The working of miracles: signs that point to Jesus

At a village wedding the wine runs out. For that family it is a disgrace that will be remembered for years. Jesus has six stone water jars filled with water, and when the master of the feast tastes what is drawn from them, it is the best wine of the celebration. Hardly anyone finds out where it came from. The evangelist ends the story with a sentence that explains everything the Bible says about miracles:

“This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory; and his disciples believed on him.”

John 2:11

The word John uses in Greek is “sign.” A sign is not the destination; it shows which way to go. The miracle manifested Jesus’ glory, and the fruit was that his disciples believed in him. Among the gifts of the Spirit Paul mentions “the working of miracles” (1 Corinthians 12:10). This article is part of the series The nine gifts of the Holy Spirit. We will look at what this gift is, what the miracles of Jesus and of the Church were like, what they are for, what they cannot do, which is the greatest of all, and how to stand before them without credulity and without unbelief. At the end there is a prayer.

What the working of miracles is

The Greek expression means, literally, “workings of powers”: acts in which the power of God intervenes beyond the ordinary course of things. It includes what does not fit under the word “healing”: deliverances, unexpected provision, protection, prison doors opening, even the dead returning to life. Again Paul uses the plural: it is not a permanent faculty someone carries about, but works God does when he wills, through whom he wills.

The book of Acts is careful to say who the subject is: “God wrought special miracles by the hands of Paul” (Acts 19:11). God wrought them; the hands were Paul’s. Whoever forgets that order has stopped understanding the gift.

Three words for a single reality

“Ye men of Israel, hear these words; Jesus of Nazareth, a man approved of God among you by miracles and wonders and signs, which God did by him in the midst of you, as ye yourselves also know.”

Acts 2:22

Peter uses three terms the Bible often repeats together. Miracles (in Greek, “powers”): they say where the event comes from, the power of God. Wonders: they say what it provokes, astonishment. Signs: they say what it is for, since it carries a message. A biblical miracle always has all three. An astonishing event without a message, or with a message that does not lead to God, is not what Scripture calls a miracle.

The God who does wonders

“Thou art the God that doest wonders” (Psalm 77:14). “To him who alone doeth great wonders: for his mercy endureth for ever” (Psalm 136:4). “With God nothing shall be impossible” (Luke 1:37). Anyone who believes God created the universe out of nothing has no difficulty believing he can act within it.

But we should not divide the world in two, as if God were present in the extraordinary and absent from the commonplace. “The heavens declare the glory of God” (Psalm 19:1) every day. The bread that comes from work and rain comes from him just as much as the manna did. A miracle is not God breaking into a world that was running without him; it is God doing in an unaccustomed way what he always does: giving life.

Miracles are not constant in the Bible

Anyone who reads Scripture straight through notices that miracles cluster at certain moments: the exodus, with the sea driven back “by a strong east wind all that night” (Exodus 14:21); the days of Elijah and Elisha, when “the barrel of meal wasted not, neither did the cruse of oil fail” (1 Kings 17:16); the exile, with Daniel; and above all the coming of Jesus and the beginnings of the Church. In between lie centuries in which the people lived by the Word and by ordinary providence. And of John the Baptist, of whom Jesus said that none greater had been born, people acknowledged: “John did no miracle: but all things that John spake of this man were true” (John 10:41). One can be a great servant of God without a single miracle.

The miracles of Jesus

He calmed a storm with two words, and the disciples, more frightened than before, asked one another: “What manner of man is this, that even the wind and the sea obey him?” (Mark 4:41). That is the question every miracle is meant to awaken. He fed a multitude with five loaves. He called a man four days dead: “Lazarus, come forth” (John 11:43).

When John the Baptist, from prison, sent to ask whether he was the one who was to come, Jesus answered by pointing to his works:

“Jesus answered and said unto them, Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see: The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them.”

Matthew 11:4-5

His miracles were the kingdom of God becoming visible: what the world will be when God reigns completely. And they have constant features. They sprang from compassion. He never worked them for his own benefit: he refused to turn stones into bread. He never worked them to show off: when they asked him for “a sign,” he replied: “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it, but the sign of the prophet Jonas” (Matthew 12:39), that is, his death and resurrection. And John sums up their purpose: “these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God; and that believing ye might have life through his name” (John 20:31).

In the Church

The first Christians, under threat, did not ask for protection. They prayed: “grant unto thy servants, that with all boldness they may speak thy word, by stretching forth thine hand to heal; and that signs and wonders may be done by the name of thy holy child Jesus” (Acts 4:29-30). First the word; then the signs, and in the name of Jesus.

And God answered. Peter “kneeled down, and prayed,” and then said: “Tabitha, arise” (Acts 9:40). While he himself was in prison, “prayer was made without ceasing of the church unto God for him,” and an angel led him out (12:5-7). At Philippi, Paul and Silas were singing at midnight with their feet in the stocks, an earthquake opened the doors, and the result was not an escape but the conversion of the jailer and all his household (16:25-34). The letter to the Hebrews gives the key to it all:

“How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will?”

Hebrews 2:3-4

God was “bearing them witness.” The signs confirmed the message, and were given “according to his own will.” Mark says the same: they preached everywhere, “the Lord working with them, and confirming the word with signs following” (Mark 16:20). Signs follow the Word; they neither replace it nor go ahead of it.

