As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him.
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Jesus answered him, “Are you the teacher of Israel, and don’t understand these things? Most certainly I tell you, we speak that which we know, and testify of that which we have seen, and you don’t receive our witness. If I told you earthly things and you don’t believe, how will you believe if I tell you heavenly things? No one has ascended into heaven but he who descended out of heaven, the Son of Man, who is in heaven. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life. For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him. He who believes in him is not judged. He who doesn’t believe has been judged already, because he has not believed in the name of the one and only Son of God. This is the judgment, that the light has come into the world, and men loved the darkness rather than the light; for their works were evil. For everyone who does evil hates the light, and doesn’t come to the light, lest his works would be exposed. But he who does the truth comes to the light, that his works may be revealed, that they have been done in God.”
Parallel Translations
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As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
For God didn’t send his Son into the world to judge the world, but that the world should be saved through him.
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And as Moses lifte vp the serpent in the wyldernes even so must the sonne of man be lifte vp,
that none that beleveth in him perisshe: but have eternall lyfe.
For God so loveth the worlde that he hath geven his only sonne that none that beleve in him shuld perisshe: but shuld have everlastinge lyfe.
For God sent not his sonne into the worlde to condempne the worlde: but that the worlde through him might be saved.
Show all 3 translations
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And as Moses lift vp the serpent in the wildernesse, so must that Sonne of man be lift vp,
That whosoeuer beleeueth in him, shoulde not perish, but haue eternall life.
For God so loued the worlde, that hee hath giuen his onely begotten Sonne, that whosoeuer beleeueth in him, should not perish, but haue euerlasting life.
For God sent not his Sonne into the world, that he should condemne the world, but that the world through him might be saued.
Examined in Scripture Analysis
Contradictions (1)
Questions where the Bible appears to say two different things, with the passages on each side set together.
Cross-references (96)
- Romans 5:8 (v16) But God commends his own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.
- 1 John 4:9-10 (v16) By this God’s love was revealed in us, that God has sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. In this is…
- Romans 8:32 (v16) He who didn’t spare his own Son, but delivered him up for us all, how would he not also with him freely give us all things?
- John 3:15 (v16) that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
- John 11:25-26 (vv15–16) Jesus said to her, “I am the resurrection and the life. He who believes in me will still live, even if he dies. Whoever lives and believes…
Show all 89 cross-references
- John 6:40 (vv15–17) This is the will of the one who sent me, that everyone who sees the Son, and believes in him, should have eternal life; and I will raise…
- John 3:36 (vv15–16) One who believes in the Son has eternal life, but one who disobeys the Son won’t see life, but the wrath of God remains on him.”
- 1 John 4:19 (v16) We love him, because he first loved us.
- John 10:28 (v16) I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand.
- 1 Timothy 1:15-16 (v16) The saying is faithful and worthy of all acceptance, that Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am chief. However,…
- Romans 5:10 (v16) For if while we were enemies, we were reconciled to God through the death of his Son, much more, being reconciled, we will be saved by his…
- John 1:29 (vv16–17) The next day, he saw Jesus coming to him, and said, “Behold, the Lamb of God, who takes away the sin of the world!
- 2 Thessalonians 2:16 (v16) Now our Lord Jesus Christ himself, and God our Father, who loved us and gave us eternal comfort and good hope through grace,
- 2 Corinthians 5:19-21 (v16) namely, that God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself, not reckoning to them their trespasses, and having committed to us the…
- Ephesians 2:4 (v16) But God, being rich in mercy, for his great love with which he loved us,
- Matthew 9:13 (v16) But you go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, and not sacrifice,’ for I came not to call the righteous, but sinners to repentance.”
- Revelation 1:5 (v16) and from Jesus Christ, the faithful witness, the firstborn of the dead, and the ruler of the kings of the earth. To him who loves us, and…
- John 1:14 (v16) The Word became flesh, and lived among us. We saw his glory, such glory as of the one and only Son of the Father, full of grace and truth.
- Genesis 22:12 (v16) He said, “Don’t lay your hand on the boy or do anything to him. For now I know that you fear God, since you have not withheld your son,…
- Titus 3:4 (v16) But when the kindness of God our Savior and his love toward mankind appeared,
- John 1:18 (v16) No one has seen God at any time. The one and only Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, has declared him.
- Mark 12:6 (v16) Therefore still having one, his beloved son, he sent him last to them, saying, ‘They will respect my son.’
- Luke 2:14 (v16) “Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace, good will toward men.”
- Numbers 21:7-9 (v14) The people came to Moses, and said, “We have sinned, because we have spoken against Yahweh and against you. Pray to Yahweh, that he take…
- 1 John 4:14 (v17) We have seen and testify that the Father has sent the Son as the Savior of the world.
- Luke 19:10 (vv15, 17) For the Son of Man came to seek and to save that which was lost.”
- John 12:47-48 (v17) If anyone listens to my sayings, and doesn’t believe, I don’t judge him. For I came not to judge the world, but to save the world. He who…
- John 6:57 (v17) As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father; so he who feeds on me, he will also live because of me.
- John 8:28 (v14) Jesus therefore said to them, “When you have lifted up the Son of Man, then you will know that I am he, and I do nothing of myself, but as…
- John 6:29 (v17) Jesus answered them, “This is the work of God, that you believe in him whom he has sent.”
- 1 Timothy 2:5-6 (v17) For there is one God, and one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus, who gave himself as a ransom for all, the testimony in…
- John 12:32-34 (v14) And I, if I am lifted up from the earth, will draw all people to myself.” But he said this, signifying by what kind of death he should die.…
- John 20:21 (v17) Jesus therefore said to them again, “Peace be to you. As the Father has sent me, even so I send you.”
- 1 John 2:2 (v17) And he is the atoning sacrifice for our sins, and not for ours only, but also for the whole world.
- John 17:3 (v17) This is eternal life, that they should know you, the only true God, and him whom you sent, Jesus Christ.
- John 3:16 (v15) For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish, but have eternal life.
- John 11:42 (v17) I know that you always listen to me, but because of the multitude standing around I said this, that they may believe that you sent me.”
- Luke 24:26-27 (v14) Didn’t the Christ have to suffer these things and to enter into his glory?” Beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he explained to…
- Zechariah 9:9 (v17) Rejoice greatly, daughter of Zion! Shout, daughter of Jerusalem! Behold, your King comes to you! He is righteous, and having salvation;…
- John 5:45 (v17) “Don’t think that I will accuse you to the Father. There is one who accuses you, even Moses, on whom you have set your hope.
- John 7:29 (v17) I know him, because I am from him, and he sent me.”
- John 8:42 (v17) Therefore Jesus said to them, “If God were your father, you would love me, for I came out and have come from God. For I haven’t come of…
- Matthew 1:23 (v17) “Behold, the virgin shall be with child, and shall give birth to a son. They shall call his name Immanuel;” which is, being interpreted,…
- Luke 24:44-46 (v14) He said to them, “This is what I told you, while I was still with you, that all things which are written in the law of Moses, the prophets,…
- John 8:15-16 (v17) You judge according to the flesh. I judge no one. Even if I do judge, my judgment is true, for I am not alone, but I am with the Father who…
- John 12:44-46 (v15) Jesus cried out and said, “Whoever believes in me, believes not in me, but in him who sent me. He who sees me sees him who sent me. I have…
- 2 Kings 18:4 (v14) He removed the high places, and broke the pillars, and cut down the Asherah. He also broke in pieces the bronze serpent that Moses had…
- Psalms 22:16 (v14) For dogs have surrounded me. A company of evildoers have enclosed me. They have pierced my hands and feet.
- Isaiah 53:10-12 (v17) Yet it pleased Yahweh to bruise him. He has caused him to suffer. When you make his soul an offering for sin, he will see his offspring. He…
- 1 John 5:11-13 (v15) The testimony is this, that God gave to us eternal life, and this life is in his Son. He who has the Son has the life. He who doesn’t have…
- Isaiah 45:21-23 (v17) Declare and present it. Yes, let them take counsel together. Who has shown this from ancient time? Who has declared it of old? Haven’t I,…
- Matthew 26:54 (v14) How then would the Scriptures be fulfilled that it must be so?”
- Luke 2:10-11 (v17) The angel said to them, “Don’t be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of great joy which will be to all the people. For there is born…
- John 5:36 (v17) But the testimony which I have is greater than that of John, for the works which the Father gave me to accomplish, the very works that I…
- John 10:36 (v17) do you say of him whom the Father sanctified and sent into the world, ‘You blaspheme,’ because I said, ‘I am the Son of God?’
- John 17:8 (v17) for the words which you have given me I have given to them, and they received them, and knew for sure that I came from you. They have…
- Acts 2:23 (v14) him, being delivered up by the determined counsel and foreknowledge of God, you have taken by the hand of lawless men, crucified and killed;
- Luke 18:31-33 (v14) He took the twelve aside, and said to them, “Behold, we are going up to Jerusalem, and all the things that are written through the prophets…
- Acts 4:27-28 (v14) “For truly, both Herod and Pontius Pilate, with the Gentiles and the people of Israel, were gathered together against your holy servant,…
- Isaiah 49:6-7 (v17) Indeed, he says, “It is too light a thing that you should be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of…
- John 5:38 (v17) You don’t have his word living in you, because you don’t believe him whom he sent.
- John 10:28-30 (v15) I give eternal life to them. They will never perish, and no one will snatch them out of my hand. My Father who has given them to me is…
- John 17:21 (v17) that they may all be one; even as you, Father, are in me, and I in you, that they also may be one in us; that the world may believe that…
- John 20:31 (v15) but these are written, that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing you may have life in his name.
- Romans 10:9-14 (v15) that if you will confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be…
- Hebrews 7:25 (v15) Therefore he is also able to save to the uttermost those who draw near to God through him, seeing that he lives forever to make…
- 1 John 5:1 (v15) Whoever believes that Jesus is the Christ has been born of God. Whoever loves the Father also loves the child who is born of him.
- 1 John 5:20 (v15) We know that the Son of God has come, and has given us an understanding, that we know him who is true, and we are in him who is true, in…
- Isaiah 45:22 (v15) “Look to me, and be saved, all the ends of the earth; for I am God, and there is no other.
- John 1:12 (v15) But as many as received him, to them he gave the right to become God’s children, to those who believe in his name:
- John 6:47 (v15) Most certainly, I tell you, he who believes in me has eternal life.
- Acts 16:30-31 (v15) brought them out, and said, “Sirs, what must I do to be saved?” They said, “Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and you will be saved, you…
- John 5:24 (v15) “Most certainly I tell you, he who hears my word and believes him who sent me has eternal life, and doesn’t come into judgment, but has…
- Matthew 18:10 (vv15, 17) See that you don’t despise one of these little ones, for I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in…
- Luke 24:20 (v14) and how the chief priests and our rulers delivered him up to be condemned to death, and crucified him.
- John 17:2-3 (v15) even as you gave him authority over all flesh, so he will give eternal life to all whom you have given him. This is eternal life, that they…
- Romans 6:22-23 (v15) But now, being made free from sin and having become servants of God, you have your fruit of sanctification and the result of eternal life.…
- Galatians 2:16 (v15) yet knowing that a man is not justified by the works of the law but through faith in Jesus Christ, even we believed in Christ Jesus, that…
- Mark 16:16 (v15) He who believes and is baptized will be saved; but he who disbelieves will be condemned.
- Acts 8:36 (v15) As they went on the way, they came to some water, and the eunuch said, “Behold, here is water. What is keeping me from being baptized?”
- Hebrews 10:39 (v15) But we are not of those who shrink back to destruction, but of those who have faith to the saving of the soul.
- 1 John 2:25 (v15) This is the promise which he promised us, the eternal life.
- Acts 13:41 (v15) ‘Behold, you scoffers, and wonder, and perish; for I work a work in your days, a work which you will in no way believe, if one declares it…
- Romans 5:1-2 (v15) Being therefore justified by faith, we have peace with God through our Lord Jesus Christ; through whom we also have our access by faith…
- Romans 5:21 (v15) that as sin reigned in death, even so grace might reign through righteousness to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.
- 1 Corinthians 1:18 (v15) For the word of the cross is foolishness to those who are dying, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God.
- 2 Corinthians 4:3 (v15) Even if our Good News is veiled, it is veiled in those who are dying,
- Galatians 2:20 (v15) I have been crucified with Christ, and it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me. That life which I now live in the flesh, I live…
- John 16:33 (v15) I have told you these things, that in me you may have peace. In the world you have trouble; but cheer up! I have overcome the world.”
89 distinct cross-references across this passage (96 total citations).
Cross-references from openbible.info (CC BY 4.0)
Explain this passage (24 sources)
Historical commentary, presented as a primary source — not an endorsement.
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John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 17 14. And as Moses lifted up the serpent. He…
14. And as Moses lifted up the serpent. He explains more clearly why he said that it is he alone to whom heaven is opened; namely, that he brings to heaven all who are only willing to follow him as their guide; for he testifies that he will be openly and publicly manifested to all, that he may diffuse his power over men of every class. To be lifted up means to be placed in a lofty and elevated situation, so as to be exhibited to the view of all. This was done by the preaching of the Gospel; for the explanation of it which some give, as referring to the cross, neither agrees with the context nor is applicable to the present subject. The simple meaning of the words therefore is, that, by the preaching of the Gospel, Christ was to be raised on high, like a standard to which the eyes of all would be directed, as Isaiah had foretold, (Isaiah 2:2.) As a type of this lifting up, he refers to the brazen serpent, which was erected by Moses, the sight of which was a salutary remedy to those who had been wounded by the deadly bite of serpents. The history of that transaction is well known, and is detailed in Numbers 21:9. Christ introduces it in this passage, in order to show that he must be placed before the eyes of all by the doctrine of the Gospel, that all who look at him by faith may obtain salvation. Hence it ought to be inferred that Christ is clearly exhibited to us in the Gospel, in order that no man may complain of obscurity; and that this manifestation is common to all, and that faith has its own look, by which it perceives him as present; as Paul tells us that a lively portrait of Christ with his cross is exhibited, when he is truly preached, (Galatians 3:1.)
The metaphor is not inappropriate or far-fetched. As it was only the outward appearance of a serpent, but contained nothing within that was pestilential or venomous, so Christ clothed himself with the form of sinful flesh, which yet was pure and free from all sin, that he might cure in us the deadly wound of sin. It was not in vain that, when the Jews were wounded by serpents, the Lord formerly prepared this kind of antidote; and it tended to confirm the discourse which Christ delivered. For when he saw that he was despised as a mean and unknown person, he could produce nothing more appropriate than the lifting up of the serpent, to tell them, that they ought not to think it strange, if, contrary to the expectation of men, he were lifted up on high from the very lowest condition, because this had already been shadowed out under the Law by the type of the serpent.
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A question now arises: Does Christ compare himself to the serpent, because there is some resemblance; or, does he pronounce it to have been a sacrament, as the Manna was? For though the Manna was bodily food, intended for present use, yet Paul testifies that it was a spiritual mystery, (1 Corinthians 10:3.) I am led to think that this was also the case with the brazen serpent, both by this passage, and the fact of its being preserved for the future, until the superstition of the people had converted it into an idol, (2 Kings 18:4.) If any one form a different opinion, I do not debate the point with him.
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv16–17 Nothing else but the free love of the Father,…
Nothing else but the free love of the Father, is the beginning of our salvation, and Christ is he in whom our righteousness and salvation is resident: and faith is the instrument or mean whereby we apprehend it, and life everlasting is that which is set before us to apprehend.
It is not all one to believe in a thing, and to believe of a thing, for we may not believe (in anything) save only in God, but we may believe (of anything) whatsoever, this saith Nazianzene in his oration of the Spirit.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv14–17 14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in…
14 And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up:
Ver. 14. And as Moses lifted up the serpent] There it was, Vide et vive; See and live, here, Crede et vive. Believe and live, And as there, he that beheld the serpent, though but with a weak squint eye, yea, but with half an eye, was cured. So here, if we look upon Christ with the eye, though but of a weak faith, we shall be saved. Doctor Cruciger, when he lay a dying, cried out, Credo languida fide, sed tamen fide, I believe with a weak faith, but with a faith, such as it is. (Selneccer. in paedag. Christ. p. 321.)
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv14–17 The history of the lifting up of the serpent…
The history of the lifting up of the serpent in the wilderness we have, Num 21:8,9. The people being stung with fiery serpents, as a righteous judgment of God for their sins, as a merciful remedy God commanded Moses, Num 21:8, Make thee a fiery serpent, ( that is, the image or representation of one of those fiery serpents), and put it upon a pole; and it shall come to pass, that every one that is bitten, when he looketh upon it, shall live. This brazen serpent in the wilderness was a lively type of Jesus Christ. Our Saviour having before spoken of the new birth as necessary to those who shall be saved, here comes to show it in the causes, and instances first in the meritorious, then in the instrumental, cause. The meritorious cause was his death; he saith, As the serpent was lifted up in the wilderness, so he, who was the Son of man, must be lifted up; that is, die upon the cross: the phrase is used twice more in this Gospel, Joh 8:28; 12:32,34, in allusion, doubtless, to this type. Yet Mr. Calvin thinks the
lifted up here more properly interpreted of the doctrine of the gospel, and by the preaching of it; and others apply it to Christ’s ascension into heaven. And this he tells Nicodemus must be, for the fulfilling the Scripture, and the counsels of his Father.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 17 Christ having instructed Nicodemus in the doctrine of regeneration…
Christ having instructed Nicodemus in the doctrine of regeneration in the former verses, here he instructs him in the death of the Messiah, and in the necessity of faith in his death. The Son of man must be lifted up; that is, upon the cross, and die; that whosover believeth in him should not perish.
Observe here, 1. An Old Testament type which our Saviour refers to, and that is, the brazen serpent in the wilderness, the history of which is recorded, Num 21:8-9.
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Observe, 2. The antitype, or the substance of what that type did shadow forth: the brazen serpent’s lifting up upon the pole, prefiguring Christ’s exaltation or lifting up upon the cross. So must the Son of man be lifted up.
Learn hence, That the Lord Jesus Christ is of the same use and office to a sin-stung soul, which the brazen serpent was of old to a serpent-stung Israelite.
Here observe, 1. Wherein the brazen serpent and Christ do agree.
And, 2. Wherein they differ. They agree thus: In the occasion of their institution; they were both apppointed for cure and healing.
Were they serpent-stung? we are sin-stung; devil--bitten. Was the sting of the fiery serpent inflaming? Was it spreading? Was it killing?
So is sin, which is the venom and poison of the old serpent. They agree in this; that they both must be lifted up before cure could be obtained; the brazen serpent upon the pole, Christ upon the cross.
They both must be looked unto before cure could be obtained; the looking up of the Israelites was as necessary unto healing, as the lifting up of the serpent.
Faith is as necessary to salvation as the death of Christ. The one renders God reconcilable unto sinners, the other renders him actually reconciled.
Again, did the brazen serpent heal all that looked upon it, and looked up unto it, though all had not eyes alike, some with a weak, others with a stronger eye? In like manner doth Christ justify and save all, that with a sincere faith, though weak, do rely upon him for salvation; Whosoever believeth in him shall not perish.
