Our Miracle-Working Savior

From The God Who Heals.

Then Jesus touched their eyes and said, “According to your faith let it be done to you”; and their sight was restored. Jesus warned them sternly, “See that no one knows about this.” But they went out and spread the news about him all over that region. —Matthew 9:29–31

Jesus did not like it when people made a big to-do about his miracles. He always had something more in mind than the miracle itself. When Jesus performed a miracle, what mattered most to him was that it would arouse a deep, godly feeling. His acts of mercy were signs of something greater – something beyond the temporal. He touched the inner person.

Jesus ultimately wants followers – people who are gripped by him and brought face to face with truly divine feelings for God’s kingdom. Yes, his miracles displayed more than the power of God, not with some earth-shattering phenomena, but with a certain kind of simplicity, a quality that could lead the soul deeper. They were so simple that they often happened before anyone was really aware of it. Indeed, sometimes nobody saw anything extraordinary take place. Yet Jesus, himself moved by compassion, awakened love in people – the same love that he had shown to them. All his words and deeds came straight from his heart and touched people’s hearts, which in turn evoked praise and glory to God. In short, his healing hand made the glory and love of God visible to everyone.

In this way, Jesus had to be a miraculous Savior, who by the Lord’s power furthered the redemption of all people and all creation. And Jesus is still our miraculous Savior. Without his mighty deeds he is nothing but a teacher. But we know him as our Lord. Oh, that this gospel might be fully lived and proclaimed!

Carl Bloch, Healing of the Blind Man, 1871.

The greatest miracles of God are not those that happen to sick people. These are not so important. It is much more important that we see things happening to the healthy, that we see changes in people’s lives and in the state of the world. What miracles, wrought by God, am I thinking about? For example, when guns are no longer fired in war. Do you think that is possible? Such a thought seems to make everybody chuckle. But did not miracles like this take place in Israel (Josh. 5:13–6:27)? Similar deeds are what we need today more than anything else, so that everything is taken completely out of our hands and put into the hands of the Living One. Of course, when something does come from God, it will come at the right time and in God’s way. What we need is God’s reality to enter again into our lives.