This is Craig’s message on Matthew 28, and Matthew’s missiology, at Beeson Divinity School’s chapel in February 2014: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dcLOUGN-T00
(The link works better if you click this page rather than just going from the home page.)
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
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
In the previous post, I emphasized Jesus’s teaching on preserving and, where possible, restoring marriage. Jesus used graphic language to challenge some of his religious hearers’ insufficient commitment to marriage. In doing so, however, he was not seeking to make matters worse for those whose marriages were being broken against their will. Indeed, as noted briefly in that post, these were the very people that Jesus was defending.
Here I will first raise a problem—a way of reading a verse that some have used to prohibit and even break up remarriages. I will then show from the context of Jesus’s larger teaching on divorce, and other New Testament interpretations of his teaching, that this first way of reading the passage takes Jesus’s point out of context.
When Jesus speaks of remarriage after divorce as “adultery” in Mark 10:11, what does he mean? When used literally, adultery means sleeping with someone who is married to another person, and/or sleeping with someone other than one’s own spouse. (Most of the ancient world gave more license to the husband so long as his paramour was single, but the New Testament does not allow this double standard.) Thus, if Dedrick is married to Shamika and sleeps with Shonda, that is adultery.
But Jesus here seems to be saying that if Dedrick divorces Shamika and marries Shonda, that is still adultery despite the official divorce; that is, he treats Dedrick as still married to Shamika. In other words, he speaks as if human, legal divorce does not actually end a marriage in God’s sight.
The question is: Does Jesus mean this literally, or is he simply using a graphic way of warning against divorce? I argue here that he is using a graphic way of warning against divorce—that he is using hyperbole, that is, a rhetorical overstatement to drive home a point. Keep in mind that the point of hyperbole is not so we can dismiss its message, saying, “That’s just hyperbole.” Rather the rhetorical and literary device of hyperbole is a way to challenge us to examine whether we are living up to its message. How we take this matters: strongly warning against divorce is not the same as denying that God recognizes the legitimacy of new marriages.
Like (but even more than) many of his contemporaries, Jesus used graphic hyperbole to communicate many of his points. Anyone who is not willing to recognize that a given teaching at least might be hyperbole, before examining it, needs to reimmerse himself or herself in Jesus’s teachings. A camel does not normally literally fit through the eye of a needle; scrupulous Pharisees did not normally literally gulp down camels whole; and we have no record of Jesus’s first followers moving any literal mountains. These were graphic ways of communicating a point.
Moreover, the literary context of at least one of Jesus’s divorce sayings involves hyperbole. Just before his teaching about remarriage and adultery in Matthew 5:32, Jesus warns that whoever looks on a woman to covet her sexually has committed adultery with her in his heart (5:28). I often tell my students that I am proud to see that none of them has committed this sin. How do I discern their innocence? The solution to this sin, which appears in the next verse, is for the transgressor to tear out his eye. In fact, nearly all of us recognize that command as hyperbole—a graphic way of underlining the point that we must put away sin. No sane reader will follow this command literally.
Further, it may be relevant that Jesus does not tell a woman married five times that she was married once and that all the rest of her relationships were adulterous. Rather, he says that she has had five husbands but the man with whom she lives now is not her husband (John 4:18). One could argue that Jesus is speaking literally in John 4:18 but figuratively in Mark 10:11, or one could argue the reverse; but one who affirms the authority of both texts cannot easily have it both ways. Further evidence shows which reading is likelier.
Matthew and Paul recognize exceptions to Jesus’s graphic statement. In Matthew, Jesus says that a man cannot divorce his wife and remarry unless the wife is unfaithful (Matt 5:32; 19:9). (Some try to make the exception here something narrower than adultery, but the Greek term is actually broader than, rather than narrower than, adultery. It is only the context that limits it even to adultery.) The basis for remarriage being adulterous would be that God did not accept the reality of the divorce (all monogamists recognized that a valid divorce was necessary for remarriage). Here, however, God accepts the reality of the divorce if the spouse was unfaithful.
Yet if Shamika is not still married to Dedrick, how can Dedrick still be married to Shamika? If even an explicitly guilty party is not married to their first spouse in God’s sight, we cannot say that God literally regards the first partners as still married, or that remarriage is therefore literally adulterous. That a true follower of Jesus should work to preserve their marriage is clear, but that anyone should break up remarriages as adulterous unions, as some suggest, is not.
