In today’s Bible reading (Mark 5), Jesus heals and restores life to a demon-possessed man, a sick woman, and a dead girl. Many pray and long to experience such displays of God’s power. But what does Jesus’ miraculous healing teach us?
Many who believe in miracles think of them as God’s supernatural intervention in our natural world. What if Jesus’ miracles were not interruptions of the natural order, but the restoration of the natural order as God originally intended? We are so used to living in a world filled with sickness, spiritual darkness, and death that they seem natural. Jurgen Moltmann, the German theologian, said, “Jesus’ healings are not supernatural miracles in a natural world, they are the only true natural things in a world distorted by sin.”
In expelling demons, triumphing over spiritual darkness, and healing the sick, dying, and dead, Jesus is driving out of creation the destructive and dehumanizing power of sin and spiritual darkness and restoring the light of life and health. I think it was Tim Keller who noted that miracles are not the suspension of natural laws, they are brief instances of God restoring the world, showing us the world of Christ’s Kingdom that is to come.
Jesus’ miracles should fill us with hope. One day, we will live forever in a world with no evil or evil one; in a world without sin, sickness, poverty, injustice, and death; a world in which the power, love and joy of God and His Kingdom fully come will be the natural order of things. Come, Lord Jesus!