What is more evident on the pages of the Gospels than the miracles of Jesus? Of course there are miracles in the Old Testament too—the miracles of Moses and Elijah. So what do we do with these miracle stories, especially as we teach people who are often desperately seeking a miracle from God in their own lives? How do we determine the main emphasis of the various accounts?
I posed these questions among others to Jared Wilson, author of The Wonder-Working God: Seeing the Glory of Jesus in His Miracles. Wilson is director of content strategy for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, managing editor of For The Church (and host of the FTC Podcast), and director of the Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri.
Transcript
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Male: We think of the fallen, broken world as normal. In a sense, it’s normal for us. But we also know as Christians, seeing how God created the world, seeing where He’s going with the world, at Christ’s second coming, the restoration of all things, that our world now is not as it’s supposed to be and not what it was meant to be. Therefore, the miracles are sort of glimpses of what life restored will be like.
Nancy: Welcome to “Help Me Teach the Bible.” I’m Nancy Guthrie. Help Me Teach the Bible” is a production of The Gospel Coalition sponsored by Crossway. Crossway is a not-for-profit publisher of ESV Bible, Christian books, and tracks. Learn more at crossway.org.
I came to the other side of the world to get together with the person I’m interviewing today, who doesn’t live on the other side of the world from me. Jared Wilson is here in Australia where we’re both speaking at the same conference. Jared, thank you for being willing to sit down with me and to help us teach the Bible.
Jared: Yeah, thanks so much for having me. I’m excited to be here.
Nancy: So, Jared is the director of Content Strategy for Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary. You’re managing editor of For the Church. And he hosts a podcast for them. You can tell us about that. Also, director of The Pastoral Training Center at Liberty Baptist Church in Kansas City, Missouri.
I found this description on your bio. I’m wondering if you wrote it, okay? Because it’s not a typical bio kind of statement, this description, it says, “Jared is not a catalytic…” and it has in quotes, I like the quotes, “‘agent of change’ or a visionary anything. He is a failed church planter and once made a mess of his marriage. He likes food too much and worries way too much about what people will think. He’s definitely not all that he’s cracked up to be. And after 20 years of ministry, he’s mainly learned that he’s kind of a nincompoop. But he knows Jesus loves him.” Did you write that?
Jared: Yeah. I did write that. I don’t think I’d let anybody else put that on my website. But it’s funny ’til you mentioned that, as soon as you said he likes food too much part, like I have this high-calorie coffee frappe thing right in front of me…
Nancy: Hey, but you know…
Jared: …as if…
Nancy: …we’ve both been speaking all day.
Jared: That’s true.
Nancy: We deserve, we need a little juice.
Jared: That’s how sin starts, Nancy. I deserve a little bit. So I’m feeling convicted already. This is a great podcast.
Nancy: This is good. So tell us a little bit more. I read all of those things that you do in Kansas City in relationship to both Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, and then the church that you’re part of. So tell us a little bit more about what you do.
Jared: Sure. So for the seminary, I work in the communications department. So my day job, so to speak, is anything related to text really. So I’m the managing editor for that website, For the Church. We publish two to three articles, blog posts, video interviews, Monday through Friday. We even have a devotional from Spurgeon that we take from morning and evening on Sundays as well. So we have Charles Spurgeon blogging for us, which, you know…
Nancy: Wow. Who can claim that?
Jared: …not a lot of sites can claim. That’s right. I also am the managing editor for the seminary’s magazine that comes out twice a year. And just anything related to the sort of message communication that goes out. I’m a writer/editor, so I have sort of a hand in crafting that.
Nancy: So speaking of Spurgeon, you’re…
Jared: That’s right.
Nancy: That seminary has a very close connection to Spurgeon?
Jared: That’s right.
Nancy: Tell us about that.
Jared: So we’re the home of the Charles Spurgeon library. We have 6,000-plus volumes that were part of Spurgeon’s personal library, so most of his books including lots of books that are annotated and have notes and things from him. If he didn’t like the author or the book itself, sometimes he would cross out the title and, you know, write a new sarcastic title. And we have a few of those.
Nancy: Seriously?
Jared: Yes.
Nancy: Sarcasm by Spurgeon in his books?
Jared: Oh, no, no. Isn’t that a shocker? And we have many artifacts as well: his writing desk, fountain pen, travel desk, the door knob to his study, his last cigar, actually, a cigar that was in his pocket in Menton, France when he died, all sorts of things there in the library. So it’s a good sort of archive or a museum to honor the “Prince of Preachers.”
Nancy: Last week, I was looking on Facebook, and I saw Tony Reinke, he must have been spending some time at the seminary because he posted these pictures. He was there, you know, he’s a big John Newton guy. And he was there in the library, and he found Spurgeon’s copy of one of Newton’s books. And so it had Spurgeon’s marginalia writing comments about Newton. That was pretty fascinating.
