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Verse:God made him who had no sin to be sin for us, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God. —2 Corinthians 5:21, NIV
Snakes generate different reactions in those who see them.
Some people love snakes, but others fear them.
In the late 1980s, my wife and I visited the famous Butantan Institute in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, the largest immunobiological and biopharmaceuticals producer in Latin America and one of the largest in the world.
Founded on February 23, 1901, it is renowned for its collection of poisonous snakes and also includes venomous lizards, spiders, insects, and scorpions collected over the course of more than a hundred years.
With extracts from the reptiles’ and insects’ poisons, the institute develops vaccines against many diseases, such as tuberculosis, rabies, tetanus, and diphtheria. The center also produces antidotes for poisonous serpent bites.
Unfortunately, on May 15, 2010, a fire in the Building of Collections destroyed more than 70,000 species of serpents, as well as more than 450,000 species of arthropods, including scorpions, Opiliones, myriapods, and spiders.
The process of extracting serpents’ poison to produce antidotes against serpents’ bites illustrates what Christ did on the cross.
By carrying our sins without becoming a sinner, He provided us with the effective antidote against sin (2 Corinthians 5:21).
This principle was well illustrated by the fiery serpents that were killing the Israelites in the wilderness and the bronze serpent on the pole, which gave life to those who looked at it (Numbers 21:4–9). Jesus said, “As Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of Man be lifted up, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:14, 15). The disastrous destruction of the large number of serpents at the Butantan Institute in 2010 reminds us of the final destruction of “that serpent of old, called the Devil and Satan,” and his evil angels at the end of the millennium (Revelation 12:9; 20:7–10). God’s triumph over evil, first promised in the Garden of Eden (Genesis 3:15) and assured on the cross (John 12:31), will then be finally and forever accomplished. Then the poison of sin will be completely eradicated from the universe, never again to infect anyone.