At that very time Jesus cured many who had diseases, sicknesses and evil spirits, and gave sight to many who were blind. So he replied to the messengers, “Go back and report to John what you have seen and heard: The blind receive sight, the lame walk, those who have leprosy are cured, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the good news is preached to the poor.”37
And so did many of the Jews:
Still, many in the crowd put their faith in him. They said, “When the Christ comes, will he do more miraculous signs than this man?”38
One Jewish scholar has argued that the ancient Jews regarded the following three miracles to be “Messianic”:
1. The cleansing of lepers.
2. The casting out of demons that caused muteness.
3. The healing of blindness.39
It is interesting to note that whenever Jesus performed one of these miracles, the Jewish response was radically different from when He performed other types of miracles. For example, when Jesus cast out a demon that caused muteness, the Jews responded, saying, “Could this be the Son of David?”40 After Jesus healed a leper, the Pharisees and scribes came from “every village in all Galilee and Judea, as well as from Jerusalem” to see Him.41
Jesus clearly had authority over disease and demons.42 And much of His ministry was dedicated to healing the sick and casting out demons, as well as forgiving sins.43 Even after His resurrection, Jesus was still healing the sick through His followers.44 In fact, He commissioned His followers to carry on His ministry of healing.45
Note the words of Isaiah that were fulfilled in Christ:
He was despised and rejected by men, a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering. Like one from whom men hide their faces he was despised, and we esteemed him not. 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.46
Matthew applied this text to the healing ministry of Jesus while He was on earth.47 Peter pointed out that this ministry is still in effect.48 Jesus Christ is Healer, both for the body and the spirit.
But this was all a signpost. When Jesus came to town, it meant that healing, deliverance, joy, celebration, forgiveness, transformation, and rescue soon followed. This is the consistent testimony of the Gospels. Jesus healed, He forgave, He celebrated through feasting with people (usually the outcasts of society), He delivered, and He transformed lives—not by changing the outside of the cup, as the Pharisees did, but by curing hardened hearts and cleansing them from the inside.
Jesus’ healings demonstrated that the arrival of God’s rule over evil was breaking into the present. For Jesus, healings and the casting out of demons were signs of the dawning kingdom. They indicated that God’s future had arrived. They were tangible signposts that the kingdom of God was coming to earth as it is in heaven.
“But if I drive out demons by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God has come upon you.”49
By healing the sick and casting out demons, Jesus was effectively saying, “This is what happens when God is running the world. This is what it looks like when God is King of the earth. The time has come; the dominion of God is breaking into the present. This is what happens when God becomes King on earth as He is in heaven. And contrary to popular opinion, God’s rule will benefit those who are regarded as being the most unworthy.”50
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Jesus of Nazareth was a man accredited by God to you by miracles, wonders and signs, which God did among you through him.
—PETER 51
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To put it in a sentence: Jesus is God’s future in person. That is what His healings announced. To encounter Jesus was to encounter God’s rule in human form.
So Jesus went all throughout Galilee, heralding that God was taking the throne. And His healing ministry pointed to that. The religious leaders, who had a completely different understanding of how the kingdom would come, didn’t recognize it when it was actively breaking forth in their midst.
THE SEVEN SIGNS OF JESUS
In addition to His healings, Jesus did many miracles or “signs.” The miracles of Jesus were His parables and teachings in action.52 For example, John wrote his gospel around seven miracles that he called “signs.” A sign is a pointer to a deeper spiritual reality.
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Jesus’ signs and wonders were his calling card, one of the proofs that the kingdom of God had come.
—JOHN WIMBER 53
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Each sign in John’s gospel sets forth what life in the kingdom of God practically means. To put it another way, the seven signs reveal the nature of eternal life—a life that has been given to us now in Jesus Christ.54
Jesus Christ as eternal life is the central theme of John’s gospel:
• In Him was life.55
• Whoever believes in Him shall have eternal life.56
• Whoever drinks the water He gives shall have a well of water springing up into eternal life.57
• People would not come to Him that they might have life.58
• He is the bread of life.59
• Whoever follows Jesus shall have the light of life.60
• Jesus came that we might have life.61
• Jesus is the resurrection and the life.62
• Jesus is the way, the truth, and the life.63
• This is eternal life: that we might know the Father and Jesus Christ, whom He sent.64
• By believing, we have life through His name.65
We could easily write a separate book expounding the seven signs of John’s gospel, but here’s a brief survey:
1. Turning water into wine—demonstrates how eternal life reverses human failure and removes mortal shame.
2. The healing of the nobleman’s son—demonstrates how eternal life is unlimited by space, time, and matter.
3. The healing of the palsied man at the pool of Bethesda—demonstrates how eternal life delivers us from the bondage to sin and death.
