Scripture Reference: John 3:1-21
From Last Lesson: The verb “lifted up” has a dual meaning: to be crucified (John 8:28; 12:32-34) and to be glorified and exalted.
The serpent on the pole (verses 14-18) – Continued. Much as the serpent was lifted up on that pole, so the Son of God would be lifted up on a cross. Why? To save us from sin and death if we would but look up at Him in faith. In the camp of Israel, the solution to the “serpent problem” was not in killing the serpents, making medicine, pretending they were not there, passing anti-serpent laws, or climbing the pole. The answer was in looking by faith at the uplifted serpent.
The whole world has been bitten by sin, and “the wages of sin is death” (Romans 6:23). God sent His Son to die, not only for Israel, but for the whole world. How is a person born from above? How is he or she saved from eternal perishing? By believing on Jesus Christ; by looking to Him in faith.
The story is told that on January 6, 1850, a snowstorm almost crippled the city of Colchester, England; and a teenage boy was unable to get to the church he usually attended. So he made his way to a nearby Primitive Methodist chapel, where an ill-prepared layman was substituting for the absent preacher. His text was Isaiah 45:22—“Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth!” For many months this young teenager had been miserable and under deep conviction; but though he had been reared in church (both his father and grandfather were preachers), he did not have the assurance of salvation.
The unprepared substitute minister did not have much to say, so he kept repeating the text. “A man need not go to college to learn to look,” he shouted. “Anyone can look—a child can look!” About that time, he saw the visitor sitting to one side, and he pointed at him and said, “Young man, you look very miserable. Young man, look to Jesus Christ!”
The young man did look by faith, and that was how the great preacher Charles Haddon Spurgeon was converted.
The difference between perishing and living, and between condemnation and salvation, is faith in Jesus Christ. Jesus could well have come to this world as a Judge and destroyed every rebellious sinner; but in love, He came to this world as our Savior, and He died for us on the cross! He became the “uplifted serpent.” The serpent in Moses’ day brought physical life to dying Jews; but Jesus Christ gives eternal life to anyone who looks to Him and trusts Him. He has salvation for the whole world!
Light and darkness (verses 19-21). This is one of the major images used in John’s Gospel (John 1:4-13). Why will sinners not come into the “light of life”? Because they love the darkness! They want to persist in their evil deeds, and this keeps them from coming to the light; for the closer the sinner gets to the light, the more his sins are exposed. It is not “intellectual problems” that keep people from trusting Christ; it is the moral and spiritual blindness that keeps them loving the darkness and hating the light.
Please note that Nicodemus finally did “come to the light.” He was in the “midnight of confusion,” but eventually he came out into the “sunlight of confession” when he identified with Christ at Calvary (John 19:38-42). It appears that he realized that the uplifted Savior was indeed the Son of God.
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD 
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