Further, the brazen serpemt was effectual for Israel’s cure after many stingings; If after they were healed they were stung afresh, and did look up to it, they were healed by it. Thus the merit of Christ’s death is not only effectual for our cure and healing at our first conversion, but after involuntary relapses and backslidings, if by faith we have recourse to the blood of Christ, we shall find it efficacious for our further benefit and future healing.
In a word, as the brazen serpent was effectual for Israel’s cure after many stingings; If after they were healed they were stung afresh, and did look up to it, they were healed by it. Thus the merit of Christ’s death is not only effectual for our cure and healing at our first conversion, but after involuntary relapses and backslidings, if by faith we have recourse to the blood of Christ, we shall find it efficacious for our further benefit and future healing.
In a word, as the brazen serpent had the likeness of a serpent, the form, the figure, the name, the colour of the serpent, but nothing of the venom and poison of the serpent in it; so Christ did take upon him our nature; but sin, the venom and poison of our nature, he had nothing to do with: though Christ loved souls with an invincible and insuperable love, yet he would not sin to save a soul. This was the similtude and resemblance between Christ and the brazen serpent.
The disparity or dissimiltude follows: The brazens serpent had no power in itself, or of itself, to heal and cure: but Christ has a power inherent in himself, for the curing and healing of all that do believe in him.
Again, The brazen serpent cured only one particular nation and people, Jews only; Christ is for the healing of all nations, and his salvation is to the end of the earth.
Farther, The brazen serpent cured only one particular disease; namely, the stinging of the fiery serpents; had a person been sick of the plague, or leprosy, he might have died for all the brazen serpent: but Christ pardons all the iniquities, and heals all the diseases, of his people, Psa 103:3
Yet again, Though the brazen serpent healed all that looked up unto it, yet it gave an eye to none to look up unto it; whereas Christ doth not only heal them that look up to him, but bestows the eye of faith upon them, to enable them to look unto him that they may be saved.
In a word, the brazen serpent did not always retain its healing virtue, but in time lost it and was itself destroyed, 2Ki 18:4 But now the healing virtue and efficacy of Christ’s blood is eternal.
All believers have and shall experience the healing power of our Redeemer’s death to the end of the world.
Lastly, The Israelites that were cured by looking up to the brazen serpent, died afterwards; some distemper or other soon carried them to their graves; but the soul of the believer that is healed by Christ shall never die more: Whosoever believeth in him, shall not perish, but have everlasting life.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv14–17 That whosoever believeth in him,.... Whether Jew or Gentile,…
That whosoever believeth in him,.... Whether Jew or Gentile, a greater, or a lesser sinner, and of whatsoever state and condition, age or sex; and though ever so weak a believer, provided his faith, is of the right kind: not an historical or temporary one, a mere assent to the truth of things respecting his person, office, and work; but such a faith, by which a soul sees a glory, fulness, and suitableness in him as a Saviour; goes to him, ventures on him, commits itself to him, lays hold on him, and receives him, leans and relies upon him, and trusts in him, and lives upon him; and which is the faith of God's elect; a gift of his grace, and the operation of his Spirit; and which works by love, and is attended with the fruits of righteousness: now the end of Christ's crucifixion and death is, that such an one
should not perish; though he is in a lost and perishing condition in Adam, and by nature, and sees himself to be so, and comes to Christ as such; and though his frames and comforts are perishing, and he sometimes fears he shall be utterly lost; and though he is subject to slips and falls, and great spiritual decays; and shall perish as to the outward man by death; yet he shall never perish eternally, or be punished with everlasting destruction, as the wicked will:
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but have eternal life; not by his works, but as the gift of God: and which he that truly believes; has already in the covenant of grace, in Christ his head, in faith and hope; and has the earnest and pledge of it, the Spirit of God; and the beginning of it, which is the knowledge of God in Christ; and shall hereafter possess it fully, and in person, to all eternity: even a life of perfect holiness and knowledge; a life of never ending pleasure; a life free from all the sorrows, distresses, and imperfections of this; and which will always continue.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv14–17 And as Moses - And even this single witness…
And as Moses - And even this single witness will soon be taken from you; yea, and in a most ignominious manner. Num. xxi, 8, 9.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv14–17 Verse 14. As Moses lifted up] He shows the…
Verse 14. As Moses lifted up] He shows the reason why he descended from heaven, that he might be lifted up, i.e. crucified, for the salvation of man. kind, and be, by the appointment of God, as certain a remedy for sinful souls as the brazen serpent elevated on a pole, Nu 21:9, was for the bodies of the Israelites, which had been bitten by the fiery serpents in the wilderness. It does not appear to me that the brazen serpent was ever intended to be considered as a type of Christ. It is possible to draw likenesses and resemblances out of any thing; but, in such matters as these, we should take heed that we go no farther than we can say, Thus it is written. Among the Jews, the brazen serpent was considered a type of the resurrection-through it the dying lived; and so, by the voice of God, they that were dead shall be raised to life. As the serpent was raised up, so shall Christ be lifted up: as they who were stung by the fiery serpents were restored by looking up to the brazen serpent, so those who are infected with and dying through sin are healed and saved, by looking up to and believing in Christ crucified. These are all the analogies which we can legitimately trace between the lifting up of the brazen serpent, and the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. The lifting up of the Son of man may refer to his mediatorial office at the right hand of God. See Clarke on Nu 21:9.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv14, 16 Joh 3:14-15. As Moses lifted up the serpent —…
Joh 3:14-15. As Moses lifted up the serpent — As if he had said, And even this single witness, bearing testimony of heavenly things, will soon be taken from you; yea, and in a most ignominious manner. Or, as Dr. Doddridge connects the words with what precedes, “And now I mention the Son of man, let me rectify that grand mistake of yours concerning his kingdom, which otherwise may be attended with fatal consequences. You expect to see him raised on a magnificent throne; and not only breaking off the yoke from the Jewish nation, but leading them on to conquer and destroy the Gentiles; but I must assure you that, as Moses lifted up, [Greek, υψωσε, raised on high, namely, on a pole,] the serpent in the wilderness — To heal those that were dying by the venom of the fiery serpents there; even so must the Son of man be lifted up — On a cross, (see the margin,) and then publicly exhibited in the preaching of the gospel, that sinners may by him receive a far more noble and important cure; even that whosoever believeth in him should not perish — As all in their natural state otherwise would; but may obtain so perfect a recovery as certainly to have eternal life” — For all those who look to him, and rely on him by faith, recover spiritual life and health. The reader will observe, 1st, That the grand point of similitude here is, in the manner of performing the cure, that is, by believing regards to what was lifted up, or raised on high, for that purpose, by a divine appointment. 2d, That the passage strongly implies, that as the wounded Israelites would have died if they had not looked to the brazen serpent for a cure, so will men, wounded by sin, original and actual, assuredly perish, and that eternally, if they do not look to, and believe on Christ, delivered unto death for their offences, and raised from the dead for their justification; which great truth is still more strongly expressed, Joh 3:18. 3d, That our Lord, by telling Nicodemus, that the death of the Messiah was prefigured by types in the law, showed him, that it was agreeable both to the doctrine of Moses, and to the counsels of heaven, that the Messiah should be in a suffering state; and consequently he intimated that the meanness of his present appearance on earth was no reason why any should doubt of his having been, and still being in heaven.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv14–17 And as Moses - Jesus proceeds in this and…
And as Moses - Jesus proceeds in this and the following verses to state the reason why he came into the world and, in order to this, he illustrates His design, and the efficacy of his coming, by a reference to the case of the brass serpent, recorded in Num 21:8-9. The people were bitten by flying fiery serpents. There was no cure for the bite. Moses was directed to make an image of the serpent, and place it in sight of the people, that they might look on it and be healed. There is no evidence that this was intended to be a type of the Messiah, but it is used by Jesus as strikingly illustrating his work. Men are sinners. There is no cure by human means for the maladies of the soul; and as the people who were bitten might look on the image of the serpent and be healed, so may sinners look to the Saviour and be cured of the moral maladies of our nature.
Lifted up - Erected on a pole. Placed on high, So that it might be seen by the people.
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The serpent - The image of a serpent made of brass.
In the wilderness - Near the land of Edom. In the desert and desolate country to the south of Mount Hor, Num 21:4.
Even so - In a similar manner and with a similar design. He here refers, doubtless, to his own death. Compare Joh 12:32; Joh 8:28. The points of resemblance between his being lifted up and that of the brass serpent seem to be these:
In each case those who are to be benefited can he aided in no other way. The bite of the serpent was deadly, and could be healed only by looking on the brass serpent; and sin is deadly in its nature, and can be removed only by looking on the cross. The mode of their being lifted up. The brass serpent was in the sight of the people. So Jesus was exalted from the earth raised on a tree or cross. The design was similar. The one was to save the life, the other the soul; the one to save from temporal, the other from eternal death. The manner of the cure was similar. The people of Israel were to look on the serpent and be healed, and so sinners are to look on the Lord Jesus that they may be saved.
Must - It is proper; necessary; indispensable, if men are saved. Compare Luk 24:26; Luk 22:42.
The Son of man - The Messiah.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv14, 16 This comparison of the serpent lifted up in the…
This comparison of the serpent lifted up in the desert, upon which whoever looked was immediately cured from the bite of the fiery serpents, is a figure of the crucifixion of Christ on Calvary. And we remark, that our divine Saviour makes use of these words, the Son of man must be lifted up or exalted; (exaltari) by which form of expression he would teach us, that he does not consider the cross as a disgrace, but as a glory; (Theophylactus and St. John Chrysostom) and moreover, that as the Israelites, bitten by the fiery serpents, were cured by looking upon the brazen serpent, so are Christians cured by looking up with an active faith, replete with love and confidence, on Jesus Christ crucified.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 17 And as Moses, &c.--Here now we have the "heavenly…
And as Moses, &c.--Here now we have the "heavenly things," as before the "earthly," but under a veil, for the reason mentioned in Joh 3:12. The crucifixion of Messiah is twice after this veiled under the same lively term--"uplifting," Joh 8:28; Joh 12:32-33. Here it is still further veiled--though to us who know what it means, rendered vastly more instructive--by reference to the brazen serpent. The venom of the fiery serpents, shooting through the veins of the rebellious Israelites, was spreading death through the camp--lively emblem of the perishing condition of men by reason of sin. In both cases the remedy was divinely provided. In both the way of cure strikingly resembled that of the disease. Stung by serpents, by a serpent they are healed. By "fiery serpents" bitten--serpents, probably, with skin spotted fiery red [KURTZ]--the instrument of cure is a serpent of brass or copper, having at a distance the same appearance. So in redemption, as by man came death, by Man also comes life--Man, too, "in the likeness of sinful flesh" (Rom 8:3), differing in nothing outward and apparent from those who, pervaded by the poison of the serpent, were ready to perish. But as the uplifted serpent had none of the venom of which the serpent-bitten people were dying, so while the whole human family were perishing of the deadly wound inflicted on it by the old serpent, "the Second Man," who arose over humanity with healing in His wings, was without spot or wrinkle, or any such thing. In both cases the remedy is conspicuously displayed; in the one case on a pole, in the other on the cross, to "draw all men unto Him" (Joh 12:32). In both cases it is by directing the eye to the uplifted Remedy that the cure is effected; in the one case the bodily eye, in the other the gaze of the soul by "believing in Him," as in that glorious ancient proclamation--"Look unto me and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth," &c. (Isa 45:22). Both methods are stumbling to human reason. What, to any thinking Israelite, could seem more unlikely than that a deadly poison should be dried up in his body by simply looking on a reptile of brass? Such a stumbling-block to the Jews and to the Greeks foolishness was faith in the crucified Nazarene as a way of deliverance from eternal perdition. Yet was the warrant in both cases to expect a cure equally rational and well grounded. As the serpent was God's ordinance for the cure of every bitten Israelite, so is Christ for the salvation of every perishing sinner--the one however a purely arbitrary ordinance, the other divinely adapted to man's complicated maladies. In both cases the efficacy is the same. As one simple look at the serpent, however distant and however weak, brought an instantaneous cure, even so, real faith in the Lord Jesus, however tremulous, however distant--be it but real faith--brings certain and instant healing to the perishing soul. In a word, the consequences of disobedience are the same in both. Doubtless many bitten Israelites, galling as their case was, would reason rather than obey, would speculate on the absurdity of expecting the bite of a living serpent to be cured by looking at a piece of dead metal in the shape of one--speculate thus till they died. Alas! is not salvation by a crucified Redeemer subjected to like treatment? Has the offense of the cross" yet ceased? (Compare Kg2 5:12).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv14–17 Jesus holds forth (under a veil) the doctrine of…
Jesus holds forth (under a veil) the doctrine of universal atonement by the only begotten Son, Joh_3:14-17.
14. Moses lifted up the serpent—By the light of subsequent revelation we know that this lifting up, shadowed by the serpent, was the lifting up upon the cross. Nicodemus doubtless understood that Jesus was to be held up and manifested to the world; but he did not understand, so prematurely as sceptics think, that Jesus was to die substitutionally for the sinner.
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As the sinner is bitten by the infernal serpent, so the people of Israel in the wilderness were bitten by the fiery serpent. As Moses raised up the brazen serpent upon the pole, so Jesus is raised upon the cross. As the brazen serpent was in the likeness of the fiery serpent, which is Satan’s likeness, so Jesus is in the likeness of sinful flesh. As the bitten Jew was required to look at the brazen serpent, so the sinner is required to look by faith to Jesus. But the symbol for Nicodemus did not reveal the death of the Son of man; nor, especially, that the death of the Son of man must take the place of the death of the sinner. So that these words, too, are one of those passages embracing a depth of meaning undiscovered till a later period. See note on Mat_7:29. The cross and the lifting up were both a matter of manifestation and of sacrifice; the latter was unknown to Nicodemus— both are known to us.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv14–17 14. the serpent] We here have some evidence of…
14. the serpent] We here have some evidence of the date of the Gospel. The Ophitic is the earliest Gnostic system of which we have full information. The serpent is the centre of the system, at once its good and evil principle. Had this form of Gnosticism been prevalent before this Gospel was written, this verse would scarcely have stood thus. An orthodox writer would have guarded his readers from error: an Ophitic writer would have made more of the serpent.
even so] Christ here testifies to the prophetic and typical character of the O.T.
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must] It is so ordered in the counsels of God. Heb_2:9-10.
be lifted up] On the cross: the lifting up does not refer to the exaltation of Christ to glory. The glory to which the cross led (crux scala coeli) is not included. Comp. Joh_8:28 and Joh_12:32; and for other symbolic language about His death comp. Mat_12:40.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv14–17 (14) And as Moses lifted up.—This verse is closely…
(14) And as Moses lifted up.—This verse is closely connected by the conjunction “and” with what has gone before. Jesus has taught that in Himself heaven and earth meet; so that, while subject to the conditions of human life, He, the Son of Man, the representative of humanity, is in heaven. He goes on to show that what is true of the representative is, through Him, true of the whole race. Again the Old Testament Scriptures form the basis of the teaching to their expounder. The people in the wilderness bitten by the fiery serpents, the poison-virus spreading through their veins, and causing burning pain, torpor, and death—this was symbolical of the world lying in the misery, restlessness, and spiritual death, which came from the Serpent’s victory in Paradise. The serpent of brass lifted up by Moses, in which the sufferer saw the means of recovery determined by God, and was healed by faith in Him—this was symbolical of the means of salvation determined by God for the world. (Comp. the phrase “lifted up” in Joh_8:28; Joh_12:32; and, as an exact parallel with this passage, Joh_12:34) Nicodemus must have understood that the healing power of the serpent of brass was in the fact that it led men to trust in Jehovah, who had appointed it. This was the current Jewish interpretation. Comp. the Jerusalem Targum, “Their faces were to be fixed on their Father who is in heaven;” so the Targum of Jonathan ben-Uziel, “The heart was fixed on the name of the word of Jehovah;” so, again, the Wisdom of Solomon, “For he that turned himself toward it was not saved by the thing that he saw, but by Thee, that art the Saviour of all” (Wis_16:7; see the whole passage, Wis_16:6-13). It was the sign of the Eternal in power and in love present to save, and the man who realised that presence lived with a new life. In the divine counsels it was willed, and must be, that the Son of Man should be the witness to the world of the Eternal Power and Love which saves every man who grasps it.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 17 And. Seeing that our Lord had claimed supreme right…
And. Seeing that our Lord had claimed supreme right to speak of heavenly things, he proceeds at once to speak of them also. There may be many ways of taking the kai : supposing that it indicates a transition from the person of the Lord to his work. From his Divine and endowed humanity thus shown to be competent to explain and re veal heavenly things, he proceeds to his atoning sacrifice. These underlying links of connection are not mutually exclusive. Even as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must also the Son of man be lifted up.
The narrative of Num_21:8, etc., is one of the rest curious in Scripture, and it was a great puzzle to the Jewish commentators, who felt that it was in apparent violation of the second command of the Decalogue. Moreover, in the days of Hezekiah the reverence paid to the serpent led to disastrous consequences and puritanic removal of the idolatrous snare. The Jewish divines consulted by Trypho (see Justin Martyr, "Dail.," 94) were unable to explain it. Philo regarded it as a designed contrast to the serpent of the Book of Genesis, but he supposed the antithesis to be that between pleasure and righteousness or prudence ("De Leg. All.," 2:1.80). The Book of Wisdom, (RAPC Wis 16:6) "The murmuring people were troubled for a while for warning, having a symbol of salvation .... he that turned to it was saved, not by reason of that which he beheld, but by reason of the Saviour of all." Ferguson, in his "Tree and Serpent Worship," regards the narrative as an indication that within the bosom of Israel the worship of the serpent had been introduced and had left its traces. But the narrative itself shows that the serpent healing from the serpent bite was a Jehovistie symbol of Divine love and victory. The "Test. XII Patr. Benj.," 9, refers to it as the type of the cross. (cf. Php_2:9 Act_2:33) "Moses made a serpent of brass, and put it upon a pole, and it came to pass, that if a serpent had bitten any man, when he beheld the serpent of brass, he lived." The fiery flying serpent, with its poisonous bite and its deadly malice, was the vivid type of the evil of disobedience to the Divine command, infusing its malign venom into the whole nature of its victim. The serpent of brass was not venomous, though it bore the likeness of the deadly plague. It was not flying, gliding from tent to tent, but captured, still, hoisted triumphantly upon the pole, a sign of its conquest. The serpent in Hebrew and Christian literature throughout was emblematic of evil, not as in many Oriental religions, of healing or deliverance; (see Gen_3:1 Rev_12:9; and, properly translated, Job_26:13, Revised Version) and it is possible to see in this type an anticipation of the "lifting up" of Jesus on the cross. There are several interpretations of the uqwyhnai . Paulus urged that Jesus by it referred to the final glorification of himself; but if so, why was not the word doxasyhnai used? It may mean, with Bleek, Lechler, Godet, the exaltation upon the cross as the steppingstone to his glory, the way, not only to David"s throne, but to the very throne of God a conception profoundly different from the current Pharisaic notions concerning the Messiah. The word is used in Joh_8:28 and Joh_12:32, 34 for the passion of the cross, although Peter (Act_2:33) and Paul (Php_2:9) used it for the glorification consequent upon the Passion. Surely the word does, if it is to correspond with Moses" exaltation of the serpent of brass, point to the exaltation of the cross, but to that as to the very throne of his power and glory. Tholuck says, "A word must have been used in Aramaic which admitted both ideas, and the word means in Chaldee and Syriac to "lift up" and "crucify. Many striking relations thus present themselves.
