As I’ve gone through Mark—and really, we see this throughout the gospels—we see Jesus regularly insist people keep mum whenever he performs an act of faith-healing.
Rebuking him,
Jesus immediately sent him out, telling him,“Look, say nothing to no one, but go away, show yourself to the priests, and make an offering for your cleansing like Moses commanded. That’s your testimony.” Instead, the man going out began to broadcast everything, and spread the word around. Thus it became impossible for Jesus to enter a town publicly. Instead, he was out in the wilds, and the people came out to him from everywhere.
Jesus ordered them strongly:“Nobody can know of this,” and,“Give her food.”
Jesus ordered them,“Nobody talk.” Yet the more he ordered, the more they proclaimed.
Jesus sent him home, telling him,“Don’t go into the village.”
It’s not about being anti-supernatural.
I grew up in a cessationist church: We were taught God stopped doing miracles back in bible times, and doesn’t do them now. Whenever a rumor went round of someone who had been cured miraculously, we were told the person was mistaken about being cured; the disease was misdiagnosed in the first place, or the person was only claiming to be cured but wasn’t really. (A lot of Word-Faith folks do that sort of thing, you see: They believe if we claim to be cured, and just believe really hard, God will follow up by actually curing us.) Whenever the subject of faith healers came up, we were told the so-called faith healer was just a con artist, taking advantage of suckers who would either psyche themselves into believing themselves cured, or taking advantage of Word-Faith folks who weren’t really cured but would shout as loud as they could that they totally were. Basically, everything an atheist would say about faith healing, you’d hear in that church.
Since these folks didn’t believe in the supernatural (anymore), they tended to read their attitude back into Jesus. Jesus, they claimed, was trying to downplay the supernatural. He didn’t want to be known as Jesus the Faith Healer. He didn’t want to be known as Jesus the Miracle Worker. He just wanted to preach the gospel, and that was all. If all he did were miracles, he’d be swarmed by people who wanted miracles, and only miracles—and he wouldn’t have any time to preach the gospel, and they wouldn’t listen anyway.
Further, miracles don’t convince skeptics, so cessationists don’t think much of them; and because they assume God thinks as they do, seems God doesn’t think much of them. This, they claim, is part of the reason God turned off the miracles for the present age: Skeptics appreciate logic, not miracles. So drop the supernatural, and stick to a nice, rational, logical presentation of the bible, and convince the skeptics that way. (And convince our largely skeptical selves that way too.)
If this is God’s attitude, and Jesus is God, why’d Jesus do any miracles? Well, cessationists explain, because God hadn’t entirely turned off the miracles. He temporarily turned ’em off during the “silent years,” but he temporarily turned ’em back on for Jesus, so that while he was in the world he could be its light (Jn 9.5) —but once he left, the miracles would go dark. (So they interpret John 9.4.) Since Jesus could do miracles, and since he was sympathetic to people’s suffering, he would, on occasion, secretly, sneak off and cure the sick. Miracles were like an embarrassing secret, like a boy who loves ballet dancing but fears what his macho schoolfriends might think of him. Jesus was trying to keep his divinity hidden, lest people find out he was God too soon, and kill him in horror and fear—or, because of their unbelief, accuse him of blasphemy and kill him for that reason… as they eventually did.
So. All of the above is based on cessationists’ unbelief and skepticism, and it doesn’t fit Jesus’s thinking at all. Yet it’s pretty common; it’s not just found among cessationists. You’ll find it among most people who don’t practice, or avoid, the supernatural. They use it to justify their doubt.
We didn’t become Christians via logic.
As fascinated as Christians can be by clever logic or profound wisdom, we regularly forget: We didn’t become Christians that way. Very few of us—and arguably, even fewer of us than we claim—came to Jesus because we were intellectually convinced Christianity was true. We didn’t come to Jesus because a brilliant sermon worked on us. It might have been a really sucky sermon, but we believed it to be brilliant simply because it worked on us. But it wasn’t even the sermon which worked. It was the Holy Spirit. He tugged on the right emotions at the right time. He, and his mighty power, brought us to Jesus. Miraculously.
Most evangelists know this. They can preach a brilliant sermon, and nobody comes forward to accept Jesus. They can preach junk, and everybody comes forward. What’s the catalyst? The Holy Spirit. If the Spirit’s there to save people, they’ll be saved. If he’s not, may as well stay home. Paul knew this, and said so.
Christians, when I first came to you, I didn’t come with an authoritative message, or wisely declaring the secrets of God to you. I didn’t know anything about you. I only knew the crucified one, Messiah Jesus. So in weakness, in fear and trembling, I came to many of you. My message and my preaching had no persuasive wisdom. Instead, my proof
came by the Spirit andhis power. Hence your faithisn’t based in human wisdom, but in God’s power.But I do teach wisdom to the mature…
—Paul, 1 Corinthians 2.1-5 KWL
…because that’s how it works. We came to Jesus through God’s miraculous power. We grew as Christians because, now that the initial part’s done and we’re in God’s family, we get taught stuff. We learn wisdom. We learn to think like God. We learn to use our heads. We’re fed spiritual meat instead of spiritual milk.
