Craig wrote an article on the historical reliability of the Bible for the Exploring God website, focusing on the periods of Abraham and the patriarchs, 2 Kings, and the Gospels. (The available historical evidence to examine these passages in the Bible increases from one discussion to the next.)
The article is available at:
http://www.exploregod.com/is-the-bible-reliable-paper
Category Archives: Luke
Divorce and remarriage video
Asbury’s Seedbed has posted a roughly 10-minute video with Craig addressing the question of remarriage in Jesus’s teachings:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=837o4On3g24
The devil in the details–Satan in the Gospels
Christianity Today recently invited Craig to write an article addressing the deletion of the devil from the new Son of God movie, but also explaining Satan’s role in the Gospels. With the help of a CT editor, Craig contributed the article at the link below.
Satan does play a key role in the Gospels, where he is mentioned more than 30 times and is described performing various activities. These passages help us to better understand Christ’s mission, the challenges we face, and the reality in which we live.
The full article is now online at:
http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2014/february-web-only/casting-out-devil.html
Gospel truth—Luke 1:1-4
When I have shared the gospel with people, some of them have asked how we can really know much about Jesus. Because I was an atheist before my conversion to Christianity, these are questions I once struggled with myself. Yet the most traditional answers are sometimes the best ones.
Some voices today have come up with more novel answers, such as the DaVinci Code—which is just a novel. Others appeal to the Gospel of Judas, but it comes from the late second-century, perhaps a century and a half after Jesus lived, and few scholars find much authentic historical memory of Jesus in it. Perhaps most shocking is the alleged “Secret Gospel of Mark,” a work supposedly discovered in the twentieth century, alleged to be based on an original from the late second century. Many recent scholars have argued that this work is a twentieth-century forgery. Those who depend on later “Gospels,” from the second century to the twentieth century, often neglect the most obvious and substantial sources about Jesus: the Gospels in our Bible.
Granted, these Gospels were written by Christians—but we learn the most about ancient sages from the circles most likely to preserve information about them, namely their followers. That is true about Socrates, Jesus, and most ancient rabbis (or in other parts of the world and eras, about Buddha or Muhammad).
These Gospels also should be taken at least as seriously as other biographies from antiquity (which often treated philosophers, politicians and generals). Biographers claimed to write mostly accurate works, especially when writing about characters of the recent past, as the Gospels were. In fact, very few ancient biographies were written as close to the time of their subjects as the Gospels were; historians often depend, for example, on Arrian’s centuries-later biography of Alexander, but the Gospels range from just one to two generations after Jesus’s public ministry. (Both used earlier sources, but the Gospels were written within living memory of some eyewitnesses. The Gospels differ from modern biographies, but most scholars today recognize that they fit ancient biographies.)
When Luke wrote his Gospel, probably shortly over a generation after Jesus’ ministry, written accounts about Jesus were proliferating. Luke tells us that “many” had written about Jesus (Luke 1:1). Most of these sources have been unfortunately lost (the surviving, so-called “lost gospels”—both gnostic and apocryphal—are significantly later). Nevertheless, one of Luke’s main sources, the Gospel of Mark, remains, and many scholars reconstruct much of another source based on where Matthew and Luke overlap. We can often compare these sources and see how Luke used them.
Moreover, Luke had oral traditions going back to eyewitnesses (Luke 1:2). Because ancient education at all levels and throughout the Mediterranean involved considerable memorization, we would expect eyewitnesses to have preserved much information about Jesus, more than enough to fill a gospel. In fact, a primary role of disciples in this period was to learn and propagate their teachers’ messages; even disciples who came to disagree with their teachers were expected to accurately report their views. This was true whether the schools emphasized written instruction (for the highly educated) or merely oral memorization. (Completely illiterate bards, in fact, wandered around repeating from memory such works as all of Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey.) To act as if Jesus’ disciples would have forgotten and replaced his teachings is to make them completely unlike other disciples in antiquity.
