Request your free, three-month trial to Tabletalk magazine. You’ll receive the print issue monthly and gain immediate digital access to decades of archives. This trial is risk-free. No credit card required.
Try Tabletalk NowAlready receive Tabletalk magazine every month?
Verify your email address to gain unlimited access.
Western society has turned the idea of the miraculous into a mere literary tool—an idiom to capture any extraordinary (i.e., a rare, unexpected, or unlikely) happening. “It was a miracle that we made it on time,” a couple exclaims at a dinner party after getting caught in heavy traffic. “He was a miracle worker,” a woman tells her friend as she explains how her counselor helped turn her marriage around. “It was a miracle that she made it through,” a man says about his mother’s risky surgery.
These are a few common ways that our culture has appropriated the word miracle over the past century. At the very least, this tendency reveals that most people label rare, extraordinary, and unlikely providences as miracles. At the same time, many professing believers today expect, on a regular basis, to experience supernatural acts of God through the personal exercise of their faith. In both cases, there is a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature and purpose of the miracles that we find in Scripture.
What, then, is the nature of miracles? And should we expect miracles today? To answer these questions, we need to establish a working definition of a miracle by considering the defining marks of the biblical miracles; then we must consider the teaching of Scripture about the function of miracles in redemptive history. Finally, we need to distinguish between the miracles that we find in Scripture and the continuing supernatural providences of God. In so doing, we will be better prepared to answer the question whether believers ought to expect miracles today.
distinguishing marks of miracles
In his work Counterfeit Miracles, B.B. Warfield set out five distinguishing marks of biblical miracles. He wrote, “Miracles . . . were an ‘immediate work of God;’ ‘above all nature;’ ‘occurred to the senses;’ ‘rare,’ and ‘for the confirmation of truth.’” These five essential marks help establish a working definition of a biblical miracle. In Scripture, miracles are supernatural acts of God—wrought by Him either immediately or mediately—through which He made His power known in tangible signs to testify to the veracity of His revelation. This definition helps us better understand the purpose of miracles in the history of redemption.
the redemptive-historical function of miracles
In the Old Testament, God worked miracles at different times to reveal His power and attest to the truthfulness of His revelation. Among the Old Testament miracles, we find the ten plagues (Ex. 7:10–12:32), the parting of the Red Sea (14:21–23), the bitter waters made sweet (15:23–25), the manna from heaven (16:14–35), the serpent on the pole (Num. 21:8–9), water from the rock (Ex. 17:5–7; Num. 20:7–11), Aaron’s staff budding (Num. 17:1–11), Balaam’s speaking donkey (22:21–35), the parting of the river Jordan (Josh. 3:14–17), the destruction of the walls of Jericho (6:6–20), the sun and moon’s standing still (10:12–14), the multiplication of the widow’s oil (1 Kings 17:14–16), the raising of the widow’s son (vv. 17–24), the curing of the poison stew (2 Kings 4:38–41), the healing of Naaman’s leprosy (5:10–14), Elisha’s bones raising the dead (13:21), the protection of Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego in the fiery furnace (Dan. 3:19–27), the deliverance of Daniel from the lions’ den (6:16–23), and the salvation of Jonah in the belly of the fish (Jonah 2:1–10).
In the New Testament, Jesus turned water to wine; gave sight to the blind; caused the lame to walk, the deaf to hear, and the dumb to speak; cleansed lepers; and healed paralytics. He delivered those who were oppressed by evil spirits, and most significantly, He raised the dead. Theologians have sometimes categorized the miracles of Christ as miracles of nature, miracles of healing, and miracles of deliverance. According to Isaiah, the healing miracles specifically were messianic markers, supernatural signs to indicate that the long-awaited Deliverer had come (Isa. 35:5–6; Luke 7:22). It should come as no surprise that there was such a concentration of miracles during the earthly ministry of Jesus. After all, He Himself is the great revelation of God—God’s final Word for sinners (Heb. 2:1–5).