Then we turn round and try to evangelize with spiritual meat. After all, it’s the good stuff! But it doesn’t work, or works very poorly. Because it’s not what worked on us. Persuasive speech wasn’t what did it. The Holy Spirit did it.
And the acts of the Holy Spirit are miraculous. The Kingdom of God doesn’t consist only of talk, of passing along wisdom and logic and clever teachings and bible knowledge, but of living in God’s power. (1Co 4.20) You gotta have both, and as Jesus demonstrated, he didn’t just preach the gospel. He didn’t just teach how the Law should be interpreted by his followers, and give us new commands. He gave us the power to do everything he could do, and more. (Jn 14.12) And where logic doesn’t work on the unbeliever, miracles may; and where miracles don’t work, logic may; for we must be all things to all people so that we can save whomever we can. (1Co 9.22)
Don’t reject or despise the supernatural. Don’t block the Spirit from doing whatever he deems necessary. (1Th 5.19) I’ve seen people who could counter every logical argument you can come up with, but they didn’t know what to do once a miracle happened: There was nothing to do but believe. Many people believed in Jesus because of the miracles he performed, (Jn 2.23, 7.31, 11.45) and it is simply stupid to disregard miracles as a way to bring people into the Kingdom when they so clearly do.
He didn’t hide many of them.
Those who bash the supernatural forget how often Jesus didn’t hide his miracles. When he and his students fed the 5,000 and the 4,000, those were some pretty public miracles. He was teaching a large crowd when he cured the paraplegic that was lowered through the roof. He was teaching in synagogue when a possessed man started shouting at him, and Jesus had to kick the evil spirit out of him. He raised Lazarus from the dead in front of the family and friends who were mourning him; he raised a young man from the dead in the middle of a funeral procession. His miracles were so well-known, he could point to them—
If I don’t do my Father’s works, don’t believe me. If I do them, though you don’t believe me, believe the works: Then you’ll realize and know the Father is in me, and I in the Father. —Jesus, John 10.37-38 KWL
—as could the people.
Many of the crowd believed in him, and were saying, “When Messiah comes, won’t he perform more
miraculous signs than this man did?”
Even in Mark, after Jesus threw the legion of evil spirits out of a Syrian Greek madman, he sent the man away with these instructions:
“Go to your home, to your people, and bring them news of all the Lord’s done to you: He had mercy on you.” —Jesus, Mark 5.19 KWL
Jesus ordered the man to spread this story. Not hide it. Not bottle it up, and tell no one. He was to let everyone in the Dekapolis know the LORD had mercy on him—and prepare the way for Jesus to return to the Dekapolis with the gospel.
So why’d Jesus hide some miracles?
Since sometimes Jesus told people to keep his miracles quiet, and sometimes he did ’em nice and public for anyone to see, and share the news of, it stands to reason that we ought not reduce Jesus’s behavior to a formula. He didn’t want every miracle exposed, nor did he want every miracle cloaked. Different behavior clearly means Jesus was adapting to circumstances.
In the places where he let everyone see him perform acts of faith-healing, Jesus knew the people needed to see a healer. He knew it would make the greatest impact on them. He knew it would draw people to him—ostensibly for healing, but it gave him the opportunity to preach the gospel. The idea that Jesus might be too busy healing to preach the gospel, is just silly. How hard is it to take the occasional five-minute break, present the good news to your captive—and gratefully receptive—audience, then go back to ministering to the sick? When Simon Peter and John cured the disabled beggar at the gate of the temple, Peter segued directly from the miracle to the gospel. (Ac 3) He took advantage of the opportunity, for the miracle provided an opportunity.
But in some cases, a miracle provides no opportunity. Yeah, it clearly works on the person who’s been cured, and it boosts the faith of the person who prayed for healing and saw God heal. But sometimes, that’s it. No one else will have the faith to accept it; they’ll just mock.
Jesus knew precisely which situation was which. When a miracle would foster faith, Jesus let it be known. When a miracle wouldn’t, Jesus would tell the spectators, “Say nothing.” And yes, the spectators would often say something anyway. We do the same thing nowadays: We brag about every miracle we’ve encountered, because we don’t care; we want everyone to know God works among us. And in so doing, we’re being fools. Sometimes the wisest thing to do is to be aware of our audience, and keep our mouths shut, and wait till they’re ready to hear it. When Jesus knew people wouldn’t receive it well, he said, “Say nothing.” He still says this. The Holy Spirit has told me to say nothing, from time to time, for the very same reason.
So when we perform miracles, we need to remember and follow Jesus’s example. Not every miracle is for public consumption. We need to hold our tongues and talk it over with God. He’ll tell us whether, and when, it’s okay.