The Power of the Cross: Old Testament Foundations: Signs, Wonders and the People

 

Old Testament Foundations: Signs, Wonders and the People, by Jeffrey J. Niehaus

When the Son of God came to earth he brought what the Bible metaphorically calls the “water” of the Holy Spirit, who had been poured out on him without measure. The Son’s first advent was foretold by the prophet Isaiah, who foresaw the result of Christ’s ministry. He said it would be a time when “the Spirit is poured upon us from on high, and the desert becomes a fertile field” (Isa. 32:15). Isaiah was a great poet as well as a prophet, and he spoke powerfully of the Messiah’s life and work. What he said has come to pass, and both he and the other Old Testament prophets have much to teach us, not only about God and his Christ, but also about prophetic ministry—a kingdom ministry of “signs and wonders”—both in the past and today.

 

Signs and Wonders—Moses and Jesus

We know from the Old Testament that God did signs and wonders to advance his kingdom. The phrase, “signs and wonders,” first occurs in the Bible to describe the plagues which God, through his prophet Moses, brought upon Egypt (Exo. 7:3). But the miracles of God in the Old Testament are not only destructive. God also parted the Red Sea and held up the waters of the Jordan River and brought his people safely across both. Such miracles were part of his plan of salvation for Israel.

The New Testament declares that Jesus also worked great miracles as part of God’s plan of salvation for his people. Some of Jesus’ “signs and wonders” showed God’s power over nature, just as Moses’ had done. For instance, Jesus turned water to wine (Jn. 2:1ff.), caused a fig tree to shrivel up (Mk. 11:12-14.20-24), and stilled the stormy waters of the Sea of Galilee (Mat. 8:23-27). But most of Jesus’ miracles involved the healing of diseases and bodily infirmities, and deliverance from evil spirits.

The ministries of Jesus and Moses have important things in common. Both were covenant mediators: Moses mediated the old covenant; Jesus mediated the new. Both Moses (Deut. 34:10) and Jesus (Acts 3:22) were prophets. And both did signs and wonders which were part of the advance of God’s kingdom—his program of salvation for his people.

 

Signs and Wonders and Prophetic Ministry

The great examples of Moses and Jesus show a connection between prophetic ministry and signs and wonders. This is not accidental. The Old Testament contains evidence that God has always intended to establish a relationship between prophetic ministry and miracles, including divine healing.

Signs and wonders are, in fact, a well-documented part of what it meant to be a prophets in the OT—one who was called to speak and act on God’s behalf—in the Old Testament.¹ The word prophet, for example, first occurs in the Old Testament in the context of a healing—the healing of king Abimelech’s wife and slave girls. Abraham told Abimelech, king of Gerar, that his wife Sarah was his sister (she was in fact his half-sister, Gen. 20:12). He did this out of fear that someone would kill him and take his wife because she was so beautiful (Gen. 20:11; he had done the same in Egypt, Gen. 12:12ff). Abimelech believed Abraham and took Sarah, but God warned Abimelech in a dream that he must not have another man’s wife. God also “closed the wombs” of Abimelech’s wife and slave girls as both a warning and a punishment (Gen. 20:18). God then told Abimelech, “Now return the man’s wife, for he is a prophet, and he will pray for you and you will live “ (Gen. 20:7). God’s statement makes a clear connection between Abraham’s prophetic call and the power to heal. The same is affirmed at the end of the chapter: “Then Abraham prayed to God, and God healed Abimelech, his wife and his slave girls so they could have children again” (Gen. 20:17).

The connection between God’s prophets and God’s healing ministry stands out even more boldly in the cases of Elijah and Elisha. Both of them did healings and other miracles which look forward to the ministry of Christ. The first reported “healing” done by Elijah was a resurrection, the son of the widow of Zarephath (1 Kgs. 17:19-24). Elisha also raised someone from the dead, the son of a Shunammite woman (2 Kgs. 4:32-37). In each case the prophet lay upon the dead body and prayed, and as he did so the boy came back to life. (Similarly, the apostle Paul brought the boy Eutychus back from the dead by lying on him, Acts 20:10). Both Elijah (1 Kgs. 17:7-16) and Elisha (2 Kgs. 4:1-7.42-44) miraculously reproduced scant supplies of food, just as Jesus did with the loaves and fishes. And Elisha healed Naaman the Syrian of leprosy by commanding him to go and wash in the Jordan seven times (2 Kgs. 5:1-19), just as Jesus healed the blind man by commanding him to go and wash in the pool of Siloam (Jn. 9:1-7). The parallels between the miracles of these Old Testament prophets and the miracles of Jesus (and Paul) are remarkable, and they have a purpose.

