Christian Relics: Hezekiah and the Bronze Serpent
Short answer: The Bible never commands Christians to venerate relics, and the one extended biblical treatment of a surviving sacred object is a warning, not an endorsement. In 2 Kings 18:4, Hezekiah destroyed the bronze serpent Moses had made because the people were burning incense to it. That object had once been God's appointed means of healing, yet it became an idol. Acts 19:11-12 records unusual healings through cloths that had touched Paul, but the text attributes the power to God, not to the cloths, and never tells anyone to keep or honour them. Hebrews 9:1-10 treats the old covenant sanctuary as preparatory and temporary. Faithful Christians differ on whether relics may be remembered soberly, but Scripture gives no command to revere them. The biblical test is whether an object helps us trust Christ or quietly replaces him.
What Hezekiah Actually Did in 2 Kings 18
The opening verses of 2 Kings 18 introduce Hezekiah as a reforming king of Judah. The supplied text begins in the third year of Hoshea, king of Israel, and marks the point when Hezekiah began to reign. What follows in the chapter is a catalogue of decisive religious reform: he removes the high places, breaks the pillars, cuts down the Asherah, and destroys the bronze serpent Moses had made. Each action removes an object or location that had become a rival to trust in the Lord.
The bronze serpent is the most striking item on that list. It was not a pagan import. It had been made by Moses at God's express command centuries earlier, as Numbers 21 records. It had been attached to genuine deliverance. Yet by Hezekiah's day the people of Israel were burning incense to it, and the narrator tells us plainly that Hezekiah called it Nehushtan, a piece of bronze. The calf of gold is destroyed easily; a relic with a true history is harder to let go.
Notice what the text does not say. It does not say Hezekiah's reforms were harsh or excessive. It does not record a public outcry, or a plea to preserve the object for its sentimental value because of its association with Moses. The narrator presents the destruction as part of what made Hezekiah a good king, one who did what was right in the eyes of the Lord. That silence is significant for how Christians think about sacred objects today.
The Bronze Serpent Was Genuine, and It Still Had to Go
Numbers 21:4-9 reports the wilderness incident in which the people grew discouraged on the journey and spoke against God and Moses. Venomous snakes came among them, many died, and Moses interceded. God told him to make a serpent and lift it on a pole so that anyone bitten who looked at it would live. This was not sympathetic magic and it was not a natural remedy; it was a God-given pattern of looking in faith, and it worked because God said it would.
That history matters for the discussion of relics, because it shows how an object can be genuinely used by God at one time. The bronze serpent was not a fraud, a fake, or a scam. Its origin was real, its purpose was divine, and its effects were recorded history. A modern reader might expect such an object to be preserved, protected, and enshrined. Scripture preserves it, but not in the way we would expect: it records its destruction as an act of faithfulness.
The reason given is worship. The people were burning incense to it, treating the instrument as though it were the source. When an object begins to receive the honour that belongs to God, the faithful response is removal, however venerable the object's history. That principle runs through the whole Bible and it is the single most important thing Israel's history says about sacred things.
Hezekiah Took Away the High Places Too
2 Kings 18 places the bronze serpent alongside the high places, the pillars, and the Asherah pole. These were different in kind: the high places and Asherah poles were largely Canaanite in origin, while the bronze serpent had a true Israelite pedigree. The king's reform does not distinguish between them in terms of action. All of them were being used in ways that competed with the worship of the Lord, so all of them were removed.
This tells us something important about how Scripture assesses sacred sites and objects. The question is never whether a thing has a religious history. The question is what people are doing with it now. A high place with a thousand years of use is a problem; so is a bronze serpent with a genuine miracle behind it, once incense is being burned to it. The biblical category is not false versus authentic, but faithful worship versus idolatry.
Hezekiah's reform is described elsewhere as unique among the kings of Judah for his trust in the Lord. The removal of the high places was not merely housekeeping. It was a pastoral act, taking away the very things that were teaching God's people to rely on something other than God. A teacher or pastor doing the same work today may need to remove not just false teaching but also true things that have been given a weight they cannot bear.
