In my morning times with God I’m working through the book of Acts (among other passages). I’m only through chapter 9 as of this morning. I’ve been looking forward to ask because I’m hungry right now to understand better what the Bible teaches regarding signs and wonders. I’m a continuationist, which means that I believe all the gifts of the Holy Spirit are for today. But I also want to understand and pursue those gifts in the way that the Holy Spirit guides and commands through the faithful written word of God which was given to us by inspiration of the Holy Spirit. What follows here is a few thoughts, centered mostly around healing miracles, that I’m gleaning from my time in the book of Acts. All scripture references are from the book of Acts unless otherwise noted.
1. Healing miracles depend on the power and authority of Jesus operating through the indwelling of the Holy Spirit. The disciples began healing people through the power of Christ after the Spirit was poured out in Acts chapter 2. Stephen was a man full of faith and the Holy Spirit, and it’s because of this that he did many signs and wonders (6:3,5,8)
2. Signs and wonders aren’t limited to the twelve apostles. While it’s true that the twelve apostles of the early church were involved in the ground-floor building up of God’s people to an extent that no-one today is or needs to be, that doesn’t mean that they accessed the power of the Holy Spirit through faith in Christ in a way that’s not available to the rest of us. In Acts 6:9, we’re told that “Stephen, full of grace and power, was doing great wonders and signs among the people.” Stephen was one of seven deacons appointed by the apostles to look after the ministry to widows and settle the dispute between the Hebrews and the Hellenists. He was a man “full of faith and of the Holy Spirit” even before the apostles prayed for and laid hands on him (6:5). And it seems that when the apostles prayed for him, they weren’t praying that he’d be used by God to perform great signs and wonders, but rather that he would be enabled by the Holy Spirit to carry out the specific ministry that he was being appointed to. Stephen didn’t receive his “anointing” through the laying on of hands by super-spiritual giants. He received power through faith and the indwelling Holy Spirit. No doubt, the example of Peter and John inspired him to pursue God by faith for the performing of signs and wonders. But it’s not at all as though Stephen received his gift of signs and wonders through the apostles. He got it from Jesus through Jesus’ gift of the Holy Spirit. Another example is Ananias, who laid hands on Paul to restore Paul’s sight (Acts 9:10-19). Ananias was singled out by God to do this, even though he was not one of the apostles. So it’s not really biblical at all to say that signs and wonders were limited to the first-century apostles because of their foundational role in the establishing of the church. It’s better to say that their involvement on the ground floor of God’s new temple (His people) meant that it was important for them to be especially active in signs and wonders. But part of the foundational role they play is in exemplifying to us how to be vessels of God’s power for God’s glory. Not to make much of ourselves, but to worship Jesus and help others see Him as He is. Which leads to the next point:
3. Healing miracles are a powerful tool of God to provoke people to hunger for the message of redemption in Jesus, and to establish the faith of those who are hungry. This is clear even in the example of Paul’s healing from blindness at the hands of Ananias. But it’s even more obvious from the healing of Aeneas and Dorcas (for which see the conclusion of Acts 9). We are told that “all the residents of Lydda and Sharon…turned to the Lord” and that in Joppa “many believed in the Lord” as a result of these healings. The evangelistic value of the sign gift of healing should not be minimized or discounted. There are many people who are in heaven now because God drew them to Himself through a healing miracle.
4. On the flip side, healing miracles reveal the hard-heartedness of those who refuse to come to Jesus, and provoke more forceful opposition. The message of Jesus preached by Peter and John was perceived as such a threat by the religious leaders because it was backed up by undeniable signs and wonders. (Acts 4:16) The rulers, elders, and scribes were forced to act because there was no room for reasonable doubt that authentic miracles had taken place. For the religious leaders to deny those miracles, they would have to destroy their own credibility. But instead of being moved to repentance and faith, they were filled with jealousy which led to the imprisonment and beating of Peter and John (5:17,23,40). A similar series of events led to the murder of Stephen. Authentic miracles may lead to intensified persecution. How is a powerless word going to provoke anyone? But when the power of Christ is demonstrated through the preaching of the Word, those who wish to preserve their own satanic social and religious power have to act decisively against Him. That power is often demonstrated in the book of Acts through signs and miracles that set the stage for the preaching of the Gospel. All the miracles and signs we read about in the book of Acts were beyond reasonable disputing to those who witnessed them, to establish the Gospel as a truth beyond reasonable dispute. If we’re going to seek after miracles, let’s seek after miracles that leave no room for doubt.