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(1) The Lord was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, though without sin.
(2) The evil of sin was seen in him conspicuously revealed, but conquered; not only conquered, but transformed into a remedy. The enemy of man, the world itself, was crucified on the cross of Christ. Sin was nailed to the cross when, in the likeness of sinful flesh, the eternal Son of God made flesh submitted to all the shame of the flesh. "The world is crucified unto me," says Paul ("in the cross of Christ"), "and I to the world." Jesus says, "Even so must the Son of man be lifted up." The Son of man here on earth, but having always a Divine life in heaven, when revealed in human nature, subject to the laws and destiny of the flesh, "must" be lifted up. This pathway to his glory must pass through the blood and agony of the Passion. There was a needs be in the Divine counsel, in the purposes of Divine love, in the fall measure of the grace which was welling from the heart of God.
(3) The comparison, however, and relation between type and antitype is more conspicuous still in the fifteenth verse, where Jesus added: In order that whosoever believeth might have in him eternal Life. granting that the above is the true text, in our translation an instance occurs of the frequent absolute usage of pisteuein (pisteuein en autw is not a Johannine phrase, while we do find (Joh_5:39 Joh_16:33 Joh_20:31) that "life," "peace," are "in him"). On this ground, if we retain the en autw , we translate it as above. The object of faith is not specified; but he who believes, who looks with God-taught longing to the Christ, to the Son of man uplifted to save, sees God at his greatest, his best, and discerns the fullest revelation of the redeeming love. "Believing" corresponds with "looking" in the narrative of Nu 21. Whosoever "looked, lived." Such looking was an act of faith in the promise of Jehovah; the otherwise despairing, dying glance of poisoned men was a type of the possibility of a universal salvation for sin-envenomed, devil-bitten, perishing men. Let them believe, and there is life. Let them understand the meaning of the Son of man thus exhausting the curse, and enduring in love the burden and penalty of human transgression, and they have straightway a life that is spiritual, fundamentally and radically new, a life heavenly and eternal. Thus can this vast change of which he had spoken to Nicodemus supervene. How," asks Nicodemus, "can this be?" "Thus may it be," answers the Son of man. It is not necessary that all the mystery of the cross should have been perceived by Nicodemus, yet the subsequent references to this man make it highly probable that, when he saw Jesus suspended on the cross, instead of giving way to unbelief and despair, he was stimulated to an act of lofty faith. (Joh_19:39, and note) In this great utterance we have the answer which Paul addressed to the Philippian jailer, and we have the argument of Paul in Ro 1, 2, and we infer that the sources of the Pauline doctrine were to be found in the known teaching of the Lord himself.
Many commentators, beginning with Erasmus, and followed by Neander, Tholuck, Lucke, Westcott, and Moulton, have supposed that our Lord"s discourse with Nicodemus ended with ver. 15, and that thenceforward we have the reflections in after times made by the evangelist, in harmony with the teachings which he had received from the Lord. This is urged on the ground that in Joh_1:18, and at the close of the present chapter (vers. 31-36), when reciting the testimony of the Baptist, it appears to the commentators that John has blended his own reflections with the words of the Baptist, adding them without break to the sentences which he does record (see notes). I am not prepared to admit the analogy; there is nothing in these words, if attributed to the Baptist, incompatible with the purely Old Testament position and transition standpoint to which he adhered. The argument drawn from the past tenses, hgaphsen and edwken , is not incompatible with the large view of the whole transaction which the Son of God adopted, as though in the fulness of its infinite love it had already been consummated. We are told that there are certain phrases which nowhere else are ascribed to Jesus himself, such as "only begotten Son a term which is found in the prologue (Joh_1:14, Joh_1:18) and First Epist., (1Jn_4:9) i.e. in John"s own composition. The reply is that John used this great word on the specified occasion because he had heard it on the lips of Jesus; that he would not have dared to use it if he had not had the justification of such use, the like to which he here recounts. The believing eiv to onoma the name of does not occur, it is said, in the recorded words of Jesus, though it is found in the discourse of the evangelist himself in Joh_1:12 Joh 2:23; and 1Jn_5:13. The same criticism applies. John used it because he had heard our Lord thus deign to express himself. Moreover, the commencement of the paragraph, by the use of the particle gar , shows that no break has occurred, that a richer and fuller and more triumphant reason is to be given for the obtaining of life eternal than that which had already been advanced. He passes from the Son of man (who is in heaven, and came from heaven and God) to the Son of God, the only begotten of the Father. He speaks in more practical and explanatory form of the Object of faith, and the Divine source of the arrangement and its issues. A flood of new thoughts and some terms occur here for the first time; but they are no more startling than other words of Jesus, whose awful weight of meaning and rich originality gave to the evangelist all his power to teach. It is quite unnecessary to find fault with the abruptness of the close of this discourse, or the sudden cessation of the dialogue, or the disappearance of Nicodemus, or of any lack of affectionateness in the style of address. Christ is often abrupt, and in numerous replies which he gave to his interlocutors he prolongs the remarks as though they were addressed to the concealed mind of the speakers rather than to their uttered words. If there had been any hint or indication that these were John"s reflections, we can only say that he who by the Holy Spirit penned the prologue was not incapable of these splendid and heart-searching generalizations of love, faith, judgment, and eternal life. But there does not appear to be any sufficient reason for such a hypothesis. Still, it must be admitted that we have not the whole of the former or the latter part of this wondrous discourse. Much has, without any doubt, been omitted. John has seized upon the most salient points and the loftiest thoughts. These stand out like mountain peaks above the glittering seas, indicating where the inner and hidden connections of their bases lie, but not unveiling them. We do not doubt that John"s mind, by long pondering on the thoughts of Jesus and his words of profound significance, had acquired to some extent the method of his speech, and do not doubt that a certain subjective colouring affects his condensation of the discourses of Jesus. He was not a shorthand reporter, photographically or telephonically reproducing all that passed. He was a beloved disciple, who knew his Lord and lost himself in his Master. He seized with inspired and intuitive accuracy the root ideas of the Son of man, and reproduced them with the power of the true artist. It is incredible, even if we regard the entire paragraph (vers. 16-21) as the language of our Lord, that we have the whole of the discourse, or conversation, of the memorable night. Still less satisfactory is it to suppose that we have in it nothing more than an imaginary scone, an idealization of the bearing of Christian truth on Jewish prejudice. So vast a thought, though it be the burden of the New Testament, and because it is so, issued from the heart of Jesus.
Vers. 14, 15. The revelation of the Divine plan of salvation.
Redemption is the essential content of revelation. The Incarnation carries with it the necessity of the Crucifixion.
I THE NATURE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT SYMBOL HERE PRESENTED TO OUR VIEW. "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up.
1. This refers to the last miracle wrought by Moses on the borders of the promised land. (Num_21:7)
2. The Israelites were to see in it the sovereign hand of God, and not to ascribe the efficacy of the cure to the mere outward symbol the brazen serpent apart from Divine power.
3. They were to see in the whole incident, not a mere effective comparison, but a preparatory type a figure of "good things to come," exhibiting
(1) the punishment of sin,
(2) and the image of a vicarious dispensation. "By his stripes we are healed". (Isa_53:5)
II THE WORK OF CHRIST. "Even so must the Son of man be lifted up.
1. Consider the meaning of this expression.
(1) It does not signify that he was to be exalted in the sight of men in the preaching of the gospel.
(2) Nor does it signify his exaltation to heaven.
(3) But his being lifted up on the cross. This is the commentary of the apostle himself: "This he said, signifying what death he should die". (Joh_12:33) The cross was to be the step to the throne.
2. There was a Divine necessity for the death of Christ. "The Son of man must be lifted up.
(1) The Divine prophecies must be fulfilled.
(2) The justice of God demanded the sacrifice. Sin can no more exist without punishment than it can exist without hatefulness. The justice of God is as manifest as his grace in the death of his Son.
(3) The love of God was the grand motive for this sacrifice.
(4) The necessity of Christ"s death is attested by many passages of Scripture. (Heb_7:2-9 Heb_8:3 Heb_9:7, Heb_9:12, Heb_9:22)
III THE DESIGN OF THE CRUCIFIXION OF CHRIST. "That whosoever believeth in him should have eternal life." Mark the various points of comparison between the type and the antitype.
1. The poison of the serpents in the wilderness represents the deadly nature of sin. That poison was death; so sin is death.
2. The gaze of the stricken Israelites answers to the look of faith. "There was life in a look.
(1) Faith is the eye of the soul looking to a Saviour. "Look unto me, and be ye saved". (Isa_45:22)
(2) The look implied a dependence in the divinely appointed remedy.
3. The brazen serpent answers to Christ the Son of man. We admit none of the fancies of divines respecting this matter. The one point of analogy was in the "lifting up." Jesus is the Object to be looked at by faith; and, as such, is seen
(1) in the excellence of his Person,
(2) in the completeness of his work,
(3) in the fulness of his grace.
4. The healing of the Israelites answers to that eternal life which is the result of faith. Thus the death of Christ is indispensable to the life of believers. And it stands in causal connection with eternal life as their inheritance. This passage proves not, as some divines say, that life is first, and that the acceptance of the sinner flows from the life; but that acceptance flows from Christ"s death, and that life issues out of the acceptance.
Vers. 14, 15. An emblem of salvation.
It was Christ"s teaching that Moses testified of him. This Moses did by foretelling the advent of a prophet like unto himself, and still more strikingly by the whole system of sacrifice which he perfected, and which the Messiah both fulfilled and superseded. He did so likewise by symbolic acts, thus unconsciously witnessing to Christ and his works. It was natural that our Lord"s first mention of Moses should occur in his conversation with a Hebrew rabbi, an inquirer, and a sympathizing inquirer into his claims. The incident in Jewish history upon which our Lord grafts great spiritual lessons was one familiar, doubtless, to Nicodemus, but one of which he could never until now have seen the deep spiritual significance.
I THE SERPENT BITE IS THE EMBLEM OF SIN. For the moral evil is, like the venom of the viper,
(1) diffused in action;
(2) rapid in progress;
(3) painful to experience;
(4) dangerous and deadly in result.
II THE DEATHS IN THE CAMP OF ISRAEL ARE THE EMBLEMS OF THE SPIRITUAL CONSEQUENCES OF SIN. Scripture consistently represents death, i.e. moral, spiritual death, as the natural and appointed result of subjection to sin. "The soul that sinneth, it shall die;" "The wages of sin is death." If spiritual life is the vigorous exercise, in the way appointed by heavenly wisdom, of the faculties of our intelligent and voluntary nature, spiritual death consists in the deprivation of power, in the cessation or suspension of such activities as are acceptable to God.
III THE BRAZEN SERPENT IS AN EMBLEM OF THE DIVINE REDEMPTIVE REMEDY.
1. Like the figure placed upon the banner staff, the provision for salvation from spiritual death is due to Divine mercy. Christ is the Gift of God; the power of spiritual healing is Divine power; the ransom paid is appointed and accepted by God.
2. In both there is observable a remarkable connection between the disease and the cure. It was not without significance that the remedy provided in the wilderness bore a resemblance to the disease. Christ too was made in the likeness of sinful flesh, and in a human body endured for us that death which is the penalty of sin.
IV THE ELEVATION OF THE BRAZEN SERPENT UPON THE POLE WAS AN EMBLEM OF OUR SAVIOUR"S CRUCIFIXION AND EXALTATION. It is observable how early in his ministry Jesus referred to his "lifting up." That he by this language indicated his crucifixion does not admit of question. "When ye have lifted up the Son of man;" "I, if I be lifted up from the earth; are instances which show how distinctly Jesus foresaw and foretold his death, and even the manner of it. The consistency is manifest between this elevation of sacrificial death and the subsequent elevation to the throne of eternal glory.
V THE LOOKING AT THE LIFTED FIGURE OF THE SERPENT IS AN EMBLEM OF FAITH IN CHRIST. There was nothing in the act of gazing which itself contributed to the recovery of those who were bitten. Nor is there anything meritorious in the attitude of the soul that exercises faith in the Saviour. But it is an act which brings the soul into closest relation with the all-gracious Redeemer. Faith is an attitude, an inspiration of the soul, which instrumentally secures salvation. The Divine ordinance is this: "Look and live!
VI THE PUBLICATION OF THE NEWS CONCERNING THE SERPENT OF BRASS IS EMBLEMATICAL OF THE PREACHING OF THE GOSPEL. It was a ministry of benevolence and of blessing which was discharged by those who went through the camp of Israel, heralding deliverance and life. And there are no tidings so honourable to deliver, and so profitable to receive, as the glad tidings of a great Saviour and a great salvation, which it is the office of the Christian preacher to publish to those who are afar off and to those who are near. T.
Vers. 14, 15. The lifting up of the Son of man.
These are probably the closing words of Jesus to Nicodemus. Jesus has had to teach him great spiritual truths from the analogies of natural birth and the wind blowing where it listeth. Now he will conclude with a historical parallel.
I AN HONOURED NAME IS MENTIONED. Nicodomus and his sect professed to glorify Moses. Jesus did glorify him ia reality. Perhaps Nicodemus is beginning to think that, after all, there is nothing in Jesus likely to he of much service, no correspondence between outward appearance and desired results. And now he is made to understand that Jesus is well acquainted with all the proceedings of Moses, and can use them just when they are wanted. Moses is not only giver of laws, prescriber of ceremonies, fountain of honoured traditions; he is also a saviour, and a saviour by methods that to the natural eye look to have no salvation in them.
II A PRESSING NEED IS SUGGESTED. There must be deliverance from destruction. Something had to be done for the bitten, dying children of Israel, and God gave Moses instructions according to his own wisdom. Other means might have been employed, but those means actually were employed which served the largest ends. Why Moses had to raise the brazen serpent is not seen till Jesus is lifted on the cross. Then we understand how God has his eye on perishing individuals still. Nicodemus is not yet bitten of a guilty conscience. His aims are earthly and limited. He wants something for his own temporal advantage something ministering to his pride as a Jew. And now Jesus hints to Nicodemus how he must discover his spiritual danger, if he is to get the full blessing from Jesus. Jesus is a Saviour as well as a Teacher. He would have men learn first their need of salvation, and then, being saved, they will go on to learn from him how best to use the life that has been saved.
III THE DEMAND FOR SIMPLE FAITH. Such a demand must not be left out of such a discourse. There are many things Jesus cannot yet explain to Nicodemus. Even were Nicodemus a spiritual man, he would have to wait while Jesus goes on through all the transactions of his great work.
How mysterious the announcement of the lifting up of Jesus would seem when it was first made! But Jesus, we may be sure, made that announcement with a view to all in future ages who should read of his lifting up on the cross. Nicodemus might not come again, so Jesus sends him away with as much of essential truth as possible. Let us, too, be deeply thankful fur the parallel Jesus draws between the brazen serpent and himself. It makes us see the power residing in simple faith when that faith goes out to an object of God"s own appointment. Y.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv14, 16, 17 As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness
Joh_3:14-15
As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness
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The brazen serpent
Nicodemuss confession of faith was substantially that of many amongst us, only he went a bit further.
Because he was honest he deserved, and because he was half blind he needed, Christs instruction for the expanding of his creed. Complete Christianity, according to Christ, involves
(1) A radical change comparable to birth. When Nicodemus staggers at this, our Lord
(2) unveils what makes it possible--the Incarnation of the Son of Man who came down from heaven. But a Christianity that stops at the Incarnation is incomplete, so our Lord
(3) speaks of the end of incarnation and ground of the possibility of being born again.
I. THE PROFOUND PARADOXICAL PARALLEL BETWEEN THE IMAGE OF THE POISONER AND THE LIVING HEALER. The correspondence between the lifting up of the serpent and the lifting up of Christ, the look of the half-dead Israelite and the look of faith, the healing in both cases, are clear; and with these it would be strange were there no correspondence between the two subjects. We admit that Jesus Christ has come in the likeness of the victims of the poison, made in the likeness of sinful flesh, without sin; but in a very profound sense He stood also as representative of the cause of the evil. God hath made Him to be sin for us, etc. And the brazen image in the likeness of the poisonous creature, and yet with no poison in it, reminds us that on Christ were heaped the evils that tempt humanity. And Paul, speaking of the consequences of Christs death, says that He spoiled principalities and powers, and made a show of them openly--hanging them up there--triumphing over them in it. Just as that brazen image was hung up as a proof that the venomous power of living serpents was overcome, so in the death of Christ sin is crucified and death done to death.
II. THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS.
1. The serpent was lifted for conspicuousness; and Nicodemus must have understood, although vaguely, that this Son of Man was to be presented not to a handful of people in an obscure corner, but to the whole world, as the Healer.
2. But Christs prescient eye and foreboding heart travelled, onwards to the cross. This is proved from the two other occasions, when He used the same expression.
3. So from the beginning Christs programme was death. He did not begin as most teachers, full of enthusiastic dreams, and then, as the illusions disappeared, face the facts of rejection and death.
4. Notice, too, the place in Christs work which the cross assumed to Him. There have been many answering to Nicodemuss conception--teachers, examples, righteous men, reformers; but all these have worked by their lives: this Man comes to work by His death. He came to heal, and you will not get the poison out of men by exhortations, philosophies, moralities, social reforms. Poison cannot be treated by surface applications, but by the cross.
5. The Divine necessity which Christ accepts--must. This was often on His lips. Why?
(1) Because His whole life was one long act of obedience to the Divine Will.
(2) Because His whole life was one long act of compassion for His brethren.
III. THE LOOK OF FAITH. The dying Israelite had to look. Suppose he had looked unbelieving, carelessly, scoffingly, there would have been no healing. The look was required as the expression of
(1) the consciousness of burning death;
(2) the confidence that it could be taken away because God had said so.
(3) The conviction of the hopelessness of cure in any other way.
IV. THE PROMISE OF HEALING.
1. In the one ease of the body, in the other case of the soul.
2. The gift of life--something bestowed, not evolved.
3. This eternal life is present, and by its power arrests the process of poisoning, and heals the whole nature.
4. It is available for the most desperate cases. Christianity knows nothing of hopeless men. (A. Maclaren, D. D.)
The brazen serpent
The difference between the Gospels and the Epistles is that between seed and flower. Christ gave men the seeds of truth, and left inspired apostles to develop them. Paul has been charged with inventing the doctrine of the atonement, but it is in this verse in germ. Notice here three analogies
I. IN THE DISEASE. The poison of the fiery serpents was fermenting in the Israelites; that of sin is fermenting in us.
1. Men are sinners: a trite observation, but Paul devoted three chapters in Romans to prove it. Our very righteousness is as filthy rags, and you may endeavour by moral improvements to wash them, but you can no more wash them clean than an Ethiop can his left hand by rubbing it with his right.
2. We are all sinners. There is no difference. Irrational animals come short of the glory of God; but men fall short. The idea of a fall underlies all human history: hence culpability. Some men have fallen more deeply, but there is no difference in the fact.
3. All are under sentence of death. Guilty before God, subject to penalty--death. The wages never fall below that.
4. Not only so, but we are polluted, morally sick. What brought death upon us wrought it in us. The venom of the serpents would assuredly terminate in death, in spite of all self or other help. We all sinned in Adam, but Adam continues to sin in us. Sickness is contagious, health never. The Jew transmitted his depravity, not his circumcision: you impart your sin to your posterity, not your holiness. Each has to be regenerated anew.