Acts 19 and the Handkerchiefs from Paul
Acts 19:11-12 in the supplied text says that God worked special miracles by the hands of Paul, and it goes on to describe cloths carried from his body to the sick, with the result that diseases left them and evil spirits went out. This is one of the only passages in the New Testament where an object connected to an apostle functions in physical healing, and it deserves a careful reading.
The verse says God worked the miracles, and that they were performed by the hands of Paul. The subject of the sentence is God. The cloths are the means, not the actor, and the text never tells anyone to gather them, keep them, honour them, or use them in worship. There is no instruction to store them, no promise that the practice would continue, and no example of anyone later doing the same with an object that had belonged to Paul. It is descriptive, not prescriptive.
This does not mean the event did not happen, and it does not forbid the sober testimony that God has sometimes worked in unusual ways. It does mean that Acts 19 cannot be stretched into a command or a guarantee. If someone argues from this passage that Christians should venerate relics, they are going beyond what the text actually says, and they are ignoring the wider biblical pattern of warnings about sacred objects.
Why Hebrews 9 Frames the Whole Discussion
Hebrews 9:1-10 says the first covenant had ordinances of divine service and an earthly sanctuary, and it goes on to describe the tabernacle, the lampstand, the table, the ark, the golden altar of incense, and the mercy seat. These were the most sacred objects in Israel's history, given by direct command, and the writer's point is that they were temporary and preparatory, standing only until the time of reformation.
The old covenant sanctuary was not wrong. It was commanded. But it was a shadow of the true sanctuary, and its whole purpose was to point forward to the greater ministry of Christ, not to draw attention to itself. When the reality arrives, the shadow does not need to be venerated; it needs to be understood. The objects of the tabernacle have no ongoing role once their meaning has been fulfilled in Jesus.
This gives a framework for thinking about any Christian object. Something may be holy in the sense that God appointed it for a season. That does not make it holy in the sense that people should honour it, pray toward it, or trust it. The direction of the whole letter to the Hebrews is away from earthly sanctuaries and toward Christ, who entered once for all. Relics as a spiritual focus run against that movement.
What John 3 Says About the Lifted Serpent
John 3:14-15 takes the bronze serpent and explains what it was really pointing to. Jesus says that as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of Man be lifted up, so that whoever believes in him may have eternal life. The object in the desert was a picture, and its meaning is found in Christ on the cross, not in the object itself.
This is decisive for relics. If the bronze serpent, the most direct physical foreshadowing of salvation in the Old Testament, was meant to direct eyes to the coming Son of Man, then preserving and honouring the object as a holy thing would actually obscure its purpose. The value of the serpent was that it taught people to look away from themselves to God's provision. Hezekiah recovered that purpose in the only way left to him once the object had become an idol.
Every Christian relic faces the same problem. An object may have a real history, and it may be worth remembering for the sake of the story. But the moment it becomes a focus of piety, it competes with the One it should point to. Christians are not told to look at objects of wood, cloth, or metal; they are told to look to Christ, lifted up for them.
Objections: Does 2 Kings 18 Forbid All Relics?
Careful readers may raise a fair objection. Hezekiah destroyed the serpent because incense was being burned to it, not because it existed. The text condemns the worship given to the object, not the object's presence in Israel's memory. On that reading, keeping a relic in a museum, telling its story accurately, and refusing any religious honour to it would not fall under the same condemnation.
That is a reasonable distinction, and honest Bible teachers should acknowledge it. Scripture does not command the destruction of every historical item from a previous dispensation. There are differences among faithful Christians here: some would say any religious use of an object is dangerous and should be avoided; others would say sober historical respect, kept clearly subordinate to Christ, is permissible. The passage settles the worship question more clearly than the remembrance question.
