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Pictures Of Redemption

The crushing of the "serpent"

Some years ago a black man named Alex Haley wrote a book entitled "Roots". It was a fictionalized history describing the odyssey of Haley's ancestors, from freedom in Africa to slavery in America, and onward to freedom again. The book was serialized on American television, where it became an overnight sensation -- the most watched program in history. This epic story further encouraged the popular study of "family trees".

There is great interest today in genealogical research. Enthusiasts delve through dusty tomes in forgotten corners of old libraries and courthouses -- and now even scan internet websites -- in hopes of finding some scrap of information to trace their "roots" one more step backward, or fill in blanks about their family histories.

While we may all have a natural interest and curiosity about our ancestors (especially if they were connected with the Truth), it is well also to remember that as believers in Christ we have effectively repudiated ties of fleshly descent. Instead, we have been "born in Zion" (Psa 87:4,6) as "Abraham's seed" (Gal 3:29), and thus the "family" of Jesus Christ (Mat 12:48-50).

As such, we have become part of a new paradigm: seen from our Heavenly Father's perspective, there are only two "families" of mankind -- the "seed" of the serpent and the "seed" of the Woman. When we are baptized, we abandon the "family" of the serpent, and join the "family" of the Woman. We do well to remember that these two families are at constant enmity with one another, and that our eternal fates are bound up in the "family" to which we give allegiance.

Genesis 3

The "roots" of these two families go all the way back to the Garden of Eden:

"I [God] will put enmity between you [the serpent] and the woman, and between your seed and her seed; he shall bruise your [the serpent's] head, and you shall bruise his heel" (Gen 3:15, RSV).

(Here the RSV translation helps our understanding by making the pronouns referring to the woman's seed to be masculine and singular -- i.e., Christ.)

The literal serpent in the garden was the "father" of lies, and of rebellion against God, because he instigated the disobedience of Eve, and then of Adam. It was his subtle questioning and disparaging of the commandments of Yahweh that entered into the fleshly mind of our natural mother, tempting her and, through her, tempting her companion Adam to go astray.

Here was the beginning of the conflict, between good and evil in the world, and between the two "seeds" or families that exemplified each principle. Those who followed the thinking of the serpent became, in Bible terms, the "seed of the serpent", while those who in faith looked for deliverance from sin and death through the special "Seed" of the woman became HER seed instead.

Surely, then, if man is to be redeemed from sin and death through the work of the Lord Jesus Christ, part of the picture of such redemption must involve this serpent and what he represents being repudiated, or destroyed. So here in Genesis 3 is the first hint of such a repudiation -- the prophecy that the "seed" (singular) of the woman Eve would one day "bruise" (or crush) the head of the serpent.

How would such a "crushing" be accomplished?

Numbers 21

As the children of Israel left Egypt and set out through the wilderness, they grumbled against God and against Moses. Soon their grumbling became chronic.

"Then the LORD sent venomous snakes among them; they bit the people and many Israelites died..."

-- The Negev viper's poison is hemolytic: that is, it breaks down the blood vessels, until -- four days after its bite -- the victim dies of hemorrhaging --

"...The people came to Moses..."

-- The people now appealed to Moses, ignoring the existing priesthood! To this point, the tabernacle had been the center of all religion. But if the man bitten by the snake persisted in looking to it for redemption in this hour of need, he would have died! --

"...and said, 'We sinned when we spoke against the LORD and against you. Pray that the LORD will take the snakes away from us.' So Moses prayed for the people. The LORD said to Moses, 'Make a snake and put it up on a pole; anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.' So Moses made a bronze snake and put it up on a pole..."

-- The "pole" (NIV) or "standard" (RV) was quite possibly the tribal insignia of Judah -- which would be very fitting indeed -- for the coming redeemer would be of that tribe! [This connection with Judah is suggested by two facts: (a) the leader, or prince, of Judah at this time was Nahshon (Num 2:3; 7:12; 10:14; 1Ch 4:10; Mat 1:4); his name is closely related to the Hebrew "nachash" -- the "snake" or "serpent" here in Num 21:6,7; and (2) Bezaleel, the worker in brass, belonged to Judah as well (Exo 31:2-4; 35:30-32)] --

"...Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived" (Num 21:6-9).

The setting up of this bronze (or brass) serpent was the token that God had conquered their plague, and the act of looking upon it was a gesture of faith in God's promises and His work.

The Israelites were notorious for giving in to their own lusts and complaining against God. In this actual event (which was at the same time an enacted parable) God emphasized their deep enslavement to sin, the "serpent", and the result -- death by the serpent's sting. "Where, O death, is your sting? The sting of death is sin" (1Co 15:55,56). "Sin, when it is full-grown, gives birth to death" (James 1:15).

