The Fourth Sunday in Lent, March 10, 2024

John 3, 14–21

Jesus said to Nicodemus: “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life.”  For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but that the world might be saved through him. Whoever believes in him will not be condemned, but whoever does not believe has already been condemned, because he has not believed in the name of the only Son of God. And this is the verdict, that the light came into the world, but people preferred darkness to light, because their works were evil. For everyone who does wicked things hates the light and does not come toward the light, so that his works might not be exposed. But whoever lives the truth comes to the light, so that his works may be clearly seen as done in God.

The Lord’s statement, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the desert, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that everyone who believes in him may have eternal life”, confuses us on first hearing because he seems to compare himself to a serpent, which brings up the memory of the serpent who wrought such destruction on the human race through its tempting of Eve in the Garden of Eden.  Our understanding of the serpent as evil is reinforced by the particular reference the Lord Jesus makes to the serpents that God sent to punish the unfaithful Israelites in the Sinai wilderness.  When the people cried out for mercy God told Moses to make a bronze representation of one of these serpents and to mount it on a pole so that the Israelites could look upon it and be saved.  This in itself sounds bizarre.  It is as if a patient were told to look upon an image of the germs that were causing the disease the patient was suffering from, and that this looking would result in their cure.  In the case of the bronze serpent, however, Almighty God wanted the people who had rejected him to look squarely at their sin and to hate it at the very least because of the suffering it had brought them.  In the case of Jesus, Almighty God wants the human race to look squarely at what sin has done to it — seeing the fearful, horrific wounds inflicted upon the Body of his Son and so hate sin, and also to understand that this same Son of God endured this suffering in order to remove it from us.  And belief in the Son as our Savior from sin leads us to eternal life.  

The very sight of a crucifix or recollection of what the Lord willingly submitted to ought to drive from our hearts any desire to sin against him and to make up for our sins as best as we can, with the help of grace.  The image of his suffering tells us more than all the books and sermons in the world of how desperately God loves us.  And this is why St. John comments after quoting the Lord’s words about his being raised up, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him might not perish but might have eternal life.”  The Greek word translated here as “so”, as in “so loved” means “in like manner”: God reveals through John that he loves the human race as much as he loves his only-begotten Son, who fully receives and fully reciprocates the love of the Father.  This might seem outrageous to us, especially if we think of it in terms of the love of humans for their children as equal to their love for anyone else.  But this is the nature of God’s unlimited love.  It does not make sense to us because we cannot conceive of a love so immense.  In heaven, cleansed from the ill-effects of sin, we will experience it directly, and it will take our breath away.

So let us gaze without flinching at what our Lord has done for us so that we love the light he offers us, do good works, and look forward to life with him in glory.