Paul explicitly allows the believer abandoned by an unbeliever (someone who is not following Jesus’s teachings) to remarry. (Laws in Corinth treated marriage as a matter of mutual consent; the departure of either party legally dissolved the marriage.) When Paul says that the believer is “not under bondage,” or “not bound” (1 Cor 7:15), he uses the exact language of ancient Jewish divorce contracts for freedom to remarry. This is precisely what the language meant when people in antiquity discussed divorce, the issue that Paul addresses here.
We should note what the two clear exceptions have in common: in neither case does Jesus’s follower break the marriage covenant; it is broken by the other person. One person working hard can often lead to the restoration of a marriage, but it is not guaranteed; the partner has their own will and can still choose to do the wrong thing (1 Cor 7:16). Paul had to address a local situation that Jesus did not explicitly address. Today we might think of physical abuse as an analogous kind of situation where the abuser is the one breaking the marriage covenant. Beyond such extreme circumstances, however, we need to be very careful, recognizing that some people will take any excuse to opt out of responsibility for a marriage (such as burning the toast, as mentioned in the earlier post). Paul makes clear that we are expected to do our best.
Not only do the biblical exceptions suggest that Mark 10:11 includes hyperbole, but so does that very verse’s context. Jesus demands, “Therefore what God has joined together, LET no one separate” (Mark 10:9). The point remains that we must not break up marriages. Yet the wording shows that marriage is not indissoluble in God’s eyes; Jesus warns against breaking marriage, rather than arguing that it is impossible to break. That is, the context of Mark 10:11, like Jesus’s and Paul’s other teachings on the subject, shows that Mark 10:11 uses hyperbole.
Jesus graphically summons us to commitment to marriage. Yet to break up remarriages (the solution that some readers have argued) actually undermines his point. Moreover, Jesus is certainly not seeking to make matters more difficult for those divorced against their will, as some churches have done. Treating someone divorced against his or her will to “stand against divorce” can be like treating someone raped or murdered against his or her will to stand against those actions.
I recognize that short posts cannot address all situations; these two posts have explored principles, but pastoral counselors must apply those principles in a wide range of concrete situations. What I hope is clear is that the biblical issue is less about whether someone eventually remarries than about the need to be faithful to marriage to begin with. (From a counseling perspective, it is unwise to enter a new relationship immediately after a divorce even if one was completely faithful to one’s previous marriage; the wounded heart is too vulnerable and needs time to heal. But at this point the expertise belongs not to me but to pastoral counselors and related professions.)
The narrowness of the explicit exceptions reminds us, however, that Jesus wants us to value and be committed to marriage. The point of exceptions is that they must be a last resort (though of course someone in physical danger is probably already at that point). Counseling or therapy can often save marriages. But we need to recognize that just as prayers for healing are not always answered (everyone acknowledges, for example, that godly people are not immortal), neither are prayerful attempts to save marriages when they involve only one party.
Believers must do their best to preserve marriage, but we must not abuse those whose marriages have broken, especially if it was not their choice. Jesus warned some religious people: “If you had understood the meaning of these words—‘I desire mercy and not sacrifice’—you would not have condemned the innocent” (Matt 12:7).
God invites us to a genuine relationship with him, empowered by his Spirit. This is not the same as mere religious rules, a contrast evident in some conflicts between Jesus and some Pharisees in his day.
True rest
In Matthew 12:1-14, a series of conflicts about the Sabbath, Jesus articulates a rest different from that of the Pharisees. The preceding context shows how this is the case. Jesus invites all the weary to come to him, promising that he will provide rest for their souls (Matt 11:28-29). In saying this he echoes a biblical promise from God, who also offered rest for his people’s souls (Jer 6:16). Likewise, both the Bible (Prov 9:5) and Jewish tradition (Sirach 24:19) depicted divine Wisdom as inviting others to come. Jesus is here the one divinely authorized to provide rest to those who come to him.
