Galatians 3:13 NIV: “Christ redeemed us from the curse of the law by becoming a curse for us, for it is written: “Cursed is everyone who is hung on a pole.”

I just finished reading Bradley Jersak’s book A More Christlike God. It encapsulated so many profound ideas and will be remembered as one of the books that significantly shaped my understanding of God. As I read, underlined, and discussed with friends, I was inspired to attempt a visual metaphor for some of his deeper concepts.

One metaphor I wanted to depict is the healing serpent, which is part of the overall concept of Christ as the great physician. If you recall Jesus in his late-night discussion with Nicodemus and JUST BEFORE the famous John 3:16 verse says, “Just as Moses lifted up the snake in the wilderness, so the Son of Man must be lifted up, that everyone who believes may have eternal life in him.” (John 3:14-15)

This strange metaphor comes from the story in Numbers chapter 21. The Isrealites are wandering in the desert; they are complaining and cursing God, and snakes come and begin killing the Isrealites with their venom. The people cry and repent, and God tells Moses to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole. “Then when anyone was bitten by a snake and looked at the bronze snake, they lived.” (Num 21:9)

The fatal venom of the serpent led to death, and turning towards the “snake on the pole” saved the people from death. What’s always been troubling for me was why Jesus equated himself to the serpent in his conversation with Nicodemus. From the beginning, the serpent has been synonymous with Satan. Isn’t it sacrilege to equate Satan with Christ?

Unless it’s actually a perfect metaphor. Paul says in Galatians this exact thing; Jesus became the curse; he absorbs the venom of sin and death for all of us. As Bradly Jersak writes, “sucking the darkness of the world into himself, where his own blood is the all-powerful, spiritual anti-venom that cleanses sin and overcomes death.” I so resonated with this metaphor that Christ undergoes the venomous bite for us all to ultimately give us the life that I wanted to create this visual reminder.

The other important visual I wanted to include is the book’s discussion of human suffering. How many of us have been trapped trying to reason out the contradiction between the God of love and the reality of evil and pain in our lives? We cannot reason it out, period. The hope, then, lies in the revelation depicted at the cross. The cross shows the most extreme version of “both/and,” where the perfect love of God and the entirety of human affliction and suffering are present in one place.

To quote Jersak, “His outstretched arms and wounded hands span the infinite chasm between God’s perfection and our pain… From his pierced side, a supernatural river of eternal love flows – blood and water, ‘sorrow and love flow mingled down.'”

The key to accepting that all of my suffering, trauma, or pain finds its place in the ‘water’ or humanity of Christ, who takes it all into himself, is also realizing that his ‘blood’ transforms my affliction into redemption and healing. “He felt it all, endured it all, absorbed it, and transformed it through self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love.”