JOHN 3.14-15: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, (15) that whoever believes in him may have eternal life." (ESV) As Jesus expands His explanation of the Gospel to Nicodemus, He begins to communicate that the Gospel is for all of the world, rather than being a Gospel for the Jewish people alone. He does this by introducing what would seem to be an obscure event recorded in Numbers 21.4-9. During the time of the wilderness wanderings — a time of punishment to the older generation and also preparation for the next generation — the people of Israel began to grumble against Moses and God. They did not like or appreciate the manna from heaven they were given to eat. And they regretted that God had brought them out of Egypt. In effect, they were telling God that He had made a mistake by bringing them out of slavery, and that He was a dissatisfactory God. Because of this rebellion against God, He sent punishment upon them in the form of poisonous snakes. The children of Israel cried out for help and God did so by instructing Moses to place a bronze image of a snake upon a pole. Anyone who looked upon the bronze snake did not die. It must be remembered that the children of Israel brought all of these difficulties of the wilderness upon themselves, when they refused to enter straightway into the promised land at the first opportunity provided by God. Jesus refers to this event as a Biblical type and shadow of Him being lifted up upon the cross and crucified. This seems at first unrelated to the work and life of Christ on the cross, because Jesus lived a holy, blameless life. The snake on the pole can easily be correlated symbolically to sin and the devil, and it seems awful to relate evil to the cross of Christ. But that is what the crucifixion of Jesus was about. In 2 Corinthians 5.21 it says, "God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God." (NIV) So in exchange for our sin as represented, I believe, by the bronze snake, God made Jesus to be sin. This punishment upon Jesus was in the place of our sin. We deserved to be punished and made sin, because so we are. But that would not have provided any form of redemption, because we all are exceedingly sinful and therefore not qualified to be the perfect, sinless sacrifice on the cross to take away sin. Jesus had to be made sin and punished in our place because He was and is the only one holy and righteous. And as Jesus says in verse 15, He must be lifted up and crucified so that everyone who believes in Him may have eternal life.