What the passage does not permit is worship, trust, invocation, or the idea that an object carries spiritual power in itself. Hezekiah's reform assumed that the presence of an object used in worship was itself a pastoral danger, even when the object was authentic. Anyone reasoning from 2 Kings 18 should reason carefully and not overstate the case in either direction.
What This Means for Ordinary Christians Today
Most believers will never face a genuine first-century relic. But the pattern in 2 Kings 18 translates directly into ordinary Christian life. A church building may have been the site of real conversion and real prayer; that does not justify quietly treating it as a mediator. A family Bible may have belonged to a godly grandmother; that does not make it a channel of divine power. A cross worn on a neck may be a reminder, or it may become a charm.
The test is what happens in your heart when the object is moved, lost, or destroyed. If the peace of God depends on the object being present, the object has taken the place of God. Hezekiah's courage lay in doing what was right even though the object had a real history. He was willing to give up something valuable for the sake of the worship of the Lord.
In its place, the New Testament points to ordinary means: hearing the word, prayer, the Lord's Supper, and the fellowship of believers. These are not relics and they are not impressive, but they are what Christ actually gave his church. Devotion attached to an object will always be a weak substitute for faith resting in the living Christ, lifted up for the life of the world.
Biblical fidelity check
What 2 Kings 18:1-6 establishes is that Hezekiah removed the bronze serpent because Israel was burning incense to it, and that the narrator counts this among his good acts. What the passage does not establish is a full theology of whether ancient objects should be destroyed, kept, or remembered. It says nothing about reliquaries, pilgrimage, patron saints, or the later practice of buying relics. It does not address the question of whether an object can be quietly preserved as history.
A common misreading treats the passage as a blanket prohibition on all sacred objects, which it is not, or conversely as no threat to religious objects at all, which it clearly is. The text condemns the worship given to the object, and it presents the removal of the object as a faithful response to that worship. It also does not erase the serpent's real history; the narrator names it Nehushtan, a piece of bronze, while knowing exactly what Moses had made.
Other passages that speak to 2 Kings 18:1-6
Several related studies help place this passage in the wider biblical discussion of worship, repentance, and trust. Scriptural Christianity: A Bible Study from John Wesley’s Classic Sermon examines what it means for faith to be living and rooted in Scripture rather than in outward forms. The Almost Christian: A Bible Study from John Wesley’s Classic Sermon presses the question of whether attachment to religion can exist without real trust in Christ. What Does 1 John 1:1 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application speaks about the apostolic witness to the real, tangible Christ. What Does 1 John 1:8 Mean? Context, Theology, and Application addresses self-deception in the religious life, a danger closely related to trusting sacred objects.
Frequently asked questions
Does the Bible command Christians to venerate relics?
No. There is no command in Scripture to honour, pray before, kiss, or trust any object, whether it belonged to a prophet, an apostle, or a martyr. Acts 19:11-12 describes God working special miracles by the hands of Paul through cloths, but the text attributes the power to God and never instructs anyone to keep or honour the cloths. Hebrews 9 describes the old covenant sanctuaries and objects as temporary, standing only until the time of reformation in Christ. Devotion to relics is a later development, not a biblical command.
Why did Hezekiah destroy the bronze serpent Moses made?
Because the people of Israel were burning incense to it. Hezekiah called it Nehushtan, a piece of bronze, and broke it in pieces. The object had a genuine history: God commanded Moses to make it in Numbers 21, and those who looked at it in faith lived. By Hezekiah's day it had become a focus of worship that belonged to the Lord alone. His action is presented as part of what made him a faithful king, showing that a true history does not justify worship given to an object.
Can a Christian keep a religious object without sinning?
Scripture does not forbid every religious item, and faithful Christians differ on this point. A family Bible or a historic object may be kept, remembered, and appreciated as history. The danger is when the object receives trust, prayer, or a sense of spiritual power it cannot carry. The test is whether your peace depends on the object or on Christ. If losing it would shake your faith, it has taken a place it should not have. Keep it, if at all, as a pointer to the Lord rather than a replacement for him.
