What are Jesus’ Miracles All About?

Jesus did not work miracles simply for the sake of showing off divine power. Nor did he work miracles just to prove he was the Messiah. The fact that he did things only God could do (raise the dead, transform water into wine, walk on water, calm storms, know people’s unspoken thoughts) is important and impressive, but the primary reason Jesus worked miracles was to push back the forces of darkness.

The over-reaching narrative arc of the scripture is restorative. Something has gone wrong in God’s beautiful, good creation. Angels and people sought to ascend. Pride disconnected them from the one Source of life. Chaos and violence erupted. Murders, wars, plagues, savagery in the heavenlies. Cancers, tsunamis, demons, and empires built on conquest and oppression.

Everywhere God pushes back the chaos – calling Abraham and Sarah, delivering Joseph, in the exodus, through Ruth’s devotion, the psalms, and the prophets, all of which was pointing to Messiah, who would accomplish the ultimate rescue.

Most Jews expected a Messiah like Moses – one who would use supernatural power to destroy Rome’s grip on Judea, a warrior-king like David, sword dripping with enemy blood. At first, Jesus many miracles reinforced that expectation. A man who can speak and calm storms could certainly call fire from heaven or open the earth to consume the wicked oppressors. Moses confronted Pharaoh. The blood of an innocent lamb confronted a cosmic evil one called Death, the Destroyer, Apollyon.

Six months out, on the roughly 100-mile hike from Caesarea Philippi to Jerusalem, all Jesus talks about is death and resurrection. It sounds like utter defeat. Eventually, they all fled – except for a couple of women, chief among them Mary of Magdala, whose devotion remained true even in death and defeat. Filled with lament for Messiah and his now hopeless kingdom, she faithfully watched and wept and anointed.

The glory of God, as Paul uses the phrase in Romans, is the honor God has given to humans to bear God’s image. We are created to be the imago Dei. Ah, but all of us have failed to reflect that image of pure and perfect love. Death, therefore, has a right to us because reflecting God’s image is only possible in union with God and God is the only source of everlasting life. Unless we are in God and God in us, death rules. We are mortal. A moon with no sun nearby reflects no light.

But death has no claim on Messiah Jesus. He was without sin. He always did what the Father asked. He and the Father were (are) one. Jesus is the Word of the Father, the creator. If one has seen Jesus, one has seen the Father. If we wish to know what God is like, we need look no further than Jesus. There is nothing unchristlike in God.

Motivated by unfathomable and therefore ineffable love, God became human, lived a sinless life, and chose to enter into death. He did not have to die. We do. He didn’t. He would not have died had he not voluntarily laid down his life for us. Then, he picked it up again. Jesus went through death so that he could pull us out on the other side.

Imagine death being like crawling through a dark tunnel. It’s a dead end. No escape. But there at the other end is Jesus, smiling, welcoming, reaching in and pulling us through into everlasting life.

Perhaps this happens in stages. To be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord. Paul would rather depart and be with Messiah, which, he said, is far better than staying here. But at the last trumpeted note, the dead in Christ will rise physically, bodily, apparently rejoining departed disembodied spirits as King Jesus descends and heaven joins earth. The narrative arc of scripture is not about our flying away to heaven when we die. It is about heaven coming to earth, all things new, the cosmos rescued and regenerated. Our dead rest in peace; they will rise in glory. Where, then, oh death, is your victory?

Jesus’ miracles were not just to prove who he was or put God’s abilities on display. Every miracle was pushing back a bit of the satan’s evil empire. Each healing, each deliverance, each defiance of the laws of nature, was designed to point to the ultimate miracle – on the cross, the one over whom death had no grip, gave himself over to death, absorbed within himself all the chaos, all the evil, all the sin, and passed through death to open the eternal portal to life for us.

It doesn’t stop there. All creation changed on Good Friday. Something took place that fundamentally shifted the cosmos. Sin, evil, chaos, the satan was crushed, defeated. Cosmic evil was confronted and death defeated. Christ is risen! God is in the process of making all things new, of redeeming, rescuing, the entire cosmos, the whole universe (or multiverse if there are many).

And, miracle of miracles, God invites us to recognize that we have passed out of death into life, that we are beloved, that all humans bear the divine image and have unsurpassable worth, and to join God in making all things new.

How do we join God as God makes all things new? By loving our enemies, turning the other cheek, going the extra mile, washing feet, visiting and caring for the sick, insane, incarcerated, homeless, despised, and marginalized. Each act of love pushes back chaos and advances the kingdom of God.