It is thus not those who privilege the Gospels as sources of information about Jesus who treat them differently than other comparable ancient works, but those who neglect the Gospels as such sources. We should keep in mind that some written sources were already emerging during a generation when Jesus’ closest eyewitness followers remained in positions of leadership in the church (cf. Gal 1:18-19; 2:9). These sources are much closer in time to the events they narrate than were most ancient biographies.
Moreover, Luke assures Theophilus that he has “thorough knowledge” of the events that he narrates (Luke 1:3). How would he have acquired this? Although the matter is disputed, many scholars interpret the “we” in some passages in Luke’s second volume, Acts, in the most obvious sense: that Luke traveled with Paul. (This was the normal sense in ancient historical works; I argue for this at greater length in my Acts commentary.) If this is correct, Luke stayed in Judea for up to two years, and would have had plenty of opportunity to talk with eyewitnesses and those who knew them (Acts 21:15; 24:27; 27:1). The next best thing to us going and consulting the eyewitnesses today is depending on a writer from that era who did just that.
Luke also writes to confirm accounts that Theophilus had already heard (Luke 1:4). Normally one does not fabricate a lie and then appeal to one’s audience’s knowledge that it is true. Rather, Luke is confirming accounts that already, some time in the church’s second generation, were widely known.
That is partly why so many narratives in the Gospels overlap, rather than telling completely different stories. It is also why these accounts do not directly address some pressing issues of later generations, such as whether Gentiles should be circumcised. The Gospel writers were preaching, using Jesus as their text, but they did not depart far from their text.
They were not simply writing sermons or epistles, but biographies; ancient biographers freely communicated lessons through their biographies, but they chose to draw lessons based on the information they had, rather than making up their illustrations. (Even speeches often drew their illustrations from historical events, the sort recorded in histories and biographies.) Novels (which flourished more in the later period of the apocryphal gospels) were usually romances and were usually interested only in entertainment, not in historical information or (usually) even moral lessons.
Luke’s historical preface invites us to confidence in what the Gospels teach us about Jesus.
Craig S. Keener is author of The Historical Jesus of the Gospels (Eerdmans, 2009).
Christmas vs. the emperor–Matthew 2 and Luke 2
In many circles, editorials and sermons on the true meaning of Christmas have become a routine, perhaps almost obligatory, protest against the materialism and rush of the season. Christmas, of course, has taken on various expressions in a range of cultures through history, along the way picking up fir trees, wrapped gifts, and developing permutations of figures such as St. Nicholas of Myra (a fourth-century bishop).
Most customs we associate with Christmas did not exist in the first century, but two books that are now in the New Testament describe the circumstances surrounding Jesus’s birth. The circumstances in the first, Matthew’s Gospel, portend Jesus’s future conflicts with hostile members of the elite. Although welcomed by outsiders, Joseph, Mary and Jesus have to flee from Bethlehem to Egypt to escape the wrath of the jealous tyrant Herod the Great. My wife, who was a refugee, readily identifies with their plight as refugees (although gifts from the Magi and the large Jewish community in Alexandria should have provided Jesus’s family a measure of comfort).
Back in Bethlehem, however, Matthew’s scene immediately develops into one of terror. Herod, king of Judea, massacres the male infants remaining in Bethlehem. Three times the narrative lists the objects that have threatened the mad king’s rage: “the baby and his mother.” Whatever Matthew’s sources for this account, his portrayal fits the recorded character of a king who murdered three of his sons, his favorite wife, and anyone he saw as a potential threat to his throne. His young brother-in-law, for example, a high priest who was becoming too popular, had a drowning “accident” in a pool that archaeologists suggest was only three feet deep.
See the rest of this story at the following link: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/craig-s-keener/christmas-vs-the-empire_b_4404833.html; also available at http://www.evangelicalsforsocialaction.org/christmas-vs-the-empire/
The discouraged prophet—Matthew 11:2-6
Have you ever faced discouragement in doing God’s work? John the Baptist had reason to feel dejected (Matt 11:2-3; see also Luke 7:18-20). Jesus had just warned his disciples about coming persecution for their mission (10:16-39), yet promised that whoever received them would receive Jesus (10:40-42). John, however, had already been rejected by those with power.