 

God’s Reasons for Performing Miracles

What was that purpose? Or to put it another way: Why did God do those miracles of healing and provision? There are at least three reasons: God did them to show that he was God; he did them for evangelistic purposes; and he did them out of compassion for his people. More than one of these reasons might be in operation at any given time.

First, God sometimes performed signs and wonders to show his people that he alone was God (e.g., Elijah on Mount Carmel, 1 Kgs. 18:16-39). Whatever else a “sign” or a “wonder” does, it always brings glory to God, who alone could do it.

God also performed healings through his prophets so that non-Israelites could know him as the true God. So the widow of Zarephath, a suburb of pagan Sidon (a Phoenician city on the Mediterranean coast) exclaimed when Elijah raised her son from the dead, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is truth” (1 Kgs. 17:24). Naaman the Syrian was converted to the true God when the Lord healed him by the word of the prophet Elisha: “Now I know that there is no God in all the world except in Israel … [and I] will never again make burnt offerings and sacrifices to any other God but the Lord” (2 Kgs. 5:15.17). These Old Testament examples show that God has always wanted to reach people of all nations and bring them to salvation. Through prophets like Abraham, Elijah and Elisha, he showed this desire by healing those who were not Hebrews and, at least in some cases, turning them to himself. There can be no doubt that such healings were not only acts of mercy, but also acts of evangelism (which is the greatest mercy, Lk. 10:20).

Yet God also did (and does) signs and wonders out of compassion for his own people. God did many miracles through Moses, both to free and to provide for his people. Through Elisha God healed the waters of Jericho so that his people could drink it (2 Kgs. 2:19-22), miraculously reproduced oil for a wife of one of the prophets (2 Kgs. 4:1-7), and made a poisonous stew safe for his people to eat (2 Kgs. 4:38-41).2

God worked miracles of healing and provision through his prophets as part of his care for his own people, but also to show people that he alone was God—so they must turn to him and be saved. Whatever signs or wonders God did he always got glory for his Name, because he alone could do them. All of this foreshadows what God did through Jesus Christ, who showed God’s compassion and provision for his own people, but also touched “foreigners” for God (e.g., a Roman, a Samaritan, a Syro-Phoenician), and always displayed his Father’s glory and glorified his Father. In addition to being the Son of God, Jesus was also the greatest of all prophets.

 

The Old Testament and Deliverance Ministry

One way that God healed people through the ministry of Jesus involved a blatant disruption of the demonic realm. We know that “the reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the devil’s work” (1 Jn. 3:8). Nowhere is such destruction more obvious than in the salvation of a sinner, when the Spirit of Christ brings a person out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of God (Acts 26:18; Col. 1:13), and gives that person “authority to become [a child] of God” (Jn. 1:12). But it was also a very obvious, even dramatic thing when Jesus “destroyed the devil’s work” by casting out demons.

The Old Testament does not say much directly about the demonic realm, but what it says is intriguing. From it we learn that the power behind pagan religion is demonic. Before Joshua led them into the promised land, Moses spoke in a prophetic poem (Deuteronomy 32) about the sins which future generations of Israelites would commit. His words are a theological commentary on pagan worship:

They sacrificed to demons, which are not God—
gods they had not known,
gods that recently appeared,
gods your fathers did not fear (Deut. 32:17)

Later in the history of Israel, we read the sad fulfillment of Moses’ prophecy:

They sacrificed their sons
and their daughters to demons.
They shed innocent blood,
the blood of their sons and daughters,
whom they sacrificed to the idols of Canaan (Ps. 106:37-38)

The apostle Paul wrote about the same spiritual dynamic when he warned the church in Corinth, “Do I mean then that a sacrifice offered to an idol is anything, or that an idol is anything? No, but the sacrifices of pagans are offered to demons, and I do not want you to be participants with demons” (1 Cor. 10:19-20). The point in both Old and New Testaments is that the power behind idolatry is demonic.³

In addition to a theological analysis of idolatrous worship, the Old Testament gives us an account of an actual deliverance. In this case, the power of God became available to set king Saul free from demonic oppression.

