Growing in Life to be Delivered from the Serpent’s Poison and become Christ’s Bride

In looking at the matter of the bronze serpent lifted up in the wilderness in Num. 21, we realise that the entire Bible speaks of this matter of the serpent and the bride, and the Bible ends with the marriage of the Spirit and the Bride and the defeat of the serpent.

Hallelujah, we who were once the increase of Satan by being bitten by him and injected with his poison to be sinners, we now are in the process of becoming the universal increase of unlimited Christ, the One who gives us the Spirit without measure!

John chapter 3 shows us in the beginning the matter of the serpent and at the end the matter of the bride.

When Nicodemus came to the Lord Jesus at night, seeking teachings to better himself, the Lord told him that He as the Son of Man must be lifted up as the reality of the bronze serpent so that all the serpentine people (of whom Nicodemus was one) would look at Him (believe into Him) and live.

We do not just sin and make mistakes – we are sinners, we are sinful in our nature; even after believing into the Lord, when we still live in the flesh and in the natural man, we spontaneously sin.

To sin is to do something apart from the Lord, to do something outside of our organic union with Christ. It may not be something bad, but whatever we do without being one with the Lord is a sin.

In Adam we were all bitten by the old serpent, and we are dead in sin and offenses (Eph. 2:1, 5); but praise the Lord, through Christ as the bronze serpent lifted up on the cross, we may receive the life of God! Hallelujah!

This is the real manifestation of God’s love toward us – He Himself became a man, for the only Begotten Son of God became in the likeness of the flesh of sin yet without sin, and He was made sin in God’s eyes on the cross so that He may bear the sin of the world and destroy sin and Satan. Hallelujah!

God has judged Satan and sin, and now we can believe into Him and appropriate this sacrifice of Christ; we can repent, confess that we are sinful, and receive the Lord Jesus as our Savior and our life.

This life that we receive, Christ Himself as life, is a sin-dealing life; when we receive Christ as life, He operates in us to release us from sin and to deliver us from our sinful nature.

As long as we cooperate with Him and enjoy Him, repenting under His shining light of anything that He exposes, the divine life in us will grow and operate to release us from sin and its power.

The Story of the Serpent and the Bride in the Bible: from Genesis to Revelation

We may say that, considered as a whole, the Bible unveils to us the matter of the serpent and the bride.

God used Adam’s rib to bring forth Eve, the increase of Adam; Eve was not something different or apart from Adam – Eve was the increase of Adam, made entirely out of the element of Adam.

However, in Gen. 3:1-6 the serpent visited Eve as the bride and succeeded in capturing her; as he was conversing with her, he poisoned her mind, emotion, and will, and even her body was transmuted to become flesh.

She engaged in a conversation with Satan without checking with her husband, and Satan’s question, Did God really say that…? poisoned her mind and emotion, for she now questioned God’s heart toward her; so she decided to take the fruit (her will was poisoned) of the tree.

Satan as sin entered into man’s body to transmute it into the flesh, which contains the serpentine poison of Satan.

But hallelujah, God is greater, higher, and wiser than the serpent! He came in to pronounce judgement upon the serpent, and in His speaking we see how the seed of the woman (Christ) will bruise the head of the serpent (Gen. 3:15).

Even more, in v. 21 we see how the seed of the woman would also become righteousness to the very ones who were poisoned by the serpent.

We may say that this is a story from six thousand years ago, and it may not have to do much with us, but in 2 Cor. 11:2-3 Paul says that through his ministry he betrothed the Corinthian believers to Christ to present them as a pure virgin to Christ.

So he feared lest somehow, as the serpent deceived Eve by his craftiness, the believers’ thoughts would be corrupted from the simplicity and purity toward Christ.

Paul was concerned that the serpent who had come to bite Eve would come to bite the believers at Corinth; once again, we see that we as believers in Christ are part of the story of the serpent and the bride (see 2 Cor. 11:2-3; cf. Rev. 12:9; 1 Thes. 3:5; 1 Tim. 2:14; 4:1; 2 Pet. 3:17).

In the book of Revelation we see the final word on the serpent and the bride; in ch. 19 we see that the bride is ready for the wedding of the Lamb (v. 7). There was a call sounded out, Let us rejoice and exult, for the marriage of the Lamb has come, and His wife has made herself ready!

After God has dealt with all the negative things that belong to the serpent, the serpent-bitten sinners have become the bride of the Lamb, and the marriage of the Lamb has come!

The wife has made herself ready by the growth in life unto maturity of all the believers in Christ, and the components of the bride are both loving the Lord and terrible as soldiers in the army of God to fight for God’s interest!

Immediately after the wedding of the Lamb, this universal couple will fight against Satan, the old serpent who has now become the great dragon, and his followers, the beast and the false prophet.

Then, Satan will be bound and cast into the abyss, where he will be imprisoned for a thousand years (Rev. 19:11-16, 19-21; 20:1-3).

Following that, Satan will rebel once more and will ultimately be cast into the lake of fire (vv. 7-10), and then the universe will be thoroughly cleared up, and there will be a new heaven and a new earth.