II. IN THE REMEDY.
1. Our salvation comes through man. The Israelites were bitten by serpents, and by a serpent they were to be healed. By man came sin; by man comes salvation.
2. Not only by man, but the Son of Man, one who in the core of His being is closely united to every other man. According to the ancient law, the Goel or nearest relative alone had the right to redeem. Christ is the nearest relative any man can have.
3. The Son of Man lifted up. The tendency is to make the Incarnation the centre of Christianity: the Bible makes the Cross that. A glorious display of condescending grace was made at Bethlehem; but on Calvary God and man were reconciled. Christ suffered
(1) with man in virtue of His keen sympathies;
(2) for man, in that He suffered martyrdom rather than forsake the path of duty;
(3) instead of man, for He bore the wrath of God.
4. The necessity for our atonement. Not shall, but must. The must of verse 10 indicates the necessity for a radical change in order to salvation; that of our text the necessity of an atonement on the part of God. Sin must be published. Gods righteousness must be upheld, and all its demands met.
5. Jesus Christ uplifted is now both physician and remedy to His people. The brazen serpent could only heal our disease: Christ saves to the uttermost
(1) degree of perfection,
(2) degree of continuation.
III. Is THE APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY FOR THE DISEASE. The Israelites were not bidden to apply poultices, but to look. You are not enjoined to improve yourselves, but to believe.
1. Through faith in Christ the sinner has permission to live. Two words are used in this connection; forgive--give for; remit--set free; corresponding to χαρίζομαι, to show grace, and ἀφίημι, to discharge. These must not be confused. As Broad Church theologians contend every one has been forgiven, but in the first sense. God has given for man all that Almighty Love could offer. But men are only forgiven in the second sense when they accept Gods pardoning grace.
2. By faith we acquire the right to live--this is justification and more than pardon, permission to live.
3. The power to live--regeneration.
Conclusion:
1. In Christs days faith in everlasting life had become practically extinct.
2. Christ revived it, not simply teaching it, but imparting it. (J. Cynddylan Jones, D. D.)
The brazen serpent
I. IT WAS TO BE MADE IN THE LIKENESS OF THAT WHICH WAS DESTROYING THEM. Around are serpents victorious: here the serpent conquered and exhibited as a trophy, and the people who see it live. Around us the powers of darkness and death are victorious, and sinning souls are dead in trespasses and sins. Behold on the cross sin, but sin judged, condemned, executed, held up as a specatcle. He was made sin, etc.
II. When the wounded Israelite looked on the brazen serpent, he found a PROOF OF GODS ABILITY AND A PLEDGE OF GODS WILLINGNESS TO SAVE HIM. As we turn to the cross, the old man is crucified that the body of sin might be destroyed.
III. THE NEW LIFE WAS MIRACULOUS IN ITS CHARACTER: it was not by any natural process of improvement or gradual restoration.
IV. How may we APPROPRIATE THE BENEFITS OF CHRISTS REDEMPTION? Let us take a walk round the camp.
1. In one tent is a man who declines to look because he has tried every remedy that science can provide, and who says, How can I be saved by looking at a mere bit of brass? and dies because he is too proud to be saved in Gods way. And so people plead that they cannot understand the doctrine of the atonement, and seem to regard themselves as under no obligation to trust Him who has made that atonement. Will not a general trust in the mercy of God suffice? But the Israelites were not told to discover the mode of the Divine operation.
2. There is another very far gone who says, Not for me--too late, and dies. So many now regard their case as hopeless, but Christ came to save the chief of sinners.
3. We meet with another who says, I am all right, but I had a narrow escape. The serpent didnt bite; it was only a scratch. But a scratch is fatal; go at once and look. Oh, no! theres no danger; but if anything should come of it I will act on your suggestion. At present I am in a hurry; I have some business. By and by the poison works. Oh for a look at the serpent now! So many perish now by making light of their danger.
4. Here is a man suffering acute agony, who listens with eagerness but obstinate incredulity. If God wished to save, He would speak. Besides, the middle of the camp is a long way, and how can healing influence extend so far? Well, to oblige you, I will look; but I dont expect anything will come of it. There; I have looked, and am no better. So, too, many amongst us try a series of experiments. Im trying to believe, but I feel no better.
5. We turn aside into a home of sorrow. A broken-hearted mother is bending over her little girl. But lamentation will not arrest the malady. Mother, your child may live. The mother listens with the incredulity of joy, but the little one cries, Mother, I want to look at Moses serpent. Instantly the mothers arms are around her, and the child is borne to the door. She lifts her deep blue eyes, while the mother, in an agony of hope and fear, stands waiting. Mother I I am healed. There is life for a look at the crucified One. Look and live. (W. H. M. H. Aitken, M. A.)
The brazen serpent
I. An HISTORICAL FACT DIVINELY ACKNOWLEDGED (Num_21:4-9). Christs entire belief in the Old Testament Scriptures.
II. AN INTIMATE CONNECTION CLEARLY REVEALED.
1. Each divinely appointed.
2. Each met a terrible necessity.
3. Benefit in each case secured by faith.
III. A GREAT NECESSITY INSISTED UPON. Must. Without Christs death none can have life.
IV. A BLESSED PURPOSE CROWNING ALL.
1. A calamity from which we may be delivered.
2. A blessedness to which we may attain.
3. The means of deliverance.
4. The universality of the statement. The only way of mercy and salvation. (J. James.)
The brazen serpent
I. THE BANE. Sin under the aspect of the serpents bite. This symbol has a twofold significance.
1. It glances back to the Old Serpent in Eden; as do also, more or less, that singular phenomenon among so many heathen nations, serpent-worship.
2. The main significance is the light which it throws on sin itself. Its character is spiritual venom; its effects are anguish and death. Those who say, I feel none of those poisonous effects, only prove themselves by that to be the more fatally steeped in sins sweltering venom; for they bewray the awful state described in Scripture as past feeling, or having the conscience seared as with a hot iron.
II. THE ANTIDOTE. Christ uplifted on the Cross and upheld in the gospel as the propitiation for the sins of the whole world. The atonement is the only healing balm. Penances, moralities, and all other substitutes are vain.
1. There is a marked significance in the serpent itself and the very pole. The atonement is as eloquent of sin as it is of salvation. The most awful exhibition of sin ever given was that given on the Cross. Hence our guilt is represented as superscribed thereon--as a handwriting against us legible to the entire universe. In the cross, and on the Crucified, God emphatically condemned sin.
2. The human race have been so infected with the serpents venom as to be called after the name of their father, serpents, scorpions, a generation of vipers. Now Christ came not in sinful flesh, but in its likeness. The Lord laid on Him the iniquity of us all as the representative of humanity. Even as the serpent of brass on the pole was in the likeness of the fiery serpents, but, unlike them, had no venom in it. In this vicarious way was human guilt declared, exposed, condemned.
3. The sin, by being condemned, was put away. As in the ancient sacrifices the fire symbolically burned up the imputed sin along with the victim, so, on the Cross, the worlds sin was put away in Christs sufferings, considered as a barrier to salvation. This blow to sin was a death-blow to Satan. It was the bruising of the serpents head Heb_2:14-15).
III. The MEANS by which the antidote becomes available for the removal of the bane; viz., faith. The wounded Israelites were healed by seeing; the perishing sinner by believing. Notice here in Its proper place the significance of the pole. It was the chief military standard--not the minor or portable ones that were borne about, but the main standard that stood conspicuous in the most prominent part of the camp, fixed in the ground, and from which floated a flag (Jer_51:27; Isa_49:22. See Isa_13:2; Isa_13:3-8; Isa_62:10-11). These texts amply illustrate the use and meaning of the large banner-poles, with their floating insignia, as the symbol of universality of promulgation, and thence of Divine interposition of world-wide scope. The texts cited, or referred to, though beginning with the ordinary uses of the symbol, soon run it into Gospel moulds; and most fitly, for very ancient predictions had declared that unto him, the Shiloh, shall the gathering of the people be (Gen_49:10; Isa_11:10; Joh_12:32). (T. Guthrie, D. D.)
The brazen serpent
I. THERE IS A STRIKING SIMILARITY BETWEEN THE CONDITION OF THE WOUNDED ISRAELITES AND THE STATE OF MAN BY NATURE.
1. Theirs was a degraded condition. Their pain was the result of their transgression.
2. Miserable.
3. Guilty.
4. Helpless.
II. THERE IS A STRIKING RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN THE MEANS EMPLOYED FOR THE RELIEF OF THE WOUNDED ISRAELITES AND THE METHOD OF OUR RECOVERY FROM SIN AND DEATH BY JESUS CHRIST.
1. The brazen serpent in shape exactly resembled the fiery serpent. So Christ was made in the likeness of sinful flesh.
2. The serpent was lifted up, which is emblematical of
(1) Christs crucifixion.
(2) Christs ascension.
(3) The public exhibition of the Redeemers Cross in the ministry of reconciliation.
III. THE RESEMBLANCE BETWEEN THE FEELINGS OF THE WOUNDED ISRAELITES AND THOSE OF THE AWAKENED PENITENT IN THE ACTS OF LOOKING AND BELIEVING RESPECTIVELY. They were
1. Sensible of their calamity.
2. Filled with humility.
IV. THE RESEMBLANCE AS TO THE EFFICACY OF THE REMEDY IN BOTH CASES. In their
1. Instantaneousness.
2. Efficacy to work in the first or last stages of the disease.
3. Completeness of cure.
Learn:
1. That salvation can only be ascribed to the free grace of God.
2. The freedom with which this salvation is bestowed.
3. That gratitude becomes those who have received mercy. (T. Gibson, M. A.)
The brazen serpent
I. THE INCIDENT REFERRED TO. This typical event occurred towards the close of the wanderings. The peoples discouragements had been many, and now the king of Edom suffered them not to pass through his border. The Church must lay its account with difficulty and checks and foes. The Christian who turns out of the straight path at the first menace of the Edomite will find more formidable difficulties before he gets to the heavenly Canaan. Now see the form their murmurings took. Aaron and Miriam are dead, and as Moses is not enough to receive all their taunts they spoke against God. There is no bread, neither is there any water, and this when they had the best of both; so easily does a fretful spirit turn into bitterness the best gifts of God. There was something of peculiar aggravation in this sin, and the retribution was awful. Would God we had died in the wilderness! and the prayer was answered. Now they humble themselves. What powerful teachers are sharp afflictions! Moses prayed for them, and God heard his prayer. To have destroyed the serpents would have been as easy as to command the setting up of the brazen one; but God would give His people a part in their own salvation.
1. Of this event there could be no doubt.
(1) The witnesses were many.
(2) The serpent was preserved as a memorial of it.
2. The serpent had a sacramental character.
3. When this sacramental character encouraged superstition, the serpent was destroyed.
II. THE LESSONS FORESHADOWED.
1. The significant intimation that Christ should die. It was placed on a level with the sacrifices and other symbols which typified the atonement.
2. Salvation does not come to us through Christs being lifted up merely, but through our looking at Him. In the other miracles everything was done by Moses alone. In this case the symbol had no power but that which the faith of the people gave it. The Cross is not a mechanical chain. We must believe.
Conclusion:
1. As the Old Testament and the New are one hook, so the Old Testament way of saving is the same as that of the New.
2. Salvation is the free gift of God received by faith. (D. Moore, M. A.)
The brazen serpent
The type and the antitype correspond
I. IN THE OCCASION OF THEIR INSTITUTION. The Israelites were wounded by the serpents; we are wounded by sin.
II. IN THEIR QUALITIES.
1. The serpent was made of an inferior metal; Christ was a root out of a dry ground.
2. There was only one brazen serpent for the whole Jewish camp; there is only one Mediator between God and man.
3. The serpent was appointed of God; Christ was appointed by the Father.
4. The serpent was publicly lifted up; Christ is uplifted by His ministers.
III. IN THE MANNER IN WHICH THE BENEFIT IS DERIVED.
1. By looking personally.
2. Instantly.
3. Steadily and constantly.
4. Exclusively.
IV. IN THE EFFECTS THEY PRODUCE.
1. The completeness of the cure.
2. Its universality.
(1) Every one may be healed.
(2) The whole of the surviving camp was healed. So all the world will one day be saved by Christ.
Conclusion:
1. How simple is the way of salvation.
2. How injurious is unbelief. If we despise this ordinance of God we shall perish. (S. Sutton.)
The mysteries of the brazen serpent
All languages are based on figures. When we teach children we employ figures. And so Christ employed figures to teach this spiritual child the things of the kingdom: a better way than by the use of abstract terms.
I. THE PEOPLE IN THE WILDERNESS, the representatives of sinful men.
1. They had stood valiantly in fight, but the serpents were things that trembled not at the sword. They had endured weariness and thirst and hunger, but these were novelties, and new terrors are terrible from their very novelty. If we could see our condition we should feel as Israel when they saw the serpents.
2. Behold the people after they were bitten--the fire coursing through their veins. We cannot say that sin produces instantly such an effect, but it will ultimately. Fiery serpents are nothing to fiery lusts.
3. How awful must have been the death of the serpent! bitten, and how awful the death of the man without Christ.
II. THE BRAZEN SERPENT. The type of Christ crucified; both remedies.
1. A number, perhaps, declared it absurd that a brazen serpent should do what physicians could not. So many despise Christ crucified.
2. Some say the cross will only increase the evil, just as old physicians averred that the sight of anything bright would intensify the effect of the poison. So many make out that salvation by the Cross destroys morality.
3. Much as those who heard of the brazen serpent might have despised it there was no other means of cure. So there is none other name, etc.
III. WHAT WAS TO BE DONE TO THE BRAZEN SERPENT? It was to be lifted up--so was Christ.
1. By wicked men.
2. By God the Father.
3. By ministers. Let them so preach Him that He may be seen.
IV. WHAT WERE ISRAEL TO DO? To look; the convinced sinner is to believe.
1. There were, perhaps, some who would not look, and some will not come to Christ for life: perhaps
(1) Through unbelief.
(2) Through insufficient conviction.
(3) Through procrastination.
(4) Through belief in other means.
(5) Through looking too much at their sores, and seeming incurability.
2. Those who would be saved must look.
(1) Whosoever.
(2) Look now.
V. ENCOURAGEMENT.
1. Christ was lifted up on purpose for you to look at.
2. He invites you to believe.
3. He promises to save. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
The lifting up of the brazen serpent
I. THE PERSON IN MORTAL PERIL for whom the brazen serpent was made.
1. The fiery serpents came among the people because they had despised Gods way and Gods bread (Num_21:1-35.). The natural consequence of turning against God like serpents is to find serpents waylaying our path.
2. Those for whom the brazen serpent was uplifted had been actually bitten by the serpents. The common notion is that salvation is for good people, but Gods medicine is for the guilty.
3. The bite of the serpent was painful. So many by sin are restless, discontented, and fearful. Jesus died for such as are at their wits end.
4. The bite was mortal. There could be no question about that--nor about the effects of sin.
5. There is no limit set to the stage of poisoning: however far gone, the remedy still had power. So the gospel promise has no qualifying clause.
II. THE REMEDY PROVIDED FOR HIM.
1. It was purely of Divine origin: and God will not devise a failure.
2. Exceedingly instructive. Wonder of wonders that our Lord Jesus should condescend to be symbolized by a dead snake.
3. There was but one remedy for the serpent bite: there was only one brazen serpent, not two. If a second had been made it would have had no effect.
4. It was bright and lustrous, made of shining metal. So if we do but exhibit Jesus in His own true metal He is lustrous in the eyes of men.
5. The remedy was enduring. So Jesus saves to the uttermost.
III. THE APPLICATION OF THE REMEDY.
1. The simplest imaginable. It might, had God so ordered, have been carried into the house, rubbed on the man, and applied with prayers and priestly ceremonies. But he has only to look; and it was wall, for the danger was so frequent.
2. Very personal. A man could not be cured by what others could do for him--physicians, sisters, mothers, ministers.
3. Very instructive--self help must be abandoned and God be trusted.
IV. THE CURE EFFECTED.
1. He was healed at once. He had not to wait five minutes, nor five seconds. Pardon is not a work of time, although sanctification is.
2. The remedy healed again and again. The healed Israelites were in danger. The safest thing is not to take our eye off the brazen serpent at all.
3. It was of universal efficacy, and no man who looks to Christ remains under condemnation.
V. A LESSON FOR THOSE WHO LOVE THEIR LORD. Imitate Moses. He did not incense the brazen serpent, or hide it behind vestments or ceremonies, but raised it on a bare pole that all might see. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Three similitudes
I. THE STUNG ISRAELITE AND THE GUILTY SINNER.
1. As the Israelite had death in his bosom, so the sinner (Heb_2:14); although the latter sting may not be felt as was the former.
2. The Israelite wanted all means of cure, and had not God appointed the serpent he had perished. As helpless is the sinner till God shows us His Christ.
II. THE BRAZEN SERPENT AND CHRIST.
1. The serpent was accursed of God. Christ was made a curse for us Gal_3:13).
2. The brazen serpent had the likeness of the serpent, but not the poison. Christ came in the similitude of sinful flesh without sin.
3. The brazen serpent was uplifted on a pole; Christ on the Cross.
4. As the poison of a serpent was healed by a serpent, so the sin of man by man (Rom_5:1-21.; 1Co_15:21). But Christ had power in Himself to heal us which the other had not.
5. The brazen serpent was not the device of an Israelite, but of God; so no man could have found out such a means of salvation as that established by Christ.
III. THE ISRAELITES LOOKING ON THE SERPENT, AND THE SINNERS BELIEVING IN CHRIST.
1. The Israelite was healed only by looking; so the sinner is justified only by believing.
2. As looking, as well as the rest of the senses, is a passion rather than an action; so in justification thou art a patient rather than an agent: thou boldest thy beggars hands to receive, that is all.
3. The Israelites before they looked up to the brazen serpent for help
(1) Felt themselves stung;
(2) Believed that God would heal them by that serpent.
So the sinner must
(1) Feel himself a sinner, be burdened and heavy laden Mat_2:23), before he will or can come to Christ. A man that feels not himself sick, seeks not the physician;
(2) He must believe that in Christ there is all-sufficient help.
4. The stung Israelite looked on the serpent with a pitiful, humble, craving, wishly eye, weeping also for the very pain of the sting: with such an eye doth the believing sinner look on Christ crucified (Zec_12:10).
5. The Israelite by looking on the brazen serpent received ease presently, and was rid of the poison of the living serpent, and so therein was made, like the brazen serpent, void of all poison. So the believer, by looking on Christ, is eased of his guilty accusing conscience (Rom_5:11, and is transformed into the image of Christ (2Co_3:18).
6. Even the squint-eyed or purblind Israelite was healed; so the weak believer, being a true believer, is healed by Christ.
7. Though the Israelite were stung never so often, yet if he looked up to the serpent he was healed. As we are daily stung by sin, so we must daily look up to Christ crucified. Every new sin must have a fresh act of faith and repentance.
Yet there are two differences betwixt their looking on the serpent and our looking by faith on Christ.
1. By looking they lived, but yet so that after they died; but here, by believing in Christ, we gain an eternal life.
2. They looked on the serpent, but the serpent could not look on them; but here, as thou lookest on Christ, so He on thee, as once on Peter, and on
Mary and John from the Cross, and thy comfort must rather be in Christs looking on thee, than in thy looking on Him. (J. Dyke.)
