us, after speaking of his own hopeless struggle against the sin in his flesh, that

…what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God did: sending His own Son in the likeness of the flesh of sin and concerning sin, He condemned sin in the flesh.
— Romans 8:3

Here we see the fulfillment of the Old Testament type of the brass serpent (Num. 21:4-9), which the Lord is referring to in the verse above. That is, Jesus was a real man who came in the flesh, just as we are in the flesh (John 1:14, 1 Tim. 3:16); and yet, He differed from us in that He did not have the sin nature (John 8:46; 2 Cor. 5:21, Heb. 4:15); He only had “the likeness of the flesh of sin,” as this verse says.

In the same way, while the brass serpent did indeed have the form of a serpent, it had none of the serpent’s poison. I remember reading a statement by H.A. Ironside that, “that brass serpent never hurt anybody.” So, the brass serpent lifted up by Moses is a type of Jesus as a genuine, yet sinless, man, dying on the cross to deal with our sin nature, which He did not have in Himself.

It is important to note, however, that Jesus does not say He would be lifted up as “a brass serpent,” but simply as “a serpent.” This is because, while He was on the cross, He was no longer innocent of sin, for at that time,

He who did not know sin, [God] made sin on our behalf.
— 2 Corinthians 5:21

That is the extent to which He loved us, being willing to become an actual “serpent,” taking our sin upon Himself to deal with the sin nature in our being!

By being crucified in the form of a serpent, Jesus took our sin nature to the cross and “condemned sin in the flesh.” At the same time, He also did away with “him who has the might of death, that is, the Devil” (Heb. 2:14), because the sin nature in our flesh is actually the nature of Satan himself. (See the Note, “Who Told Adam He Was Naked?”). And because “the ruler of this world” was judged, the death of Christ upon the cross as a serpent also judged the evil world system in which we live (John 12:31).

Thank the Lord that He allowed Himself to be lifted up on the cross as a serpent, to judge and terminate all of these evil things!

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—  5 October 2024 —