CrossTalk: Already Been Bit

It seems the Israelites of old were always complaining about one thing or another. One time, God responded by sending vipers into the camp. “They bit the people, so that many people of Israel died.  And the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned, for we have spoken against the LORD and against you. Pray to the LORD, that he take away the serpents from us.’ So Moses prayed for the people.  And the LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.’” (Numbers 21:6-8)

The first thing to notice is what happens when someone gets bit. We don’t know what kind of snakes these were, but their bite was incurable. Everyone who was bitten died. It was just a matter of time. That’s why the people came to Moses for help. There was nowhere else to go.

In the New Testament, Jesus uses this as a picture of our problem with sin. We have already been bit. The poison is already working death in us. It’s not that Jesus comes to condemn us for this or that sinful act. Rather, like people who have been bitten by a deadly snake, we are “condemned already” (John 3:18). Sinful acts are symptoms that the poison is already at work.

Unless the antivenin is administered, the venom will run its course and leave us dead. That’s the reality of deadly snakes, and that’s the hard reality of sin. You don’t do anyone a favor by denying reality. If your child was but by a deadly snake, you would stop at nothing to give them the antivenin. The same is true for anyone we love.

Living in denial never saved anybody from anything. A doctor who knows you have cancer does you no favor by denying it. In fact, he would be prosecuted for malpractice and should lose his license! The first step in getting help is in admitting the problem.

Of course, it is bad news! Nobody likes to hear bad news. But your friends will tell it to you anyway. Not because they hate you, but precisely because they love you. Only those who don’t care about you will withhold life-saving information just because they don’t want to deal with your static. That’s not friendly. That’s just mean.

It’s the same with sin. It would be uncaring and hateful for those who know about the snake bite to keep the diagnosis and the cure a secret. That’s why Christians talk about sin--in order to talk about Jesus! Anything less is selfish in the extreme!

God’s cure for the bites was to, “make a fiery serpent and put it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, shall live.” Fifteen hundred years later, Jesus compares Himself to that snake.

“Just as Moses lifted up the Serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes may have eternal life in him” (John 3:14-15). The venom is already at work and all the denial in the world will not make it go away. But there is one thing that will.

When Jesus, the Son of Man, is crucified He is taking away the sins of the world. He comes to be the antivenin for the bite of sin that would kill us otherwise. “God did not send His Son into the world to condemn the world, but in order that the world might be saved through Him” (John 3:17). Look to Him and be saved.