One of the saddest accounts in the history of Israel is the story of Saul’s disobedience toward God. The prophet Samuel, who originally anointed Saul king, put the king’s rebellion in the strongest terms: “Rebellion is like the sin of witchcraft,” and added, “Because you have rejected the word of the Lord, he has rejected you as king” (1 Sam. 15:23). As part of God’s punishment of Saul, “an evil spirit from the Lord tormented him” (1 Sam. 16:14). This statement does not mean that the Lord commands hosts of evil spirits and sends them against hapless mortals. Rather, the Lord sometimes allows evil spirits to have their way with people who have rebelled against God, and that is one form of divine judgment upon them. A good example occurs in 1 Kgs. 22:19-28, where God allows a lying spirit to speak through false prophets, with the result that sinful king Ahab is led astray to campaign against the Aramaeans, and is killed in the battle. In the case of Saul, God allowed the judgment of demonic affliction to be ameliorated at times by his servant David. David would play the harp in Saul’s presence when the evil spirit attacked the king, and then “relief would come to Saul; he would feel better, and the evil spirit would leave him” (1 Sam. 16:13, 23).

This is a case of deliverance (at least temporary deliverance) from demonic oppression, but it is not just deliverance by a shepherd boy. David had already been anointed by Samuel to succeed Saul, and when he was, “from that day on the Spirit of the Lord came upon David in power” (1 Sam. 16:13). Not only was David anointed by the Spirit; he was also a prophet, as we know from Peter’s sermon on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:30). It appears, then, that the David who delivered Saul was an anointed, prophetic figure, who of course not only became king of Israel, but also spoke prophetically of Christ on a number of occasions (e.g., Pss. 2, 16, 22, 110).

 

Old Testament Healing and the Prophetic

These examples of prophetic healing and deliverance through prophetic figures in the Old Testament make a clear point. God chose to do signs and wonders through anointed, prophetic figures. He did them through his prophet and covenant mediator Moses; he also did them through other prophets such as Elijah, Elisha, and David. The New Testament evidence is similar. God did signs and wonders not only through Jesus⁴ (the Prophet and Mediator of the New Covenant), but also through Jesus’ disciples during his earthly ministry, and then through the apostles and other Christians⁵ as the church age began.⁶ The parallel suggests that God has always intended kingdom life in both Old and New Testaments to be “prophetic”—a life that includes signs and wonders. This may seem a bold statement, but other evidence supports it, including both the outpourings of God’s Spirit and the prophecies of such outpourings in the Old Testament.

The Old Testament contains prophecies and yearnings for God’s extension of his kingdom by signs and wonders—of which the church age is a fulfillment. Moses first gave voice to this yearning during the wilderness wanderings of Israel. In the book of Numbers we read how God had the elders of Israel stand around the tent of meeting. God then “took of the Spirit that was on [Moses] and put the Spirit on the seventy elders. When the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied” (Num. 11:25). Two other men, Eldad and Medad, were also listed among the elders, but had not come to the tent. But God also let his Spirit rest on them, “and they prophesied in the camp” (Num. 11:26). Joshua, who was Moses’ helper, was jealous for his great leader. He wanted Moses to be the sole prophet. He complained to Moses about what was happening. But Moses, with God’s heart, replied, “Are you jealous for my sake? I wish that all the Lord’s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put his Spirit on them” (Num. 11:29).

We know that Moses had God’s point of view when he said this, because God later promised to fulfill Moses’ wish in a prophecy well-known not only to Pentecostals and charismatics but to Christians everywhere:

And afterward,
I will pour out my Spirit on all people.
Your sons and daughters will prophesy,
your old men will dream dreams,
your young men will see visions.
Even on my servants, both men and women,
I will pour out my Spirit in those days (Joel 2:28-29)

