Salvation – Look and Live
By Pastor David Kuntz

In the Gospel of John, the Lord had been speaking to Nicodemus about the necessity of a new birth.  Jesus pleaded with this inquisitive religious leader, “Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God”  (John 3:3).  You must be born again meant that man by his own nature is dead in his trespasses and sin and in order to obtain life man must be regenerated by the Spirit and the word of God (John 3:5).  The implication of the Savior’s words for Nicodemus must have been staggering!  All of his life he had been diligently observing the O.T. law and the traditions of Judaism.  He had achieved one of the highest positions of his day in religion as a Pharisee.  But now Jesus asks him to abandon an entire system of religious works and put his faith in Jesus Christ alone for salvation.  Wow!  Nicodemus was trying to soak all this in from the great teacher of Nazareth – salvation is by grace through faith, not human works.  

In order to appeal to this expert in the Scriptures, Jesus illustrated His teaching from a well-known incident from the wilderness wanderings in Numbers 21.  Jesus said, “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”  (John 3:14-15).  In Numbers 21, the people of Israel had rejected God’s provision of manna again.  According to John 6, the manna was much more than just food for Israel.  It was a type of the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God – the bread of life.  When the Jews despised the manna, they were actually rejecting God’s way of salvation.  So “the LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died”  (vs. 6).  In response to God’s judgment, the people confessed their sins and turned to Moses to intercede for them (vs. 7).  Moses in turn, cried out to God and Lord tells him to make a serpent of brass, fix it to a pole and tell the Israelites to look in faith to it and they will be healed (vs. 8).  Those who refused to look at the serpent in faith, died from their poisonous bites.  The brazen serpent on pole was a striking foreshadowing of Christ being lifted up on the cross in order save those bitten by the serpent of sin! 

The illustration of the serpent on the pole is remarkable and indeed worthy of our study.  Why did the Lord use a bronze serpent to depict our Savior on the cross?  For starters, this was literally the very image of the creature that was causing their death and symbolically this was the image of the one who caused man to be cursed – Satan.  Second, the Lord used a bronze serpent instead of a real serpent to depict a perfect substitute for our sin.  What did the Lord tell the Israelites do be saved from their poisonous venomous snakebites?  God said all an Israelite had to do was look by faith and they would live!  This is salvation by grace through faith.  Please notice what the Lord was trying so hard to drive home to the Pharisee Nicodemus –salvation is not by good works.  God did not tell the Israelites to manufacture some sophisticated snake serum to heal their deadly bites or even tell them to offer a sacrifice to the brazen serpent for salvation.  The only cure for those suffering the curse from the deadly venom of the fiery serpent was to look in faith to the emblem of the curse itself.  The emblem of destruction was at the same time the emblem of healing.  So the only remedy for those under the curse of sin is to look in faith to the cross work of Jesus Christ.   Christ purchased the remedy from the curse by becoming the curse for us.  Have you turned from your sin and looked to the uplifted Savior on the cross for salvation?  Please turn your eyes upon Jesus and be saved before that bite devours your soul!  Look and Live!