What's the Point of Miracles?
Awesome Christian Artist Jim LePage has produced a cool looking piece on the Book of Acts. Check it out on his blog. That's the link right there. In the blue. Underlined. Click it. You know you want to.
Anyway, in his post about the piece he asked a very important question:
What does the Spirit actually do? If I’m eating some awesome cheese popcorn from Candyland and I see someone I know who really likes white cheddar popcorn from Candyland and I offer them some, is that the Spirit working in me? Or if I’m at the mall and I see someone getting dangerously close to the Thomas Kinkade store and I run over, leap in the air and tackle them just before they were about to enter, was that the Spirit enabling me to be Christ-like?
I think it's easy for Christians to go to one of two extremes here. Some Christians focus on the "signs and wonders" aspect of the Spirit's work, and say that the Holy Spirit working means people speaking in tongues and prophesying, miraculous healings, your salary doubling within six months (oops, did I say that out loud?), etc. Others focus on the "fruits of the Spirit" and say that, well, signs and wonders are cool (or maybe they're not), but what the Spirit really does is make us be kind to one another and tolerate that one obnoxious guy at work and maybe give a few dollars to a poor person every once in a while so they don't bother us anymore (oops, did I say that out loud?), etc. Neither extreme adequately describes the Spirit's work.
The answer to the first extreme is easy. Any two-bit demon, and most halfway decent human con artists, can cook up a couple sweet miracles. If you seek signs and wonders, Jesus says that false prophets of the Last Day will be more than glad to help. He even said in Matthew 12:39 that An evil and adulterous generation seeks after signs.
More importantly, signs aren't the reality. When a couple thousand people- well, basically stalked him after he miraculously fed them with a couple loaves of bread, Jesus said, Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life. In other words- Dudes! You just sailed over a lake just to get some free sandwiches! Why? Don't work for this crappy earthly food, even if I'm the one giving it to you. I have something so much better for you. I have My own Body and Blood to give you.
The fact is, though, Jesus did feed them. For a guy who called you "evil" if you asked him for a miracle, Jesus sure did a lot of them. He taught His disciples to do them, too, Whenever He sends His students out ahead of Him, He tells them to do two things: preach and to do miracles. This is how He commanded the Twelve when He sent them out (Matthew 10:7-8):
Preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
The key to this question is Jesus' first command to them: Preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The Church is called to preach a supernatural message: God has stepped into the world. He's not Mr High-And-Mighty-Up-In-The-Clouds anymore (and was He ever?). He speaks your language now, lives on your street, eats your food, and the only thing that matters now is how you respond to Him. And His Spirit is at work in the world right now, inspiring people to repent of their sins and serve the Lord before He returns, transforming bodies and souls and cities and cultures to reflect the Image of God.
The work of the Holy Spirit is not about trances and dreams and gold flakes falling from the ceiling. Nor is it about filling a room full of nice, sweet, soft-spoken US citizens on Sunday morning. The Holy Spirit is in the demolition business: breaking into peoples' lives, tearing them to shreds from the inside out, and putting them back together again.
And as that happens, we should expect to see signs and wonders. We should expect to see tumors shrink to nothing before our very eyes, to hear words of prophecy that cause people to fall down in wonder, to witness people who have spent years enslaved in the demonic kingdom be set free in an instant. Why shouldn't we?
But here's the catch. Signs and wonders are a key part of the Christian message. They're inseparable from Gospel preaching. But they're part of the preaching, not the subject of the message.
You ever cook something on the grill? Sometimes a flame will shoot up out of the fire in the grill. If you're looking at the grill from a few feet away, that's a pretty good sign it's turned on! But as hot as that tongue of flame is, it's not what cooks your meat. Miracles are like that. Miracles are a sign that God's kingdom is come, but they're not the Kingdom. And when the Kingdom is fully come, there will be no need for miracles, because the whole universe will be a miracle. But until that Day comes, signs and wonders will continue in the Church.
The Church today needs a heavy dose of the supernatural- more than that, it needs a massive paradigm shift about what "supernatural" really means. We need God to reveal to us that the work the Church does right now- preaching the Word and administering the Sacraments- is supernatural and can only be done by the power of the Holy Spirit. Once we realize this, we will expect and anticipate, even pray passionately for God to validate our preaching with miraculous signs and wonders, without making them the focus of our religion. We will be able to rehabilitate miracles, prophecy, tongues, and other "supernatural" events within the larger system of the Kingdom of God, which is supernatural and Spirit-empowered through and through.
