Nail it Up! – Rationale for the Death of Christ

Nail it Up!

John 3:14-15 – “And 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.”

The above key text throws light onto a very critical responsibility of every Christian. First, the above scripture compares the death of Christ to an act of Moses in the wilderness. Secondly, it sheds light on the manner in which our Lord Jesus Christ took away the sins of man, and how we can follow his steps as believers to be free from anything that suppresses us in any way.

Firstly, let us take a look at the first statement in the above scripture: “And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness,“. This incident can be found in Numbers 21:9. In the wilderness, Moses was instructed by God to make an image of a serpent out of brass and hang it on a pole so that whoever was bitten by a real serpent could look up at it and be healed. This was a miracle! The Israelites were attacked by poisonous snakes out of nowhere in the wilderness and Moses when not knowing what to do to save lives, he asked God. In many cases, we Christians find ourselves in situations and wait till they overcome us before we speak to God. There are so many cases where we try to analyze the situation we find ourselves in and come up with solutions from our own analogy which mostly proves futile. Moses and the Israelites were surround by herbs in the wilderness, but none could save them. They had brass, but it was useless to them until he asked God. You can be surrounded by the things the world can give you, you can always come across basic messages of the gospel, but until you ask God for wisdom, you will always see these messages and tools as useless and none can be used effectively solve your problems permanently. Let us continue to look into how this act by Moses relates to the death of Jesus Christ.

In the situation of Moses, when the affected Israelite looks up at the image of the snake, the venom from the bite of the snakes in them would be spiritually taken out from their body. So the image of the serpent represented the mother of all serpents, and so anytime an affected Israelite looks up at the mother serpent, whatever thing in their body that belongs to the mother serpent had to go back to it. Are you enlightened already?

Our Lord Jesus Christ took upon Himself the sins of all mankind, in other words, He became the mother of sin for our sake. When God wanted to take away the venom of the serpents from His children (the Israelites), He had to converge all the venom into one main source. In the case of mankind, God had to converge all the sins of mankind into one main body for it to be condemned. This is what I want you to understand; that whenever something is lifted up, anything that is tied to it will follow too. When a carrier is tied to a hot air balloon, whenever the balloon is lifted, the carrier follows. The principle is that, whatever is being lifted must be greater either in size, in weight, in power, etc than what is tied to it. So Jesus took upon himself to carry the greatest of all sins with a penalty of death in order to be able to carry along all the sins of man. When Jesus nailed the image of the greatest sin, it became a converging source where all other sin in men who looked up at him physically and spiritually was lifted to.

So, anytime you have an addiction, remember that there is no greater sin than what Jesus nailed on the cross. All you need to do is to look up at Jesus on the cross, and your addiction will be taken away. One hindrance that affects what has been lifted is when the weight, power, or size of whatever thing that is tied to it on the ground is much greater. In many times, we look up at Jesus when we ourselves are not ready to let go that sin. We look up at the cross when our fleshly desires are reigning over the spirit. We are most at times too weak to let go the situation in order to be saved. You need to understand that you can never nail someone up when that person is stronger than you are. There ways one can effectively let go and nail that bad situation on the cross. Let us take a brief look into how Jesus was crucified.

Before Jesus was crucified, he first had to be arrested, because you cannot judge a thief unless he is arrested and tried. So the very first thing we learn here is that before you can effectively let go of that situation, you first need to arrest and put it on trial. I call this stage the Conviction stage. You must first point out and honestly admit your weaknesses. You must admit your addictions, and admit your sins. You can never let go of something you are not fully aware of, so you need to be aware of your weakness and fully admit it.

Secondly, Jesus was Imprisoned and Starved. I call it the Starvation period. This is where you make up your mind to do everything you can to abstain from this sin you have fully admitted. A period where after admitting an addiction, you psych your mind on the disadvantages of committing your life to the drugs you are addicted to, the sex life you are addicted to, the sin you are stuck with.

Before Jesus was finally crucified, he had to be flogged till he was weak, because you cannot crucify the strong man unless he is weak. Every Christian in order to weaken the flesh for the spirit to gain control needs to fast periodically. you cannot keep starving your flesh in the starvation period without fasting and prayer. This is the period where you flog your situation with fasting and prayer until it is weak enough to be crucified. ‘You cannot nail it up in its strong state’.

Then finally, Jesus was crucified. When you have fully practiced all these stages, it prepares your spirit to effectively be in control whiles you let go of your situation to be carried away and to nail it up onto the cross. Remember, every situation that is killing your dream, killing your spirit, killing your career, etc will never stop until you nail it up! The cross has been lifted, are you ready to let go? May God lay His hands upon you as you receive salvation from your colonial situations in Jesus name.

Please add your questions, contributions and prayer requests in the comment section. I will be so glad to interact with you. You may also reach out to me privately by my contact page here. God bless you.