Jared: Yeah. Obviously, you know, it can get a little strange. One of my favorite artifacts is actually Spurgeon’s copy of Bunyan’s “Pilgrim’s Progress.” It’s a little pocket version. And it’s bowed, and the reason…we’ll, we’re told the reason that it’s bowed is because it was the copy that he kept in his breast pocket, and it’s sort of shaped to his chest. So it has this permanent kind of, you know, bowing. And that’s really neat, just the idea that he kind of carried that copy around. Of course, it might have just been warped by the weather, but the other story is better.
Nancy: I like the other story. Yeah.
Jared: Me too.
Nancy: Well, let’s start this way, Jared. Would you just tell us a little bit about how you came to be a person who loves and teaches and writes about God’s word? How did that come about in your life?
Jared: Sure. It came really about at an early age. You know, I was raised in the church, always a very…if I can use the phrase “literary child,” reading books, reading stories, and writing stories, always wanted to be a storyteller. Before, you know, experiencing a call to ministry and sort of pursuing vocationally ministry, I was trying to publish as a novelist. But even as a child, I would write little stories and staple them together and try to sell them to my friends.
Nancy: Seriously?
Jared: Yes, ma’am. It just the writing impetus has always been a part of my life as far back as I can remember. So when, you know, Perry and I, of course, we’ve been raised in the church and hearing the Bible faithfully taught and preached, those just sort of dovetailed for me. So, you know, I was Christian leader as a kid, as well the president of my Christian club in high school, and would sometimes teach even the youth Sunday school classes while I was a student and those sorts of things. So it’s something that early and I was kind of thrown into. I don’t have a lot of formal training in it. So a lot of what I’ve learned has had to be sort of just sort of independently studied and that sort of thing.
But, yeah, God’s been really gracious and, you know, protected people from me quite a bit, and protected me from myself quite a bit. But a lot of the emphasis on the Gospel and, you know, the crystal centricity of the Word, a lot of that has come through personal experience something that, you know, I alluded to in the biography that you read at the beginning of the program. Really just a train wreck of my own life, where the Lord proved very sweet, and a very bitter time for me, and for my wife. And in the restoration of that relationship, finding the satisfaction of Christ supreme overall, that just sort of infused with finally a meaning that would satisfy me, and I think others.
Nancy: So you’ve written a number of books. I didn’t bring a list with me.
Jared: Okay.
Nancy: Are there one or two books that you think, “Okay. This is the heartbeat of my ministry”?
Jared: Yeah, I think I would say. So I wrote a book that was published by Crossway in 2011 called “Gospel Wakefulness.” And that theme really runs through everything else that I write. And that’s really even the theme of my, I think, preaching and teaching ministry as well. Just the idea that the Gospel is for lost and found a like. That we’re not just converted by the Gospel, but we’re grown by the Gospel, and having a growing awakening, a realization to just how all-encompassing the grace of God is, the finished work of Christ is. So that’s sort of the through line that runs through all my books. So what whatever the topic is parables, miracles, or what have you, the germ or, you know, the kernel at the center of it all is how robust and versatile the good news is.
Nancy: You mentioned that you’ve always loved to write. And on my flight on the way to Australia, I was reading your book “The Wonder-Working God.” And there were numerous times I would come to a sentence and sometimes a whole paragraph and, honestly, I was so jealous. I’ve written a lot of books, but people say, “Are you a writer?” And I can never say that I’m a writer because I feel like I write, but there’s a difference in being a writer and being someone who writes, in my view. And so, when I read some of these paragraphs, I just thought to myself, “Now, Jared, he’s a writer.”
Jared: Well, I appreciate that.
Nancy: So I appreciate you using your gift that way. So here’s one paragraph I read of your book that I just thought was so artfully done. You wrote, “Because Jesus’s very person was the perfect integration of full humanity and full divinity, he carried around with him the growing rift between this world and that one. As he walked, his elbows traced both the air and the ether, stretching the limits of creation, the heavenly gravity pressing in at his movements. Jesus strained the capacity of this world with his very presence. The world’s breeches were too small, in other words, for the King of the Universe. And we should not be surprised that as the seams split, glory streamed through.” That’s a great paragraph.
Jared: Yeah. Is it sinful to say I’m a little proud of that paragraph?
Nancy: It’s human to say.
Jared: Yeah, okay. Yeah. You know, I do, because my first love really was stories and storytelling, I think, I mean, I tried to bring a kind of literary sensibility to, you know, to nonfiction. And even when I was originally writing for publication, trying to be published as an author, I was writing novels and couldn’t get published. And then, we planted a church and through the midst of that, you know, I had an agent that, you know, represented mostly for fiction works. And, you know, we weren’t finding much traction. And eventually, you know, he came asking for a manuscript. I said, “I can’t finish the story because I’m so busy with our church, but I’ve been preaching through the Gospels and doing a series on the historical Jesus. I could put some stuff together. ” And he said, “You know, you’re really a fiction guy. I don’t know. You don’t have a platform etc., etc.” I said, “This is all I’ve got.” And I put it together, and we got a book deal.