After Christ’s ascension, the Apostles performed miracles as they carried the gospel to the nations for the first time in redemptive history. Jesus had given the Apostles power to heal and to cast out demons during His earthly ministry. He then sent them into the world to preach the gospel and perform accompanying signs and wonders. Among the Apostolic miracles recorded in the book of Acts is the healing of the lame man at the temple gate in Jerusalem (Acts 3:1–10), Peter’s shadow healing the sick (5:12–16), the raising of Dorcas (9:36–42), Paul’s healing the crippled man at Lystra (14:8–10), the healing of the demon-possessed girl in Philippi (16:16–18), Paul’s miracles of healing in Ephesus (19:11–12), and the raising of Eutychus from the dead (20:9–12).
Jay Adams, in his book Signs and Wonders in the Last Times, touched on the uniqueness of the supernatural work of God during the earthly ministry of Christ and during the Apostolic age. He explained:
Events were taking place in the “fullness of time” (Gal. 4:4); God was “sending forth His Son” who would establish a new covenant (Jer. 31:31–34). . . . Clearly, those were no ordinary times. . . . The extraordinary nature of the last days should help the serious student understand that these were not times like ours. They were radically different.
Anyone reading the Gospels or the book of Acts should immediately perceive that “those were no ordinary times.” That has often not been the case, however. Instead, myriads of well-meaning (and sometimes not well-meaning) individuals have downplayed the extraordinariness of those times. In so doing, they have minimized the unique and significant role of the Apostles and the Apostolic miracle-signs in redemptive history.
Biblical miracles occurred only during specific redemptive-historical epochs of revelation (Heb. 1:1–2; 2:4–5). A number of miracles took place during the period of Moses and Joshua; then a series of miracles happened in the days of Elijah and Elisha; finally, the miracles recorded in the New Testament occurred during the period of Jesus and the Apostles. These three epochs cover the periods of the law, the prophets, and the gospel. This is especially important to grasp if we are to come to a settled understanding of the purpose of miracles in Scripture, as signs of the progressive revelation that God was giving throughout redemptive history until the Apostolic age. The miracles of Jesus and the Apostles were messianic signs that indicated the coming of the promised kingdom of God. Herman Ridderbos has rightly noted:
Jesus’ miracles have an eschatological character as messianic deeds of salvation. This follows from . . . the fact that the cure of diseased persons, the raising of the dead, etc., are to be considered as the renewal and the re-creation of all things, manifesting the coming of the kingdom of heaven. These miracles, however, are only . . . signs of the coming kingdom of God.
In a very real sense, the Apostolic ministry was an extension of the messianic ministry of the risen and ascended Christ for the spread of the gospel to the nations. The Apostolic age was foundational for the completion of the revelation of God in Scripture and the establishment of churches among the nations (Eph. 2:20; 3:5; 4:11). Once that foundation was laid, there was no more need for these extraordinary messianic signs. These were signs of the Apostles (2 Cor. 12:12) attesting to the completion of the canonical revelation of Scripture (1 Cor. 13:8).
continuing supernatural providences
One common objection to the notion of the cessation of the Apostolic signs and wonders is that it leads a professing believer to embrace a functional deism. Though some may erroneously fall into a deistic understanding of God’s work in the world today, it is far from the position of historic Protestant cessationism. For instance, the Reformers and English Puritans were deeply prayerful, spiritual, and expectant men who trusted God to manifest His healing and delivering power in the lives of His people. They believed that the signs and wonders wrought through the hands of Apostles had ceased but that the living God continues to work providentially in the lives of His people––even in ways that can be considered supernatural or miraculous.
The Westminster divines expressly taught this in the Westminster Confession of Faith: “God, in his ordinary providence, maketh use of means, yet is free to work without, above, and against them, at his pleasure” (5.3). Touching on this idea, Warfield explained that “no one who is a Christian in any clear sense doubts that God hears and answers prayer for the healing of the sick in a generally supernatural manner.” This means that while we recognize that the sign-miracles of the Apostolic age have ceased, we want to encourage God’s people to trust Him to answer prayers—even in supernatural ways—for the healing and deliverance of others.