A belief in miracles is a necessary consequence
of a belief in God. He who does not believe in miracles does not
believe in God. "For My thoughts are not
your thoughts, neither are your ways My ways, saith the Lord.
For as
the heavens are higher than the earth, so are
My ways higher than your ways, and My thoughts than your
thoughts." Isa. 55:8, 9. Miracles, therefore,
are simply God's natural actions. His smallest acts must be miraculous
in the eyes of men, simply because He is
God. Since God is infinitely above man, and His ways are as much
higher
than man's ways as the heavens are higher than
the earth, it follows that no one can deny the existence of
miracles at the present day without denying
that God lives and directs the affairs of the universe.
It is idle to speculate as to whether or
not miracles are a setting aside of the laws of nature. What are
commonly
known as the "laws of nature," are
nothing less than God's ways of working in the inanimate world.
We cease to wonder at them because they are so common that we
do not recognize God in them. Familiar as the phenomena of the
weather are to us, no man can make it rain. The most learned botanist
cannot make a single blade of grass. No matter how deeply scientists
may explore the operations of nature, there is still something
in every one of them which they cannot explain.
The life of Jesus on earth, from His birth
to His ascension was a miracle, because it was the life of God.
Thousands of people who never heard of Jesus, had tried to live
sinless lives, but not one had been able to do so. Philosophers
had set forth lofty moral sentiments, but not one had been able
to live out his own teachings. But Christ lived a sinless life,
in the face of such temptations as all the world together had
never known. It was
because He lived the life of the infinite God.
"God was in Christ, reconciling the
world unto Himself." 2 Cor. 5:19. All His acts were the acts
of the Father, who
dwelt in Him. Said He: "Believest thou
not that I am in the Father, and the Father in Me? The words that
I speak unto you, I speak not of Myself; but the Father that dwelleth
in Me, He doeth the works." John 14:10. So the
miracles that Christ did were the natural working
of that life of God, which was His life.
These miracles were wrought for a definite
purpose. After having told of many miracles that Jesus did, and
His
resurrection as the crowning one of the whole
series, the apostle John said: "And many other signs truly
did
Jesus in the presence of His disciples, which
are not written in this book; but these are written, that ye might
believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of
God; and that believing ye might have life through His name."
John 20:
30, 31.
Every miracle of Jesus, therefore, was for
the purpose of showing us how we may receive His life, and have
the
same miracle wrought in us. It is truly said
that His miracles of healing were the natural outgrowth of His
sympathetic loving nature; "For God so
loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever
believeth in Him should not perish, but have
everlasting life." John 3:16. Love to man prompted every
step in the
plan of salvation. Christ did not perform the
miracles simply for the purpose of calling attention to Himself,
but to show the love and the power of God toward man. The healing
of the bodies of men was only an object lesson.
They were aids to faith, to enable men to grasp
unseen realities; to show them the power of Christ to heal the
disease of the soul. Whoever reads the accounts
of the miracles of Jesus with this in mind, and not as stories
told
for our entertainment, will receive of the
life which was manifested in the doing of those miracles. Each
one
illustrates some phase of the work of Christ
in supplying man's spiritual needs.
In subsequent numbers of this paper we shall
study some of these miracles, to the end that we may receive life
through His name.