Hallelujah, for eternity there will be a universal couple – Christ as the Husband and the church as the bride (Rev. 21:1-2, 9-10), and the serpent will be in the lake of fire with all his followers!

Lord Jesus, grant us today’s growth in life so that we can go on unto maturity in life and be part of Your divine and mystical army to conquer Satan and spread Your kingdom over this whole earth! Amen, Lord, thank You for coming into us as the divine life; now we want to cooperate with You for You to grow in us, expand in us, and bring Your kingdom in us, so that we may be produced as the bride of the Lamb. Produce us as Your overcomers, those who return with You to fight and destroy Satan and his armies at Armageddon and bring in Your kingdom on the earth!

Believing into the Lord and Growing in Life to be Delivered from the Serpent’s Poison and become Christ’s Bride

God has an enemy – Satan; this one comes to man in a subtle way to question God, His heart, His intention, and His purpose, and when man engages in a conversation with him, his mind, emotion, and will get poisoned and corrupted.

Even after believing into the Lord Jesus, if we still allow the enemy to have ground in us, if we still engage into conversation with Satan and let his fiery darts lodge in our mind, we are corrupted from the simplicity and purity toward the Lord Jesus.

We thank and praise the Lord that He has saved us; He brought us under the ministry of the apostles, the genuine ministry of the New Testament which betrothed us to Christ.

We as believers in Christ are betrothed to Christ to be married to Him, and our eyes have to be focused on Him, not paying attention to anything or anyone else except Him.

But Satan still comes in a subtle, cheating, and deceitful way to corrupt our inner being and distract us from the Lord Jesus.

The Lord has come as the bronze serpent and was made sin for us on the cross; He was never sinful, but He came in the likeness of the flesh of sin and concerning sin, and when He was on the cross God made Him sin on our behalf (2 Cor. 5:21).

Sin came from Satan, entered into man (Rom. 5:12), and made man a sinner, even sin itself under God’s judgment; so Christ became a man in the flesh (John 1:14) and was made sin (not sinful) on our behalf to be judged by God (Rom. 8:3).

Through His death on the cross Christ opened the way for us, sinners, to believe into Him and receive Him; we can now receive His life, and by doing this, we become the increase of Christ.

We who were the increase of Satan can become the increase of Christ – there’s a transfer from the kingdom of Satan into the kingdom of God, and we are re-gene-rated with new genes, the divine genes, the God-genes, to become part of the increase of Christ.

Hallelujah, all believers in Christ are part of the increase of Christ to be His reproduction and continuation on the earth!

So now we need to grow in life unto maturity; we need to allow this divine life which has regenerated us to increase and spread in us until it saturates our mind, emotion, and will, and our entire being.

Our mind is the battleground – we need to be renewed in the spirit of our mind so that the divine life in our spirit would spread into our mind to remove and eradicate the serpent’s poison from our mind, until our mind becomes life.

We need to cooperate with the Lord in our emotion, decisions, feelings, and desires, so that He may spread into our emotion and will and saturate them.

Regeneration is just the first step of a long process – a lifelong process – of becoming the increase of Christ, the bride of Christ.

Paul the Apostle was jealous over the believers that Satan would not corrupt their mind from the simplicity and purity toward Christ; the more we remain in the ministry of the New Testament, the ministry of the apostles, the more we love the Lord, we yearn for His return, and we give Him the cooperation He needs to produce us as His bride, His increase.

Lord Jesus, we love You. We open to You and allow You to saturate our mind, emotion, and will, so that any poisonous element of Satan would be removed and eradicated from our being and we would be produced as Your bride. Amen, Lord, may our mind be saturated and permeated with Your word as we remain in the genuine ministry of the New Testament, loving You and enjoying You and being betrothed to You. Oh Lord Jesus, grant us to grow in life unto maturity every day so that we may be part of Your overcoming bride, Your increase!

This article can also be read in the Romanian language / Citiți acest articol în limba română vizitând următorul link, Să creștem în viață pentru a fi eliberați de otrava șarpelui și să devenim mireasa lui Cristos.

References and Hymns on this Topic

• Inspiration: the Word of God, my enjoyment in the ministry, the message by bro. Ed Marks for this week, and portions from, Collected Works of Witness Lee, 1982, vol. 2, ”The Fulfillment of the Tabernacle and the Offerings in the Writings of John,” ch. 10, as quoted in the Holy Word for Morning Revival on, Crystallization-Study of Numbers (2), week 6, Christ as Typified by the Bronze Serpent.
• Hymns on this topic:
  # Verily God, yet become truly human, / Lower than angels to die in our stead; / How has that long promised “Seed of the woman” / Trod on the serpent and bruised his head! (Hymns #180)
  # Lamb of God—our sin’s redemption, / Brazen serpent—Satan’s end, / Grain of wheat—life’s reproduction, / Now with many grains we blend. / Hallelujah! Hallelujah! / What an all-inclusive death, / What an all-inclusive death! (Hymns #1089)
  # Come, Desire of nations, come! / Fix in us Thy humble home: / Rise, the woman’s conqu’ring seed, / Bruise in us the serpent’s head; / Adam’s likeness now efface, / Stamp Thine image in its place: / Final Adam from above, / Reinstate us in Thy love. (Hymns #84)