4. The feeding of the five thousand—demonstrates how eternal life is always sufficient and can never be exhausted.
5. Jesus walking on water—demonstrates how eternal life transcends and is victorious over the force of nature.
6. The healing of the man who was born blind—demonstrates how eternal life gives spiritual sight.
7. The raising of Lazarus from the dead—demonstrates how eternal life overcomes death in all of its degrees.
JESUS IS THE REAL TEMPLE
Earlier we pointed out that healing and forgiveness of sins go together. This is abundantly clear in both Testaments. In this connection, the ancient Jews understood that the temple was the place where sins were forgiven. The Gospels are clear that Jesus was the Temple of God in living, breathing, walking, and talking form. He was the embodiment of what the temple meant. Consider the following:
• The Jews understood that the temple was the one place on earth where heaven and earth intersected. It was the extension of the garden of Eden, the playground of angels and humans. Jesus was God and man. He was the joining together of God’s dwelling and the dwelling of humans. Jesus is the reality of Bethel, the “house of God,” which is marked by commerce between the heavens and the earth. (Recall Jacob’s dream in Genesis 28, where angels ascended and descended from heaven to earth, and Jesus’ words to Nathanael in John 1 that Jesus is the fulfillment of God’s house.)66
• Jesus identified Himself as the tabernacle of God, the fulfillment of the tabernacle of Moses, where God’s glory rested.67 The words of John 1:14, He “dwelt among us,” literally mean He “tabernacled among us.” In the same text, John went on to say “and we beheld His glory.”
• In John 2:19, Jesus said to the Jew
s, “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up.” John then informed us, two verses later, that Jesus was speaking of the temple of His body.
• In Matthew 12:6, Jesus announced that He is greater than the physical temple. The physical temple was a signpost. Jesus is the reality.
• In Colossians 2:9, Paul says that all the fullness of the Godhead dwells in Jesus in bodily form. In other words, Jesus is the dwelling place of God.
• In John 20, Jesus breathed into the disciples. They were now a new creation. He then gave them the word of proclaiming forgiveness to sinners. Forgiveness was the rule of the temple in Jerusalem. The temple afforded forgiveness of sins by the sacrifices that were offered there. Now Jesus, the real Temple and the real Sacrifice, offered forgiveness. And those who were part of the Temple, His disciples, declared it as well.68
• In His ministry in Galilee, Jesus was acting and living as though He were the temple itself. He was fulfilling all of the temple’s functions. To have your sins forgiven in that day, you had to go to the temple. Jesus was subverting this system by offering forgiveness Himself.
• After the temple of His body was destroyed, Jesus rose again on the third day. Fifty days later, at Pentecost, thousands of Jews were converted to Christ. They were the “living stones” that were “hewn out of the one Rock,” which is Christ. In Mark 14:58, one of the witnesses at Jesus’ trial said, “We heard him say, ’I will destroy this man-made temple and in three days will build another, not made by man.’”69 These living stones became the building blocks for the house of God. Jesus, the real Temple, had increased. Now the church has become the temple of God on earth.70
• In Acts 2, an unusual event occurred on the day of Pentecost in the city of Jerusalem. The Spirit of God fell on 120 disciples of Jesus. They spoke in tongues, and tongues of fire appeared on their heads. The real temple of God was being born right in the midst of the old physical temple. The tongues were the reverse of what happened in Babel. At Babel sinful men tried to achieve unity by creating a tower to reach the heavens. God judged their effort and confused them by scrambling their languages. At Pentecost the Spirit of God united them, they spoke in other tongues, and they understood one another. The fire on their heads is reminiscent of the fire that fell from heaven on the temple when it was dedicated.71 The new temple of God is not built with human hands.72
• The temple was a signpost of a future reality. It was God’s dwelling place. It was the place of forgiveness, redemption, restoration, and wholeness. It was the place of God’s presence on earth.
So Jesus was the Temple of God in person—the overlap of heaven and earth. In Jesus, God’s will was being done “on earth as it is in heaven.”73
What does this have to do with the Lord’s healing ministry? A great deal.
In addition to certain miracles many first-century Jews believed the Messiah would do the following:
• He would cleanse and restore the temple.
• He would triumph over Israel’s enemies.
• He would end Israel’s exile.
• He would bring God’s peace and justice to the whole world.74
• He would be of Davidic descent.75
The First Testament books of Jeremiah, Daniel, Ezra, and Nehemiah all witness to the fact that Israel’s exile was the result of their sin and rebellion. Israel, therefore, longed to be forgiven (corporately) and to be released from exile. (They were under the thumb of the Romans during Jesus’ day.)
In their eyes God had left the earth after the temple at Jerusalem was destroyed by the Babylonians and Israel was taken into exile. He was no longer called “the God of heaven and earth.” He was only called “the God of heaven.”76 The temple and the land, possessed by God’s people, gave the Lord a foothold in the earth.