And you know, I haven’t looked back since then. But I try to, as much as I can, bring in, you know, just the sense of early influences, when I was a kid reading Lewis and Tolkien, and some of them, and Dickens, and others, but even just in high school, Faulkner and Hemingway. And just the ability to turn a phrase that I hope isn’t distracting, but now kind of adorns, I think, the beauty of the Gospel and adorns the glory of Christ. He’s worthy of our best efforts, I think.
Nancy: Absolutely. Well, I wanna talk with you today about this book, “The Wonder-Working God.” You’ve done a couple on Gospels. You’ve got the one “The Storytelling God” where you talked a lot about parables. I read a lot of that one, too, so helpful. We’re always struggling to figure out how to handle parables and teach them well. And so not only did you teach the parables, but you handed Bible teachers, I think, in that book, some very helpful tools for approaching parables for our own teaching. But I really wanna talk to you about this book, “The Wonder-Working God,” because I think as Bible teacher, sometimes we struggle with how to handle miracle stories.
When I think about a lot of the Bible teaching that I sat under for most of my life, it seems like the lesson that was taken away from most miracle stories was, you know, trust God and He’ll do this miracle in your life. And so there’s that aspect. But I think also, what I bring to the miracle stories is…my husband, David, and I have a ministry to grieving parents. And, you know, we’ll sit in this circle at our retreats for grieving parents. And the are people who, they’ve read the Gospels. And, I mean, what stands out on the pages of the Gospels, more than healing miracles. And so, you know, they see Jesus’s ability to do a miracle, and they believe in prayer, and they’re praying, and it seems like all their friends and people from all over the world, oftentimes are praying for their child. And then they don’t get the miracle. And so often, because they haven’t perhaps understood how to read and understand these miracles, to put them in context. What you do so beautifully, I think, in this book, is you put them in context of the larger story of what God’s doing in the world that helps us under understand them.
So I have a special interest in these miracle stories because I think about how wrong understanding impacts very real people and people who are precious to me who are grieving the fact that they didn’t get the miracle that they hoped for for someone they love. So perhaps you could be begin just by talking to us in a general sense, are there some tools you would hand to us or some glasses through which we should read miracle stories in the Gospel, some basic understanding we should have as we read them?
Jared: Right. So I think the miracle and parables work in a similar way to reveal a facet of the glory of Christ. And I think the way that we’ve misread the miracles so often isn’t entirely off track, right? Just the idea that God can work a wonder in your life, or that God cares about the problems that you go through, even the pain or the sickness.
And certainly, what Jesus is doing in the Gospels, you know, the people that he’s healing, for instance, or restoring, they’re not incidental to the or, you know, coincidental to, you know, to the process, he really does have a care and concern for them, and addressing of their “felt need,” or what have you. So we’re not entirely off track to think along those lines of what Christ could do for us in those. But that’s really just a bare kernel of what the miracles function or how miracles function in Jesus’s ministry sometimes. So I grew up hearing the teaching that the miracles were largely about Christ revealing himself to be God.
Nancy: Yes, his deity, to demonstrate his deity.
Jared: Right. Which, of course, he is, God, there’s no denying that. And that’s not entirely off track, either. Certainly, the miracles reveal sovereign power and, you know, they demonstrate that he is not of this world and that sort of thing. So it’s not entirely off track. But it’s really not the full story of what’s happening there. So they’re not necessarily attractants. Sometimes you hear people say that Jesus performed miracles to attract a crowd or to attract people to him. But then you find other instance where he tells his followers, “Don’t tell anybody about this,” or what have you. So he’s always, you know, in some sense, shepherding the moment.
I think the big picture or the big explanation that sort of encompasses all of Christ’s miraculous ministry is that he’s giving us a window into the other world, right? So in the Gospels, what we find, and particularly in Matthew, Mark, and Luke, is this recurring phrase, the Gospel of the kingdom, that Jesus came preaching the Gospel of the kingdom. This is not set at odds with, you know, the Gospel of the Cross, or what have you that, you know, Paul and the apostles preached later. But it’s sort of, you know, the overarching campaign, the mission of Christ as he is bringing his own sovereignty to bear, right? He’s announcing his kingship, to put in a simple way.
The miracles then are demonstrations of what it looks like when Christ is king. And because it’s just the inauguration of the ministry, of course, all sin isn’t vanquished, all death isn’t vanquished. But you’re getting these glimpses, these windows, that when Jesus is in charge, when Jesus exercises his sovereignty, when his sovereignty breaks into the fallen, broken world, things are restored, and things come back to order. And one since the miracles look back to before the fall, before there was death, before there was sickness, and so on, but they also look forward to Christ second coming, they’re windows into the other world that is breaking in through his ministry.
