and He became sin

last friday, 14 September, the Catholic Church celebrated the Feast of the Triumph of the Cross. i lost track of the dates and couldn't have told you that, but the boys and i try to make it to Mass on fridays, regardless, so by the grace of God, we made it.
the first reading of this feast is the story of the israelites compaining in the desert, so they are punished with a course of serpents. as they lay dying, they begin to repent, so God tells Moses to raise up a serpent on a pole, and whomever gazes on it will be saved from death.

photo courtesy of artvalue

this is viewed as one of the first images of the Crucifixion, but it always has puzzled me. a serpent is a symbol of satan and sin, not of Christ, so why is this an image of the crucifixion?
the biggest sin that the israelites commit after leaving egypt, the one that kept them in the desert for forty years and brought the serpents to them, was grumbling against God--some translate it as "murmering" against God for not leading them directly to the promised land. this whole thing has so many layers of symbolism that it is hard to stay focused: for us, egypt is our own sin, and the desert is our own life, which gives us the opportunity to become pure, to enact our salvation and live out grace so that we can stand with God, with nothing between Him and us. because any speck of sin is incompatible with God's presence (hence the strongest argument for Mary being pure from sin: if Christ was to live in her, she could not have had original sin. Christ and sin cannot cohabitate). so it makes sense that sin must die, typified by the serpent on the pole, before we enter heaven.
but Christ was sinless.
then i remembered an image that an artist i knew many years ago had been given. i do not remember the whole scene, except that it depicted Christ in profile. in iconography, saints are always shown with their whole face, which is why if one is looking off to the side, the face looks out of proportion: so it can show the whole of it. and which is why, if you look at an icon of the last supper, you can tell which is judas, because he is the only one shown in profile. so this friend remarked that this image was blasphemous, unless taken in the context of that verse that Christ was made sin . . .
the verse is 2 Corinthians 5.21, and the KJ translation reads, "For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

giotto's crucifixion

this, then, is why the image of the serpent can typify Christ: the Christ who died on the Cross took on and became our sin. and this is the only way in which we can be saved, is if we nail our sin to the Cross with Christ. our sinfulness must die, because anywhere that sin holds, is not held by Christ. every sinful habit, every vice to which we cling, is not saved. this, then, is what purification means, and what it means to be crucified with Christ so that the new nature may live, so that we may be God's righteousness.