Anyway, in his post about the piece he asked a very important question:
What does the Spirit actually do? If I’m eating some awesome cheese popcorn from Candyland and I see someone I know who really likes white cheddar popcorn from Candyland and I offer them some, is that the Spirit working in me? Or if I’m at the mall and I see someone getting dangerously close to the Thomas Kinkade store and I run over, leap in the air and tackle them just before they were about to enter, was that the Spirit enabling me to be Christ-like?
I think it's easy for Christians to go to one of two extremes here. Some Christians focus on the "signs and wonders" aspect of the Spirit's work, and say that the Holy Spirit working means people speaking in tongues and prophesying, miraculous healings, your salary doubling within six months (oops, did I say that out loud?), etc. Others focus on the "fruits of the Spirit" and say that, well, signs and wonders are cool (or maybe they're not), but what the Spirit really does is make us be kind to one another and tolerate that one obnoxious guy at work and maybe give a few dollars to a poor person every once in a while so they don't bother us anymore (oops, did I say that out loud?), etc. Neither extreme adequately describes the Spirit's work.
The answer to the first extreme is easy. Any two-bit demon, and most halfway decent human con artists, can cook up a couple sweet miracles. If you seek signs and wonders, Jesus says that false prophets of the Last Day will be more than glad to help. He even said in Matthew 12:39 that An evil and adulterous generation seeks after signs.
More importantly, signs aren't the reality. When a couple thousand people- well, basically stalked him after he miraculously fed them with a couple loaves of bread, Jesus said, Labour not for the meat which perisheth, but for that meat which endureth unto everlasting life. In other words- Dudes! You just sailed over a lake just to get some free sandwiches! Why? Don't work for this crappy earthly food, even if I'm the one giving it to you. I have something so much better for you. I have My own Body and Blood to give you.
The fact is, though, Jesus did feed them. For a guy who called you "evil" if you asked him for a miracle, Jesus sure did a lot of them. He taught His disciples to do them, too, Whenever He sends His students out ahead of Him, He tells them to do two things: preach and to do miracles. This is how He commanded the Twelve when He sent them out (Matthew 10:7-8):
Preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils: freely ye have received, freely give.
The key to this question is Jesus' first command to them: Preach, saying, The kingdom of heaven is at hand. The Church is called to preach a supernatural message: God has stepped into the world. He's not Mr High-And-Mighty-Up-In-The-Clouds anymore (and was He ever?). He speaks your language now, lives on your street, eats your food, and the only thing that matters now is how you respond to Him. And His Spirit is at work in the world right now, inspiring people to repent of their sins and serve the Lord before He returns, transforming bodies and souls and cities and cultures to reflect the Image of God.
The work of the Holy Spirit is not about trances and dreams and gold flakes falling from the ceiling. Nor is it about filling a room full of nice, sweet, soft-spoken US citizens on Sunday morning. The Holy Spirit is in the demolition business: breaking into peoples' lives, tearing them to shreds from the inside out, and putting them back together again.
And as that happens, we should expect to see signs and wonders. We should expect to see tumors shrink to nothing before our very eyes, to hear words of prophecy that cause people to fall down in wonder, to witness people who have spent years enslaved in the demonic kingdom be set free in an instant. Why shouldn't we?
But here's the catch. Signs and wonders are a key part of the Christian message. They're inseparable from Gospel preaching. But they're part of the preaching, not the subject of the message.
You ever cook something on the grill? Sometimes a flame will shoot up out of the fire in the grill. If you're looking at the grill from a few feet away, that's a pretty good sign it's turned on! But as hot as that tongue of flame is, it's not what cooks your meat. Miracles are like that. Miracles are a sign that God's kingdom is come, but they're not the Kingdom. And when the Kingdom is fully come, there will be no need for miracles, because the whole universe will be a miracle. But until that Day comes, signs and wonders will continue in the Church.
The Church today needs a heavy dose of the supernatural- more than that, it needs a massive paradigm shift about what "supernatural" really means. We need God to reveal to us that the work the Church does right now- preaching the Word and administering the Sacraments- is supernatural and can only be done by the power of the Holy Spirit. Once we realize this, we will expect and anticipate, even pray passionately for God to validate our preaching with miraculous signs and wonders, without making them the focus of our religion. We will be able to rehabilitate miracles, prophecy, tongues, and other "supernatural" events within the larger system of the Kingdom of God, which is supernatural and Spirit-empowered through and through.