Nancy: I like what you said here. You said, “the miracles demonstrate the [inaudible 00:16:52] of the Kingdom.” And you said, “The miracles are acts of heavenly normalization, which is to say they are isolated snapshots of the transformation of the broken world to the way it will someday be. I think, we think of miracles as the opposite, that somehow, it’s God breaking in, doing something other worldly. And you’re kind of making the opposite argument, aren’t you?
Jared: Yeah, very influenced by C.S. Lewis, and talking about what miracles are in his book, of course, where he comes at the idea that a miracle is a breaking of the natural order or, you know, a breaking of the rules or something like that. And, you know, he uses the phrase to say, we’re essentially, you know, a miracle is we’re receiving new data about how the world works. That maybe how we thought the world works, wasn’t the full picture. So God, of course, isn’t breaking his own rules or anything like that.
But we think upside down because we think of the fallen, broken world as normal. In a sense, it’s normal for us. But we also know, as Christians, seeing how God created the world, seeing where he’s going with the world at Christ and coming the restoration of all things, that our world now is not as it’s supposed to be and not what it was meant to be. Therefore, the miracles are sort of glimpses of what life restored will be like, glimpses of what the entire world will look like when Christ establishes his kingship over the entire globe.
Nancy: Well, why don’t we dive in to a couple of miracle stories? And perhaps you can help us to figure out when we are handling one of these stories, how we effectively pass along to our people what’s really at the heart of these stories. Why don’t we get in John 2?
Jared: Okay.
Nancy: John, he’s the Gospel writer who over and over he’s talking about signs and so many of these are miracles, are they not? And so this first sign is a miracle, it’s not a healing miracle, something very different that’s at the wedding at Cana.
Jared: That’s right. The water into wine. And there’s a lot ways you can go with this. We’ve probably all heard different lessons. And I think earlier, we were talking to someone who said, they heard a lesson about parenting between, you know, Jesus’s exchange with his mother Mary at the wedding.
Nancy: I heard a long thing one time. It was all about whether or not they use this passage to talk about whether or not people should drink alcohol.
Jared: Should drink alcohol, right.
Nancy: I don’t think that necessarily that’s what…when John was writing this.
Jared: That’s right.
Nancy: And isn’t that an important principle for us as Bible teachers. We don’t want to just use the scripture as a way to then talk about something that we wanna talk about, or our pet topic. But instead, we wanna look at the passage and we wanna try and think, “What was John seeking to communicate to his original readers?” And even deeper than that, “What is the divine author, what does he want us to understand from this?” And so, I guess, part of that comes into this understanding of how to handle the miracles, right?
Jared: Right. And, you know, the exchange between Jesus and Mary is really interesting. I think we can get distracted but, you know, the over curiosity about what’s going on there, and oftentimes, we can misread. He seems like he’s being really sharp with her and that sort of thing. And then we miss really the gist of the thing or what Jesus is really about to do. And what he does. I think, you know, the superficial level, you know, of course, is Jesus sort of public debut into ministry, at least his public, you know, debut of miraculous ministry in doing something phenomenal, of course, by turning water into wine.
So it seems, you know, to, you know, to put it really bluntly, like a neat trick or something like that. And I remember one of the very first sermons I ever preached when I was in student ministry, I did this magic trick of turning…well, it was grape juice, but where I appeared…
Nancy: Was it real magic?
Jared: I write about this in the book, actually, about how I turned water into…we were good Baptist, so into grape juice.
Nancy: Okay. I think you have to tell people how you did this because I found it fascinating.
Jared: Well, it’s very rudimentary, and it really entails having white grape juice. So I had a translucent pitcher full of white grape juice.
Nancy: Which looked like water?
Jared: That’s right. You know, from the congregation, it just looked like I had a pitcher of water. And if you say, “I have a pitcher of water,” immediately they go, ‘Oh, it’s water” because, it’s transparent. And then I had another pitcher that was empty, but in the bottom, there was red food coloring, and you couldn’t see it from their perspective. So as I poured the white grape juice into the empty picture, it took on the color of red.
Nancy: That’s magic.
Jared: That’s right. But the real trick is, someone has to taste it. So either it’s already in their head that it was water, I pour a cup, I make some poor kid on the front row to drink it. “What does it taste like?” “It’s grape juice.” I had effectively turned water into wine. And I don’t even remember what the point of the lesson was. Probably I was teaching that Jesus, you know, was powerful, or something like that, which of course, he is.
I think, having some really the basic tools of even biblical symbols. What does wine symbolize in the Scriptures? And it’s actually a really versatile symbol. It represents so much in the Old Testament, especially, abundance and joy and prosperity, all sorts of things, flourishing, national flourishing, all these sorts of things. So I think that gives us a clue or at least a window into what Jesus is doing there by providing wine, and the good wine at this wedding, right? So they have cisterns of water. And I think what John is doing, this is my hunch, I believe, it’s borne out through studying the text and other commentaries and such, that it is Jesus essentially saying, “What I bring is relief from the old way of doing things, from the old system. And in essence, if you just sort of pan up, it’s basically how the glory of the Gospel exceeds the glory of the law.