Sin and salvation through Christ
I. SIN. This was the occasion, with its consequent misery, of the setting up of the brazen serpent; so the occasion of Christs coming was mans being bitten by the old serpent (Rev_12:9; 2Co_11:3). Among the Israelites few were stung, here all; there their bodies, here the soul; there temporal death followed, here eternal.
1. The sting is painful, although not always. It is a great part of our misery not to know our misery. Yet Satans darts are often painful (Eph_6:16). Sin in life will make hell in conscience (Pro_18:14; Job 1Co_15:56).
2. The sting is deadly (Rom_5:12; Rom_6:23; Gen_2:17). Not only death temporal, but spiritual and eternal (Mar_9:44; Pro_8:36).
II. CHRIST SET FORTH BY THE BRAZEN SERPENT.
1. The resemblance between the two.
(1) Both were remedies devised by Gods mercy and love (Joh_3:16). We neither plotted nor asked it. The Israelites did ask through Moses; but in our case God, the offended party, makes the first motion (1Jn_4:19).
(2) Christs humiliation set forth.
(a) A serpent was chosen to show that He came in a mean estate Psa_22:6; Isa_53:3; Mar_9:12);
(b) because the serpent was cursed of God (Gen_3:14).
(c) The serpent was made of brass, not of gold.
(3) The serpent had the form, but not the poison. So Christ (Heb_4:15).
(a) God would cure a serpents bite by a serpent (Rom_8:3).
(b) The parties to be cured were men; therefore the Son of Man must be lifted up.
(4) The place where the brazen serpent was uplifted was Punon Num_33:42-43), for from Punon they came to Oboth Num_21:10). This was in Idumaea, famous for mines of brass or copper--known among the ancients as the metal of Punon. Eusebius (Eccl. Hist., bk. 8.) tells us that Sylvanus and thirty-nine more were beheaded for the faiths sake near the mines of brass in Punon; and Eutychius, Epiphanius, and Theodoret speak of Christians condemned to work in these mines. So that the brass out of which the serpent was made was found in the place where they were bitten. That body which Christ assumed was not brought from elsewhere. Where the mischief was the remedy was at hand.
(5) The brazen serpent was lifted up on a pole. So Christ on the Cross 1Pe_2:24). The serpent first stung us by the fruit of a tree, and Christ saved us by suffering on one.
2. The super-excellency of Christ to the type. The brazen serpent
(1) Was but a sign of salvation (Wis_16:6), but Christ is the author of it Heb_5:9).
(2) Benefited the Israelites only, but Christ all nations (Isa_11:10).
(3) Freed them from present death only, Christ from eternal death Joh_11:26).
(4) Became a means of idolatry (2Ki_18:4), whereas Christ is to be equally honoured with the Father (Joh_5:23; Heb_1:6; Php_2:9-10).
(5) Was broken in pieces; but they shall be broken in pieces who deny Christ (Psa_2:9; Dan_2:44; Luk_19:27).
III. FAITH THE MEANS OF BENEFITING BY CHRIST.
1. The necessity of faith. None had benefit but such as looked Num_21:8).
2. The encouragement of faith
(1) To broken-hearted sinners. If you are stung by sin, look to Christ. A felt sense of sin is warrant enough. The Israelites cried out, Oh! what shall we do? So Act_2:37; Act_16:29-30.
(2) To lapsed believers. God did not take away the serpents, only He gave a remedy. Sin is not abolished, but 1Jn_2:1.
3. The nature of faith, which is a looking unto Christ. The act of faith is expressed by seeing or looking (Zec_12:10; Isa_17:7;Joh_6:40; Heb_11:1; Heb_11:27; Heb_12:2). Faith itself is said to be the eye of the soul (Eph_1:18; Gal_3:1), and its hindrance blindness (2Co_4:4).
(1) The objects proper to faith are things that lie out of the view of sense Joh_20:29).
(2) What kind of sight faith is.
(a) Serious; not a glance, but a fixed eye.
(b) Applicative (Job_5:27; Joh_20:28).
(c) Affectionate, with desire and trust (2Ch_20:12; Psa_121:1; 1Pe_1:7; Isa_17:7; Psa_123:2; Psa_34:5).
(d) Engaging (Php_2:8; Eph_1:17).
The saving sight:--Two great historical facts--the uplifted serpent and the uplifted Saviour. Infinite is the difference between them in point of dignity and momentousness. The one had a narrow circle of a few thousands for its witnesses, and the desert for its theatre; the other a universe. From the one came body-healing, soon to be interrupted by death; from the other flows soul-healing unto life everlasting. But the one sheds much light on the other. Compare them
I. IN THE DESPERATE NATURE OF THE MALADY.
1. What could he more fatal or terrible than this judgment?
2. Like the camp of Israel, this is a world of dying men.
II. IN THE SURPRISING CHARACTER OF THE DIVINELY-PROVIDED REMEDY.
1. God alone could stay the judgment. All the virtue of the serpent of brass lay in the fact that it was appointed by God expressly for a sign of His merciful interposition.
2. Both were lifted up.
III. IN THE APPLICATION OF THE DIVINELY-APPOINTED REMEDY AND THE CERTAINTY AND INSTANTANEOUSNESS OF THE CURE. (A. Wilson, B. A.)
Regeneration: its objective cause
In speaking about the subjective work of Christianity Christ mentions only the initiatory acts in the new birth. In speaking of its objective work He introduces us to the central act. Around this very fact objective Christianity clusters.
I. THE LIFTING UP OF THE SON OF MAN. Our Lord dealt much in illustrations. In this chapter He borrows one from human life--birth; one from nature--wind; and now one from the Scriptures, showing how rich the historical events of the Old Testament were in types and symbols. This illustration is intended to set forth
1. The great fact that Christ was to be a healing medium.
2. The symbol of the devil is made the symbol of his Destroyer in the very act of bruising his head.
3. The virtue by which He should become the healing medium (Joh_12:32-33).
4. Christs moral as well as physical exaltation (see Joh_13:31-32) glorifying both Himself and His Father.
5. Christs transcendent greatness of mind, enabling Him to take cognizance only of the glory, and not of the degradation, of His suffering.
6. His lifting up by many tongues made eloquent by a love kindled from Calvary.
II. THIS GREAT TRANSACTION HAD FOR ITS OBJECT THE SALVATION OF MEN.
1. This salvation is negative and positive--meeting the twofold nature of sin, which is
(1) Positive--entailing misery;
(2) punitive--depriving of positive blessedness. Christ delivers from the first--shall not perish and restores the second--eternal life.
2. This perishing is not annihilation, but a deprivation of vital relation to God; eternal life is a restoration of this relation.
3. These effects are the results of Christs lifting up, and connect the objective transaction with the subjective effects, and goes back to the matter of the new birth, which is organically connected with eternal life.
III. THE DIVINE LOVE, AS AN IMPELLING MOTIVE, WAS EQUAL TO THIS (Joh_3:6). Here, then, are five links in the wondrous chain.
(1) Men are delivered from the perdition of sin, and restored to the Divine life.
(2) This is secured by the lifting up of the Son of Man.
(3) But this Son of Man is the only-begotten Son of God.
(4) This only-begotten Son was made incarnate, that He might be lifted up.
(5) This required some mighty motive.
It is implied
1. That the objects were so unworthy, that the method of redeeming them required so much humiliation and sacrifice, that the motive could only be found in the infinite love of God.
2. That this love is not to be described by word, but by action. God so loved. Here are two loves contending--Gods complacent love for His Son and His love of commiseration for the world.
IV. THAT GODS OBJECT IN ALL THIS IS BENEVOLENT (Joh_3:17). The declaration that Christs object was to save men, given in Joh_3:15; Joh_16:1-33, is here emphasized. It was His sole object.
1. This is an important reminder to all engaged in promulgating the kingdom, of the spirit which should actuate them (Luk_9:55-56).
2. An invitation of mens confidence in the gracious intentions of God Isa_55:8-9). (A. J. Parry.)
The scene referred to
Not long ago I saw a picture of this by Guido. In the foreground strong men were writhing in the death agony; some are pallid in death; some hopelessly lifting eyes, bloodshot and ghastly, to the sacred emblem at the right hand of the picture, and already a new life throbs within them; joy flushes the countenance with unexpected hues of health. But in the centre is a mother, despair in her eye, lifting her babe with both hands, that it may gaze on the saving sight. Why does not the child look up? All! it is too far gone; the deadly bite has penetrated to the central springs; it hangs its head; it droops; it will not look; it gives one throe of anguish, and dies in the mothers uplifted hands. Oh! the unutterable pathos of that mothers look! Often, alas! do parents, teachers, pastors, hold up their dear charge, with agonizing solicitude, before the Saving Sight, without saving results. But the fault lies not with God, but with you. (A. Wilson, B. A.)
The agony of sin
What a moment of agony and terror it must have been as all around unfortunate victims were being attacked with these messengers of death. Young and old, rich and poor; for with them there was no respect of persons. On all sides you might see the Israelites writhing in mortal pains. You might hear the mothers agonized screams as the poisonous reptile fastened its fangs in her darlings breast. See that strong man tottering along; he has just been bitten. A moment ago he was in full health and strength, but now the deadly venom is flowing through his veins, and he is a dead man already. In this terrible emergency the people cried unto God, and Moses was instructed to make a serpent of brass and set it on a pole, and whosoever looked on this should live. (W. M. H. Aitken.)
The serpents
To this day a mottled snake, with fiery red spots upon its head, abounds at certain seasons in the Arabah. It is the dread of the fishermen, and is peculiarly dangerous to the bare-legged, sandalled Bedouin. So inflammable is its bite, that it is likened to fire coming through the veins; so intense its venom, and so rapid its action, that the bite is fatal in a few hours. The body swells with a fiery eruption; the tongue is consumed with thirst; and the poor wretch writhes in agony till death brings relief. This horrible pest suddenly appeared in the camp of Israel in prodigious numbers. From crevices in the rocks, from holes in the sand, from beneath the scanty herbage, these fiery-headed snake-demons swarmed into every tent. There was no running away from them, and killing seemed hardly to diminish their numbers. On every side there was a cry of anguish; men, women, children, racked with the fiery torture; none able to save or even to help another. And much of the children of Israel Num_21:6).
The serpents bite
Some of you recollect the case of Gurling, one of the keepers of the reptiles in the Zoological Gardens, in October, 1852. This unhappy man was about to part with a friend who was going to Australia, and he must needs drink with him. He went back to his post in an excited state. He had some months before seen an exhibition of snake-charming, and this was on his poor muddled brain. He must emulate the Egyptians, and play with serpents. First he took out of its cage a Morocco venom-snake, put it round his neck, twisted it about, and whirled it round about him. Happily for him it did not arouse itself so as to bite. The assistant-keeper cried out, For Gods sake put back the snake! but the foolish man replied, I am inspired. Putting back the venom.snake, he exclaimed, Now for the cobra. This deadly serpent was somewhat torpid with the cold of the previous night, and therefore the rash man placed it in his bosom till it revived, and glided downward till its head appeared below the back of his waistcoat. He took it by the body, about a foot from the head, and then seized it lower down by the other hand, intending to hold it by the tail and swing it round his head. He held it for an instant opposite to his face, and like a flash of lightning the serpent struck him between the eyes. The blood streamed down his face, and he called for help, but his companion fled in horror. When assistance arrived Gurling was sitting on a chair, having restored the cobra to its place. He said, I am a dead man. They took him to the hospital. First his speech went, then his vision failed him, and lastly his hearing. His pulse gradually sank, and in one hour from the time at which he had been struck he was a corpse. There was only a little mark upon the bridge of his nose, but the poison spread over the body, and he was a dead man. I tell you that story that you may use it as a parable and learn never to play with sin, and also to bring vividly before you what it is to be bitten by a serpent. Suppose that Curling could have been cured by looking at a piece of brass, would it not have been good news for him? There was no remedy for that poor infatuated creature, but there is a remedy for you. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
A beautiful legend
is related respecting a scene in the camp of the Israelites at the time of the setting up of the brazen serpent. A woman had been bitten, and was lying in her tent, while the poison was doing its deadly work on her system. It was the day and the hour when the serpent of brass was to be set up in the camp; but such headway had the poison made that it seemed likely that in that case it would prove too late. But the image was at length raised; and the two daughters of the dying woman brought her to the door of the tent, with her face turned towards the image, when apparently swooning in death; the image of the brazen serpent fell upon her eyes, and she was healed. (D. Curry, D. D.)
The serpent eternal life
It is a noteworthy fact that in many of the ethnic religions the serpent was adored as a symbol of life. Horapollon, explaining (wrongly) a particular Egyptian hieroglyph, remarks that among the ancient Egyptians a serpent with its tail in its mouth was a symbol of eternity. The ordinary word for eternity in Egyptian begins with a figure of a serpent. This ancient symbolism, which leaves its traces also in the classics, may have owed something of its origin to the fact of the apparent renewal of the serpents life when it awakens from its dormant condition, and when it casts its old skin. The adoration of AEsculapius, the Greek god of healing, was always connected with serpent worship. In the chief temple at Epidaurus tame serpents had a place of honour; and the god was said frequently to take the form of a serpent when he appeared to men. In the third century before Christ the help of AEsculapius was invoked by the Romans to avert a pestilence. In response, AEsculapius is said to have appeared in the form of a serpent, to have gone on board the Roman ship, and when the ship arrived in the Tiber to have glided over the side and to have taken possession of an island, where a temple was erected to him. It will be remembered also that Cadmus was changed into a serpent at his own request, when he discovered that serpents were dear to the gods. Among the Arabs the serpent is still the living thing of living things. This is seen in their ordinary speech. The Arabic word for life is haya; a common word for a serpent is hayyat, a plural form from hayya, a living thing. When Moses, therefore, lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, it would be recognized by the Jews as a symbol of that life which God had promised to give to those who would look to it in faith. To them it was a most natural symbol; when it ceased to be a mere symbol, and became an object of idolatrous worship, it was destroyed. (Sunday School Times.)
Jesus lifted up
During the American Civil War there was a man on one of the boat-loads of wounded from the field who was very low and in a kind of stupor. He was entirely unknown. Mr. Moody called him by different names, but could get no response. At last, at the name William, the man unclosed his eyes and looked up, and revived. He was asked if he was a Christian. He said, No, but manifested great anxiety upon the subject. I am so great a sinner that I cant be a Christian. Mr. Moody told him he would read what Christ said about that, so turning to St. Johns third chapter he read, 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 everlasting life, etc. Stop! said the dying man; read that over again, will you? It was read again. Is that there? Yes, said Mr. Moody; thats there just as I read it to you. And did Christ say that? Yes. The man began repeating the words, settling back upon his pillow as he did so, with a strange, solemn look of peace on his face. He took no further notice of what was going on about him, but continued repeating the blessed words till Mr. Moody left him. The next morning when the soldiers place was visited it was found empty. Mr. Moody asked if any one knew aught about him during the night. A nurse who had spent the hours with him till he died, replied, All the time I was with him he was repeating something about Moses lifting up a serpent in the wilderness. I asked him if there was anything I could do for him, but he only answered, As Moses lifted up the serpent. Just before he died, about midnight, I saw his lips moving, though there was no sound escaping. I thought he might have some dying message for home, so I asked him for one. But the only answer was the whispered words, As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up: that whosoever believeth in Him-- and so on until his voice died away, and his lips moved no longer. (D. L. Moody.)
Looking at Christ
Mr. Barnes, of the Jewish Mission, Mildmay, London, said: I was visiting in a Jewish neighbourhood in the East End of London, and called upon a Jewess, whom I had known for a long time as a very hard-hearted unbeliever in Jesus Christ. I did not know what to say to her; in fact, I had given her up as almost hopeless. When, however, I called on this occasion she said, I love Jesus, I have got Jesus now as my Saviour. I said, You have! How came you to love Jesus? Well, she said, I will tell you. You know my little girl attends your school, and she comes home and sings the hymns you teach her. She has been singing a good deal lately, There is life for a look at the Crucified One. She kept on singing and singing, and at last it broke my heart, and I wondered, is it true there is life for a look. I have been induced to search the Bible, and I believe Jesus is now my Saviour.
Christ exalted
Describing the artistic glories of the Church of St. Mark at Venice, Mr. Ruskin says: Here are all the successions of crowded imagery showing the passions and the pleasures of human life symbolized together and the mystery of its redemption; for the maze of interwoven lines and changeful pictures lead always at last to the cross, lifted and carved in every place and upon every stone; sometimes with the serpent of eternity wrapped round it, sometimes with doves beneath its arms and sweet herbage growing forth from its feet; but conspicuous most of all on the great rood that crosses the church before the altar, raised in bright blazonry against the shadow of the apse. It is the Cross that is first seen and always burning in the centre of the temple; and every dome and hollow of its roof has the figure of Christ in the utmost height of it, raised in power, or returning in judgment.
Saved by a sight of Christ
I have seen Jesus. This was the saying of a half-witted man, who had turned away from living a very wicked life, when he was asked what had led to this great change. The late Dr. Bushnell, of Hartford, Connecticut, tells this story. He was well acquainted with the person to whom it refers. In addition to his being naturally weak-minded, he had fallen into very wicked ways. He swore dreadfully; he was a confirmed drunkard; he would tell lies, and steal, and do almost anything that was sinful. At one time there was a revival of religion in connection with Dr. Bushnells church. Among others who came to see the doctor then with the earnest inquiry, What must we do to be saved? was this weak-minded, wicked man. Thoughtless people, when they saw him going to church, supposed he was only going in mockery, and to make sport of it. And even serious Christians looked on him with pity, and rather wished he would not come. But when Dr. Bushnell came to converse with him he found him so earnest, and apparently so sincere, that he did not hesitate to receive him into the communion of the church. And the whole course of the poor mans life after this showed that the doctor was right in doing so. From that time onward everything about the man showed that old things had passed away with him, and all things had become new. He became an humble and consistent follower of the Lord Jesus Christ. All his bad habits were given up. He never drank intoxicating liquor again. A profane word was never heard from his lips. He was truthful and honest; regular in attending church; diligent in reading the Bible, and faithful in practising what it taught. To those who had known him in former years this change seemed wonderful. And when he was asked by some one to tell what it was which had led to it, his answer was, in the words already quoted, I have seen Jesus. This explained it all. (D. Newton.)
We are saved by looking to Christ
As a general rule, self-contemplation is a power towards mischief. The only way to grow is to look out of ones self. There is too much introversion among Christians. A shipmaster might as well look down into the hold of his ship for the north star as a Christian look down into his own heart for the Sun of Righteousness. Out and beyond is the shining. (H. W. Beecher.)
We must look away from ourselvesfor peace
Did you ever hear of a captain of a vessel driven about by rough winds who wanted anchorage and tried to find it on board his vessel? He desires to place his anchor somewhere on board the ship where it will prove a hold-fast. He hangs it at the prow, but still the ship drives; he exhibits the anchor upon deck, but that does not hold the vessel; at last he puts it down into the hold; but with no better success. Why, man alive, anchors do not hold as long as they are on board a ship. They must be thrown into the deep, and then they will get a grip of the sea-bottom, and hold the vessel against wind and tide. As long as ever you have confidence in yourselves you are like a man who keeps his anchor on board his boat, and you will never come to a resting-place. Over with your faith into the great deeps of eternal love and power, and trust in the infinitely faithful One. Then shall you be glad because your heart is quiet. (C. H. Spurgeon.)