Peter quoted Joel’s prophecy on the day of Pentecost (Acts 2:17ff), to explain how it came to pass that believers in Christ could be proclaiming the wonders of God in various tongues, “as the Spirit enabled them” (Acts 2:4). The outpouring of the Spirit which began there continued as the church grew and God continued to gift his people for the work of his kingdom. The gift of the Spirit for kingdom work is what Jesus promised just before he ascended: “You will receive power when the Holy Spirit comes on you; and you will be my witnesses” (Acts 1:8). In other words, they could not be Jesus’ “witnesses” until the “power” of the Holy Spirit came upon them. The Holy Spirit—the “Spirit of prophecy” (Rev. 19:10)—was necessary to enable God’s people to advance his kingdom. That Spirit was necessary in the Old Testament (as the prophets and their signs and wonders illustrate) and was necessary in the New Testament as well. And, since Jesus Christ is “the same yesterday and today and forever” (Heb. 13:8), the same “Spirit of prophecy” which is the “testimony of Jesus Christ” (Rev. 19:10) is necessary today, to make God’s people faithful testimonies or witnesses of Christ.

The examples of Old Testament outpourings of the Spirit and prophecies of such outpourings, taken all together, strongly indicate that God has always intended kingdom life, life under His rule and reign, in both Old and New Testaments to be “prophetic.”⁷ On the basis of Rev. 19:10, we can now define the “prophetic” as that which is a “testimony of Jesus Christ.” Old and New Testament evidence connects the prophetic with signs and wonders, and argues that such a prophetic lifestyle includes miraculous healings, deliverances, and other works of power. The democratization of the Spirit from Pentecost onward means that signs and wonders are to be a normal part of kingdom life. So it appears in the Early Church. That is no doubt why God provided lengthy New Testament passages (Rom. 12:1-8; 1 Cor. 12-14; Eph. 4:7-13; I Thes. 5:19-22; I Pet. 4:10-11) to help his people manage his abundant spiritual gifts.

If such was the case in the Early Church, one natural and related question is, to what extent signs and wonders may be expected in our day. A full answer to that question lies outside the scope of this chapter. A starting place for an answer may well be some of Jesus’ comments on what it means to follow him (e.g. Mat. 10:25; Lk. 6:40; Jn. 14:12). One question that can be addressed (at least in a limited way) is that of divine healing. Old Testament prophets did not heal everyone who needed healing, nor did Jesus himself. To what extent may we expect God to heal people today? The question needs to be addressed because it involves an Old Testament passage (Isaiah 53) which has sometimes been misunderstood.

 

Isaiah 53: The Substitutionary Atonement of Christ and Divine Healing

No discussion of healing and the Old Testament would be complete without a look at Isaiah 53. More than any other Old Testament passage, Isaiah 53 portrays the character, the ministry, the sufferings, the death, and the exaltation of the Messiah—as well as his gifting of the church. On the basis of this chapter alone, Isaiah’s book might well be called the “Gospel” of the Old Testament. Among other things, Isaiah’s prophecy anticipates the healing ministry of the Messiah:

Surely he took up our infirmities
and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
smitten by him, and afflicted.
But he was pierced for our transgressions,
he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was upon him,
and by his wounds we are healed (Isa. 53:4-5)

Jesus began to fulfill these verses when he started his healing ministry, as Matthew reports: “He drove out the spirits with a word and healed all the sick. This was to fulfill what was spoken through the prophet Isaiah: ‘He took up our infirmities and carried our diseases’“ (Mat. 8:16-17, citing Isa. 53:4a). Matthew applies Isaiah’s words to what Jesus did in his earthly ministry. But, as Luke says of the Lord’s works, these are “all that Jesus began (ērxato) to do and to teach, until the day he was taken up to heaven” (Acts 1:1-2). Luke describes the works of Jesus as those that he “began” to do, because Jesus then went on to do similar works in and through the Early Church (I Cor. 12:6; Gal. 3:5). And he is still doing them. Therefore, Isaiah’s words leave room for an understanding that the ongoing ministry of the Messiah includes miraculous healing and deliverance such as Matthew describes.