Now imprisoned, John recognized that he might never again see freedom. What would become of his calling? Was he not called to prepare the way for the coming one (3:3, 11)? He had recognized Jesus as the promised one, who would baptize in the Spirit and in fire (3:11); he even wanted Jesus to baptize him, presumably in the Spirit (3:14). (In the context of John’s announcement, baptism in fire plainly referred to judgment—3:10-12.) But now he was hearing reports about Jesus (11:2), and there was no evident baptism in the Spirit and certainly no fire.
John now had doubts. Was Jesus the coming one or another forerunner? Either way, John trusted Jesus to tell him the truth. Jesus was a true prophet; John was only unsure whether he was the baptizer in the Spirit and fire that John himself had announced. So John sends some of his disciples to ask Jesus openly.
At this point in Jesus’s ministry, it remained more discreet for Jesus not to specify his full identity publicly; nevertheless, he manages to communicate the idea indirectly for John. After the messengers have witnessed Jesus’s works, he sends them back with a summary of the works. The first noted works are the blind receiving sight and the disabled walking (11:5).
These first two works probably echo Isaiah 35:5-6, which belongs to promises of God’s future kingdom. Jesus’s works thus are demonstrations of God’s kingdom, or reign. The context of these signs in Isaiah includes the restoration of creation (Isa 35:1-2). Jesus’s present healings, although not universal, foreshadow a day when the Lord will renew creation, providing full healing for us and for the physical earth. Likewise, as we honor Jesus by carrying on his works, caring for people and even for the natural world, these works foreshadow the fuller deliverance to come.
Whether it was Jesus doing the works or us doing the works in his name, the works announce Jesus’s identity. Jesus is the one who inaugurated these works of the kingdom. Isaiah spoke of these works happening when God would come (Isa 35:4), just as John had announced that the one whose way he was preparing was divine—since only God could pour out God’s Spirit (Matt 3:11).
In the last line of Matthew 11:5, Jesus also echoes Isaiah 61:1, referring to the mission of God’s servant to bring good news to the poor. Caring for the poor, like caring for the blind and disabled just mentioned, was not the way people in Galilee, Judea, or elsewhere in the Roman Empire sought power. The ambitious gathered wealth and cultivated the favor of members of the elite; in Judea Jesus could have appealed to Pharisees, scribes, and especially Sadducees. Instead Jesus follows only the Father’s mission, depending on the Father’s power. Jesus embraces the lowly and the outsiders, those who are willing to receive the kingdom with the same attitude of dependence as children (Matt 18:3-4). It is the meek who will inherit the earth (5:5), and Jesus himself is meek (11:29).
After hinting about his identity to John through these biblical allusions, Jesus offers a blessing for whoever does not stumble on account of him (11:6). The stumbling block of Jesus’s limited ministry prefigured the fuller stumbling block of the cross (cf. 1 Cor 1:23; Gal 5:11). Humility, servanthood and sacrificial death are not what the world honors or what makes sense to the world, but God’s servants are not ashamed of the cross (Romans 1:16).
We may be tempted to condemn John’s doubts and struggles, but Jesus affirmed John. After the messengers left, Jesus began to praise him behind his back (Matt 11:7-10). Prophets such as Elijah and Jeremiah struggled with their callings (1 Kgs 19:4; Jer 20:14-18); David nearly snapped under pressure (2 Sam 25:33-34), and in his ministry Paul experienced fear and anguish (2 Cor 7:5; 11:28-29). Later in this Gospel, Jesus himself expressed feelings of despair: “My God, my God, why have you abandoned me?” (Matt 27:46). Of course, Jesus knew that the words he was praying were from a psalm that ended on a note of victory (Ps 22), but that does not diminish the agony he experienced at that moment.
If you have ever experienced discouragement in doing God’s work, this was also true of God’s servants before you. God was faithful to them, however, and God will be faithful to you. Be faithful to what you are called to do, and God will see to it that what you are really called to do is fulfilled. We each have our part to play, and the Lord may praise our work afterward, as he did with John (cf. Matt 25:21, 23). But the kingdom is not about us–it is about Jesus. We can have courage, because Jesus the kingdom-bringer has already inaugurated his victory. Unlike John, we know how that story ends.