Whosoever
Dr. Bonar, of Scotland, tells a story of a lady getting into conversation with a workman, and, finding he was a happy Christian, How long have you been thus rejoicing? she asked. Six months ago, he said, I heard an address from the words, Whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life. I could not take it to myself, then, he said, but when I went home that night I dreamt that whosoever meant me. I got out of bed, and got the Bible to see the word, and there it was, whosoever. But you knew it was in the Bible, didnt you? Yes, but I wanted to see it with my own eyes, and Ive been resting on it ever since. Whosoever:--Years ago a young woman married, contrary to the advice of her friends, an ungodly man. She was not long in finding out that she was unequally yoked, and much misery followed. Her husbands mother had given him a Bible, which was put away in a napkin and never looked at. Ten years later sickness overtook him, and the end was evidently fast approaching. One day when his wife had gone into the harvest field, and he was sitting alone in the house, the thought came to him, What a fool Ive been! Here my life is nearly gone, and Ive lived it without God and without hope. Shortly afterwards his little boy came home from school, and the father sent the lad to look for the Bible. The boy brought it down and read part of Joh_3:1-36. to his father, and managed to read the little words, but when he came to the longer word whosoever, in Joh_3:16., he stumbled at it, and said, I cant read that; I dont know what it spells. Why, boy, said the father, you should know that word, because all may turn upon its meaning. So the boy ran out to ask a traveller who happened to be passing what it meant, while the father sat at the open window. The traveller answered to the boys inquiry, The word who-so-ever means anybody and everybody. The words fell on the ear of the listening father, and he said to himself, Anybody, everybody. Why that includes me. It was the very message he needed. He left his burden of sin with the great sin-bearer, and became a new creature in Christ Jesus.
Heaven is everlasting
What is wanting here? said a courtier to his sovereign, with whom he was riding, amid the acclamations and splendour of a triumphal procession. Continuance, replied the monarch. So say I, adds Mr. James. Tell me, if you will, of your youth, your health, the buoyancy of your spirits, your happy connections, your gay parties, your elegant pleasures, your fair prospects, and then ask me what is wanting. I reply, Continuance. A single day may spoil everything; before to-morrows sun shall rise you may be attacked by disease and death. (Biblical Museum.)
Looking and finding rest
At last one snowy day, it snowed so much that I could not go to the place I had determined upon, and I was obliged to stop on the road; I found rather an obscure street, and turned down a court, and there was a little chapel. It was the Primitive Methodist Chapel. I had heard of these people from many, and how they sang so loudly that they made peoples heads ache; but that did not matter. I wanted to know how I might be saved, and if they made my head ache ever so much I did not care. So, sitting down, the service went on, but no minister came (the snowstorm made him late). At last a very thin-looking man came into the pulpit, opened his Bible, and read these words, Look unto him, and be ye saved, all the ends of the earth. Just setting his eyes on me, as if he knew all my heart, he said, Young man you are in trouble. Well I was, sure enough. Says he, You will never get out of it till you look to Christ. And then lifting up his hands he cried out, Look! look! look! It is only look, said he. I saw at once the way of salvation. Oh, how I did leap for joy at that moment! I know not what else he said, I did not take much notice of it. I was so possessed with that one thought. Like as when the brazen serpent was lifted up, they only looked and were healed. I had been waiting to do fifty things, but when I heard this word, Look! what a charming word it seemed to me! Oh, I looked until I could almost have looked my eyes away; and in heaven I will look on still in my joy unutterable. (C. H.Spurgeon.)
Looking and trusting
I once told my little Willie to jump off a high table, and I would catch him. But he looked down and said, Papa, Ise afraid. I again told him I would catch him; but he looked down and said, Papa, Ise afraid. You smile, but that is just the way with the unbeliever. He looks down, and dares not trust the Lord. You would say that would be blind faith, but I say it would not be. I told Willie to look at me and then jump, and he did it, and was delighted. He wanted to jump again, and finally his faith became so great that he would jump when I was eight or ten feet away, and cry out, Papa, Ise a comin. (D. L. Moody.)
Joy comes by looking unto Jesus
Then was Christian glad and lightsome, and said with a merry heart, He has given me rest by sorrow, and life by His death. Then he stood awhile to look and wonder; for it was very surprising to him that the sight of the Cross should thus ease him of his burden. He looked, therefore, and looked again, even till the springs that were in his head sent the water down his cheeks. Now as he stood looking and weeping, behold three shining ones came to him, and saluted him with Peace be to thee; so the first said to him, Thy sins be forgiven thee; the second stripped him of his rags, and clothed him with change of raiment; the third also set a mark on his forehead, and gave him a roll with a seal on it, which he bid him look on as he ran, and that he should give it in at the celestial gate; so they went their way. (Pilgrims Progress.)
Looking brings life
If we look upon Christ with the eye though of a weak faith, we shall be saved. Dr. Cneciger when he lay a-dying cried out, Credo languida fide, sed tamen fide. I believe with a weak faith, but with a faith such as it is. (J. Trapp.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv14, 16 14, 15. As Moses lifted up the serpent in…
14, 15. As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up. The reference is to Numbers 21:4–9. As the bitten Israelites were healed by looking upon the brazen serpent lifted on high, so the world in sin is saved by looking to Jesus lifted up upon the cross.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary 1892 · Public Domain On v16 Joh_3:16-21. These verses are confidently held by many to…
EXPLANATORY AND CRITICAL NOTES
Joh_3:16-21. These verses are confidently held by many to contain the reflections of the Evangelist, and not to be a continuation of our Lord’s discourse. But
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(1) there is not the slightest indication of a transition from Christ’s words to a disciple’s comments on them; and
(2) we cannot think that our Lord would have let Nicodemus depart without a distinct assertion that the Son of man was none other than the Son of God, as the Baptist declared Him to be; and without further instruction in the mystery of redemption. Nicodemus was, we may believe, now a humble learner, and that now our Lord’s discourse flowed on uninterruptedly. The discourse is not, we may affirm, reported in full. The Evangelist, directed by the Spirit, recorded what was of universal interest and importance; and perhaps also we have at the close a condensation of our Lord’s utterance. St. John did not profess to have recorded every word spoken by the Saviour, any more than all His actions (Joh_20:30; Joh_21:25; Act_20:35). God so loved, etc.—The love, and not the wrath of God, is the source of redemption for mankind. Gave His only begotten Son (2Co_9:15).—It was during this conversation most likely that John first heard this striking title (1Jn_4:9). Believeth upon (εἰς).—Implying the idea of assured trust in the Son as the all-merciful and almighty.
Joh_3:17. Condemn.—Better judge (κρίνειν). “It means originally to separate, and in the moral sense to separate good from evil. Passing from the act to the effect, it may mean to absolve; but as the usual effect of separation is to exclude the evil, the word has attached to itself frequently the idea of condemnation” (Watkins). Judgment is not the end of Christ’s coming, but salvation. That the world, etc.—How condemnatory of sectarian limitations of the power of Christ’s saving work!
Joh_3:18-19. But though Christ did not come to judge, the effect of His coming is judgment. And this judgment is not an arbitrary act. It is the result of men’s own choice. Those who remain in the bondage of sin shall taste the penalty of sin (Rom_6:23). This is their judgment. This judgment is made imperative by the entrance of light into the world. It was then evident that men loved darkness rather than light—darkness absolutely (σκότος) in contradistinction to light.
Joh_3:20-21. Here the explanation of this awful choice made by unrenewed humanity is given. He that doeth evil, etc.—Doeth (πράσσων), or practiseth, evil (φαῦλα), or bad actions. To see such actions for a moment in the light of eternal truth is to condemn them. Those who find pleasure in them therefore avoid the light. But he that doeth (ποιῶν) truth, etc.—ποιῶν “implies effective realisation—in good-doing the product remains” (Godet). “Right action is true thought realised” (Westcott). “Among mankind before Christ there mingle two kinds of men. With the appearance of Jesus their separation begins” (Lücke). And with this word of hope to Nicodemus—hope that he was of the number of those doing truth—the interview with him ends.
Joh_3:22. After, etc.—I.e. after the occurrences related from Joh_3:13 in the previous chapter. The land of Judæa means the country districts of Judæa. No further record of this work, in which our Lord must have increased the number of His followers, is given, as Jesus did not baptise personally, but through His disciples (Joh_4:2).
MAIN HOMILETICS OF THE PARAGRAPH.—Joh_3:16-21
The blessedness to which the Spirit leads us through regeneration.—Faith in Christ, as St. John points out, is the means through which men attain to the new life (Joh_3:15). We must surrender ourselves and trust in Him for all. But faith also is “the gift of God.” Of ourselves alone we cannot attain it; for sin has darkened our spiritual vision and weakened our spiritual power. But faith is given by the Spirit (1Co_12:9). He transforms our nature—through Him it is born anew. The darkness is cleared away from our spiritual vision, and spiritual strength is given to those who have no might. And thus the spiritually renewed are led to rejoice in—
I. The unchanging divine love, which is revealed as the eternal spring of redemption.—
1. It was not from an unwilling God that mercy was won for perishing men. God Himself is fons et origo of all the mercy and goodness and love which have been showered on men, sinful as they were, through the long course of history.
2. Nay, more: when no man could “redeem his brother, or bring to God a ransom for him,” God sent His only-begotten Son, gave Him up to live and die for man’s salvation.
3. And the reception of and participation in this heavenly gift is assured to those who believe. And those who thus receive Christ and His salvation are led ever more joyfully to understand the mystery of the divine love—to realise “that God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved” (Joh_3:17).
II. Those who are spiritually renewed rejoice in having escaped from the terrible judgment of unbelievers.—“He that believeth not is condemned already,” etc. (Joh_3:18-20)
1. Those who turn away in unbelief from God’s dear Son bring judgment upon themselves, and shut themselves out from the divine mercy in Christ. They reject Christ’s expiation of the offended divine law, and the means by which the new spiritual life is alone begotten in men; thus the final judgment will simply be a declaration of their self-condemnation. They will stand self-condemned before the Judge (Rev_6:16).
2. And, as a result of this rejection of Christ, the light of men, the unbelieving sink into ever deeper darkness, the heart becomes hardened, the dominion of evil is ever more firmly established. Evil becomes their good—they devour iniquity (Pro_19:28), wickedness is sweet in their mouths (Job_20:12). And because of this they hate the light, for it intrudes on their peace, and threatens to snatch their pleasure from them. But the end is certain; it is condemnation—eternal loss. Thus the Spirit brings before believers this terrible result of unbelief as a warning; and they are led thereby more fully and even tremblingly to rejoice in their salvation.
III. And, last, the blessedness of the new life is a cause of rejoicing.—
1. It is free from the fear of judgment; for over the believer the Eternal Judge Himself has cast the shield of His grace. “There is no condemnation to them who are in Christ Jesus,” etc. (Rom_8:1). The eternal judgment will be but the open manifestation of God’s love to His people; and in the judgments and trials that overtake them here they realise “not tokens of wrath, but of gracious chastisement.”
2. And in the life of faith men ever seek the light—desire ever more fully to know themselves, their weaknesses, their follies, their sinfulness; and to know Christ and the gospel of His grace, that those evils may, through the grace of His indwelling Spirit, be ever more eliminated. By the truth enlightened, they order their way and work to the honour of God, in all things seeking to adorn the doctrine of God their Saviour, and to demonstrate that the life they now live in the flesh they live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved them and gave Himself for them; they work out their own salvation with fear and trembling, knowing and acknowledging that it is God who works in them, etc. (Php_2:13), so that their “deeds may be made manifest that they are wrought in God.”
Joh_3:16-21. The office of the Holy Ghost.—This office has two sides: the Holy Ghost gathers together and separates—unites and divides.
I. He reveals the love of God.—
1. The object of this love: God loved the world.
2. The manner and kind of this love: God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Song of Solomon 3. The condition of this love: whosoever believeth in Him.
4. The purpose of this love: God gives His Son that we may not perish, but that we may have eternal life. Not that He might judge the world; but that the world through Him might be saved.
II. He executes judgment.—
1. Through His continued pentecostal activity, in that He reveals the love of God in Christ to us poor sinful men, and to a lost world, and in that He shows the mighty so (οὕτω) of this love. He not only gathers the Church, but in so doing carries out a solemn judgment. It is a momentous fact that those who believe are not judged, whilst the unbelieving are judged already.
2. How is this judgment, this separation, effected? Attend first to the effect which the heart experiences in which the Holy Spirit witnesses to the love of God. Christ is the light which penetrates into the heart of man, and reveals the existing darkness. The man is dismayed, but he fears the struggle. He resolves to remain as he is. Thus arises the opposition to this apprehension by the Spirit. But because the Holy Spirit does not leave hold of the man who has been convicted, the opposition may gradually become hatred of the light that shines in on his darkness. The man then enters on the way of darkness, in which his deeds are evil, and does not come to the light, so that his works may not be detected, and lose their delight, etc.—Appuhn in J. L. Sommer’s “Evang. Per.”
Joh_3:16-21. The double office of the Holy Spirit.—He is:
I. A guide to the way of salvation, Joh_3:16-18; Joh_3:21.—
1. He holds up to our view the love of God in Christ.
2. He leads us to regard the Saviour as dear and beloved.
3. He enkindles faith in us.
4. He gives us assurance of life eternal.
5. He sanctifies and renews us.
He is further—
II. A judge of those who contemn the great salvation.—
1. He condemns the darkness of unbelief and those who love it.
2. He separates the unbelieving and carnally minded from the community of the faithful.
3. He represents to them their unbelief as the sole cause of their condemnation.—Dr. v. Biarowsky.
Joh_3:16. The love of God.—John is veritably the apostle of love. He alone of all the apostolic band seems to have been chosen to understand somewhat the deeps of this divine love, so that he might tell it to men. The spirit of inspiration chooses fitting instruments; and we must assume that by nature and grace St. John was best fitted to make known the gospel of eternal love. Here, for the first time, he opens for us in his Gospel this eternal spring. Its presence had been implied before, when the revelation of Christ was spoken of; but now it is clearly made known. Notice:—
I. The eternal spring of love.—
1. It is God Himself. He is the fountain of love. Many glorious things are spoken of God. His eternity, “the same yesterday,” etc.; His almighty power, so that He speaks and it is done, etc.; His omniscience, His wisdom, are all brought before us, and evoke our adoration and praise.
2. But this feature of His nature is pre-eminent. It is said God is the righteous One, holy One, etc. But it is not said, He is righteousness, etc. It is said He is love. This is the attribute that runs through and dominates all the others.
3. How comforting is this revelation of the divine love. How it has altered men’s ideas of God, and changed to them the face of the universe! How dark and terrible were men’s thoughts of the heavenly Father in times of old, when they offered children in sacrifice, etc.
4. Now how changed is the face of the universe! Jesus has told us of the Father’s care and love for the fowls of the air, the lilies of the field. And nature now is to the Christian everywhere vocal of love divine. History we read with new light in view of this glorious revelation. And especially in the history of His dealings with men it shines conspicuous; throwing its golden light over all. But further—
II. God first loved the world.—
1. It would have been long ere the world would have come to love Him. But “He first loved us,” and our love would never have blossomed in response to His had He not loved us.
2. And first, what does this imply in its fulness? It implies an eternity of love. In the Son whom He loved from eternity He loved His people. Thus all through the course of the world’s history, even when He seemed to be coming only in wrath, God has been coming in love to men.
3. And we live in times when the most amazing proof of that love has been bestowed. “He gave His only begotten Son,” etc. And in all the Church and history of the Church that divine love speaks in convincing tones—in that word of salvation preached, in those ordinances, the observance of which tends to the soul’s spiritual health, in those gifts of the Spirit given freely to them who believe, in those promises that draw us near to the throne of grace,—in all these the love of God is proclaimed to our wondering eyes.
4. How has that love cared for us and watched over us from infancy until now—not turned aside through waywardness, etc.! God first loved us!
III. Walk in the belief of His love and thus taste its joy.—I. Believe on Him who is the gift and revealer of God’s love. Then love will cast out fear.
2. Love will also strengthen to labour. When the sun rises man goes forth to his work, and when the sun of love in Christ shines on a man he becomes diligent for God. Fear for eternity has vanished, and he labours joyously in time.
3. He who believes in God’s love fears not the storms of temptation or trial. Are they not in God’s hands? Shall they not work together for good?
4. Those who abide in love abide in God and God in them. Thus they can “never perish.” Abiding in God’s love through Christ they are eternally safe—safe amid all the turmoil of time until the rest of the Father’s house is reached. This is heaven on earth, and therefore no condemnation.
Joh_3:17. No condemnation.—How great the truth revealed in those simple words—God sent His Son. Jesus Christ His Son came to earth sent by the Father in love to men. The end of His mission was salvation to our perishing race. This great truth is brought before us in two aspects.
I. No condemnation.—
1. His Son was sent not to condemn. Nay, His very name was a sign and symbol of safety, He was called Jesus—a Saviour.
2. The world lay justly under condemnation. It would have sufficiently vindicated the divine justice to have carried out a sentence of condemnation. And the history of all races and religions shows how conscious men were of being under condemnation,—how they feared that it would be carried into effect.
3. But God’s ways are not man’s ways. His love and pity for men found a way by which this condemnation might be averted.
4. “His tender mercies are over all His works.” This has been shown all down the history of the past. It is seen in His providential dealings with man. He has so ordered the course of nature that “seedtime and harvest, summer and winter,” etc. (Gen_8:22), have visited the earth, made it fruitful. He has sent men rain from heaven and fruitful seasons, etc. (Act_14:17). All this showed His loving care, and might have led men to expect that some further loving purpose lay behind.
5. This gracious purpose is seen in redemption, in His sending the Son—not to condemn the world. But there is a further side of this purpose of God, and that is—
II. Salvation.—
1. No condemnation might still have left us far from God. There was an actual purpose of blessing beyond and above this, in God sending His Son. It was, “that the world through Him might be saved.” God could have destroyed, condemned the world without sending the Son. But it was necessary in order to the world’s salvation that He should come.
2. He came to save His people from their sins. It was sin that lay at the basis of alienation and condemnation; and Jesus came not in wrath but in love, to save men from it, by taking away, in His own sufferings and death, the sins of the world.
3. How great was this salvation which He brought. Moses was privileged to lead Israel out of Egyptian bondage, and Joshua to lead the ransomed people into the Land of Promise. But the Son was sent to deliver the world from the bondage of sin, and bring unto all believers the promise of a heavenly inheritance.
4. God sent the Son for this great end. “He is the Author of eternal salvation unto all them that obey Him” (Heb_5:9).
5. And He alone could undertake this office; for He is Emmanuel, “God with us.” He is God with men—in all the fulness of the divine power. The Creator, the Preserver, etc., who took upon Him the form of a servant, but whose glory was manifest in the flesh. He is God for men. He was sent and came to stand in man’s room. He has authority and power to do so. Men died in Him unto sin. Through faith in Him they live. And He is God in men—in those who believe. “Christ in us the hope of glory.” Here is salvation. With Him in us and we in Him, how can we perish? Nay, a world shall be saved! The last shall not outnumber the saved. The purpose of God towards the world shall not fail (Act_3:20-21).