That is not to say that healing is automatically available to every believer today, any more than it was when Jesus walked the earth, or in the Early Church (cf. Gal. 4:14; Phil. 2:27; I Tim. 5:23; II Tim. 4:20). It also does not mean that healing and the atonement is “in the atonement” in the same way that forgiveness of sin is. On this point Isa. 53:5 (“The punishment that brought us peace was upon him, and by his wounds we are healed”) has been misunderstood.⁸ Isaiah’s references to “punishment” and “wounds” in this verse are a description of the suffering servant’s substitutionary atonement (cf. Isa. 53:6-12). But the “peace” (Hebrew shalom, “wholeness”) that comes as a result, and the “healing” brought by his wounds, are primarily the healing from sin (cf. Isa. 1:5, 6) and the peace of the promised Spirit (cf. Isa. 48:16; Jn. 14:26-27), whom we have within because of Christ’s atoning work.

Healing of sickness is made possible through the atonement (“he took up our sicknesses [h‑ōlāyēnû]” Isa. 53:4; cf. Mat. 8:16-17), inasmuch as forgiveness of sin makes healing possible (Ps. 103:3; James 5:15-16; see also Peter H. Davids chapter in this book on sin and the fruits of sin). But Scripture also makes it clear that the healing of disease mentioned in Isaiah 53 will only be experienced in part.⁹ In I Corinthians 13 Paul says that in this age the church will only experience spiritual gifts, which include healing, “in part (ek merous)” until the second coming of Christ: “For we know in part and we prophecy in part” (I Cor. 13:9; cf. I Cor. 1:6-7 and 13:8-10, 12; I Jn. 3:2; Rev. 22:4).¹⁰

The apostle Peter applies Isa. 53:5 to the forgiveness of sin. Peter says of Christ, “He himself bore our sins in his body on the tree, so that we might die to sins and live for righteousness; by his wounds you have been healed” (1 Pet. 2:24; ). Just as Isaiah portrays sin as disease (Isa. 1:5.6), so Peter uses Isaiah’s words to inform us that the “healing” of Isa. 53:5 is first and foremost a healing from sin. That is the “healing” that we find in the atonement. In the same vein, Peter goes on to quote Isa. 53:6: “For you were like sheep going astray, but now you have returned to the Shepherd and Overseer of your souls” (1 Pet. 2:25). The work of the atonement is to heal us from sin and to return stray sheep to God, as Peter’s application of Isa. 53:5-6 makes clear. It makes physical healing possible (“He took up our sicknesses” Isa. 53:4 and Mat. 8:16-17) but does not necessarily guarantee it in this age to God’s people.

That does not mean that healing and the atonement are totally unrelated. Because of Christ’s atonement God has sent healings and many other gifts of the Holy Spirit to his church. As Gordon Fee has observed, “Healing is provided for [in the atonement] because the atonement brought release from the … consequences of sin; nonetheless, since we have not yet received the redemption of our bodies, suffering and death are still our lot until the resurrection.”¹¹

 

Old and New Testaments and Healing Today

From the Old Testament we see that God combined spiritual words and deeds of power as he advanced his kingdom through his servants the prophets. So when Elijah had raised the widow of Zarephath’s son to life she exclaimed, “Now I know that you are a man of God and that the word of the Lord from your mouth is truth” (1 Kgs. 17:24). For her it was an act of power, her son’s resurrection, that confirmed the truth of God’s word from the prophet’s mouth. In a similar way, Elisha’s healing of Naaman the Syrian made the latter a believer in God (2 Kgs. 5:15.17).12 God used not only words, but also power, to bring the lost to himself, even in the Old Testament. He did the same in the New Testament. Jesus not only preached the “Gospel of the kingdom”—he demonstrated it by miraculous healings, deliverances, and resurrections (Mat. 4:23; Jn. 11:38-44). Jesus’ teaching and his works of power were intimately related—so much so that the people at Capernaum exclaimed, “What is this teaching? With authority and power he gives orders to evil spirits and they come out!” (Lk. 4:36).

The apostle Paul followed Christ’s example. His words to the Romans are noteworthy. He tells them how he has been “leading the Gentiles to obey God by what I have said and done—by the power of signs and wonders, through the power of the Spirit” (Rom. 15:18-19a). Paul characterizes his twofold ministry (“what I have said and done”) by saying, “I have fully proclaimed (plēroō “fill, fulfill”¹³) the gospel of Christ” (Rom. 15:19b). Paul’s account seems to make it clear that a “full” Gospel proclamation consists both of preaching/teaching the word and of attendant works of power—signs and wonders. That is just what the Old Testament evidence would lead us to expect, for that is just the way God worked through Old Testament prophets who foreshadowed the person and work of Christ.