Nancy: And you’re saying that because of the contrast. These were pitchers that were used for ceremonial washing. Is that what you’re primarily drawing that view from?
Jared: That’s right. Yeah, the cisterns, that’s right. Yeah. And you even see, I think, so immediately following John has Jesus cleansing the temple. And I think those two snapshots put together give us an even better picture of what Jesus is doing in that moment. So it’s not wrong to say that this miraculous event shows Jesus has power or supernatural power and what have you. It certainly does. But it doesn’t go deep enough to kind of give us a window into his ministry and the point of his ministry, and in a sense, the super session of the Gospel over, you know, the old religion or the Old Covenant.
Nancy: So bring on to that story, what we were talking about earlier, in terms of kind of a heavenly normalization. Was that the term you used?
Jared: Yeah.
Nancy: So what are we seeing happen here that is showing us something is actually being righted, rather than being transformed? And yeah, I’m not saying [crosstalk 00:23:49].
Jared: Yeah, well. And I think the connection is important because many times you’ll have preachers even, but sometimes scholars perhaps on the progressive end, but sometimes it seeps into evangelical thinking, that Paul and Jesus are at odds or what Jesus talked about in the Gospels sometimes it seems foreign to what you read when we’re not really seeing how the pieces fit together, right? So you have Paul, for instance, 2 Corinthians 3 talking about how the glory of the Gospel exceeds the glory of the law. That the law is glorious, but that the Gospel is more glorious still, or that the law is sort of the building blocks. Or in Galatians, Paul is talking about the law being a tutor that trains us to yearn for Christ.
And so, what I think the normalization is this is, if you’re trying to achieve ritual purity, if you’re trying to achieve right standing with God, you’re trying to achieve the abundance and prosperity and vitality, all the things that the new wine represents, through the old way, or through the law, just to itself, you’re always gonna be butting your head up against the walls of righteousness, the falling short of God’s glory. But Christ comes and through him comes, finally, finally, the abundance and the peace and the joy and the vitality that we’re desperately trying to achieve through our own efforts. So I don’t think, as some would say, that it’s a message that the Old Covenant that the law or what have you is bad. I think it’s simply putting Christ at the center, as the fulfillment of those things. And therefore, it’s only through Christ that we can achieve what the wine represents.
Nancy: I recently just finished a book “Even Better Than Eden.” And I’ve got one chapter that traces the Biblical theme of the bridegroom beginning in Genesis, where we have this failed bridegroom, Adam, through Song of Solomon and the prophets that are promising, you know, “Your Maker is your husband and there is a better bridegroom coming.” And then I went here to this John 2 story, which I think is fascinating and then the first time he appears, that he is at a wedding and the bridegroom of this wedding has failed. And then we see Jesus in contrast. He is the true bridegroom. And he’s the one who brings the very best of wine, yeah?
So because of that, when I read a little statement, you quoted someone in your chapter that when I read it, I thought to myself about the chapter of my book. I missed that. It’s already gone to press, I can’t add it. But you wrote in here, “Jesus is not performing a neat trick. He isn’t just supplying a need, he’s signaling the immediate presence of the ancient promise. John Prior says, “It’s the wine of the Eschaton.”
And that was kind of mind blowing for me, because I’ve seen other miracles that way. But like that Jesus is pulling back the curtain, showing what it’s going to be like when the king comes, when his kingdom, when our prayers for, “Your kingdom come, Your will be done,” are answered in full, and the king rules and reigns. I’ve seen that in the healing miracles, but I hadn’t seen that as in this kind of miracle, that he is, in a sense with this miracle, he’s giving them the taste of the wine that’s going to be served at the marriage supper of the Lamb.
Jared: Right. Isn’t it interesting? The Bible effectively begins with a wedding and ends with a wedding. So it would make narrative, literary sense for the Lord’s public debut and ministry to be at a wedding.
Nancy: Yeah. Absolutely. All right. How about another one?
Jared: One of my favorite miracles is really sort of a two miracles in one narrative. And I love the way in the Gospel of Mark, Mark 5, the healing of the woman with the bleeding issue and Jairus’ daughter, which to me just as a literary piece, is so well done, so well constructed, even in Mark, which is a very fast paced and kind of frankly blunt Gospel. But I remember preaching through this and just finding it so rich and so helpful.
So to paint the scene, of course, Jairus is, you know, a military official. He’s come to Christ, asked him to come heal his daughter on the way…I’m Cliffnote-ing the story here, on the way to respond to this request to heal Jairus’ daughter is this moment as the crowd is pressing in that Jesus feel some of his power go out of him, right? So there’s a woman who has been bleeding, has this bleeding issue, and as she reaches out and grabs ahold of the hem of his garment, and she is instantly healed. And he stops and he speaks to her. I find it really interesting… So in that pause, right, this is an urgent request, my daughter is gonna die if you don’t come. And of course, she does die. Well, you know, I don’t know if that’s something that Mark is trying to throw out that the pause gives time for her to die and then the miracle of the raising becomes even more pronounced.
