When God's Cure Looks Like the Curse
You know that feeling when someone offers you a solution that looks suspiciously like the problem itself? Like when your doctor tells you the cure for your back pain is more exercise, or when Dave Ramsey says the way to get out of debt is to stop spending money.
Well, God invented this seemingly backwards approach to problem-solving way before any modern guru figured it out. And He did it with snakes.
When Complaining Goes Viral
The Israelites had reached peak frustration with their wilderness road trip. They complained to God: "Why did you drag us out of Egypt just to die out here? This manna tastes like cardboard" (Numbers 21:5 — paraphrased, obvs).
God's response? He sent venomous snakes into the camp. Suddenly, people were dying from snake bites, and the complaints about menu variety seemed pretty trivial.
The Weirdest Medical Advice Ever
The people, now properly terrified and repentant, begged Moses for help. But God's solution was bizarre: "Make a bronze snake and put it on a pole. Anyone who gets bitten can look at it and live" (v.8).
Wait, what? The cure for snake bite is... looking at a snake? The very thing we’re cursed with? That makes no sense.
When the Cure Becomes the Curse
Fast forward 1,400 years, and Jesus drops this bomb on Nicodemus: "Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, so that everyone who believes may have eternal life" (John 3:14-15).
Jesus just compared Himself to... a snake? A symbol of God’s judgement?
This is where it gets beautifully twisted. Paul explains: "God made Him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in Him we might become the righteousness of God" (2 Corinthians 5:21) and “Christ has redeemed us from the curse of the law, having become a curse for us (for it is written, ‘Cursed is everyone who hangs on a tree’)” (Galations 3:13).
Jesus didn't just carry our sin—He became our sin. He became the curse. He became the very thing that was killing us.
God's Cosmic Plot Twist
Think about how outrageous this is. According to Proverbs 17:15, both justifying the wicked and condemning the innocent are "an abomination to the Lord." Yet at the cross, God did exactly that—He justified us (the wicked) and condemned Jesus (the innocent).
God literally became an abomination to save us.
Why the Backwards Solution Works
Here's why God's snake-as-cure approach is genius: it kills our pride and self-reliance.
If the bronze serpent had been a beautiful golden dove, people might have thought, "Well, of course looking at something that awesome would heal me." But a snake? The very thing killing them? That required pure faith.
Same with the cross. A crucified criminal doesn't look like victory—it looks like defeat. But that's exactly why it works. It's not about how things appear to us, but about what God accomplishes through apparent failure.
The Ultimate Snake Oil
Sometimes the cure really does look exactly like the disease. Sometimes salvation comes wrapped in what looks like judgment.
The bronze serpent saved those who looked to it not because it was beautiful, but because God said it would. The cross saves those who look to it not because it looks victorious, but because God said it is.
In a world full of slick solutions, maybe what we need is to stop looking for salvation in obvious places (like ourselves and our goodness) and start looking to the One who became a curse to break our curse.
Even if He does look like a snake on a stick.