In 12:1-14, however, members of the religious elite debate Jesus over the interpretation of rest. They observe Sabbath law so strictly and literally that they risk inhibiting the rest that the Sabbath was meant to bring. Jesus prioritizes his followers’ hunger and people’s need for healing above Sabbath rules—after all, eating, health, meeting of needs contributed to rest. The Pharisees understood this for some issues as well, so Jesus challenges their inconsistency.
From what we can gather about the Pharisees from later sources, they should not have been so angry with Jesus. First of all, Jesus defends his practice based on some biblical analogies similar to the sort used by Pharisees themselves. Second, Pharisees themselves debated whether medicine could be used on the Sabbath; more lenient Pharisees allowed it. Moreover, Jesus is not even using medicine. When he heals a man with a withered hand here, he simply commands the man to stretch out his hand, which no one could consider a Sabbath violation. Pharisees debated Sabbath questions among themselves all the time, without seeking to “destroy” those who disagreed (12:14).
Yet as we recognize from our own experience today, religious people do not always live up to the best ethical ideals espoused by their teachers. Sabbath conflicts between Jesus and his critics may have simply reflected a larger array of concerns. Pharisees were respected, a sort of religious elite, and tended to be better educated and of higher status than most people. Jesus cared for the poor, the sick, the marginalized, and even sinners; he did not cultivate the favor of the elites. Jesus had not been trained in Pharisees’ traditions; in fact, at times he challenged them. Jesus was a threat to their own sense of security in their beliefs and practices—as he would be to those of many people today. Some Pharisees here therefore desire to silence him, although they lacked political power to harm him. That task would fall to the political elite—Sadducees in Jerusalem and ultimately a reluctant but corrupt governor.
Blaspheming the Spirit
In the following narrative, Matthew warns that Jesus’s Pharisaic critics come close to blaspheming against the Holy Spirit. What does that mean? Sometimes readers today fear that they have committed the offense; no one concerned about it, however, may have committed it. No one able to repent has committed an unforgiveable sin (12:31-32).
So what does this passage mean by blaspheming against the Spirit? In this context in Matthew, Jesus has been driving out demons by the Spirit of God, showing that God’s kingdom was upon them (12:28). His critics shrug off this evidence that God is with him, attributing this defeat of Satan’s kingdom to Satan himself (12:24). They thus treat God’s Spirit as a demonic spirit! These critics are rejecting not just Jesus’s own testimony, but the Spirit’s conspicuous testimony that God’s reign is drawing near in Jesus. That is, they are determined not to believe no matter what the evidence! Jesus shows why this charge cannot be correct and shows how biased they are in explaining away his exorcisms.
Matthew’s context shows us something further. Because Jesus is empowered by God’s Spirit to cast out demons (12:28), he fulfills a prophesied mission. Matthew has just quoted a passage in Isaiah about God’s servant endued with the Spirit (12:18). This servant would initially be gentle rather than like a warrior (12:19-20; cf. 11:29; 21:5). In Isaiah’s context God originally gave this servant mission to Israel, but because Israel was disobedient (Isa 42:18-20), God would raise up one within Israel to bring the nation back to him (49:5; 53:4-6, 11). The context in Isaiah further shows that the servant would bless not only his own people, but also the Gentiles (42:6; 49:6; 52:15), announcing good news of God’s reign (52:7).
How did Jesus’s critics risk blaspheming against the Spirit? They were rejecting God’s own verification of Jesus’s identity and mission. After falsely accusing Jesus, his critics have the audacity to request a “sign” (Matt 12:38)—after explaining away the signs he has already offered! The ultimate sign would be their ultimate test: “the sign of Jonah”—Jesus’s resurrection (12:39-40).
An unforgiveable sin is one in which one’s heart becomes so hard that one rejects even obvious evidence of the truth, to the extent that one cannot ever become convinced. Only God knows whose hearts become irreparably unrepentant, but when that state occurs, it can occur from persistently refusing to believe even in the face of what is obvious. Obviously no one who afterward accepts Christ has gone that far.
Inviting demons back
In the ancient Mediterranean world, people often returned charges against false accusers, and Jesus does so here. Instead of recognizing that Jesus drives out demons by God’s Spirit, his critics attribute his works to demons. So Jesus tells about a man delivered from a demon who ends up with eight demons instead of the one, and concludes, “That is how it will be with this evil generation” (12:45). Jesus has been casting demons out, but his critics are welcoming them all back in. It is thus they, and not he, who are doing Satan’s work.
