Last month we published an article by Ted Bradshaw on Jesus’ inviting Peter to walk on the water. (See Something to Think About.) We invited responses to the article. The following response was received from CCCC pastor David Green. We invite other responses to this and to any of our articles, but especially the Something to Think About essays.
Editor:
You invited observations on Mr. Bradshaw’s article in the March Foresee. Here are a few.
1. We need to be careful in drawing a straight line from the life and ministry of Jesus and his disciples to ourselves. The book of Acts and the epistles intervene with their precise explanations of who Jesus was and what his mission on earth entailed, especially with the future apostles. For they held a unique place in the history of redemption that is unrepeatable as to Christ’s office as Redeemer and the apostles as founders of the Christian faith in the world — including the gospel message’s confirmation by miraculous signs.
2. Closely related to this is the fact that external signs, i.e. the visibly miraculous, often caused wonder in people (see all through the Gospel narratives), but they never changed a heart, either from being dead in trespasses and sins to eternal life or to a higher state of holiness in believers. Thousands saw Jesus’ miracles and remained in their sins.
3. We should also note that biblical miracles occur most often in situations where they merely aggravate unbelief in God’s Word. The ministries of Moses, Elijah and Elisha — so filled with signs — were generally accompanied by unbelief or a temporary reform that soon lapsed into the same or a worse condition of disobedience and lawlessness.
This is clearest with our Lord, who shortly following three years of continuous miracles of every kind and climaxing with his raising Lazarus from the dead, was hailed as the Son of David, but on the following Good Friday he was jeered and given over to crucifixion by the prevailing voices of many of those who had praised him days before.
4. Miracles are the sovereign disposition of God (see particularly Hebrews 2:2–3). In addition to the point just made above, in the ministries of the prophets who worked them (and only prophets — not priests or kings were vehicles for God’s miracles), they were intended to reinforce their words. So that if the word from God was not effective, perhaps a sign would be effective to bring faith in the word. This was certainly true in the life of our Lord Jesus.
Jesus’ signs also showed God’s compassion for those in distress, often in spite of their unbelief.
5. Further, the pastoral letters of 1 & 2 Timothy and Titus do not speak of working miraculous signs, expecting them or commissioning others to do them. Rather Paul instructed these men as his dear disciples to teach and live out the word of the gospel in all purity and holiness with compassion and continual service as the best demonstration of God’s power and grace. In this way they would fulfill their ministries, save themselves and their hearers (1Timothy 4:16).
6. Thus the emphasis on expecting the miraculous should fall on our crying out to God for the greatest of all miracles: the conversion of a human soul from darkness to light, from enmity with God to peace with him. Conversion and sanctification are entirely the miraculous but also the mysterious work of the Holy Spirit in the soul, normally using as his tool the read or preached Word of God. To this all Scripture bears eloquent witness.
This is surely to what Christ referred when he told the eleven “Greater works than these will you do because I go do the Father” (John 14:12). And what was the evidence for this statement? ANSWER — for starters, 3000 converted under Peter’s preaching at Pentecost and the astonishing success of the preaching of the gospel among the very Jews — including many priests (Acts 6:7) who had called for Jesus’ crucifixion.
With the miraculous it is never a question of what God can do but what he normally does. That miraculous signs may still occur is certainly possible and they have occurred, but always and only when God sovereignly chooses to intervene in some way, usually for reasons stated above.
So may we devote ourselves to prayer, that we might be holy and righteous instruments, such as God has used in the past, to make his word effective for the conversion of unbelievers and for sanctifying and energizing God’s people to be living sacrifices, holy, pleasing to God (Romans 12:1–2) and thereby the best testimony to God’s saving power in the world.
Yours by grace,
David Green