The prodigal sons—Luke 15:11-32
Most people who have attended church for awhile know the story of the prodigal son, but not everyone catches the parable’s point in context. The religious people of Jesus’ day criticized him spending time with sinners (Lk 15:1-2), so Jesus responded by telling three stories: about a shepherd, a woman, and a merciful father. Most people looked down on shepherds as low-class, and courts often rejected their testimony, as well as that of women. (That God chose shepherds as witnesses of Jesus’ birth and women as witnesses of his resurrection reveals that God’s values differ from people’s.)
Thus Jesus tells the story of the lost sheep (one of a hundred), the lost coin (one of ten), the lost son (one of two)—and then of the other lost son.
First, Jesus told of a shepherd who left his 99 sheep to look for the one that was lost. (Because shepherds and others herders watched over their flocks together [see Luke 2:8], he would have left the 99 safe with these other watchmen.) When he found the lost sheep, he called his friends together and they rejoiced. Jesus explains that in the same way, when God finds those who had been lost to him, heaven rejoices. God’s “friends” rejoice when the lost is found, yet the religious people were complaining about Jesus reaching the lost. Maybe the religious people, therefore, were not really God’s friends.
Second, Jesus told of a woman who lost one of her ten coins. This was a pitifully small amount of money to most of Jesus’ hearers, but was much for the woman. Poor Galilean homes had floors of loosely-fitted stones; so often did coins get lost between the stones that archaeologists today can sometimes date the homes’ last habitation based on the coins in the floors! These homes had little lighting, so she lights the small kind of lamp that would fit in one’s hand, and sweeps with a broom, hoping to hear it. When she finds the coin, all her friends rejoice with her; in the same way, God’s friends rejoice with him when he rescues the lost person. But many religious people did not care about what mattered to God; they cared about their view of social propriety!
Third, Jesus told of a father who lost one son. The younger son demanded his share of the inheritance (one-third). Demanding one’s inheritance was equivalent to saying, “Father, I wish you were dead!” Yet the father mercifully does the unthinkable: he divides his hard-earned inheritance. Many hearers would have despised the father’s indulgence. The son then squanders the inheritance, behavior that all ancient moralists derided.
The now-destitute son is reduced to feeding pigs—hence a state of uncleanness so he would not even seek help from a synagogue. Hearers might expect the story to end here—the wicked son receives his just desserts for his crimes! Yet this son realizes that things were better off for servants in the father’s house, and returns, seeking to be a servant.
It was considered undignified for older men to run, yet when the father sees him, he runs and embraces him. His son mattered more than dignity! The son volunteered to be a servant, but the father indirectly rejects this request. He orders the best robe in the house—undoubtedly the father’s; a ring—undoubtedly a family signet ring, thus indicating the son’s reinstatement to sonship; and sandals—though poor workers, in contrast to this household’s sons, often wore no sandals. “No,” the father is saying; “I won’t receive you as a servant. I will only receive you as my son.”
Then the father orders a celebration, including the fatted calf (enough food to feed the entire village). So far the story has ended like the others: when the lost is found, there is celebration. But now Jesus turns to the final story: the story of the other lost son.
The older brother is so angry with the father’s mercy that he publicly refuses to enter the house or greet his father with a title. To publicize an intrafamily dispute in front of the villagers gathered for the celebration dishonored the father even more publicly than his younger brother had done! Elder brothers might normally reconcile estranged fathers and younger brothers, but not this son. “This son of yours,” he calls his brother. “This brother of yours,” the father pleads.
“I never even received a baby goat,” the brother protests, “but you killed the fattened calf for a party for him!” Yet the inheritance was divided, so the elder brother’s two-thirds had already been allotted to him (15:12, 31); he had nothing to lose financially, unless he chose to share with his brother. He simply acted from spite.
“It is not fair,” the older brother protests. “I served you all these years.” Notice the elder son’s basis for argument: not a son’s relationship with the father, but a servant’s relationship with a master. The elder son does not know his father’s heart. He is lost in the father’s house. Essentially, he complains, “You showed him mercy, but I am good enough that I do not need mercy.”
