Christ came as life that man may have life and have it abundantly (John 14:6a; 11:25a; 10:10b; 1 John 5:11-12). His coming to man was by incarnation. He did not simply descend to the earth from the heavens and declare that He was life to man. This would not have worked. He had to come through incarnation through the womb of a virgin, because He had to die for our sins. In order to die for our sins, He had to shed His blood (Heb. 9:22); therefore, He needed a body of blood and flesh. The only way for Him to gain such a body was to be incarnated. Through incarnation He obtained a body of blood and flesh in order to accomplish redemption. However, His coming through incarnation was not only to save us from our sins, but also that He might be life to us. In John 10:10b the Lord Himself said that He came that man may have life and may have it abundantly. Christ came as life and resurrection (14:6; 11:25). Thus, when He came, life came, and when we receive Him, we have life (1 John 5:11-12).
The Lord Jesus laid down His own human life for man (John 10:11, 15b, 17-18a). The Lord Jesus has two lives. The life that He came to give us is the divine life (John 10:28a), and the life that He laid down for us is His human life, His soulish life (John 10:11). He died in the human life, but He remained alive in the divine life. For Christ to lay down His life means that He sacrificed or gave up His human life for us. The Lord laid down His own human life for sinful man and took it again (John 10:18a). For the Lord to take His life again means that He rose up, resurrected, from among the dead. Through death and resurrection He released His divine life that He might dispense the divine life into His believers (John 12:24). The divine life has been released for us to receive, and the way to receive it is just to believe into Christ as the resurrected One (John 3:15-16, 36).
Christ was lifted up on the cross in the form of the serpent (John 3:14-15). He died on the cross not only as a man but also as a serpent. Fallen men are serpents (Matt. 3:7; 12:34; 23:33) who have been poisoned by the old serpent, Satan (Rev. 12:9). As fallen men, we have been bitten, poisoned, by Satan. The poisonous nature of the old serpent is within us. Therefore, in God's eyes we are not merely human beings; we are serpents with a serpentine nature. Christ died for us in the form of the serpent, typified by the brass serpent that Moses lifted up in the wilderness (John 3:14-15; Num. 21:8-9). In Numbers 21, many of the children of Israel were bitten by fiery serpents. In the eyes of God, they had become serpents. So, Moses put a brass serpent on a pole, and as many of the Israelites who looked on the serpent were healed. The serpent on the pole had the form of the serpent but not its poison. In the same way, the Lord Jesus had the likeness of the flesh of sin (Rom. 8:3), the form of the flesh of sin, but He had no participation in the sin of the flesh (Heb. 4:15; 2 Cor. 5:21). Since the Lord Jesus was lifted up in the form of a serpent, in the eyes of God, He was a serpent. To be lifted up is to be judged, exposed, and openly put to shame. Christ was judged for us that we as His believers may have God's eternal life—the uncreated, indestructible life (Heb. 7:16). Because God's life is eternal, it is also indestructible. If it could be destroyed, then it would not be eternal. That it is eternal means that it exists under any kind of situation. Thus, it is everlasting. In nature and in standard, God is eternal, without any limitation. This eternal life is given to us through Christ's being lifted up in the form of the serpent. He died in the form of the serpent to suffer shame openly for us before the whole universe, so that His life could be released from within Him and dispensed into us. This life that is dispensed into us is eternal, uncreated, and indestructible.