For this reason, the First Testament prophets predicted that God would someday return to Zion. When this happened, the long, bitter exile of Israel would end and their sins would be forgiven. To put it another way, if the sin that caused Israel to be exiled was forgiven, it meant that Israel’s long exile was over.77
Jesus’ healing ministry, therefore, was not simply evidence that He was the promised Messiah or that the kingdom of God was breaking into the present. It was not simply evidence of the compassion of God to alleviate human suffering, reversing the curse that sin produced. It was also a visible expression that Jesus was re-creating the new Israel and that her exile had come to an end. The healings Jesus did demonstrated that the forgiveness He offered was in fact effective.78
JESUS’ CLEANSING OF THE TEMPLE
In like manner stands Jesus’ act of cleansing the temple, which was a dramatic symbol that the temple and its corrupt system were under God’s judgment. The city of Jerusalem and the temple that stood in it—the place of God’s presence—were to be the light of the world. Instead, they came to symbolize the commercial oppression of the poor. The place where God chose to put His name rejected Him when He appeared.79 Jesus’ “temple tantrum” demonstrated, in active parable, that the city and the temple would be destroyed.80 Jesus was declaring and portraying that God’s judgments against His people and their temple in the past were repeating themselves again. When Jesus cleansed the temple, He was acting in the role of a king, for only kings held the exclusive right to cleanse and reestablish the temple. This act of cleansing the temple is what most likely got Him killed.
Jesus was replacing the old temple with Himself. At the consummation of all things, the temple of God—Christ and those who are in Christ—will fill the earth and be among humans.81 Thus, God’s intention to expand the garden to cover the entire globe will eventually reach fulfillment. As Zechariah prophesied hundreds of years beforehand, the “BRANCH” would rebuild the temple, sit on His throne, and rule.82 In that day fasting will turn into feasting.83
In short, Jesus fulfilled the chief criteria of the Messiah: He would be of Davidic descent (Jesus was born of the seed of David, and His life would echo David’s life in many respects). He would cleanse and restore the temple (Jesus cleansed the temple and, in His resurrection, restored its reality). He would triumph over Israel’s enemies (Jesus conquered all of God’s enemies in a way that no one expected—on a Roman cross). He would end Israel’s exile (Jesus did this in His death and resurrection). And He would bring God’s peace and justice to the whole world (Jesus inaugurated this in His healing ministry, and He will consummate it at His return).
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We must look for the fulfillment of the New Covenant within, the covenant not of laws but of life. The Spirit of Christ Himself is to be within us as the power of our lives.
—ANDREW MURRAY 84
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CURING AND HEALING
Jesus never met a condition He couldn’t cure. Jesus even healed the weather—sounds strange but true.85 But there is a big difference between healing and curing.86
Nels Ferré was born in Sweden in 1908, one of ten children of a strict Swedish Baptist clergyman. At thirteen, he was sent to find his future in America on his own. At the train station on the day of his departure, Nels’s family formed a prayer circle around him as his father prayed first. Then each member of the family blessed him with a prayer. Nels boarded the train and sat by the window, watching his family wave to him and cry. As the train rolled out of the station, his mother ran down the wooded platform alongside it. He slid the window open and leaned out just in time to hear her calling, “Nels! Nels! Remember Jesus! Remember Jesus!”87
Ferré became a respected theologian, sometimes with rather strange notions, and taught at some of the most prestigious educational institutions in the United States. While teaching at Andover Newton Theological School, he developed rheumatoid arthritis. Two of his graduate students took it upon themselves to provide transportation for him to and from his home to the campus. His physicians warned Ferré that the disease was progressing fast enough that eventually he
would never walk again. But Ferré said he lived in the “citadel of faith,” not the “borderlands of doubt.” So he refused to accept that diagnosis. Instead, Ferré asked his seminary students to leave his car farther, and farther, and farther away from his house. Gradually, Ferré lengthened the distance he could walk to the point where he asked the students not to bring the car at all.
He struggled and stumbled to the classroom. But when he arrived at the door, he burst into the room, singing Martin Luther’s great hymn “A Mighty Fortress Is Our God.” He sang so loudly he could have startled people for miles around.
Was Nels Ferré cured? No. All the determination in the world did not change the course of the disease. His joints still swelled. His hands became disfigured. Fibrous tissue still grew in the wrong places, and the linings to his lungs were reddened. His mobility decreased as the pain increased.
Was Nels Ferré healed? Absolutely. He experienced the only kind of healing that counts in the end because it is the only kind of healing that lasts to the end—unto eternity. He “remembered Jesus.” And in that remembrance he found healing, the healing that only Jesus can bring.
God sometimes cures. God always heals. Sometimes death is the final healing act. But death is never a “blessing.” The blessing is not in the death, which is part of the powers and principalities Jesus has already overthrown. The blessing is in the healing that comes after all the curatives of earth have been tried and failed.
CHAPTER 11
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Jesus: Teacher and Preacher
Not only do we know God by Jesus Christ alone, but we know
ourselves by Jesus Christ alone. We know life and death by
Jesus Page 20