There are church people today who resent evangelism, missions, social concern and other forms of outreach. After all, they may feel that they have never needed any outreach to themselves. Perhaps a newcomer might take their favorite pew. There are those who look down on new believers, or believers from less socially “dignified” backgrounds than their own.
Jesus ends the parable with the father’s plea to enter, a welcome invitation to the elder brothers today who remain lost in the father’s house.
This article is adapted from an article Craig wrote for the Missionary Seer in 2006, and follows insights by Kenneth Bailey, Joachim Jeremias and other scholars.
Global sharing, 2 Corinthians 8—9
Any reader of the Gospels knows that Jesus taught radical sharing of our possessions with people who need our help. Luke’s Gospel is particularly emphatic about this principle. God’s prophet invites the truly repentant person to share anything they have beyond what they need to live on, even if they have just a second pair of clothes and someone else has none (Luke 3:8-11). Whoever wants to be Jesus’ disciple will surrender all his or her possessions (Luke 14:33; cf. 12:33).
Whether literally or as a principle expressed perhaps hyperbolically, these passages are surely demanding. Some Christians in history, such as St. Anthony and many monastic movements, followed this literally for themselves. Others, such as Charles Finney, suggested that this teaching applied to all prospective disciples: we do not lose all our possessions at the moment of conversion, but we do lose our ownership of them.
We see this principle lived out by the early Christians in times of revival in Acts 2:44-45 and 4:32-35. The church eventually developed mechanisms for strategic sharing with local Christians, and handled fairly complaints of minority groups within the church (6:1-5). Eventually, however, the church outgrew a single locale, and Christians who had more than what they needed to live on in one location needed to help Christians who had less than what they needed to live on in another location. Paul and his coworker Barnabas were agents of the Antioch church’s gifts to the Jerusalem church (Acts 11:28-30), and this may have provided the model for one of Paul’s most ambitious projects: a collection for the poor in Jerusalem (cf. 24:17).
One of Paul’s driving concerns involved Jerusalem’s status as the mother church. Because Jewish Christians contributed to the Gentiles spiritually, Gentile Christians owed them material aid in their time of need (Rom 15:27). Paul probably uses this collection to establish reconciliation between the culturally distant churches of Jerusalem and the rest of the Roman world.
Another aspect of his concern is particularly relevant to us, however. Many of Paul’s “mission churches” were in cities with stronger economies than Jerusalem, and many of the members in his churches had more than what they needed to live on. This may have been true in Galatia (1 Cor 16:1), but believers in Macedonia (Rom 15:26) gave even from relative poverty (2 Cor 8:1-5). Corinth, however, was one of the wealthiest cities in the Roman world—and its Christians there unfortunately had to be prodded into giving!
Paul lays out the principle plainly for them: “equality” (2 Cor 8:13-15). If God supplied Christians in some parts of the world more than what they needed to live on, it was so they could help Christians in other parts if the world who had less than what they needed. God supplied the total church with sufficient resources to make sure that everyone was taken care of, but gave some individual churches more than others. Why? So those with resources could share God’s ministry of giving. God is the provider for all of us, so when we share with others the praise goes to God (9:8-15). The church in each part of the world must, of course, be self-supporting, except in times of emergency such as famines; but we can still coordinate our various resources as strategically as possible. Someday the roles of the needy may be reversed (8:14), but the principle remains unchanged.
Paul shows that sharing is not just with needy individuals (as one might guess from reading the Gospels), but also with needy churches. Some have spiritual resources to contribute; some have material resources; each individual and each church must contribute what we can for the greater good of Christ’s body.
Given the exchange rates, a dollar can do many times more in most African countries, and many other parts of the world, than it can do in the United States. In one country, I was told that my background commentary would cost a pastor two months’ salary. Twenty year ago, after I discovered that, I re-prioritized my giving. At the time, 25¢ could provide a meal for a person in a famine-stricken country. I was single at that time, and chose to live in an efficiency apartment that doubled as my office, eating as simply as I could so as to make available every cent possible for wider needs. Having a family has since adjusted how I must budget my resources, but the principle of caring for others remains important. In a world where millions of children die annually from hunger, malnutrition and preventable diseases; in a world where some countries have over a million AIDS orphans; in a world where millions of people live in cardboard boxes in dumps and lack clean drinking water, the sacrificial generosity of Christians can make a life-and-death difference.