What they are for

To point to Jesus and confirm the Gospel. To show God’s mercy to particular people. To open a way where Christ is not known. Not to entertain, nor to enrich anyone, nor to demonstrate a minister’s importance.

At Lystra, after a lame man got up, the crowd wanted to offer sacrifices to Paul and Barnabas as gods. They tore their clothes and ran in among the people crying out: “Sirs, why do ye these things? We also are men of like passions with you” (Acts 14:15). That is the reflex of someone who truly has this gift: to push the glory away in horror.

What a miracle cannot do

It does not produce faith by itself. To the crowd that had eaten the loaves Jesus said: “Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled” (John 6:26). And in a parable he put these words into Abraham’s mouth: “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead” (Luke 16:31). Many saw Lazarus come out of the tomb, and some went off to denounce Jesus.

It does not prove that someone is of God. This is one of Jesus’ most serious warnings: “Many will say to me in that day, Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name?… and in thy name done many wonderful works? And then will I profess unto them, I never knew you” (Matthew 7:22-23). Paul speaks of “signs and lying wonders” (2 Thessalonians 2:9). And Moses had already said that if a prophet works a wonder and by it draws the people away from God, he is not to be listened to (Deuteronomy 13:1-3). What is tested is the message and the fruit, not the astonishment.

It does not measure spirituality. To the seventy who came back exultant Jesus said: “in this rejoice not… but rather rejoice, because your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:20).

It should not be sought for its own sake. “Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe” (John 4:48) is a reproach, not a compliment. Faith that is held up only by the extraordinary falls when the ordinary comes, or the cross.

The greatest of miracles

There is a work of power greater than opening a sea: changing a heart. “If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new” (2 Corinthians 5:17). A violent man becoming gentle, a woman able to forgive the one who wrecked her life, someone coming out of a twenty-year addiction, a dead marriage reviving, a believer persevering with joy in the midst of suffering: these too are “workings of power,” and they are the ones that most abound.

And above them all stands the sign Jesus promised to those who asked him for one: his resurrection. All other miracles point towards it and take their meaning from it. Read How to be born again according to the Bible and The crucifixion of Jesus.

Does God still work miracles?

All Christians confess that God is free and powerful to act today as always. They differ on how. Pentecostal and charismatic churches believe the Spirit still gives this gift to particular people, especially where the Gospel is being proclaimed for the first time. Many historic churches think that God answers the prayer of his people with miracles, but that there are no longer “workers of miracles” like the apostles, whose signs accredited their unique mission. The Catholic Church recognises miracles after investigating them very rigorously. From all of them the same prudence can be learned: pray boldly, verify honestly, never exaggerate, and give God all the glory.

How to live before this gift

1. Pray boldly. The Church in Acts asked for signs in the name of Jesus. It is no lack of humility to ask the impossible of the One who can do all things.
2. Put the Word first. Signs confirm the Gospel; where that is missing, they confirm nothing.
3. Give thanks for the ordinary. Today’s bread, today’s health, today’s sun.
4. Always tell the truth. An exaggerated or unverified testimony dishonours God even when told with good intentions.
5. Push the glory away from yourself. “We also are men.”
6. Accept the “no” and the “not yet.” The same God who opened Peter’s prison allowed the death of James a few verses earlier.
7. Seek love. Without it, the one who moves mountains “is nothing.”

Abuses that must be named

Announced miracles no one can verify. Promises of a miracle in exchange for “sowing” money. The sale of oil, water, handkerchiefs or “anointed” objects. Pressure on people to “declare” what has not happened. Blaming those who did not receive their miracle. None of this has anything to do with the gift of the Spirit. Simon the sorcerer wanted to buy the power, and heard: “Thy money perish with thee” (Acts 8:20). If you have been a victim of something like this, do not turn away from Christ because of those who used his name.

Frequently asked questions

How does a miracle differ from a healing? Every extraordinary healing is a miracle, but not every miracle is a healing. Paul names them separately: the one concerns health; the other, every other work of power.

Is it wrong to ask for a miracle? No. Jairus, the Canaanite woman and the centurion asked, and Jesus heard them. What Jesus reproaches is demanding signs as a condition for believing.

Why do I not see miracles? Perhaps you see more than you count. And perhaps God is giving you something worth more: a faith that does not depend on seeing. “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have believed” (John 20:29).

Does everything inexplicable come from God? No. That is why the Bible commands us to test: what it says about Jesus, to whom it gives the glory, what fruit it leaves. Read The discerning of spirits.

Series “The nine gifts of the Holy Spirit”: Introduction · previous: The gifts of healing · next: The gift of prophecy according to the Bible.

Prayer

God who does wonders, forgive me for both things: for having thought you small, as if you could no longer do anything, and for having sought you only for what you could give me. You opened the sea, multiplied the bread, called Lazarus from the tomb; and one day you worked the greatest miracle on me: you gave me a new heart. Thank you. Come, Holy Spirit, and open my eyes to your everyday works, which I pass without seeing. Give me faith to ask you for the impossible on behalf of those I love, and peace to trust you when the answer is different. Stretch out your hand, Lord, where your Gospel is proclaimed, and confirm your word. And if you ever do something through my hands, let me run to say: it was not I. May every sign lead to Jesus, dead and risen, the sign that is enough. Amen.