But there’s almost a compare and contrast thing going on. And I see several levels at which this plays. You have two people who in a sense are requesting healing. You have the man who is important and an official and he comes right to Jesus directly. He believes that Jesus can heal and he believes that Jesus will heal in some sense that he’s bold enough to say that to his face, “You must come heal my daughter.” Then you have the woman who is unclean, at least culturally, religiously, culturally untouchable. She is socially, in a sense, considered refuse, or what have you. She’s the lowest of the low. You have people on opposite ends of, you know, the social scales here. She also believes that Jesus can heal her, but she’s not sure that he will. Maybe inside she kind of, you know, feared, “I’m gonna have to steal this blessing. I know he can heal me, I just don’t know if he will.”
So you have two people who, opposite ends of the spectrum, both want healing, both need healing, they approach in two different ways, and they both receive healing. That tells me a few things. Number one, your social status or your worthiness is not what prompts Christ to act on your behalf, simply your neediness, your depth of neediness. It also tells me something about the relation of faith to healing. Of course, this is physical healing we’re seeing here, but I think we can draw a parallel to salvation, which is to say that it’s not the strength of your faith that saves you, just the truth of your faith. You can have a weak, small, tiny faith as that woman did, “I believe he can heal me, not sure, if he will.” So she has a true faith, but it’s very small. And yet she receives the same measure of healing as Jairus’ daughter. That’s important to me as well. And then the fact that he’s going to heal Jairus’ daughter, but in this moment, as he’s speaking to this woman, who probably suffers the shame having been discarded, and he calls her daughter as he’s speaking to her.
All of that put into one is just. So you have, of course, the miracle of the healing, which is another picture to the restoration that Christ will bring, especially at the consummation of the kingdom at the end of days. But in the midst, you have these great, wonderful, deep lessons about faith, that it is this strength of Christ that saves, not the strength of our faith. That it doesn’t matter where you are on the socioeconomic spectrum, or where you are religiously, or anything like that, if you come in faith to Christ, he will not turn you away, and in fact, will embrace you as a beloved daughter or son of the Father.
Nancy: So, Jared, say someone came to you and they said, “You know, I thought that if I had enough faith, I had people tell me that if I had enough faith that my child would be healed.” How would you use this miracle story or one like it to respond to that person?
Jared: Yeah, I think, you know…
Nancy: Or would you even go to them with a miracle story about that.
Jared: I don’t know if I would go to a miracle story so because it would be very difficult to draw a straight line there. I might speak to the moment where Jesus asked about the man born blind, which is a miracle story. You know, why is he…? Is it his sin or his parent’s sin, which in their minds, there’s sort of a connection between the healing and faith or righteousness or what have you? And Jesus discards all of that and to say, you know, “It’s not because of his sin or their sin, but that the Father might be glorified in this moment.”
You know, I think one of the difficulties we have today, especially as we read the Gospel accounts, is wondering, “Why doesn’t this stuff happen more often today?”
Nancy: Yes.
Jared: You know? And of course, there’s some camps, some Christian camps will say, “Oh, of course, it does,” and what have you. But, I mean, just looking realistically at the people we know in our own lives who do not have small faith. In fact, for, you know, probably because of the sanctification that the Lord has brought through their suffering, have a tremendous faith, a stronger faith than those who have lives of ease and comfort. And we wonder, “Why don’t you do these things like you used to?”
And one of the lessons I think we learn through the Gospels is that the miracle isn’t the point. Christ is the point. And to get hung up on these workings of wonder is to miss by looking at the signs, what has been signified, which is Jesus himself. And I think that, you know, that comes even through one of the parables that he told about the rich man and Lazarus, where, you know, in the midst of that narrative, you have the idea that if someone will come back from the dead, if there’s a resurrection, they could see that, then they’d believe. And no. In fact, what we’re told is, if they won’t believe the Scriptures, if they don’t believe the law and the prophets, then someone coming back from the dead will not convince them. So it’s not a miracle that we need, it’s Christ that we need. And salvation, I think, is miracle and enough for us.
Nancy: So you’re talking about that this sense that there are so many miracles during this time in the Gospels, and people wonder why there aren’t more today, or are there? But I think also, if I remember correctly, in your book, you don’t just focus on the miracles in the Gospels.
Jared: Right.
Nancy: You go back because it’s not just in the Gospel, certainly in the day of Jesus, there’s a concentration of them. But what are some of the things that we learn about miracles and this miracle wonder-working God from Old Testament miracles?
Jared: Yeah. Well, I think it’s largely about the provision, God providing for His people. We certainly see demonstrations of the power of God. The miracles in the Old Testament do seem to function in a different way, or at least they, I don’t know if they are more dramatic, but they have a bigger of panorama.