A tale of two kings, Luke 2:1-20
Part of our Christmas story is a tale of two kings: one powerful in the eyes of the world, and the other identifying with the lowliest of people. It is the latter who is the true King, and this reminds us that we serve a God who is not impressed with power or status, but who dwells close to the lowly (Ps 34:18; Is 57:15). If we want to find God’s presence, we too will likelier find Him among the lowly.
This passage opens with a decree of Augustus Caesar, who displays his power here by censuses used to collect taxes for Rome and its empire (Lk 2:1). Augustus had achieved power by brutally crushing his competition, and he maintained power through absolute political control. Emperors fed Rome with free grain levied as taxes on Egyptian farmers—whose children sometimes starved. His was an empire maintained by force and propaganda, utterly different from the unpretentious kingdom that Christ came to bring.
All the important people would feel honored to be in Caesar’s presence; by contrast, Christ was born to a betrothed village couple from Judea’s “frontier” of Galilee, forced to migrate to Bethlehem for Caesar’s census. In contrast to Caesar, Christ was not born in what people of status would have viewed as a “respectable” family.
For readers in the Roman Empire, the narrative here is full of similar contrasts. Augustus lived in a palace; Christ was born in a feeding trough meant for animals. Choirs in Augustus’ temples hailed him as a god, lord and a “savior” for the empire; an angelic voice hailed Jesus as “born this day a savior,” “Christ the Lord” (Lk 2:11). The empire celebrated Augustus’ birthday; heaven celebrated Christ’s.
Imperial propaganda announced and celebrated the “Pax Romana,” the “peace” that Augustus established (i.e., imposed) for the empire by subduing (i.e., conquering) many of its enemies (i.e., neighbors). By contrast, at Jesus’ birth heaven announced God’s offer of true peace to humanity (Lk 2:14).
Virtually everyone in the empire knew of the emperor. Yet God chose to reveal Jesus’ identity to shepherds, who were outcasts to most of ancient Mediterranean society. Who would heed shepherds? Yet they faithfully proclaimed what they had experienced to anyone who would listen (Lk 2:18). Some ancient laws rejected the testimony of shepherds and women; yet Luke’s Gospel opens and closes with such testimony, approved by God.
If Augustus had a son now, he would be born in a palace and clothed with expensive garments (cf. Lk 7:25). But some time after Mary and Joseph reached Bethlehem, Mary gave birth and laid Jesus in a manger in a cave, apparently because the house was too crowded. (Contrary to most translations, there was no “inn” involved; if anyone excluded them from the house at all, it was apparently not an innkeeper, but relatives!) Mary wrapped Jesus with “swaddling cloths” (wrappings meant to help a baby’s limbs grow straight), not royal robes.
At Christmas we celebrate the incarnation of God in flesh, the incomparably great one sharing our broken humanity and ultimately our mortality. When God came among us, he came not among the great and mighty. He was not impressed with the pretension of human power, as if the prestige of powerful human empires mattered anything to him. Instead, he came among the broken, among the lowly, and showed us that we do not need to pretend to be anything great; he welcomes us by his own generosity. Like the shepherds, let us recognize the love of our king who cares for each of us, and tell everyone about him.
When miracles don’t happen
Miracles have often been associated with missions. In both Acts and the history of missions, miracles have often been reported on the cutting edge of ground-breaking evangelism. In the early medieval period, examples include Augustine of Canterbury’s early work among the English, Columba’s among the Scots, and Boniface’s among the Germans. They are reported especially frequently in the past half-century in parts of Africa, Asia and Latin America (though they also appeared in times of revival there earlier, such as in India in the 1850s and the Korean revival of the early twentieth century).