The Spirit confirms that Jesus fulfills what the prophets before him promised. Those who refuse to believe him in the face of divine attestation have no excuse.
Religion by itself may not please God. What pleases God is carrying out his will, and we can do that only by his Spirit.
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/
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.
Matthew’s Gospel includes five discourse sections. The last of these (chaps. 23—25) begins with Jesus pronouncing judgment on scribes and Pharisees, the highly respected religious people of the day. It then closes with him noting how his second coming will distinguish between the righteous and the wicked.
Between these sections, Jesus warns that Jerusalem’s “house,” the temple, would be laid desolate (Matt 23:37-38), and that the temple’s stones would be thrown down (24:2). The disciples consequently asked two questions: “When will these things (the temple’s destruction) happen?” and “What will be the sign of your coming?” The short answer to the former question is, “within a generation” (24:34), and to the latter, “no one knows the day nor the hour” (24:36). But Jesus answers each in somewhat more detail.
He has already spoken of the temple being desolated (23:38). Now he speaks of the promised “abomination,” or “desecration,” which brings about the “desolation” in the sanctuary (24:15). Josephus, the first-century Jewish historian who lived through the events that he describes, believes that the slaughter of the priests in the temple in 66 was the abomination which brought about the temple’s destruction three and a half years later, in A.D. 70. When the temple was destroyed, Romans set up images of Caesar, who was worshiped as a god, on the site. The year 70 was roughly a generation after Jesus warned of the coming desolation (somewhere around the year 30).
Jesus warned those in Judea to flee into the hills (24:16); the massive Roman army would be less effective hunting fugitives on mountain trails, and both David and the Maccabees had found refuge in this way. Because people often dried vegetables or conversed with neighbors on their flat roofs, reached from the outside of the house, Jesus also warns those on the roof not to waste time entering the house (24:17). Peasants who needed their outer garments as blankets at night, but left them at the edge of the field as the workday’s sun grew hot, should abandon them and flee with haste (24:18). Jesus’ point was that judgment was coming, and people should flee as quickly as possible! (My wife, who is Congolese and had to flee as a refugee when war came, understood the importance of such haste.)
The temple was the center of Israel’s religious devotion and hopes for the future. Some considered it impregnable; most considered it blessed. Yet as in Jeremiah’s day, this symbol par excellence of religious devotion could not stay God’s judgment. Religion alone is not enough.
What does all this have to do with Jesus’ answer to the other question, about the sign of his coming? Let me comment first about the timing of that coming. In Jesus’ day, people viewed wars, earthquakes, and famines as signs of the end; but Jesus warns that when these things occur, the end is still “not yet” (24:6-8). A more reliable sign of the end is the good news of the kingdom being proclaimed among all peoples (24:14); if we are eager for Christ’s return, there is something we can do to fulfill this final prerequisite. But as for a literal “sign” of the end? Jesus offers only one: the sign that occurs in the sky at his second coming (24:30). In other words, whoever waits for the final “sign” will wait too late!
After Jesus discusses the temple’s destruction, he speaks of the judgment of his servants at the second coming. He tells of a servant who exploited his fellow servants, as if he would never give account to the master; this minister would be damned (24:45-51). Jesus further contrasts those who would stay ready for his return with those who would not (25:1-30).
In other words, the first part of Jesus’ discourse, against the scribes and Pharisees, has everything to do with the part about the temple and the later part about the second coming. God’s servants were not ready at our Lord’s first coming; today many of us condemn scribes and Pharisees rather flippantly for missing the truth. But Jesus also warns that many of his servants will not be ready at his second coming, either. We should examine our hearts: do we live our lives in light of the fact that we must someday answer to the One who gave us those lives? Mere religion is not enough. We must follow Christ.
Adapted from an article Craig wrote in 2006. Craig Keener is author of 17 books, including two commentaries on Matthew’s Gospel.
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).
The Great Commission at the end of the Gospel of Matthew includes the verbs: “going, baptizing, teaching.”
In this “Seven Minute Seminary” Craig shows how this climax is connected to the rest of the book.