Nancy: Maybe we should talk about what some of those are.
Jared: But they have a bigger panorama. Okay. We have the pillar of cloud and the pillar of fire…
Nancy: Right. So in the time of Moses…
Jared: …right from being visible.
Nancy: …there’s a concentration of miracles?
Jared: Right. Water coming out of the rock and those sorts of things.
Nancy: His staff becoming a snake?
Jared: That’s right. Or in the days of the prophets, right, so fire pouring out of heaven to light up, you know, wet altars, and that sort of thing. The miracles of Jesus seem much more personal. They’re not any less powerful, of course, but they have a lot to do with this sort of, there’s a relational component to them, they don’t seem as visibly or extensively dramatic as the miracles in the Old Testament. I also think that we sometimes have a misconception because we have this condensed record, a chronicle of the highlights that they happen more often than we think they did, because we’re sort of seeing selections from history, or the record of God’s historic acts or mighty acts through history. And because they’re in these pages, we think, “Oh, there’s a miracle every day. Something, you know, miraculous happened.” I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. So sometimes, that can be misleading. We misread sort of the historical record there. Yeah.
Nancy: So there’s this concentration of miracles at the time of Moses. And then, interestingly, a concentration of miracles surrounding Elijah’s ministry, this great prophet. We don’t continue to see those kinds of miracles throughout all the prophets. So, yeah, and then there’s this next concentration of miracles during the ministry of Jesus.
Jared: Right. And in a sense cease…I don’t wanna say the miracles ceased where there’s this of them trailing off as you progress through Acts as well. So certainly, we would expect the physical, you know, the Incarnate Word on Earth, or in his public ministry, you see all of these, you know, mighty acts that are taking place. While after his ascension, the apostles, they’re working miracles, and there’s some really astounding things that the Holy Spirit is doing through them in their ministry. But as you keep going through Acts, they seem to become few, you know, they’re fewer and far between. And then by the time Paul is and, you know, Peter and so forth, are writing to the churches, you know, they mention these things here and there. But it doesn’t seem like normative or routine thing that these people are just seeing these mighty acts all the time. So I think we need to not discount, of course, the specialness of having the incarnate Son of God walking physically amongst us, and how that might be, for lack of a better word, a disruption of business as usual.
Nancy: I remember at one point being taught, and I found this helpful, and I appreciate if you would either critique it, or improve upon it, that as we look at the miracle stories, let’s say, you mentioned the man who was born blind, and he’s able to see. And that we look at that and that one thing we should see is just the sense of him being able to…that it’s a miracle of physical sight, and yet it’s pointing to a deeper spiritual miracle that he sees and understands and embraces who Jesus is. Or similarly, with the man who is let down in the roof, and he is paralyzed, there’s a sense in which he is unresponsive to God, and the miracle is that he is able to respond to God, you know, to walk, and that that is the deeper miracle. Or like the woman that you talked about who has been hemorrhaging for 12 years, the life is draining out of her. In a sense, she’s…and the miracle shows the restoration of life to a person. Is that over spiritualizing? Is that somehow diminishing the intent of the miracle stories in the Gospel or is that coming closer to understanding them rightly?
Jared: I think it’s getting closer to understanding them rightly. Again, to see that the miracles are not to terminate on themselves, but to terminate on Christ. Right? So everyone who got a physical healing, still later died, even those who were resurrected, right? You know, Jairus’ daughter and Lazarus and so on, they had to later die. So we are even seeing that in these mighty works, these mighty acts that Jesus is, you know, performing, orchestrating, that we can’t terminate on those, that those are still just signposts as wonderful as they are, as miraculous as they are. What Jesus is also helping us to see is, “You trust in me, and you will never die.” That the greater miracle is eternal life, not simply being able to see again, or having your leprosy healed, or what have you.
And I think we see it…one of my favorite miracle stories, is the feeding of the 5,000. In particular, in John 6, where He makes that point really explicit, actually. So you have this, of course, the miraculous feeding, you know, a few loaves, a few fish, and to feed this gigantic crowd. And then He goes on to preach and say, “Okay. Look, you’ve got your bellies full. But in a sense, I mean, this is Him implicitly saying this, “Since you’re gonna get hungry again, if you really wanna live, you have to eat my flesh and drink my blood.” And they all leave, they’re so offended, they’re so disgusted by this teaching. They’re offended by the good news, actually.
So Jesus is there and in effect, saying, “I’m glad to work the miracle for you, because I care about you, and I love you, and I want to meet that felt need for you. You have to eat to “live.” But if you really want eternal life, if you really wanna be satisfied, if you really wanna live forever, you have to have me. I’m better than the miracle. So I think we always run astray from the point of the miracles when we focus so much on the miracles that we miss what they’re pointing to, which is the sufficiency and supremacy of Jesus.