That twofold ministry of words and works does not stop with the apostle Paul or with the New Testament church. As one moves through the Old Testament, the evidence mounts that God has in mind the creation of a prophetic people, who will be gifted to advance his kingdom by signs and wonders like the prophets of old.¹⁴ Another way of saying this is that Jesus not only died on the cross for our sins: he rose and ascended on high and—with the Father—sent his Spirit to enter his people (Jn. 14:17) and empower them (Rom. 8:9-14) for prophetic living.

After all, “the testimony of Jesus Christ is the Spirit of prophecy” (Rev. 19:10). Those who are living testimonies of Jesus Christ have the Spirit of prophecy within them. This does not mean that all of God’s people will prophesy, or that they are “prophets” in the sense that Agabus was a prophet (Acts 11:27-28, 21:10-11). Rather God will work through his people by that Spirit to do “signs and wonders”—even miraculous healings—on earth, just as he worked through his prophets in the Old Testament, and through his Son, and through the disciples/apostles and early Christians. It was, after all, Jesus (that perfect prophet) who said, “A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher” (Luke 6:40; cf. Mat. 10:25). Jesus’ words are a calling on God’s church. The church can embrace that calling with faith and expectation, because Jesus also promised: “He who believes in me will also do the works that I do (ta erga ha egō poiō),” and he added, “And greater works than these (meizona toutōn) will he do, because I go to the Father” (Jn. 14:12 RSV).

 

 PR

 

In the Next Issue

The Fall 2006 issue will feature “A Biblical View of the Relationship of Sin and the Fruits of Sin: Sickness, Demonization, Death, Natural Calamity” by Peter H. Davids.

 

Notes

¹ The Hebrew word translated “prophet” (nābî’) appears to be a passive participle from a root related to Akkadian nabû, “to call.” The sense seems to be that a prophet is someone called by God to be a spokesman for God (cf. Ex. 4:14-16). The Greek word (prophētēs) which normally translates the Hebrew, and from which our English word “prophet” comes, means, according to Henry George Liddell and Robert Scott, A Greek-English Lexicon (Oxford: Clarendon, 1968), p. 1540, “one who speaks for a god and interprets his will to man … revealer of God’s will, prophet.” However, it is clear from what prophets did in the Old Testament that they had far more than a speaking role.

² Elisha also miraculously caused a lost axehead to float, thus relieving the anxiety of the man who had both borrowed and lost it (2 Kgs. 6:1-7); and by Elisha’s word God struck an army of hostile Aramaeans blind, facilitated their capture, and then restored their sight—with the result that they left off raiding Israel’s territory (2 Kgs. 6:8-23).

³ Cf. C. Fred Dickason, Angels, Elect and Evil (Chicago: Moody, 1975), p. 152.

⁴ Mat. 4:23; 9:35-36; 10:1, 7-8; 11:5; 12:15, 18; 14:14; 15:30; 19:2 [cf. Mk. 10:1]; 21:14 [cf. Lk. 21:37] Mk. 1: 32-39; 2:2, 11-12; 3:14-15; 6:12-13; 10:1 [cf. Mat. 19:2] Lk. 4:18, 31-36, 40-44; 5:17, 24; 6:6-11, 17-18; 7:22; 9:1-2; 10:9, 13; 13:10-13, 22, 32; 14:4, 7ff.; 21:37 [cf. Mat. 21:14]; Jn. 2:23; 3:2; 7:14-15, 21-23, 31, 38; 10:25, 32, 38; 12:37, 42, 49; 14:10, 12; Acts 1:1; 2:22; 10:38

⁵ Acts 3:6, 12; 4:29-30; 5:12-16, 20-21, 28, 42; 6:8, 10; 8:4-7, 12; 9:17-18 (cf. 22:13), 34-35; 14:3, 8-10, 15ff.; 15:12, 36; 18:5, 11 (cf. II Cor. 12:12; I Cor. 2:4-5); 19:8-12. Rom. 15:18-19; I Cor. 2:4-5; 11:1; 12:1-11, 28-31; 14:24-25; II Cor. 12:12; Gal. 3:5; Phil. 4:9; I Thes. 1:5-6; Heb. 2:3-4.