This enslavement to sin, with its consequence of death, had no remedy unless God Himself intervened. His intervention took the form of a lifeless, powerless brass serpent elevated on a stake. Here was a "serpent" of brass -- its red copper signifying man's flesh -- but an extraordinary serpent: one made incapable of stinging... now erected as an ensign witnessing to all men.

The message was that the serpent-power of sin, which infested human nature since the sentence upon Adam and Eve, would be once and for all conquered by God, and that those who had faith in Him would -- despite their own personal shortcomings -- be saved from death.

John 3

Jesus expressly connects this parabolic event in Numbers 21 with his own death:

"Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:14-16).

In making comparison between those former Israelites and those to whom he was then speaking, Jesus was plainly intending to stress two items of resemblance:

The first -- between the "snake-bitten" then and the "sin-bitten" now -- is easy to grasp because we remember the role played by the serpent in the garden. Because sin entered into the world through the first couple's acceptance of his suggestion, the serpent became the fitting symbol of sin. He was in fact the true Bible "devil" (Rev 20:2): the teller of lies and the deceiver of men. By extension, then, the Bible "devil" now dwells in each of us because we bear the condemned nature of Adam, a nature susceptible to the rebellious thinking of the serpent.

So, Jesus says, this generation is dying because it is bitten by "sin". He scarcely needed to say that every generation since Adam has met or will meet the same fate. We are born of the flesh, "born in sin", and dying just as surely as the Israelites fell in the wilderness -- unless a divine miracle brings us back to life.

Thus the way is prepared for the second intended comparison: between the serpent lifted up on the pole and Christ "lifted up" on the cross. The serpent was the symbol of sin, and therefore the serpent on the pole was the symbol of sin conquered. By "lifted up", Jesus unquestionably meant his own crucifixion (John 12:32,33). His crucifixion was to be the defeat of sin.

This of course implies that in some sense "sin" was attached to Jesus. But we err if we call him a "sinner":

"He committed no sin" (1Pe 2:22).

"He has been tempted in every way, just as we are -- yet was without sin" (Heb 4:15).

"Can any of you prove me guilty of sin?" (John 8:46).

How then did Jesus the sinless man partake of "sin"? How could he -- with any reasonableness -- be symbolized by a serpent? Paul gives the answer:

"For what the law was powerless to do in that it was weakened by the flesh, God did by sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin. And so he condemned sin in the flesh" (Rom 8:3).

Jesus was associated with sin because he possessed "sinful flesh": a nature susceptible to sin. The death of Jesus accomplished in full what the setting up of the brass serpent had done in part. It condemned sin, or the serpent, in human flesh; it destroyed it; and it provided a focus for the faith of those who needed forgiveness and deliverance from their sins.

No individual Israelite in that day was able completely to destroy (by his own will and strength) the "serpent" or "diabolos" in his bosom. And neither can we! But one special member of the human race, with a nature just like theirs (and ours), totally subdued the evil desires of the flesh in himself, and finally took that serpent-nature that inevitably tended to sin and impaled it -- lifeless and powerless -- upon a tree. What a wonderful picture of our redemption is that serpent of brass!

Final Note

Sometimes the question is asked: 'If Jesus needed to save himself only, and the rest of mankind were not in the picture at all, would he still have had to die on the cross as he did?'

The first, and simplest, answer is: 'Jesus the redeemer ought not to be separated from the redeeming work which he was sent to do.'

But a second, and subsidiary, answer might be this:

Remember: Jesus possessed the same sin-tending nature that we all have. Even if he were the only man who needed to be saved, still, as long as he possessed that nature, there would never come a time when he would have it completely and absolutely under control -- it just doesn't work that way! Being human in all essentials, he was NEVER (on his own) going to reach a state of oneness with his Father, a sort of "nirvana", where sin was not possible.

Therefore, some death -- some "cutting off" of the flesh, at a relatively early age, and in the prime of life -- while it might appear on one level to be a tragedy as well as a terrible trial, was -- on another level -- a great blessing. Because it was the conclusion, the final battle in a great war against sin. Thus it was a blessed release from the insidious and incessant pressure of the flesh. Practically up to the moment he breathed out his last breath, Jesus was fighting a never-ending battle against a relentless foe -- the "serpent" in his own mind asserting HIS will to the exclusion of the Father's will!

Seen in this way, those words that Jesus cried out on the cross -- "It is finished!" -- were the triumphant shout of a man who knew, at last, that that little voice in his mind -- urging him to do as he pleased, to go his own way, and to forget the heavenly will -- was now forever to be silenced. That "cancer" could never be cut out while the patient survived; but in his dying the cancer would die too!

And when he was awakened by the angels in the garden tomb, he would hear no more the subtle whisper of the serpent!

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Next, a look at other "serpent" passages -- in Old Testament and New -- that fill out this "picture of redemption".