Lessons.—
1. Consider the greatness of God’s love in Christ! He might have destroyed the world, as at the flood, etc. But He chose the way of love, which meant the way of self-sacrifice and humiliation for the Song of Solomon 2. How shall they escape who neglect so great salvation? (Heb_2:3).
3. Let the divine love constrain us to faith and willing submission. Thus shall we best glorify His name by believing in Jesus.
Joh_3:20. Love not the darkness.—Sin is darkness. It leads to men turning away from the light, i.e. from God, as Adam and Eve hid themselves from God when they had fallen.
I. Sin in its nature is darkness.—
1. It is a denial of man’s dependence on God, and an attempt to cut the life loose from Him—“to be as gods.”
2. This ends in disobedience to the divine law, which is man’s light; and in turning away from the source of that light.
3. All ways that lead from God lead to darkness and death.
II. The results of sin lead to ever-increasing alienation and darkness.—
1. How terribly this has been brought out in the world’s history! “Darkness covered the earth, and gross darkness the people.” And men became so accustomed to this state that they loved darkness rather than light.
2. Indeed the entrance of light became a pain. There were still ways in which it could make itself felt, through conscience, through the shame which men often felt at sin; for God’s image, though broken, was not entirely destroyed. But this entrance of the light brought pain. It brought restriction to the lower nature, which had now gained the ascendency, and it showed how far men had fallen, to what height they must attain.
3. Thus they came to love darkness rather than light, and this was their condemnation. Not that they were sinful and in darkness, but because they clung to it even after the light had come. And thus Christ, who came to save, becomes in the nature of things their Judge (Joh_15:22-24).
III. The way of escape from the darkness of sin.—
1. “Awake, thou that sleepest,” etc. (Eph_5:14). The light has come.
2. Christ brings the true knowledge of God, of ourselves, and of the way of salvation.
3. The sun of righteousness has arisen, and with that rising the hope and promise of escape from the darkness of self and sin, to those who believe.
Joh_3:22-24. Our Lord’s ministry in rural Judea.—In Jerusalem our Lord came unto His own—the very centre of the Theocracy—and His own received Him not. He therefore turned His face again toward Galilee. But on the way He lingered in the rural parts of Judea with His disciples, attracting men to Him, and baptising, not personally, but through His disciples, those who believed on Him (Joh_4:1). Who those disciples were we cannot well determine. Peter was not there, it would seem; for although a disciple, he had in the meantime returned to his avocation (Mar_1:16-18). John the Evangelist was with Him, and perhaps one or two of the others already called. Probably, also, some who attached themselves to Him on this ministry. We notice:
I. The initiation of Christian baptism.—
1. By the command, in Mat_28:19, baptism was ordained as an universal possession for all people—a means of grace designed for all ages.
2. In reply to the question why Christ Himself did not baptise but through His disciples, the answer which seems most conclusive is that He desired that all His people should have the assurance that baptism by the hands of His disciples is to be accounted as His baptism.
II. The earnest activity of the Saviour.—
1. “Work while it is called to-day” was a prominent characteristic of His activity;
2. And in every place, at all times, He must needs be about His Father’s business—a happy example for all His true disciples never to neglect opportunities of proclaiming the truth of God.
III. The result of this activity.—
1. It seems to have been phenomenal—“the same baptiseth, and all men come to Him” (Joh_3:26). Disciples were gathered.
2. Here again to the babes—simple countryfolk—were revealed the things which were hid from the wise and prudent in Jerusalem.
HOMILETIC NOTES
Joh_3:16. The greatness of the divine love.—A well-known proverb is, Like draws to like. But here there is an immense dissimilarity.
1. Who is God? The Being of beings, the Almighty, the Light of lights.
2. What are you?—a shadow, a vapour. The greatness of faith.—
1. In faith God has chosen His people to blessedness from the beginning (2Th_2:13);
2. Through faith they can come by Christ’s blood to a throne of grace (Rom_3:25);
3. Through faith they come to God (Heb_11:7);
4. Through faith they have peace with God (Rom_5:1);
5. Through faith they receive forgiveness of sin (Act_10:43);
6. Through faith they are accounted righteous (Rom_4:5);
7. Through faith they overcome the world (1Jn_5:4);
8. The end of faith is the salvation of the soul (1Pe_1:9). Happy and blest are they who have believed. The greatness of this word.—Frederick of Denmark chose this verse as his “sleeping cup.” Receiving this great saying in faith he fell asleep in the Lord gently and blessedly. Monica, the mother of Augustine, used it as a heavenly pinion. Hearing it in the course of a sermon, she was so entranced that she began to cry out, “Avolemus, Avolemus!” (Let us soar upward). Abraham Buchholzer, a noted chronologist, held it before him as a shield against the temptations of the enemy. When, on a bed of sickness, he was oppressed with temptation he cried out without ceasing, Not lost, not lost! referring to this verse, “Whosoever believeth shall not perish.” Luther called this verse parva biblia (little Bible), because it contained in it the kernel of the whole of Scripture. And when it was repeated to him on his death-bed he said: “It is my favourite cordial.” Luther also wrote of this verse as follows: “This is one of the best and most glorious of evangels, and were well worth being written in golden letters, not on paper, but where it may be, on the heart; and well would it be if it were the subject of daily meditation in every Christian’s prayer, to strengthen faith, to awake the heart to supplication; for these are words that can turn sorrow into joy, and make the (spiritually) dead alive, if only the heart would steadfastly believe them.” We behold here the contents of evangelical doctrine and the paragon of consolation. If this saying alone is laid hold of truly by faith, it will enable a man in utmost peril to withstand all fiery darts, to be victorious in all temptations, and lay hold of life eternal. Do not shut yourself out; God does not desire that you should be shut out.—From J. J. Weigel.
ILLUSTRATIONS
Joh_3:16. The eternal love of God.—God has not waited for us to love Him; before all time, before we were endowed with life, He thought of us, and thought of doing us good. What He meditated in eternity He has performed in time. His beneficent hand has bestowed every variety of blessings upon us; neither our unfaithfulness nor our ingratitude has dried up the fountain of His goodness to us, or arrested the stream of His bounty. O thou eternal Love, that hast loved me when I could neither know nor acknowledge Thee! immeasurable love! that has made me what I am, that has given me all I possess, and that has yet promised me infinitely more! O love without interruption, without change, that all the bitter waters of my iniquities could not extinguish! Have I any heart, O my God, if I am not penetrated with gratitude and love for Thee?—Fenelon.
Joh_3:16. Shall not the love of God constrain us to love Him?—Are there yet amongst us those who have never felt the love of God as shown in the gift of His Son? Are there hearts which can warm to every benefactor but the greatest, throb kindly towards every friend but that One who died in man’s stead, and give their quick sensibilities to every tale of heroism and philanthropy but that which describes how “the Son of man came to seek and to save that which was lost”? Indeed we must fear that there are yet many whose affections are in full play towards all but God; many who, in the domestic circle and the intercourse of life, show themselves possessed of fervent affections and acute sensibilities, but who are yet utterly indifferent in regard to the things done “for us men and for our salvation.” What shall we say to such? You have not, but surely you must wish to have, a lively sense of the love shown towards you in redemption. Then, when you go hence, read, in one of the Gospels, the account of Jesus Christ’s sufferings and death; read it with prayer that God would take away the heart of stone and give the heart of flesh; and we shall still hope for you that you will know the gushings of a thankful spirit, and feel a thrill of gratitude at the announcement that God so loved you as to give His own Son to die in your stead.—Henry Melvill.
Joh_3:17. The victory of eternal love.—The result of all this is, that the suffering is efficacious—“He taketh away the sin of the world.” The blood of bulls and of goats could never take away sin, but this Man has offered up one sacrifice for sins for ever. “He taketh away;” it is not merely, “He bears the sin of the world.” He takes it away by taking it upon Him. Many an unconscious victim had shed its blood for the sin of the world, and yet the sin remained. Many a great heart had borne the sin of the world, and had broken under the weight, and still the sin remained. There had been many that palliated the sin of the world, and yet it remained. It is possible to disguise the sin of the world, to drive it under the surface, to cover it with a fair exterior, to make excuse for it, but that is not to take it away. It is possible to fight with separate sins of the world, and in some measure to master them, but as long as any sin remains the sin of the world has not been taken away. But Jesus came not to deal with the sins of the world, but with the sin of the world. In human nature strictness in one direction often compensates itself by laxity in another, and men dream that they have overcome sin when they have gained a victory in some isolated fragment of the world of moral duty. But to exchange one sin for another, as Samson the Nazarite did, is not redemption. Nor is the mere escaping from the penalty of sin redemption. Redemption means the removal of sin, not merely of the punishment of sin; and He who dealt with sin effectually by taking it away was Jesus Christ, and Jesus Christ alone. The sin of the world, not the sins. The victory of Christ was over sin as a unity, the whole corruption of human nature which finds expression in separate sins. The sin of the world is regarded as heaped up in one tremendous pile, and that pile laid upon the head of Christ. That was the load which He staggered under. Think of the sin of one life—the sin with which it is born, the sins of childhood, youth, manhood, age; the sins of broken vows, broken oaths, unfulfilled duties; and then multiply that one life by the numbers of all the world, and consider what a foe it was Christ came to reckon with, what a foe it was that He overcame in the body of His flesh through death.—Dr. W. Robertson Nicoll.
The Preacher's Complete Homiletical Commentary (gen. ed. Joseph S. Exell; Funk & Wagnalls, c. 1892) — public domain (pre-1929). A full-Bible homiletical/sermon-outline anthology covering 65 of 66 books (2 John is absent from the source module). Text from a community e-Sword module.
Alexander MacLaren 1905 · Public Domain On vv14, 16
John
THE BRAZEN SERPENT
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Joh 3:14.
This is the second of the instances in this Gospel in which our Lord lays His hand upon an institution or incident of the Old Testament, as shadowing forth some aspect of His work. In the first of these instances, under the image of the ladder that Jacob saw, our Lord presented Himself as the sole medium of communication between heaven and earth; here He goes a step further into the heart of His work, and under the image, very eloquent to the Pharisee to whom He was speaking, of the brazen serpent lifted up on the pole in the desert, proclaims Himself as the medium of healing and of life to a poisoned world.
Now, Nicodemus has a great many followers to-day. He took up a position which many take up. He recognised Christ as a Teacher, and was willing to accord to the almost unknown young man from Galilee the coveted title of ‘Rabbi.’ He came to Him with a little touch of condescension, and evidently thought that for him, a ruler of the Jews, a member of the upper and educated classes, to be willing to speak of Jesus as a Teacher, was an endorsement that the young aspirant might be gratified to receive. ‘Rabbi, we know that Thou art a Teacher sent from God’-but he stopped there. He is not the only one who compliments Jesus Christ, while he degrades Him from His unique position. Now, to this inadequate conception of our Lord’s Person and work, Christ opposed the solemn insistence on the incapacity of human nature as it is, to enter into communion with, and submission to, God. And then He passes on to speak-in precise parallelism with the position that He took up when He likened Himself to the Ladder of Jacob’s vision-of Himself as being the Son of Man that came down from Heaven, and therefore is able to reveal heavenly things. In my text He further unveils in symbol the mystery and dignity of His Person and of His work, whilst He speaks of a mysterious lifting up of this Son of Man who came down from heaven. These are the truths that the conception of Christ as a great Teacher needs for its completion; the contrariety of human nature with the divine will, the Incarnation of the Son of God, the Crucifixion of the Incarnate Son. And so we have here three points, to which I desire to turn, as setting forth the conception of His own work which Jesus Christ presented as completing the conception of it, to which Nicodemus had attained.
I. There is, first, the lifting up of the Son of Man.
Now, of course, the sole purpose of setting that brazen serpent on the pole was to render it conspicuous, and all that Nicodemus could then understand by the symbol was that, in some unknown way, this heaven-descended Son of Man should be set forth before Israel and the world as being the Healer of all their diseases. But we are wiser, after the event, than the ruler of the Jews could be at the threshold of Christ’s ministry. We have also to remember that this is not the only occasion, though it is the first, on which our Lord used this very significant expression. For twice over in this Gospel we find it upon His lips-once when, addressing the unbelieving multitude, He says ‘When ye have lifted up the Son of Man, then shall ye know that I am He’; and once when in soliloquy, close on Calvary, He says, as the vision of a world flocking to Him rises before Him on occasion of the wish of a few Greek proselytes to see Him, ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’ We do not need, though we have, the Evangelist’s commentary, ‘this He spake signifying what death He should die.’
So, if we accept the historical veracity of this Gospel, we here perceive Jesus Christ, at the very beginning of His career, and before the dispositions of the nation towards Him had developed themselves in action, discerning its end, and seeing, gaunt and grim before Him, the Cross that was lifted up on Calvary. Enthusiasts and philanthropists and apostles of all sorts, in the regions of science and beneficence and morals and religion, begin their career with trusting that their ‘brethren should have understood’ that God was speaking through them. But no illusion of that sort, according to these Evangelists, drew Jesus Christ out of His seclusion at Nazareth and impelled Him on His career. From the beginning He knew that the Cross was to be the end. That Cross was not to Him a necessity, accepted as the price of faithfulness in doing His work, so that His attitude was, ‘I will speak what is in Me, though I die for it,’ but it was to Him the very heart of the work which He came to do. Therefore, after He had said to the ruler of the Jews that the Son of Man, as descended from Heaven, was able to speak of heavenly things, He added the deeper necessity, He ‘must be lifted up.’ Where lay the ‘must’? In the requirement of the work which He had set Himself to do. Beneath this great saying there lies a pathetic, stern, true conception of the condition of human nature. That desert encampment, with the poisoned men dying on every hand, is the emblem under which Jesus Christ, the gentlest and the sweetest soul that ever lived, looked out upon humanity. And it was because the facts of human nature called for something far more than a teacher that He said ‘the Son of Man must be lifted up.’ For what they needed, and what He had set Himself to bring, could only be brought by One who yielded Himself up for the sins of the whole world.
But that ‘must,’ which thus arose from the requirements of the task that He had set before Him, had its source in His own heart; it was no necessity imposed upon Him from without. True, it was a necessity laid on Him by filial obedience, but also true, it was the necessity accepted by Him in pursuance of the impulse of His own heart. He must die because He must save, and He must save because He loved. So He was not nailed to the Cross by the nails and hammers of the Roman soldiers, and the taunt that was flung at Him as He hung there had a deeper meaning, as scoffs thrown at Him and His cause ordinarily have, than the scoffers understood: ‘He saved others,’ and therefore ‘Himself He cannot save.’
So here we have Christ accepting, as well as discerning, the Cross. And we have more than that. We have Christ looking at the Cross as being, not humiliation, but exaltation. ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up.’ And what does that mean? It means the same thing that He said when, near the end, He declared, ‘The hour is come that the Son of Man should be glorified.’ We are accustomed to speak-and we speak rightly-of His death as being the lowest point of the humiliation which was inherent in the very fact of His humanity. He condescended to be born; He stooped yet more to die. But whilst that is true, the other side is also true-that in the Cross Christ is lifted up, and that it is His Throne. For what see we there? The highest exhibition, the tenderest revelation, of His perfect love. And what see we there besides? The supreme manifestation of the highest power.
‘‘Twas great to speak a world from nought,
‘Tis greater to redeem.’
To save humanity, to make it possible that men should receive that second birth, and should enter into the Kingdom of God-that was a greater work, because a work not only of creation, but of restoration, than it was to send forth the stars on their courses and to ‘preserve’ the ancient heavens ‘from wrong.’ There is a revelation of divine might when we ‘lift up our eyes on high,’ and see how, ‘because He is great in power, not one faileth.’ But there is a mightier revelation of divine power when we see how, from amidst the ruins of humanity, He can restore the divine image, and piece together, as it were, without sign of flaw or crack or one fragment wanting, the fair image that was shattered into fragments by the blow of Sin’s heavy mace. Power in its highest operation, power in its tenderest efficacy, power in its widest sweep, are set forth on the Cross of Christ, and that weak Man hanging there, dying in the dark, is ‘the power of God’ as well as ‘the wisdom of God.’ The Cross is Christ’s Throne, but it is His sovereign manifestation of love and power only if it is what, as I believe He told us it was, and what His servants from His lips caught the interpretation of it as being, the death for the sins of the sin-stricken world. Unless we can believe that, when He died, He died for us, I know not why Christ’s death should appeal to our love. But if we recognise-as I pray that we all may recognise-that our deep need for something far more than Teacher or Pattern has been met in that great ‘one Sacrifice for sins for ever,’ then the magnetism of the Cross begins to tell, and we understand what He meant when He said, ‘I, if I be lifted up, will draw all men unto Me.’ Brethren, the Cross is His Throne, from which He rules the world, and if you strike His sacrifice for sins out of your conception of His work, you have robbed Him of sovereignty, and taken out of His hand the sceptre by which He governs the hearts and wills of rebellious and restored men.
II. Notice, again, how we have here the look at the uplifted Son of Man.
I do not need to paint for you what your own imaginations can sufficiently paint for yourselves-the scene in the wilderness where the dying men from the very outskirts of the camp could turn a filmy eye to the brazen serpent hanging in their midst. That look is the symbol of what we need, in order that the life-giving power of Christ should enter into our death. There is no better description of the act of Christian faith than that picture of the dying Israelite turning his languid eye to the symbol of healing and life. That trust which Jesus emphasises here in ‘whosoever believeth on Him,’ He opposes very emphatically to Nicodemus’s confession, ‘We know that Thou art a Teacher.’ We know-you have to go a step further, Nicodemus! ‘We know’; well and good, but are you included in ‘whosoever believeth’? Faith is an advance on credence. There is an intellectual side to it, but its essence is what is the essence of trust always, the act of the will throwing itself on that which is discerned to be trustworthy. You know that a given man is reliable-that is not relying on him. You have to go a step further. And so, dear brethren, you may believe thirty-nine or thirty-nine thousand Articles with an unfaltering credence, and you may be as far away from faith as if you did not believe one of them. There may be a perfect belief and an absolute want of faith. And on the other hand, blessed be God! there may be a real and an operative trust with a very imperfect or mistaken creed. The wild flowers on the rock bloom fair and bright, though they have scarcely any soil in which to strike their roots, and the plants in the most fertile garden may fail to produce flowers and seed. So trust and credence are not always of the same magnitude.
This trust is no arbitrary condition. The Israelite was bid to turn to the brazen serpent. There was no connection between his look and his healing, except in so far as the symbol was a help to, and looking at it was a test of, his faith in the healing power of God. But it is no arbitrary appointment, as many people often think it is, which connects inseparably together the look of faith and the eternal life that Christ gives. For seeing that salvation is no mere external gift of shutting up some outward Hell and opening the door to some outward Heaven, but is a state of heart and mind, of relation to God, the only way by which that salvation can come into a man’s heart is that he, knowing his need of it, shall trust Christ, and through Him the new life will flow into his heart. Faith is trust, and trust is the stretching out of the hand to take the precious gift, the opening of the heart for the influx of the grace, the eating of the bread, the drinking of the water, of life.
