When the Snake Bites

When the snake bites, its toxin finds its way to the vulnerable places in the body where it does its destructive and debilitating work. The timely administration of anti-venin is all that can save the victim. And that antidote is fashioned from the very poison that the snake injected.

This is also God’s way. When the snake seeded his poison into mankind in the garden, that poison found its way into every nook and cranny of man’s being. But it is by the means of the poison itself that deliverance is administered. God has taken the venom of Satan and removed its sting, and He now applies the cure through the very means that the devil employs. Satan’s own weapon is turned against him.

This shows up in many different ways. For instance, a person may have been injured by rejection so badly that his whole behaviour is crippled - bringing depression, unsociability, suspicion, withdrawal and mistrust. Will God therefore work to ensure that this person is insulated from further hurt of that type? On the contrary, He will bring more rejection.

It is by taking what has harmed and killed, what has poisoned and crippled and making it the very means of a person’s healing that the Father glorifies the Son. Who else could do such a thing? For men it would be impossible, but not so for God. He delights in doing the impossible to the praise of His glory in showing forth the futility of His enemies.

Am I rejected? That new rejection flies like an arrow to the very place in me that was hurt so long ago. But because this new rejection is borne upon the wings of faith, because it trusts God to be at work in all things for my good, because God’s every thought towards me is good and so that I may prosper – then the sting of this new hurt becomes the balm of Gilead to my wounds.

It is in the very midst of this fiery furnace that Jesus guards me so that not even the smell of smoke will taint my clothes. Am I tempted to hate or despise the rejecter? It is forbidden. For both rejecter and rejected alike are infected with the same poison, though it shows in different ways. The rejecter is now the very instrument of God for my own good, and His grace is sufficient for me.

This precious cure, born in the blood and body of Jesus Christ, is now borne in my own body through suffering, to set at nothing the works of the devil in me. Without faith it might destroy me. It would certainly maim me more. But God’s gift of Jesus and of faith in Him brings healing out of harm, cure out of cursedness and life out of death.

But that faith must be exercised in the face of the spitting snake, who is anxious that the potency of his toxin should not be neutralized. He will spare no slithering effort, nor leave any stone unturned to bring about doubt in the cure that God has provided.

Yet simply abiding is enough. Standing fast. Not being moved. For it is trust in the healer and His medicine that releases its power. The blood of Christ cleanses us from all sin – but the instrumentality of that cure is our steadfast faith.