The people of Israel are a great picture of humanity as a whole. God rescues them from slavery in Egypt with great and mighty miracles. He provides food and water when they need it and leads them to the promised land. Yet they constantly grumble against God, rejecting what He gives them, and always look for something better. At one point they start grumbling again, “We should have stayed in Egypt!” God sends serpents against them so that they begin to die by the dozens. “Whoops”, they say, “we have sinned. Forgive us!” So God provides a means of redemption, a bronze snake put on a pole. People bitten need only to look at the snake and they would be healed.
Thousands of years later and the world is the same. God has provided us with many a great thing yet we grumble, reject, and turn away from God. The world is corrupt and full of sin, needing redemption. The solution? Love, see John 3:16. Now while John 3:16 can stand on its own, it is always good to read a single verse in it’s context. We read in John 3:14-15, Jesus points to the story of the bronze snake. He says just as the people of Israel could receive redemption by looking at the snake so we can receive redemption by looking to (having faith in) Jesus.
John explains 3:16 in the next verses by saying that Jesus didn’t come into the world “to condemn the world, but to save the world.” He came to redeem us. God’s love is redemptive. We are to have the same kind of love, redemptive. Sinners shouldn’t fear us, that we will beat them over the head with a cricket bat. Sinners should feel the love we have for them, to bring them to the feet of Jesus that they may too be redeemed. Love also has practical value, practical redemption. John says in his letter, “let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth.” We are called to love and bring redemption through Jesus. Let’s move!
What practical way can you help bring redemption, be it physical, emotional, or spiritual to some one else?
This is how we know what love is: Jesus Christ laid down his life for us. And we ought to lay down our lives for our brothers and sisters. If anyone has material possessions and sees a brother or sister in need but has no pity on them, how can the love of God be in that person? Dear children, let us not love with words or speech but with actions and in truth. -1 John 3:16-18
