Having written briefly about Jesus as the miracle worker, I decided to touch a bit on why He was even able to be a miracle worker in the first place. I guess a simple answer would be, “He is God, that’s why He was the miracle worker”. You would be right if you thought that.
To me, there are several more complete, descriptive answers pertaining to why Jesus worked miracles.
The first reason is actually founded upon the fact that Jesus is God. But He is more than God in the sense that He is more than just a person to be worshipped, more than a person to be feared and loved. He is at once all of these things, and the creator of these things. Being “God” is true, that is what Jesus is, but somehow, our definition of God falls way short. Some think of God as a bearded older fellow, wise, kind, loving, and that’s about it. Honestly, we have such a disjointed opinion about God that we often inhibit ourselves from appreciating to our very limits His completeness.
Jesus is God, and as such, He is the creator, of all things. John said nothing that was made has its existence without Him, and all things that were made were made through Him. When thinking of Jesus as the miracle worker, why is it easy for me to believe His miracles? Because being the Creator, He would have absolute command of His creation, He would be intimate with His creation to levels we can only imagine.
An interesting “science” has appeared on the scene in recent years. It is that of sub-atomic realities. Imagine, there are things much smaller than atoms, and we can study them. Imagine Jesus, the creator of all these things, knowing all about these sub-atomic “particles”. Two thousand years ago, Jesus knew what makes up a man, what makes up a tree, and how to stop the wind from blowing. Can healing a shriveled hand on the Sabbath even be hard for Him?
Jesus is in command of all these things, from hands, to wind, to sub-atomic particles. Giving sight to the blind, in essence, for Jesus, may well have been just a matter of Him rearranging a few sub-atomic particles., each of which was under His authority. And that would follow, if we believe Jesus is God, and thus, Jesus is the agent of creation. In fact, it explains why He was able to do what he was able to do when He was here.
But there is another reason I like to ponder every so often. That reason is the relationship Jesus had with His Father. To say it in one word, perfection. God’s will was Jesus’ will, and Jesus did what pleased His Father all of the time. I think for the most part, that basically meant being “with” His Father in all things. It meant being reliant upon God for the answers to the sub-atomic question, as well as knowing His Father would give Him both the right answer, and the power and authority to perform it.
Looking fairly closely at the accounts of the written gospels, I find it interesting that Jesus did everything in His Father’s name, as if He were the Father’s “ambassador” to us. Not just God, but God’s mouth on earth, God’s hands, God’s feet, God’s human attributes that we tend to place upon our Father. Jesus was all of these things, in perfect unity with Abba. Being the ambassador, the Son, Jesus had all of the Father’s authority to do what He did here. And He did it all in His Father’s name.
There are other descriptions we could use that would help make the miracles Jesus performed seem more real to us, rather than the distant, aged “events” we read in the Bible. But these two reasons speak most loudly to me.
Coming to this point in my life, God has always before seemed distant. He has seemed “just out of reach”. Now, having this gift of grace in my imperfect body, and coming to know the Father more and more, He seems closer, a lot closer, than He ever has.
Did He move, or did I?
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