Day 23, Thu., 8th March: John 3.14-21

You’d have to say that the connection between the passages of the last 3 days is unlikely, even by the Bible’s standards. The text two days ago was from Israel’s Exodus, well over a millennium before the time of Christ. The book of Numbers, chapter 21 describes how God ordered Moses to construct an idol - this was expressly forbidden in the Ten Commandments - in bronze, a snake on a pole so that those who had been stung by the plague of serpents sent by God as punishment for Israel’s complaining, could look upon it and live. “The Lord taketh away and the Lord giveth,” it seems.

Fast forward to yesterday’s text which recorded the actions of good king Hezekiah of the southern kingdom of Judah. Realising that over the many hundreds of years since the Exodus Israel’s worship had become so corrupted by local Canaanite idol worship that the now ancient bronze snake was regarded as one more idol to worship, Hezekiah had it destroyed, along with idols of the Canaanite fertility goddess Asherah.

Yet the original story persisted, to the extent that when the author of John’s gospel was pondering the meaning of Jesus’ death, some 60 or so years after that event, and perhaps 1,400 years after the snake idol did its saving work, he coupled the two. Or rather, he remembered that Jesus had coupled the two in his famous nocturnal conversation with Nicodemus, the sympathetic but puzzled Pharisee.

“Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,” said Jesus, part exegete, part prophet, “so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him may have eternal life.” 

These words lead directly into the bible’s most famous verse, John 3.16:

“‘For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life.”

And that proceeds to words scarcely less profound, but much more harsh. The God who sent serpents on this occasion, an earthquake on another and human agents on a third to kill His recalcitrant people “did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through him.”

So, within this unlikely, serpentine theme that stretches over a vast period lies a severe warning. This God sent both means of death and means of life to His own people. God provided for them both the way to escape from slavery and victuals for the journey to the promised land, but also sent means of punishment and death. In the snake, ancient symbol of both death and life, God sent both a means of death and a means of rescue from death.

John’s Jesus realised that the bronze serpent of the Book of Numbers pointed forward to Him. To look to both it and Him provided ways back to life; to look to neither is to choose death. That choice constitutes the judgement that humans make on ourselves, a judgement either for life, or for death. Jesus clarifies this with another image, that of the light:

“And this is the judgement, that the light has come into the world, and people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil. For all who do evil hate the light and do not come to the light, so that their deeds may not be exposed. But those who do what is true come to the light, so that it may be clearly seen that their deeds have been done in God.’”

This last provokes further questions in me. I get it that the light which has come into the world is Jesus. That is, of course, according to John’s Jesus, but Jesus’ teaching, deeds, and especially His death and resurrection provide sufficient evidence for me to accept that. Being inclined more towards Arminius’ teaching on free will and prevenient grace rather than Calvin’s on pre-destination and God’s absolute sovereignty (In this is a discussion that continues to this day!) I also get it that people move either towards or away from the light at least partly of our own volition. I grieve that the consequences of our choice are apparently so severe but, in large part because of John 3.16, I believe that this loving God takes into account all the factors that have influenced each of us. Having been as shocked as many by the outcomes of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse I am moving perhaps closer to Luther’s position of distinguishing between the “visible” and the “invisible “ church.

And perhaps that last provides the beginning of an answer to my main question. For there are many people I know whose deeds (I think) would stand up to the scrutiny of the light, but who for whatever reasons do not identify with the visible church. On the other hand there are those who identify with the visible church but who have attempted to keep their deeds unseen in the darkness.


In the Bible Satan (ha shaitan, the Accuser) is depicted both as a great snake and as the father of lies. For me the great thing about the Judgement is that the truth will out! I want to live a Lenten life, following, saying and doing the truth, and fastening my gaze on Jesus, the light and truth of the world.

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