Serpent of Brass

The serpent of brass that Moses made and raised on a pole when the Israelites were bitten of serpents (Num. 21:9⁹And 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. (Numbers 21:9)) may, in the light of John 3:14¹⁴And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of man be lifted up: (John 3:14), be regarded as symbolic of God’s way out of death into life, as well as of the condemnation of sin in the death of Christ (compare Rom. 8:3³For what the law could not do, in that it was weak through the flesh, God sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh, and for sin, condemned sin in the flesh: (Romans 8:3)). As the bite of the serpents typified the venom of sin, and was incurable by natural means, so in the death of the Lord Jesus we see not only the ground of forgiveness of sins, but the condemnation of the state, with which sin was connected: then they who looked lived. In the history of Israel the brazen serpent came near the end of their wanderings, when their perverseness was fully manifest. In Christianity what is typified is the condemnation of sin in the flesh, as the ground of the communication of the Spirit as living water to the believer.