>>8038886 (pb)
It has nothing to do with eastern mysticism or Self worship.
The Israelites are traveling through the wilderness and they start complaining about the very manna that (((God; who is CREATOR and who is separate from Creation and entirely different from You or Me and who We will NEVER become since we are created beings))) has been providing miraculously to feed them in the desert. (They say, “We detest this miserable food!”) As a punishment for their ingratitude, God sends poisonous snakes among them and many of the Israelites start dying from snake bites. So they come to Moses and admit, “We sinned when we spoke against the Lord and against you.” They ask him to “pray that the Lord will take the snakes away from us.” God forgives the people and tells Moses to make a bronze snake and put it up on a pole.” God promises, “Anyone who is bitten can look at it and live.”
In other words,
an admission of sin and a response of hopeful faith
, looking to the means God provided for deliverance, was how the Israelites could be rescued from physical death in this instance. Jesus is telling Nicodemus that
the same thing will be true, on a much grander scale in the spiritual realm
, when he is “lifted up” onto the cross. Anyone who is sincerely sorry for the way they’ve disobeyed and offended God, and who looks in hopeful faith to Jesus’ death on the cross for their sake, will be rescued spiritually and given the chance to live anew. This is what it means to be “born again.”