Just look

A "type" of Christ is a kind of picture of Him in the Old Testament, a prophetic person or event which has significance not only for its own sake but even more for what it foreshadows about Jesus. One of the most powerful of these is found in in the twenty-fifth chapter of Numbers:

From Mount Hor they set out by the way to the Red Sea, to go around the land of Edom. And the people became impatient on the way. And the people spoke against God and against Moses, “Why have you brought us up out of Egypt to die in the wilderness? For there is no food and no water, and we loathe this worthless food.” Then the Lord sent fiery serpents among the people, and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. And the people came to Moses and said, “We have sinned, for we have spoken against the Lord and against you. Pray to the Lord, that he take away the serpents from us.” So Moses prayed for the people. And the Lord said to Moses, “Make a fiery serpent and set it on a pole, and everyone who is bitten, when he sees it, shall live.” So Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on a pole. And if a serpent bit anyone, he would look at the bronze serpent and live.

Given the shape of the snake and the geometry of a pole, it would probably have required a cross-beam to hold the snake in place. Thus, there was a cross erected in the Israelite camp, and those who had been bitten by one of the poisonous snakes God had sent among the Israelites had only to believe God's promise and look at the cross and the snake that hung from it to be healed and live.

Jesus Himself made the significance of the story plain in one of the most beautiful and beloved passages in the entire Bible, a passage so laden with significance that if a person knew nothing else about God but what this one passage says, it would be enough to save him: "And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up,  that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life " (John 3:14-17),

So powerful did Phillip Melanchthon- one of Luther's associates a Greek scholar and, like Luther himself, a scruper- find the symbolism of the snake on the cross that he made it his personal seal (above, right).  I'm kind of fond of that image myself. It reminds me as it reminded Melanchthon that just as the Israelites were healed of the venomous bite inflicted by those snakes if they simply believed God's promise and looked at the cross with the snake on it, all he- or any of us- have to do in order to be healed of the deadly bite of sin and guilt and the death which they merit and bring with them is to seek it in the cross upon which God's Son suffered and died to make atonement for every sin of every sinner, without exception,.

Today is Good Friday. Today we remember how Jesus hung on the cross, suffering the punishment we deserved. There is no sin- not a single one- committed by any sinner, anywhere, for which He did not make atonement there. There is no sinner, however vile, whom God does not promise to heal if they simply look to the One Who hangs there on the cross for healing and life.

People with OCD often wonder whether they have "enough" faith. But to ask that question betrays a misunderstanding of what faith is. It isn't a quality that lives in us. Still, less is it an emotion or total certainty. Faith is simply believing God's promise enough to look to the cross for healing.

When an Israelite who was bitten by one of those snakes was healed, it wasn't because of something he or she felt, or did, or was. Actually, it wasn't so much the act of looking at the brass snake that did the trick as much as it was simply believing that because God had promised it he would find healing there, and trusting His promise enough to look. God keeps His promises. To look at the snake was to prove that one believed Him.

God promises that all who look to His Son, hanging there on the cross, will be healed of the venom of sin and the curse it bears. This doesn't happen because the sinner who does so has earned it somehow, or deserves it, even by believing, any more than one of the Israelites who was bitten by one of those snakes deserved to be healed. No, the healing in both cases comes from the fact that God has promised it, and God doesn't lie.

To look to Jesus for healing is to believe that promise, and to receive what it promises. Simply doing that- nothing more- is faith. Simply taking God at His Word, and pinning one's hopes on the confidence that God doesn't lie and means what He says when He promises forgiveness and eternal life to all who look away from themselves and what they deserve to Jesus and the cross. There, they find all that is needed to be completely forgiven of all sin and to receive the gift of eternal life- not because of something in themselves- even their faith- but because He promises it.

It's not about what we feel, or don't feel. It's not about whether we believe enough. There is no "enough." The forgiveness does not lie in the person who receives it, but in the One upon Whom He looks in faith.

"Whoever comes to Me," Jesus promises three chapters later, "I will never cast out." You are not saved by your works. You are not saved by your feelings. You are not saved by anything you contribute. Strictly speaking, you are not even saved by your faith. You are saved and forgiven and granted the gift of eternal life because God promises it to all who believe that He is telling the truth when He promises those things to anyone, without exception, who seeks them in His Son.

It is not necessary that we feel a certain way. It is not necessary that we believe without doubting. It is not necessary that we jump through any hoops or "deserve" what was won for us this day in any way. If we could have won it by anything we could have done ourselves, it would not have been necessary.

All that is necessary is that we look to the Crucified for what God promises. That in itself is believing that He is telling the truth. That in itself- nothing more- is faith- all the faith that anybody needs to receive everything God promises.

That's one reason why Lutherans aren't afraid of using the crucifix rather than just an empty cross. God Himself told Moses to put that image of the snake in the midst of the camp so that anyone who looked upon it would live. That, and His command to make statues of cherubim to sit on the Ark of the Covenant seems to us to make clear that while to worship an image is idolatry, to use one to remind us of God's promises is permissible.

The crucifix reminds us that He makes that same promise to anyone who looks in faith upon the One Who hung on the cross of Calvary. To believe that promise is all that is necessary to receive what it promises.

Simply to believe enough to seek it where He promises that we will find it.