John 3:14 Commentary and Bible Study

So that is the first Scripture. The message here is that salvation always has been a personal experience, appropriated by faith, by trust in Christ, even back in the preaching of Moses in Numbers 21: the burning, fiery serpents. We read how the children of Israel sinned and murmured against God and against Moses, and the Lord sent the serpents among them, and they were bitten and were dying. Moses was instructed to make brazen serpent and lift it up on a pole. It was God’s visual aid to the people, a type of the Saviour who would come. All who looked would be healed. There must be a public crucifixion of Christ. Not just public in those days, but the Son of man must be lifted up in every land and nation, in every day and age through the preaching of the gospel, so that all the world shall know that God has sent a Saviour. And so it is, even in Islamic schools, in the Islamic world, children will learn something about Christ and his death on Calvary, even if it is criticised and scorned. Nevertheless, throughout the world Christ will be publicly lifted up, so ‘that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have eternal life.’ Nicodemus is given a glimpse of the immeasurable love of God. Salvation is not by keeping the ritual law. You had to keep that if you were an Israelite living under the Old Testament. You were obliged to keep the ritual of the ceremonial law because it teaches you. The sacrifices and all the enactments in a detailed, methodical way teach the principles of mercy and grace and God’s holiness and the need for atonement. But once Christ has come, that comes to an end.