A Snake On A Pole
In John chapter 3:14-15, Jesus says, “Just as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life”. This is a reference to the story of “The Bronze Snake” in Numbers 21, where after the plague of snake, sent by God, He orders to make a bronze snake, as a symbol of saving all those, who were bitten by a snake. Jesus makes a parallel here, using a metaphor- He means, that the event, when Jesus goes up to the Heaven, when he will be raised from the dead, it will be a sign, that all those, who are bitten by the snake (which can be interpreted, as the sin- from the story of Adam and Eve), or who are sinners, can still be saved, if they believe in the resurrection of Jesus, and that He is the Son of the Father.
The Gospel of John is so much different from the synoptic ones. It contains only seven miracles, while in those of Matthew, Mark and Luke there are about twenty in each. Another difference is that John’s points and ideas are considered to be more Gnostics, than Christians. And also, he explains the life of Jesus from another prospective, underlining the importance of some other teachings of Jesus. One of the major themes of John is eternal life. There are two definitions of it, which we talked about in class. One is a deep abiding awareness of your eternal union with your Creator, and second is to live in constant, conscious communication with the source of your being. They are different from the traditional idea about eternal life, which is so widely spread and used in most churches, where they teach that we gain eternal life after we die. And even not all of us can get eternal life, but only those, who live a christian life. Eternal life has a beginning , due to this traditional view, and also it may have an end for some of us- those, who are “unclean”.
If we look at two given definitions, we see that the situation is different concerning the question of the...
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