The Cross and the Bronze Serpent

Do you ever find it hard to be faithful? Even when you want to, do you find yourself falling short of the mark? And yet, how often do we complain when things don’t go our way? We expect God to heal our ailments, to fix our troubles, even when we are unfaithful to Him.

In the book of Numbers, God sets His people free from slavery. He gives them the precious gift of freedom, leading them out of Egypt with mighty signs and wonders. But how do they respond? With complaints. Apparently, the wilderness hotel service wasn’t quite up to their

standards. They grumble against Moses, against the manna, against the conditions of the desert. Their ingratitude brings on a plague of serpents. Only then, when death surrounds them, do they repent. God in His mercy commands Moses to make a bronze serpent and set it on a pole, so that all who look upon it may be healed.

This pattern runs throughout salvation history. God delivers His people. In time, they grow comfortable, proud, and forgetful of Him. They begin to think, I can do this on my own. God allows them to taste the consequences of their choices. They repent, cry out for help, and He rescues them once more. The cycle repeats again and again.

And we are no different. We fall into the same trap. We tell ourselves: I don’t need anyone. I am strong enough, smart enough, good enough. But it is a lie. It’s like a toddler insisting, “I can do it myself!” right before dropping the glass of milk. Pride blinds us to our dependence, and we discover too late that our self-sufficiency cannot save us.

Saint Paul points us to a better way. In Philippians, he writes that Jesus, though He was in the form of God, did not cling to His divine prerogatives. Instead, He emptied Himself, taking on human flesh. He accepted suffering and death He did not deserve. He humbled Himself, becoming obedient even to death on a cross. He shows us the truth: mankind is not self-sufficient. Only in humility, in dependence on the Father, is there life.

It is in this light that Jesus compares Himself to the bronze serpent (John 3:14). At first, this seems like a strange and even unsettling image. Why liken Himself to a serpent? Yet the parallel is rich with meaning. The fiery serpents in the wilderness represented sin: venomous, destructive, bringing both physical and spiritual death. From the beginning, the serpent has been the deceiver, leading Adam and Eve into disobedience. The curse of sin entered the world through the serpent’s deceit. And yet in the wilderness, God took the very image of the curse and transformed it into a means of healing.

The Church Fathers saw this as a profound foreshadowing of the Cross. Saint Augustine wrote that Christ “was made in the likeness of sinful flesh” (Romans 8:3), not because He sinned, but because He bore the appearance of sin on our behalf. Just as the serpent of bronze was fashioned in the likeness of the deadly serpents but carried no poison itself, so Christ took on the likeness of sinful humanity but without sin, so that by His death we might be healed.

The cross, like the serpent, is an instrument of shame and destruction. Crucifixion was designed to humiliate and annihilate. Yet God transformed it into the very means of salvation. What appeared to be Christ’s defeat was, in fact, His victory. The Fathers loved to linger on this paradox: death is conquered by death, shame is turned into glory, the curse itself becomes the cure.

Suffering, too, plays a role in this mystery. In the wilderness, suffering drove Israel to repentance. In our lives, suffering detaches us from false loves and reorients us toward God. We discover that our idols cannot save us, our strength cannot sustain us, and our wisdom cannot deliver us. God permits us to feel our weakness so that we may return to Him. And yet He never abandons us. He is always ready to heal, always ready to redeem.

This is why we exalt the cross. This is why we, like Christ, must learn to empty ourselves. The world sees only defeat, but we see glory. The world sees only humiliation, but we see redemption. The serpent became a sign of healing. The cross became the tree of life.

We adore you, O Christ, and we bless you, because by your Cross you have redeemed the world.