5. God doesn’t give us healing miracles to rescue us here and now from a world of suffering and hardship, but to point us all to the coming salvation so that we’ll put our trust in Him and give our lives to Him. When Peter and John were beaten, and when Stephen was stoned, no attempt was made by any of the followers of Jesus to reverse injury and death through the performing of further miracles. Following Jesus means submitting to the realities of a broken world, and specifically to the suffering of persecution. It means embracing suffering as a gift and an honor if through suffering we are able to experience union with Jesus and put Him on display. There is room for grief in the midst of victorious hope (8:2). While there is a time and place for raising the dead (9:36-43), ultimately we lay to rest those that have died in the Lord until He returns to make all things new. The purpose of signs & wonders, then, is not establish heaven here on earth right now, but to give a foretaste of heaven. It is not to usher in the recreation of all things, but to signify that such a recreation is coming, and to allow believers and unbelievers to experience it in whatever temporary extent permitted by the Holy Spirit, so that we would all put our confidence fully in Jesus and persevere in this broken and sinful world in the hope of a coming inheritance. Future hope is the center of our faith and supplies the necessary context for miracles. Why should those who have been raised with Christ submit to death and suffering, unless there is an even better resurrection to come?
6. Signs and wonders are for the glory of God! Those who performed miracles through the Holy Spirit’s power gave all the credit and the honor to Jesus. (3:12-16, 4:10, 4:30) It was a desire for His glory that moved them to seek miracles in the first place. When those who witnessed their miracles began to make much of them, they jealously defended the preeminence of Jesus, saying “Men of Israel, why do you wonder at this, or why do you stare at us, as though by our own power or piety we have made him walk? The God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, the God of Jacob, the God of our fathers, glorified His servant Jesus…and His name–by faith in His name–has made this man strong” (3:12-16). Even though we are to some extent filled with the same Holy Spirit that indwelled and empowered Jesus, there’s a difference between the miracles that He performed and those that we can perform through Him. The miracles He performed were for His glory, to display both His divinity and His identity as the human mediator, prophet, and King over all God’s people. Jesus’ miracles were done for His glory because He is God. The miracles that we do in the name of Jesus are for the same purpose: to display the power and authority Jesus has received from the Father for the glory of God. It’s not wrong to speak of miracles being “done” or “performed” by a person (5:12, 6:8) but even in using that language we should be careful to give all the glory to God and to not insult Him by promoting people for the things they do in God’s power. Even when we “do” miracles, it’s really Jesus doing them through us, the members of His body united to Him by faith (2:43, 4:16, 4:30).
7. Signs and wonders are for the promotion of the Gospel of repentance and reconciliation through the blood of Jesus. Often in today’s “signs and wonders” movement, alleged signs and wonders are used not to point people to the redeeming work of Christ, but to offer power to people as a means for them to gain immediate transcendence over difficult circumstances in their lives and the lives of their friends. People are told, “receive the Holy Spirit and you can do miracles just like us–just like Jesus!” This way of talking about signs and wonders is misleading because it obscures their true purpose. Signs and wonders are not given to us so that we can experience here-and-now transcendence over pain, sickness, financial hardship, or difficult people. The purpose of signs and wonders is to add power to the preaching of the Gospel of deliverance from power of sin and from the punishment that sin deserves through the finished work of Jesus, so that we become children of God who live our whole lives in the hope of the coming restoration of all things. It’s not so that we can be magicians of some kind. There was a magician named Simon who was fascinated with signs and wonders as a means to self-promotion. (8:9-24) He even wanted to help other people! (v. 19) But because the gospel hadn’t registered with Simon’s heart (v. 23), he could only see God’s power as a means to his power. He wanted to separate signs and wonders from their God-intended purpose, to comfort the hearts of believers and rescue the lost. Whenever Peter, John, and Stephen performed miracles, they followed it up with the preaching of repentance from sin and faith in the redeeming and reconciling work of Jesus (3:17-26, 4:8-12, 5:29-32, 7:2-53). The power to perform miracles was never offered to the lost as a reason to come over to Jesus’s side.
8. Miracles are not just for unbelievers, but also for believers! While the book of Acts really seems to emphasize the evangelistic value of healing miracles, we also see that healing miracles can bless and edify the church. For example, the resurrection of Dorcas (9:36-42) gave back to the church at Joppa one of its most valuable servants, bringing great comfort to the widows who were blessed by her ministry. God not only provides real blessings to the church through the gift of healing, but helps make the future healing we’ll experience at the return of Jesus real to us by allowing us to experience that healing in a momentary, temporary way. God doesn’t serve our unbelief by performing miracles on demand, but He does perform miracles to strengthen, encourage, and guide a faith that’s already alive.
Thanks for reading! Hope this helps you as you seek to discern God’s will and be full of the Holy Spirit.
-Andy
Andrew Micah 