The Purpose of Signs and Wonders in the New Testament: What Terms for Miraculous Power Denote and Their Relationship to the Gospel, Part 2, by Gary S. Greig
God provided abundant healing signs and wonders to accompany the proclamation of the gospel in Jesus’ ministry and in the Early Church. Why shouldn’t the Church today follow the example of the Early Church in Scripture?
The critics have confused the signs of wonders of miraculous healing in the ministry of Jesus and the Early Church with the ”sign from heaven” demanded by the Pharisees which Jesus refused to give. Jesus did not denounce ordinary “people” for seeking signs and wonders (plural) in his healing ministry in Mat. 12:38-40; 16:1-4; Mk. 8:11-12; Lk. 11:16; Jn. 6:30f. He denounced stubborn, unbelieving religious leaders (Mat. 12:38; 16:1; Mk. 8:11) for demanding a “sign [singular] from heaven” (Mk. 8:11; Lk. 11:16; cf. Mat. 16:1; Jn. 6:30f.). (Even in the so-called “rebuke” of John 4:48, Jesus granted the “sign,” healing the royal official’s son, and this led to the conversion of the official and his family [Jn. 4:53-54].)
The religious leaders were calling demonic the signs of Jesus’ healing ministry (Mat. 12:24; Mk. 3:22; Lk. 11:15) and were asking for a prophetic sign from heaven beyond those of Jesus healing ministry like those performed by prophets such as Moses, Elijah, or Isaiah—manna from heaven (Jn. 6:30-31); plagues of the Exodus which were “signs” (Exo. 7:3; 8:23; 10:1-2; Nu. 14:23; Deut. 6:22; 11:3f., 34; 7:19; 26:8; 29:3; 34:11; Jos. 24:17); drought which was a “sign” (Deut. 28:22-24, 46; cf. I Kgs. 17:1ff.); the retreating shadow of the sun which was a “sign” (II Kgs. 20:9). F. F. Bruce points this out:
According to Mark, the refusal to give a sign was Jesus’ response to some Pharisees who, in the course of debate, asked him to supply ‘a sign from heaven.’…
First, what sort of sign would have convinced them? External signs might have been necessary to convince a heathen Egyptian or an apostate king of Israel, but why should they be necessary for custodians and teachers of the law of the true God?…
Secondly, would the kind of sign they had in mind really have validated the truth of Jesus’s words? … It may be suspected that it was some … extraordinary but essentially irrelevant sign that was being asked from Jesus…
In the third place, what about the signs he actually performed? Why were they not sufficient to convince his questioners? … If the restoration of bodily and mental health could be dismissed as a work of Satan, no number of healing acts would have established the divine authority by which they were performed…While the healing miracles did serve as signs of the kingdom of God to those who had eyes to see, they did not compel belief in those who were prejudiced in the opposite direction…
While the miracles served as signs, they were not performed in order to be signs. They were as much a part and parcel of Jesus’s ministry as was his preaching—not… seals affixed to the document to certify its genuiness but an integral element in the very text of the document.94
Thus, Scripture is clear that Jesus gave abundant signs of God’s Kingdom in his healing ministry. But He provided no sensational sign from heaven to those who were unbelieving and remained closed to His teaching and its basis in Scripture (Mat. 5:17-20; cf. Jn. 3:10-11). Such an attitude refused to ask God for guidance about Jesus and his teaching (Jn. 5:39-40; Jn. 6:45; Jn. 7:17). For such stubborn unbelief God gives no extra sign.
VI. Past Signs and Wonders versus Ongoing Signs and Wonders
Certain evangelicals suggest that Scripture encourages faith on the basis of past signs and wonders but not on the basis of ongoing signs and wonders. Carson and Boice say the following:
John’s readers are called on to reflect on the signs that he reports [Jn. 20:30-31], to think through the significance of those redemptive events, especially Jesus’ resurrection, and thereby believe. The mandate to believe here rests on John’s reports of God’s past, redemptive-historical signs, not on testimonies of present, ongoing ones.95
We do not repeat annual crossings of the Red Sea. Such miraculous events are redemptive events and are not presented as normative for Christian experience. They are to be remembered, not repeated.96
But no hint of such a dichotomy between the past and the present can be found in Scripture. First, nowhere does Scripture teach that the miraculous healing ministry and the spiritual gifts exercised by Jesus, the apostles, and the laity of the Early Church are not to be continued today. James 5:14-16 quite clearly suggests the contrary, as well as Rom. 12:6-8; I Cor. 12:7-11, 28-30; 14:22-39; Gal. 3:5; Phil. 4:9 (and I Cor. 11:1); I Thes. 5:19-21; II Tim. 1:6; and I Pet. 4:10-11. Healing and spiritual gifts accompanied the ministry of the Word as the normal New Testament pattern, as has been adequately demonstrated above. We do not repeat the healing of the lame man at Lystra (Acts 14:8ff.), but we pray for the lame and sick to be healed (James 5:14-16).
Category: Biblical Studies, Spring 2007
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