Nancy: It seems a bit that there’s an escalation of the miracles as we read through the Gospels. We see this girl who has died and Jesus shows up and says, “No, she’s just asleep. Rise up.” Right? But then when we get to John 10, 11 and there is one who has died, this one who Jesus loves, and the big issue there, he’s been in the grave for three days and he stinketh, right? And so that seems kind of to be getting toward an ultimate miracle.
Jared: That’s right. Yeah, it’s building, of course, up to the Transfiguration, and, of course, Christ’s own resurrection. You know, similar point, I think, you know, what’s interesting is, I don’t know if you’re a fan of “The Princess Bride,” but you remember is it…
Nancy: I love “The Princess Bride.” Oh yes.
Jared: …Miracle Max and he’s just mostly dead, right? When you get to Lazarus, you know, he’s totally dead. He is stinking dead. And I think, you have, of course, the depth of love there. And this is not just some person in need of healing or need a resurrection, this is Jesus’s friend. So you have that added grief that he, in essence, cares for his friend he cares for his friend’s sisters, they’re his friends as well. And, you know, so there’s a…I mean, there’s always a, you know, personal stake in what Jesus is doing. But here, it’s so…there’s such love there.
But it’s another example of that Christ is a conqueror of death, that even death is not more powerful. Like the ultimate enemy that we have, the final answer to, you know, for us, the thing that every man and woman in some way, shape or form is trying to combat and, you know, outrun, and what have you, it’s gonna get us all in the end. And here’s Jesus saying, “I am mightier than that,” and another snapshot. I mean, in a sense, it’s a raw deal for Lazarus, I think, you know, assuming that he’s [inaudible 00:42:51].
Nancy: Have to die two times.
Jared: That’s right. I mean, “I was having a good time,” he’s thinking. But it’s just it’s the doorway into Christ ultimate conquering death through his own resurrection.
Nancy: I think it’s important in these miracle stories to point out the obvious is that people who were died and resurrected, they died again.
Jared: Yeah.
Nancy: People who were sick, eventually died. And so, there’s a sense in which we are seeing in the miracle of Jesus, we are getting little tastes and glimpses of the complete, abundant, pervasive, permanent healing that is to come when Christ the King comes again. Because if we look at the miracles, we get very excited about them, we want them. But we have to say that as many people as Jesus healed, he didn’t heal everyone. The healing wasn’t permanent, and it wasn’t pervasive. It’s, you know, if you look at the map and where most of these things happened in and around Galilee, it’s in this small area, but yet, it’s giving us a…it’s like pulling back the curtain, helping us to see what this world will be when the King comes again.
Jared: That’s exactly right.
Nancy: And this healing is permanent and pervasive, and when he heals everything for all time.
Jared: That’s wonderful just to think about.
Nancy: It is, isn’t it?
Jared: Yeah. And I think it’s just another reason or another motivation not to get hang up on the miracle, but on the miracle worker. Because of that reason, I mean, even some of the people he healed, we don’t assume that everyone that he physically healed, you know, exercised faith in him and were saved eternally, right? I mean, they may have, you know, enjoyed that physical healing for the rest of their natural life, but we don’t assume that their hearts were close to him. So even today when those of us who suffer or the scenario you mentioned earlier, people will say, “Oh, we want this healing, we want this miracle.” And God may grant it or He may not. But, you know, the ultimate satisfaction is to know that this is just as Paul says, “A light momentary affliction compared to the eternal weight of glory that is coming.”
And it doesn’t mean that God doesn’t love you if He doesn’t grant this. You know, think of Paul again, himself, you know, with the thorn in the flesh, praying, “Lord, take this from me.” And for the Lord to say, “No, I’m not going to grant you this healing, or this deliverance from this affliction, demonic or otherwise, because my grace is sufficient for you.” And I think for a lot of us, when we can really break through to understanding that the permanent eternal grace of God granted to us is better than an earthly miracle, then we’re on the right track.
Nancy: Well, before we go, Jared, would you just speak directly to those who might be listening, perhaps they are working through some of the Gospels that are so sprinkled with these stories. Is there a word of encouragement or instruction you would give them that would help them to handle these texts rightly?
Jared: I think you’re on the right track when the summation or your final understanding contributes to beholding the glory of Christ. That really is the point not just of the Gospels, but of the Christian enterprise that we would be satisfied and, you know, find Christ supreme and lovely and saving for us. So don’t terminate on the signs themselves. Let the signs point you to the Savior, the Signified. I think when you see the glory of Christ more and more clearly, then you’re understanding the miracles rightly.
Nancy: Thank you so much, Jared.
Jared: Thanks for having me.
Nancy: You’ve been listening to “Help Me Teach the Bible” with Nancy Guthrie, a production of the Gospel Coalition sponsored by Crossway. Crossway is a not-for-profit publisher of the ESV Bible, Christian books and tracks, including “The Storytelling God” and “The Wonder-Working God” by my guest today, Jared Wilson. Learn more about Crossway’s Gospel center of resources at crossway.org.
