Peter SmytheIntelligent Holy Ghost Christianity

In Part 5, we demonstrated how the “laying on of hands” comports with Isaiah’s revelation of the “Suffering Servant” in Isaiah 52 and 53. We remember that Isaiah recorded:

So marred beyond any man’s was his appearance,

And his form beyond the sons of men (Isaiah 52.14, Rotherham)

And we saw how Isaiah’s revelation was of the spiritual side of the crucifixion, not the physical. Before moving on to the goat to Azazel, the infamous scapegoat, we thought we’d get really controversial (like we already haven’t?) and tie up some loose ends at the same time.

Having Become a Curse

If we go to Galatians 3.13, we read about Jesus having become a curse:

Christ redeemed us from the curse of the Law, having become a curse for us - for it is written, “Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree” - (NASB)

In this verse, Paul quotes from Deuteronomy 21.22 (“for he who is hanged is accursed of God”), but we want to zero in on the phrase “having become.” That phrase is just the one word, γινομενος (genomenos), in the Greek and is defined by the big Greek lexicon guns this way:

Louw & Nida - “to become, to acquire or experience a state,” e.g., John 1.14 (“the Word became flesh”)

BDAG - “to come into being through process of birth or natural production,” “to come into existence, be made, be created, be manufactured, be performed,” “come into being as an event or phenomenon from a point of origin”

Thayer - “to become, i.e., to come into existence, begin to be, receive being: absolutely”

When we compare Galatians 3.13 - Jesus becoming a curse on the cross - we see that it is absolutely consistent with Isaiah’s vision of the crucifixion in Isaiah 52 and 53. The crucifixion was not just about a physical death on a cross, but quite a bit more.

The Bronze Serpent

And now on to something even more controversial (and sure to get us on yet another “discernment” ministry hit list) . . .

In the book of Numbers, the Israelites complained to Moses in the wilderness:

Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this miserable food. (NASB)

That criticism opened the door for “fiery [poisonous] serpents” to go among the people and bite them, thus killing many. As a result of this, the Israelites repented saying, “Moses, we repent for we’ve spoken against you and the Lord and now please pray for us that God take the snakes away.” When Moses prayed, God said to Moses:

Make a fiery serpent and set it on a standard [pole]; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live. (Numbers 21.8, NASB)

So Moses made a snake out of bronze, put it on a pole, and raised it high for all the Israelites to see. The Word records that “if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.”

And this is the fascinating part of this snake story: Jesus, himself, used it as a type of his own crucifixion. In John 3.14, he says:

As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up. (NASB)

One of the best ways to approach this verse is to ask the hard questions about it:

1. In Mark 16.18, Jesus analogized serpents to Satan (Mark 16.18 - “they will pick up serpents”) and he had to have been aware of the Genesis account (Gen. 3.1 - “Now the serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field” - KJV). If he didn’t identify with our sin on the cross, why in the world would he analogize the crucifixion to Moses’s snake?

2. When Moses went to God in prayer for the Israelites, why did God instruct him to put a snake on a pole in the first place (Moses: “Are you kidding me?”)? If Jesus didn’t actually become identified with sin on the cross, wouldn’t a little lamb be the better type (maybe God just didn’t think of that, huh)?

Michael Moriarty, the author of The New Charismatics, took issue with what appears to be the tough answers to those questions and wrote:

The bronze serpent did not produce the healing, it was merely a symbol that reminded them of their sin and the divine judgment sent to punish their sin. It was the saving grace of God in response to the genuine faith of the repentant Israelites that brought deliverance. They believed God’s Word and obeyed His command and were healed. By turning from their sins and trusting in God’s specific provision for deliverance, the Israelites felt as if they received a new surge of life and had been born all over again. Jesus uses this profound story of deliverance to illustrate God’s provision for receiving spiritual life. The elevation of the bronze serpent on a pole in the midst of the camp of Israel is a picture of Jesus Christ being elevated on the cross (Jn 3:14,15)… . Nicodemus would have been thoroughly confused if he understood Jesus to be teaching that He would soon become united with the Devil on the cross. In fact, by analogy, if Jesus became a ‘serpent’ in nature as Copeland and his followers teach, then healing was provided by Satan, the Serpent, in Numbers 21 and not by God, since healing came as they looked to the elevated bronze serpent. (Michael Moriarty, The New Charismatics, Zondervan at 364).

A few comments about Moriarty’s treatment of John 3.14:

1. “The elevation of the bronze serpent on a pole in the midst of the camp of Israel is a picture of Jesus Christ being elevated on the cross.” We and virtually every theologian agree that the bronze snake is a type and shadow of the crucifixion. The question is just how much or to what extent is the snake on the pole a “picture of Jesus Christ … on the cross”?

2. “Nicodemus would have been thoroughly confused if he understood Jesus to be teaching that He would soon become united with the Devil on the cross.” Actually Nicodemus was confused about everything. He responded to Jesus’s statement, “unless one is born again he cannot see the kingdom of God” with “How can a man be born when he is old? He cannot enter a second time into his mother’s womb and be born, can he?” In their conversation, Jesus spoke of terse spiritual realities while Nicodemus cluelessly responded with plain ‘ole natural thinkin’ (we would have done the same thing).

3. Moriarty’s “then healing was provided by Satan” is to us a false analogy. Moses didn’t hold up a snake on a pole in homage to Satan. He held up the means by which redemption from the snakes would come, i.e., Jesus’s identification - bearing the sins of us, etc.

4. “[I]t was merely a symbol that reminded them of their sin and the divine judgment sent to punish their sin.” While having a nice theological ring to it, that statement just doesn’t do it for us. The Israelites had already repented so what’s with a remembrance of “sin and divine judgment?” Also, when Moses lifted the bronze serpent on the pole, the snakes were still crawling trying to kill the Israelites. If you were one of those Israelites, would you really need Moses to lift up a snake on a pole to remind you where not to step (and would you be looking up or down)? According to Numbers 21.8, the bronze snake was not a symbol of “their sin and the divine judgment,” but rather a symbol of deliverance. Each man who looked upon the snake was delivered and each man that did not would still be subject to death by snakebite.

We take it that when Jesus analogized his death on the cross to Moses’s bronze snake, he knew exactly what he meant and it didn’t just involve the pole.

[Note: The shadow of the goat to Azazel gets even more provocative. Next post.]