Numbers 21:6-9
“The LORD sent fiery serpents among the people and they bit the people, so that many people of Israel died. So the people came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned, because we have spoken against the LORD and you; intercede with the LORD, that He may remove the serpents from us.’ And Moses interceded for the people. Then the LORD said to Moses, ‘Make a fiery serpent, and set it on a standard; and it shall come about, that everyone who is bitten, when he looks at it, he will live.’ And Moses made a bronze serpent and set it on the standard; and it came about, that if a serpent bit any man, when he looked to the bronze serpent, he lived.”
Jesus cited this event at John 3:14-15: “‘As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up; so that whoever believes will in Him have eternal life.’” The part stating “when he looks at it” resembles John 6:40’s reference to “beholds the Son,” as well as “he will live” resembling “eternal life.”
John 6:40: “‘For this is the will of My Father, that everyone who beholds the Son and believes in Him will have eternal life, and I Myself will raise him up on the last day.’”
James White: “I personally prefer Jesus’s interpretation to anybody else’s. I think that’s probably the best interpretation always to have.”669
So, given that hermeneutical principle, if Numbers 21:6-9 is Jesus’s personal illustration on the meaning of the Cross, and if we should always prefer His interpretation to anybody else’s—which is the best interpretation always to have—then in order to best understand Calvary, shouldn’t Calvinists therefore grant paramount importance to Numbers 21:6-9? And what does that passage tell us? It tells us about a provision that is a finished work, sufficient to achieve its purpose, and which makes people savable, on condition that they avail themselves to it, without which, they would perish despite what otherwise could and would have saved them. Jesus could have chosen other illustrations of the Cross, but this is the one He selected, and yet it is nothing at all like Calvinism’s conception of Calvary, in which Calvinists describe the Cross as “not dependent upon the human act of faith for success or failure.”670
What do Calvinists believe?
Verse 6 states that many Israelites had died because of the fiery serpents that God had sent. Did He not love them? God preserved only those who He wanted to preserve among the Israelites. It’s the same today.
God saves who He wants to save from out from this world, and just as the serpent was not a provision for all other nations, neither is the Cross a provision for all others, except the elect, the Bridegroom’s wife.
Our reply:
In other words, by this view, the serpents killed off all of the “non-elect,” so that only “the elect” were alive and remaining for the provision. How would that be indicative of Calvary? The common view of Calvinists is that the only thing that can be gleaned from Numbers 21:6-9, when quoted at John 3:14-15, is the manner in which Jesus was lifted up, which symbolized the Cross. However, the provision at Numbers 21:6-9 was also a form of an atonement, and therefore it becomes very telling. It satisfied God’s justice. It would save their life. There was a condition attached to it, as stipulated by God. It was God’s sovereign choice to make it efficacious only upon active participation. In spite of the existence of the provision, if someone chose not to look upon it, then they perished, even though everything necessary for their salvation was fully provided. That provides some terrific lessons for Calvary. People can perish and die in their sins today, even though everything necessary for their salvation has been fully provided by God. It’s not a double-payment by sinners in Hell, but rather people having declined to receive the payment that would have otherwise satisfied their debt, thus establishing a basis for accountability.
As an analogy, if you choose not to cash a check that was written out to you, that doesn’t mean that the check was bad. So, too, those who refuse Jesus’ free gift of forgiveness cannot allege a double payment, since the transaction, though perfectly valid and completed on the giver’s end, was never completed on the recipient’s end.
To summarize:
- God accepted Christ’s atonement as a provision to save the world, just as God accepted the serpent on a standard as a provision to heal the people.
- Jesus’ death accomplished the provision of salvation for anyone to be saved, just as the serpent accomplished the means of healing for everyone bitten.
- God made a sovereign choice to make His atonement save conditionally, just as God made a sovereign choice to make the serpent on a standard save conditionally upon looking upon it.
- God made a sovereign choice to make Christ’s atonement save an individual only after their human choice to believe in Him, just as God made a sovereign choice not to have the serpent on a standard heal anyone until they first made the human choice to look upon it.
- The atonement itself does not save without faith, nor does the atonement automatically save anyone, any more than the serpent on the standard automatically healed anyone before they looked upon it.
- There is no “double jeopardy” because unbelievers haven’t yet completed God’s transaction. Upon death, God’s provision for their salvation would have expired as unclaimed, just as those who were bitten would not have had the provision of their healing completed if they died before looking upon it.
- Christ’s atonement is available to all but applied only to those who believe, just as the provision of the serpent on a standard was indiscriminately available to anyone who was bitten but healing applied only to those who looked upon it.
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669 Responding to James White on Psalm 82 and John 10 (ft. Michael Heiser) Part 1, 0:42-0:48, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIjFO5SoUXE.
670 James White, Debating Calvinism (Sisters, Oregon: Multnomah Publishers Inc., 2004), 191.
[This post has been excerpted with permission from Richard Coords, Calvinism Answered Verse by Verse and Subject by Subject, © 2024.]
