Week 19: Look And Live

Encounter

There was a season in my life when I thought I understood Jesus.

Read

There was a season in my life when I thought I understood Jesus. After theology school, I knew the verses. I could quote John 3:16. I believed He died for my sins. But if I am honest, my version of Jesus was clean. Safe. Polished.

Then I slowed down and read something I had rushed past for years. Once again, John tells a story the other Gospels don't, as he does with 26 scenarios unique to his Gospel. There are also 35 stories in Matthew, Mark, and Luke that John does not record. To be clear, if you count every scenario, story, and Scripture separately—miracles, parables, individual teachings, scenes, discourses, Passion events, resurrection appearances, and birth narrative moments—there are about 300 stories across all four Gospels.

Only in the Gospel of John does Jesus speak to Nicodemus in the quiet of the night. And He says, "Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up."

That sentence does not make sense unless you go back to the book of Numbers, to the moment when venom was running through people's veins. Serpents everywhere. Death spreading through the camp. If you can't picture this in your mind, just turn on today's news and look at the sin-bitten condition of our world.

God told Moses to lift up a bronze serpent on a pole. The very image of what was killing them became the means of healing. If they looked at it, they lived. This is why it's so important for us to look toward Jesus, who is the author and finisher of our faith. If we look, we live.

That is what Jesus was saying about Himself. The thing that is hard to say out loud is this: on the cross, Jesus did not just carry sin like a backpack. He became sin.

He who knew no sin became sin for us. That means every lie, adulterous betrayal, theft, murder, act of sexual violence, perversion, addiction, prideful thought, jealous glance, secret fantasy—every sin imaginable to man. There is not a vile or unclean thing in the human story that He did not absorb into Himself on that cross. So, if you can't forgive others, then neither can you be reconciled to "the real Jesus." Because he became every sin that makes us cringe.

He embodied the full weight of guilt and shame into His sinless body. He stood in our place. He loved us so much, in that while we were yet in sin, he allowed Himself to be seen as all of it. He became "the serpent lifted high." I would love to say more about that moment, but my writings are already long enough.

You cannot truly grasp the New Testament without the Old. If you never look at Numbers and watch dying people lift their eyes to the very image of their curse, you will never feel the shock of what Jesus meant in John. The Old Testament is not background noise. It is the shadow of LIGHT to come.

When those Israelites were bitten, they had no strength left. They could not fix the venom. They could not earn healing. They could not negotiate. They could only look. Look and live. That should still be our invitation to others, without stipulation.

Not clean yourself up and live. Not understand everything and live. Not pretend you are not as broken as you are and live.

Look at the cross and see what Yeshua was willing to become for you. Look at the Holy One who stepped into the filth of humanity so we would not have to stay there. Look at the Messiah, who did not flinch at our worst, but carried it. Perhaps you've loved yourself so much that you've always accepted yourself as flawless. But I am crying as I write this, because I can only hope that you see what I see.

Maybe you thought you knew Jesus, too. Maybe you knew the polished version. The safe version. The Sunday version. But when I was broken, wounded, and dying in my sins, I took a closer look.

I saw Him lifted up, bearing everything I/we are ashamed to name. "I" saw Him becoming the curse so we could be free. And when you see Him like that—really see Him—something shifts.

The ordinary Christian performance ends. You stop hiding. You stop pretending. You no longer have anything to prove to anyone. An indescribable peace embodies you when you simply look. And you live.

Go Deeper in Scripture

Reflect

Respond

Walk it out

• Re-read one key passage from this lesson in the KJV, in full context.
• Share one sentence of encouragement with another believer.
• Take one quiet act of obedience you have been postponing.
• Pray briefly each morning: “Lord, let Your word rule my choices today.”