One could offer only samples of such miracle reports in many places where the gospel is breaking new ground today. An eyewitness shared with me, for example, how he witnessed the instant healing of one nonbeliever’s arm, which had been paralyzed for decades. Local witnesses of this one event sparked a revival among a long-resistant people group in Suriname, leading to tens of thousands of conversions over the next few years. Likewise, many reports surround the spreading of the gospel in previously unevangelized villages in Mozambique, where a number of deaf non-Christians were healed when Christians prayed for them. A team from the United States documented some of these cases to the best that conditions allowed and reported on them in Southern Medical Journal in September 2010. (Objections were answered in Candy Gunther Brown’s book Testing Prayer, published by Harvard in 2012.)
But what happens when miracles do not occur? What happens when we pray and nothing physically changes? Jesus healed all who came to him, but the Bible does not lead us to expect that God will do extraordinary signs every time people pray. Jesus proclaimed the kingdom, or reign of God, and demonstrated God’s reign by his authority over sickness, spirits, and storms. Jesus warned his detractors that if he was driving out demons by the finger or Spirit of God, then God’s kingdom had come upon them (Matt 12:28/Luke 11:20). Jesus also described his miraculous ministry in language that evoked Isaiah’s picture of the future era of restoration (Matt 11:5//Luke 7:22). In his ministry, the promised restoration of the kingdom era had begun.
Miracles, however, are signs of the kingdom, and not the fulness of the kingdom itself. The first century apostles died, and so far as we know, no one raised them. Even those whom Jesus or others miraculously raised eventually died again later; unlike Jesus’s resurrection, these raisings were not meant to be permanent and eternal. Believers through history have continued to die; healings are real, but when they happen they only delay the inevitable that all people through history have faced. Jesus admonished his followers to give special honor to people who were blind and disabled (Luke 14:13), presumably implying that such conditions would often continue in this age.
God often does miracles. I have collected hundreds of miracle reports from eyewitnesses in my recent book on the subject; although I cannot verify the reliability of every claim, many came from witnesses that I know and trust, and some are well-documented. Whereas some are recoveries that could possibly be attributed to natural immune responses (which are also God’s gift), some, such as the instant disappearance of cataracts, reversal of auditory nerve damage, raisings of persons believed to be dead for hours, the instant healing of severe burns or closing of a large wound overnight, are dramatic signs of God’s activity. Hearing these reports encouraged my own faith and motivated me to believe that God can do anything. I pray with renewed confidence and am more prepared to recognize answers to prayer.
At the same time, the world’s suffering continues. In places like Congo, where my wife is from, people have to depend on God and often see miracles, but the rate of mothers dying in childbirth, of children losing limbs, of babies dying of malaria or typhoid fever or meningitis, are unacceptably high. Miracles are not meant as an easy panacea for the world’s problems. Jesus multiplied the fishes and loaves, but then commanded the disciples to gather up the fragments that remain, because they would not need a miracle for their next meal. In a world where health care, clean drinking water and other resources are inequitably distributed, Jesus’s miracles speak an uncomfortable word to us. They show us what Jesus cares about: people’s health and deliverance. They therefore invite us to use all means possible—prayers for healing, medical missions, work for political and economic justice, and the like—to help people. Sometimes we don’t need a miracle—we need to use what God has already given us. Praying for our daily bread, for example, does not mean that we don’t also work for a living if we’re able to.
We pray for miracles that only God can do, and work for transformations that he has given us the ability to do. In both cases, we help people to have a foretaste of God’s coming kingdom, when he will wipe away all tears from our eyes and there will be no more sorrow or sighing or death. There is a message in the Gospels that runs deeper than miracles: the message of the Cross. In the Cross God shows that even in the deepest tragedy, God still has a plan. Miracles are samples of the future, meant to keep hope kindled; but the deepest sign of hope is the cross that gave way to the resurrection. Even when God does not do a miracle when we think we need it, the future is secure.
This is adapted from an article for the A.M.E. Zion Missionary Seer. Craig S. Keener is author of the award-winning Miracles: The Credibility of the New Testament Accounts (2 volumes; Baker Academic, 2011).