⁶ As George Eldon Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1959), p. 115, says of the disciples, “ … the Kingdom of God was at work among men not only in the person of our Lord but also through His disciples as they brought the word and the signs of the Kingdom to the cities of Galilee.”

⁷ It is also clear, of course, that part of Christ’s work was to send the Spirit to all believers, thus enabling them to live such a “prophetic” lifestyle far beyond what Old Testament believers normally could do (cf. Jn. 7:37-39, 14:16-17).

⁸ See Gordon D. Fee, The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels (Beverly: Frontline, 1985).

⁹ In Eph. 5:18 Paul commands us to “pray in the Spirit on all occasions with all kinds of prayers and requests” (cf. I Thes. 5:17; Col. 4:2). Yet, Paul was ill in Galatia for a long enough period that it “was a trial” to the Galatians (Gal. 4:14); Epaphroditus did not experience immediate healing from illness and almost died according to Phil. 2:27; Timothy had chronic illnesses involving his stomach which were not completely healed according to I Tim. 5:23; and Paul had to leave Trophimus sick in Miletus, apparently seeing no healing in response to prayer (II Tim. 4:20).

¹⁰ On experiencing healing of illness as a “gift of grace” (I Cor. 12:9, 28, 29) experienced only in part in the Early Church according to the New Testament, see A. Oepke, “iaomai,” TDNT, vol. 3, p. 214; on experiencing spiritual gifts in this age only “in part (ek merous I Cor. 13:9),” see Gordon Fee, The First Epistle to the Corinthians (NICNT, ed., F. F. Bruce; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1987), p. 644 and n. 21; Schneider, TDNT, vol. 4, p. 596.

¹¹ Fee, The Disease of the Health and Wealth Gospels, p. 19. Fee goes on to say, “While there are scores of texts that explicitly tell us that our sin has been overcome through Christ’s death and resurrection, there is no text that explicitly says the same thing about healing, not even Isaiah 53 and its New Testament citations.”

¹² Naaman may well have appreciated that (in the words of one British New Testament scholar) “miracles of healing are … symbolic demonstrations of God’s forgiveness in action.” Cf. Alan Richardson, The Miracle-Stories of the Gospels (London: SCM Press, 1942), pp. 61ff.

¹³ The use of pleroō “bring (the Gospel) to full expression” in Rom. 15:19 cannot mean that Paul finished preaching the Gospel, because he was still planning to visit Rome and preach the Gospel further in Spain (Rom. 1:13, 15; 15:23f.). Nor can it mean that he said everything there was to say about the Gospel (J. Murray, The Epistle to the Romans [NICNT; Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1968], p. 214). But, as G. Friedrich points out, it means that Paul proclaimed the Gospel in the way he described in 15:18-19, “in word and deed, by the power of signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit”: “Again, Rom. 15:19 … does not mean that Paul has concluded his missionary work, but that the Gospel is fulfilled when it has taken full effect. In the preaching of Paul Christ has shown Himself effective in word and sign and miracle (v. 18). Hence the Gospel has been brought to fulfilment from Jerusalem to Illyricum and Christ is named in the communities (v. 20)” (Friedrich, TDNT, vol. 2, p. 732).

¹⁴ God shows by signs and wonders in both Testaments that he has invaded our space with his kingdom. As Ladd, The Gospel of the Kingdom, pp.107, 115, has noted, “When Israel rejected the Kingdom, the blessings which should have been theirs were given to those who would accept them … The Kingdom of God, as the redemptive activity and rule of God in Christ, created the Church and works through the Church in the world. As the disciples of the Lord went throughout the villages of Palestine, they proclaimed that in their mission, the Kingdom of God had come near to these villages (Luke 10:9). They performed the signs of the Kingdom, healing the sick and casting out demons, thus delivering men from the satanic power (vv. 9, 17) … In the same way, the Kingdom of God, the redemptive activity and power of God, is working in the world today through the Church of Jesus Christ.”

 

Scripture quotations, unless otherwise indicated, are taken from the NIV®.

This chapter is from Gary S. Greig and Kevin N. Springer, eds., The Kingdom and the Power: Are Healing and the Spiritual Gifts Used by Jesus and the Early Church Meant for the Church Today? A Biblical Look at How to Bring the Gospel to the World with Power (Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 1993). Used with permission.