The Serpent Savior

What if the thing you fear might destroy you could somehow become the place where healing begins?

In Numbers 21:4–9, the Israelites are attacked by poisonous snakes in the wilderness. God gives Moses a strange instruction: make an image of the very creature they fear, raise it on a pole, and tell the people to look at it. Those who look toward the serpent live.

Centuries later, Jesus draws upon this disturbing story in John 3:14–17: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up.” The cross—an instrument of humiliation, suffering, and death—becomes Christianity’s great symbol of salvation and life.

Chapin explores the unsettling Christian conviction that sometimes something within us must die before we can become fully alive. Not because suffering is good, but because God can work even through loss, failure, disappointment, and the things we most fear. Resentments can die. False identities can be shed. Old ambitions can loosen their grip. We can become freer to love, forgive, reconcile, and give thanks.

And the invitation is surprisingly simple: Look to Jesus. We do not need to understand everything before healing begins. We turn our gaze toward the One who was lifted up—and trust that God can bring life even from the places that look like death.