Miracles 101

Were the Lord's Miracles A Show of Suspending God's Natural Order?

In class with John Frame, I recall being taught that there's a close relationship, maybe almost indistinguishable one, between God's working of providence and His working of miracle.

Professor Frame would set forth a case for providence being considered a mighty work, a glorious-wondrous work. He would cite texts like the Psalms 104, 107, and others. He would defend his position by saying that a faithful reading of the psalms, for example, shows that God's intervention of glorious works were described not as miraculous, but ordinary displays of His governing, upholding providence.

But now, take in and listen to Tim Keller, he's reflecting on the miracle of the resurrection of Jesus:

The most instructive thing about this text, [Matthew 28: 16-20 and the resurrection appearance] is, however, what it says about the purpose of Biblical miracles. They lead not simply to cognitive belief, but to worship, to awe and wonder. Jesus’s miracles in particular were never magic tricks, designed only to impress and coerce. You never see him say something like “see that tree over there? Watch me make it burst into flames!” Instead, he used miraculous power to heal the sick, feed the hungry, and raise the dead. Why? We modern people think of miracles as the suspension of the natural order, but Jesus meant them to be the restoration of the natural order. The Bible tells us that God did not originally make the world to have disease, hunger, and death in it. Jesus has come to redeem where it is wrong and heal the world where it is broken. His miracles are not just proofs that he has power but also wonderful foretastes of what he is going to do with that power. Jesus’s miracles are not just a challenge to our minds, but a promise to our hearts, that the world we all want is coming.

The Reason for God, pp. 95-96 by PCA Pastor Timothy Keller

God's mighty working, with miracles, shows forth the dawn of the age of Christ's turning back sin, death and the devil, and setting forth the great foretaste of heavenly power.

Indeed, by miracles we taste and see the goodness of God's authoritative word and the power of the age to come.

G. Mark Sumpter