It is the only possible condition. God forbid that I should even seem to depreciate other forms of healing men’s evils and redressing men’s wrongs, and diminishing the sorrows of humanity! We welcome them all; but education, art, culture, refinement, improved environment, bettered social and political conditions, whilst they do a great deal, do not go down to the bottom of the necessity. And after you have built your colleges and art museums and stately pleasure-houses, and set every man in an environment that is suited to develop him, you will find out what surely the world might have found out already, that, as in some stately palace built in the Campagna, the malaria is in the air, and steals in at the windows, and infects all the inhabitants. Thank God for all these other things! but you cannot heal a man who has poison in his veins by administering cosmetics, and you cannot put out Vesuvius with a jugful of water. If the camp is to be healed, the Christ must be lifted up.
III. And now, lastly, here we have the life that comes with a look at the lifted-up Son of Man.
Those of you who are using the Revised Version will see that there is a little change made here, partly by the exclusion of a clause and partly by changing the order of the words. The alteration is not only nearer the original text, but brings out a striking thought. It reads that ‘whosoever believeth may in Him have eternal life.’ Now, it is far too late a period of my discourse to enlarge upon all that these great words would suggest to us, but let me just, in a sentence or two, mark the salient points.
‘Eternal life’; do not bring that down to the narrow and inadequate conception of unending existence. It involves that, but it means a great deal more. It means a life of such a sort as is worth calling life, which is a life in union with God, and therefore full of blessedness, full of purity, full of satisfaction, full of desire and aspiration, and all these with the stamp of unendingness deeply impressed upon them. And that is what comes to us through the look. Not only is the process of dying arrested, but there is substituted for it a new process of growing possession of a new life. You ‘must be born again,’ Christ had been saying to Nicodemus. The change that passes upon a man when once he has anchored his trust on Jesus Christ, the uplifted Son of Man, is so profound that it is nothing else than a new birth, and a new life comes into his veins untainted by the poison, and with no proclivity to death.
‘May have eternal life’-now, here, on the instant. That eternal life is no future gift to be bestowed upon mortal men when they have passed through the agony of death, but it is a gift which comes to us here, and may come to any man on the instant of his looking to Jesus Christ.
‘May in Him have eternal life’-union with Christ by faith, that profound incorporation-if I may use the word-into Him, which the New Testament sets forth in all sorts of aspects as the very foundation of the blessings of Christianity; that union is the condition of eternal life. So, dear brethren, we all need that the poison shall be cast out of our veins. We all need that the tendency downwards to a condition which can only be described as death may be arrested, and the motion reversed. We all need that our knowledge shall be vitalised into faith. We all need that the past shall be forgiven, and the power of sin upon us in the present shall be cancelled. ‘The blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth from all sin,’ because it was shed for the remission of the sins of the many, and is transfused, an untainted principle of life, into our veins. What Jesus said to Nicodemus by night in that quiet chamber in Jerusalem, what He said in effect and act upon the Cross, when uplifted there, is what He says to each of us from the Throne where He is now lifted up: ‘Whosoever believeth shall in Me have eternal life.’ Take Him at His word, and you will find that it is true.
John
CHRIST’S MUSTS
Joh 3:14.
I have chosen this text for the sake of one word in it, that solemn ‘must’ which was so often on our Lord’s lips. I have no purpose of dealing with the remainder of this clause, nor indeed with it at all, except as one instance of His use of the expression. But I have felt it might he interesting, and might set old truths in a brighter light, if we gather together the instances in which Christ speaks of the great necessity which dominated His life, and shaped even small acts.
The expression is most frequently used in reference to the Passion and Resurrection. There are many instances in the Gospels, in which He speaks of that must. The first of these is that of my text. Then there is another class, of which His word to His mother when a twelve-year-old child may be taken as a type: ‘Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?’ where the mysterious consciousness of a special relation to God in the child’s heart drew Him to the Temple and to His Father’s work. Other similar instances are those in which He responded to the multitude when they wanted to keep Him to themselves: ‘I must preach in other cities also’; or as when He said, ‘I must work the works of Him that sent Me while it is day.’
Yet another aspect of the same necessity is presented when, looking far beyond the earthly work and suffering, He discerned the future triumph which was to be the issue of these, and said, ‘Other sheep I have . . . them also I must bring.’
And yet another is in reference to a very small matter: His selection of a place for a few hours’ rest on His last fateful journey to Jerusalem, when He said, ‘Zaccheus, . . . to-day I must abide at thy house.’
Now, if we put these instances together, we shall get some precious glimpses into our Lord’s heart, and His view of life.
I. Here we see Christ recognising and accepting the necessity for His death.
My text, if we accept John’s Gospel, contributes an altogether new element to our conception of our Lord as announcing His death. For the other three Gospels lay emphasis on it as being part of His teaching, especially during the later stage of His ministry. But it does not follow that He began to think about it or to see it, when He began to speak about it. There are reasons for the earlier comparative reticence, and there is no ground for the conclusion that then first began to dawn upon a disappointed enthusiast the grim reality that His work was not going to prosper, and that martyrdom was necessary. That is a notion that has been frequently upheld of late years, but to me it seems altogether incongruous with the facts of the case. And, if John’s Gospel is a true record, that theory is shivered against this text, which represents Him at the very beginning of His career-the time when, according to that other theory, He was full of the usual buoyant and baseless anticipations of a reformer commencing His course-as telling Nicodemus, ‘Even so must the Son of Man be lifted up.’ In like manner, in the previous chapter of this same Gospel, we have the significant though enigmatical utterance: ‘Destroy this Temple, and in three days I will raise it up’; with the Evangelist’s authoritative comment: ‘He spake of the Temple of His body.’ So, from the beginning of His career, the end was clear before Him.
And why must He go to the Cross? Not merely, as the other Evangelists put it, in order that ‘it might be fulfilled which was spoken of the prophets.’ It was not that Jesus must die because the prophets had said that Messiah should, but that the prophets had said that Messiah should because Jesus must. There was a far deeper necessity than the fulfilment of any prophetic utterance, even the necessity which shaped that utterance. The work of Jesus Christ could not be done unless He died. He could not be the Saviour of the world unless He was the sacrifice for the sins of the world.
We cannot see all the grounds of that solemn imperative, but this we can see, that it was because of the requirements of the divine righteousness, and because of the necessities of sinful men. And so Christ’s was no martyr’s death, who had to die as the penalty of the faithful discharge of His duty. It was not the penalty that He paid for doing His work, but it was the work itself. Not that gracious life, nor ‘the loveliness of perfect deeds,’ nor His words of sweet wisdom, nor His acts of transcendent power, equalled only by the pity that moved the power, completed His task, but He ‘came to give His life a ransom for many.’
‘Must’ is a hard word. It may express an unwelcome necessity. Was this necessity unwelcome? When He said, ‘The Son of Man must be lifted up,’ was He shrinking, or reluctantly submitting? Ah, no! He must die because He would save, and He would save because He did love. His filial obedience to God coincided with His pity for men: and not merely in obedience to the requirements of the divine righteousness, but in compassion for the necessities of sinners, necessity was laid upon Him.
Oh, brethren! nothing held Christ to the Cross but His own desire to save us. Neither priests nor Romans carried Him thither. What fastened Him to it was not the nails driven by rude hands. And the reason why He did not, as the taunters bade Him do, come down from it, was neither a physical nor a moral necessity unwelcome to Himself, but the yielding of His own will to do all which was needed for man’s salvation.
This sacrifice was bound to the altar by the cords of love. We have heard of martyrs who have refused to be tied to the stake, and have kept themselves motionless in the centre of the fierce flames by the force of their wills. Jesus Christ fastened Himself to the Cross and died because He would.
And, oh! if we think of that sweet, serene life as having clear before it from the very first steps that grim end, how infinitely it gains in pathetic beauty and in heart-touchingness! What wonderful self-abnegation! How he was at leisure from Himself, with a heart of pity for every sorrow, and loins girt for all service, though during all His life the Cross closed the vista! Think that human shrinking was felt by Him, think that it was so held back that His purpose never faltered, think that each of us may say, ‘He must die because He would save me’; and then ask, ‘What shall I render to the Lord for all His benefits toward me?’
II. In a second class of these utterances, we see Christ impelled by filial obedience and the consciousness of His mission.
‘Wist ye not that I must be about My Father’s business?’ That was a strange utterance for a boy of twelve. It seems to negative the supposition that what is called the ‘Messianic consciousness’ dawned upon Jesus Christ first after His baptism and the descent of the Spirit. But however that may be, it and the similar passages to which I have already referred, bearing upon His discharge of His work prior to His death, teach that the necessity was an inward necessity springing from His consciousness of Sonship, and His recognition of the work that He had to do. And so He is our great Example of spontaneous obedience, which does violence to itself if it does not obey. It was instinct that sent the boy into the Temple. Where should a Son be but in His Father’s house? How could He not be doing His Father’s business?
Thus He stands before us, the pattern for the only obedience that is worth calling so, the obedience which would be pained and ill at ease unless it were doing the work of God. Religion is meant to make it a second nature, or, as I have ventured to call it, an instinct-a spontaneous, uncalculating, irrepressible desire-to be in fellowship with God, and to be doing His will. That is the meaning of our Christianity. There is no obedience in reluctant obedience; forced service is slavery, not service. Christianity is given for the specific purpose that it may bring us so into touch with Jesus Christ as that the mind which was in Him may be in us; and that we too may be able to say, with a kind of wonder that people should have expected to find us in any other place, or doing anything else, ‘Wist ye not that because I am a Son, I must be about my Father’s business?’ As certainly as the sunflower follows the sun, so certainly will a man animated by the mind that was in Jesus Christ, like Him find his very life’s breath in doing the Father’s will.
So then, brethren, what about our grudging service? What about our reluctant obedience? What about the widespread mistake that religion prohibits wished-for things and enforces unwelcome duties? If my Christianity does not make me recoil from what it forbids, and spring eagerly to what it commends, my Christianity is of very little use. If when in the Temple we are like idle boys in school, always casting glances at the clock and the door, and wishing ourselves outside, we may just as well be out as in. Glad obedience is true obedience. Only he who can say, ‘Thy law is within my heart, and I do Thy will because I love Thee, and cannot but do as Thou desirest,’ has found the joy possible to a Christian life. It is not ‘harsh and crabbed,’ as those that look upon it from the outside may ‘suppose,’ but musical and full of sweetness. There is nothing more blessed than when ‘I choose’ covers exactly the same ground as ‘I ought.’ And when duty is delight, delight will never become disgust, nor joy pass away.
III. We see, in yet another use of this great ‘must,’ Christ anticipating His future triumph.
‘Other sheep I have which are not of this fold; them also I must bring, and there shall be one flock and one Shepherd.’ Striking as these words are in themselves, they are still more striking when we notice their connection; for they follow immediately upon His utterance about laying down His life for the sheep. So, then, this was a work beyond the Cross, and whatever it was, it was to be done after He had died.
I need not point out to you how far afield Christ’s vision goes out into the dim, waste places, where on the dark mountains the straying sheep are torn and frightened and starving. I need not dwell upon how far ahead in the future His glance travels, or how magnificent and how rebuking to our petty narrowness this great word is. ‘There shall be one flock’ {not fold}; and they shall be one, not because they are within the bounds of any visible ‘fold,’ but because they are gathered round the one Shepherd, and in their common relation to Him are knit together in unity.
But what sort of a Man is this who considers that His widest work is to be done by Him after He is dead? ‘Them also I must bring.’ Thou? how? when? Surely such words as these, side by side with a clear prevision of the death that was so soon to come, are either meaningless or the utterance of an arrogance bordering on insanity, or they anticipate what an Evangelist declares did take place-that the Lord was ‘taken up into heaven and sat at the right hand of God,’ whilst His servants ‘went everywhere preaching the Word, the Lord also working with them and confirming the Word’ with the signs He wrought.
‘Them also I must bring.’ That is not merely a necessity rooted in the nature of God and the wants of men. It is not merely a necessity springing from Christ’s filial obedience and sense of a mission; but it is a ‘must’ of destiny, a ‘must’ which recognises the sure results of His passion; a ‘must’ which implies the power of the Cross to be the reconciliation of the world. And so for all pessimistic thoughts to-day, or at any time, and when Christian men’s hearts may be trembling for the Ark of God-although, perhaps, there may be little reason for the tremor-and in the face of all blatant antagonisms and of proud Goliaths despising the ‘foolishness of preaching,’ we fall back upon Christ’s great ‘must.’ It is written in the councils of Heaven more unchangeably than the heavens; it is guaranteed by the power of the Cross; it is certain, by the eternal life of the crucified Saviour, that He will one day be the King of humanity, and must bring His wandering sheep to couch in peace, one flock round one Shepherd.
IV. Lastly, we have Christ applying the greatest principle to the smallest duty.
‘Zaccheus! make haste and come down; to-day I must abide in thy house.’ Why must He? Because Zaccheus was to be saved, and was worth saving. What was the ‘must’? To stop for an hour or two on His road to the Cross. So He teaches us that in a life penetrated by the thought of the divine will, which we gladly obey, there are no things too great, and none too trivial, to be brought under the dominion of that law, and to be regulated by that divine necessity. Obedience is obedience, whether in large things or in small. There is no scale of magnitude applicable to the distinction between God’s will and that which is not God’s will. Gravitation rules the motes that dance in the sunshine as well as the mass of Jupiter. A triangle with its apex in the sun, and its base beyond the solar system, has the same properties and comes under the same laws as one that a schoolboy scrawls upon his slate. God’s truth is not too great to rule the smallest duties. The star in the East was a guide to the humble house at Bethlehem, and there are starry truths high in the heavens that avail for our guidance in the smallest acts of life.
So, brethren, bring your doings under that all-embracing law of duty-duty, which is the heathen expression for the will of God. There are great regions of life in which lower necessities have play. Circumstances, our past, bias and temper, relationship, friendship, civic duty, and the like-all these bring their necessities; but let us think of them all as being, what indeed they are, manifestations to us of the will of our Father. There are great tracts of life in which either of two courses may be right, and we are left to the decision of choice rather than of duty; but high above all these, let us see towering that divine necessity. It is a daily struggle to bring ‘I will’ to coincide with ‘I ought’; and there is only one adequate and always powerful way of securing that coincidence, and that is to keep close to Jesus Christ and to drink in His spirit. Then, when duty and delight are conterminous, ‘the rough places will be plain, and the crooked things straight, and every mountain shall be brought low, and every valley shall be exalted,’ and life will be blessed, and service will be freedom. Joy and liberty and power and peace will fill our hearts when this is the law of our being; ‘All that the Lord hath spoken, that must I do.’
Alexander MacLaren, Expositions of Holy Scripture (1904–1910) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv16–17 (Greek - ἀπόλλυμι," trans). "marred," Mar 2:22, "lost,"; Mat…
perish
(Greek - ἀπόλλυμι," trans). "marred," Mar 2:22, "lost,"; Mat 10:6; Mat 15:24; Mat 18:11; Luk 15:4; Luk 15:6; Luk 15:32. In no N.T. instance does it signify cessation of existence or of consciousness. It is the condition of every non-believer.
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world kosmos = mankind. (See Scofield "Mat 4:8").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On v14 The purpose of Christ’s coming:
The purpose of Christ’s coming:
v. 14. And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up,
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v. 15. that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have eternal life.
v. 16. For God so loved the world that He gave His only-begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.
v. 17. For God sent not His Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world through Him might be saved.
The act of Moses in the wilderness, in erecting the brazen serpent before the eyes of the stricken people, was typical, symbolical, Num 21:1-9. The people that had been bitten by the fiery serpents and then looked upon this symbol in faith were healed, and the poison had no effect upon them, Jesus is the antitype of the brazen serpent. In accordance with the divine counsel of love, in which He Himself had taken part, the Lord took upon Himself the obligation that He also should be elevated upon a tree before the eyes of the whole world. There are three points of similarity between type and antitype in this story. The brazen serpent of Moses had the form and appearance of the poisonous reptiles after which it was modeled, just as Jesus was revealed in the form of our sinful flesh, had the needs and ways of an ordinary human being, was finally punished as a criminal, Just as the brazen serpent, however, had no poison, was altogether harmless, so Jesus, though in appearance like unto sinful men, was without sin, holy, harmless, undefiled. A strange curse was resting upon Him, and for the sins of others, imputed to Him, He hung upon the cross. And finally, just as he that looked at the brazen serpent in faith remained alive, so also every sinner that has been poisoned by sin in its various forms, but now looks up to Jesus, the Savior, in simple, trusting faith, shall not perish, shall not be punished with everlasting destruction, but have eternal life. For in Christ all sin has been conquered, all guilt has been taken away: there is complete redemption in Him. This thought Jesus now repeats in a burst of Gospel-preaching which is without equal in the world’s literature, which, in fact, summarizes the entire Gospel in one short sentence. With the full emphasis of adoring wonder Jesus exclaims: For so God loved the world, so much, so greatly, so beyond all human understanding. The greatness of God’s love is such as to call forth this cry of astonishment even from the Son of God, the Savior Himself. God loved the world, God is the Author of salvation, 1Ti 2:3. He loved the world, all the people living in the world, all that make up the human element in the world; there is none excepted. He proved this love with a deed so wonderful, so surpassingly beautiful, that it cannot be brought out strongly enough in words of human speech, God gave His only-begotten Son as a free gift and present for the whole world. And such is His will and intention that He makes no exception: Everyone that believes in Him shall not perish, shall not see destruction, but have everlasting life, the life in and with Jesus that shall have no end, but consists of bliss and joy through countless ages. What a contrast: the holy, eternal God and His equally holy and eternal Son giving the highest and best for the world, for the fallen, corrupt humanity, for the bitter enemy of God! The death of the Son of God is the punishment for the sins of the world; the Son of God dies that the world, all the people in the world, might live in all eternity. God’s death, God’s blood, was thrown into the scales in payment for the sins of the world. And there is nothing to be done on the part of sinners but to accept this atonement in faith; for faith accepts and appropriates the redemption of Christ. And the believer has eternal life even now, even here in time. He is sure of his salvation, because it is based upon the work of Jesus the Savior. "What shall, what can He do and give more? For since He gives His Son, what does He hold back that He does not give? Yea, He gives Himself altogether, as Paul says Rom 8:32: Who spared not His own Son, how shall He not with Him freely give us all things? Surely all must be given with Him who is an only-begotten, dearest Son, the Heir and Lord of all creatures; and all creatures must be made subject to us, angels, devils, death, life, heaven and earth, sin, righteousness, things present and things to come, as St. Paul again says, 1Co 3:22-23: All things are yours; and ye are Christ’s, and Christ is God’s. " Jesus emphasizes the glorious fact of salvation also by bringing out the same truth in a negative statement. The mission of Jesus as the gift of God to the world was not to condemn the world, though the latter had richly deserved such condemnation. Though He Himself is the Holy One of God, yet He would not, in His capacity as Savior of sinners, judge and condemn them; The sole purpose of His coming was the salvation of the world. Thus Nicodemus heard from the mouth of Jesus the complete account of the way of salvation, a salvation which is absolutely all-encompassing.
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv14, 16 Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the…
Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up
This figure of speech is called a simile. Some people will "lift up" Jesus just as Moses "lifted up" the bronze serpent in the wilderness. (See: Simile)
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in the wilderness
The wilderness is a dry, desert place, but here it refers specifically to the place where Moses and the Israelites walked around for forty years.
translationWords
Moses
serpent
desert
Son of Man
eternity
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv14, 16 3:14-15 Jesus was lifted up on the cross so…
3:14-15 Jesus was lifted up on the cross so that all people could understand the way of salvation, look to him in faith, and have eternal life.
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.