What is "Saving Faith?"--The Brass Serpent
Updated: Aug 14, 2022
Jesus makes it clear what saving faith is when he says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the desert, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life” (John 3:14, 15). We get a better understanding of this when we look at the passage in the bible that talks about the snake in the desert: Numbers 21:4-9.
In that passage we see how the Israelites spoke against God; so, he sent poisonous snakes that bit the people. The people began to die and those who were still alive started to admit they had sinned (Confession) and asked Moses to ask God to take the snakes away. So, Moses made a bronze snake and “when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, he lived.”
This is probably the best illustration of what it means to trust in Jesus. They had a choice: trust in their own efforts to save themselves from the snake, which was obviously hopeless, or trust in God and obey him by looking at the bronze snake.
Imagine them chopping up the snakes with axes and finally realizing they are hopelessly out-numbered and giving up on trying to save themselves with their own efforts and, while surrounded by a swarm of poisonous snakes, they cast their
axes aside and looked at the bronze snake, thereby demonstrating their total lack of trust in their own efforts to save themselves and an unquestionable trust in God’s ability to save them, because at that point they really were relying totally on God and nothing or no one else to save them.
Think of the poisonous snakes as sin and the bronze snake as Jesus. We can try to live righteously on our own efforts, and each of us can examine our lives and see how hopeless that is. But if we fix our eyes on Jesus and rely on him and only him to save us from sin he will. You can stake your life on it.
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