Wise as Serpents, Harmless as Doves

by Suzanne McCarthy for TCC

"Be wise as serpents and harmless as doves." We always hear that portion of the verse. In the NASB it says "shrewd" and "innocent".

We need to be shrewd as serpents and innocent as doves because it is the shrewd serpent who motivates people to sin, and sometimes we fall into sin with no prior wrong intentions to do so.

The "innocent" part may be a bit dubious, but let's at least hope that most Christians do not intend to sin.

Just as the occasion to sin often sneaks up on us, serpents don't usually flaunt themselves out in the open where everybody, even the "innocent", can recognize them.

The Bible shows us spiritual lessons by the physical world around us, so I thought I would share one with you.

My son was on maneuvers for two weeks in a mountainous area, and one of his men was snake bit by a rattlesnake during that time. It took the man about twenty minutes to tell the officers that he had been bitten. He realized that it was a rattlesnake that bit his hand but perhaps he thought he could wait for treatment.

We are like that sometimes with sin. We know we have been "snake bit" but we wait, and the wound grows worse.

Like the snake who hid in the underbrush and bit the soldier, Satan hides in the underbrush and hits the Soldier of the Cross when we least expect it.

He is Nachash, which means "the shining one." He can be twined around the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and appear grand and alluring, but he can camouflage himself too. He can appear as an angel of light or be a snake in the underbrush.

In Rabbinic thought, a thicket or thorns represent the sins of the people. We get "snake bit" before we know it and in these last days we need to be on guard.

This is why we need to put on the Armor of G-d every day!