Theopedia

Miracles of Jesus

“Now Jesus did many other signs in the presence of the disciples, which are not written in this book; but these are written so that you may believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that by believing you may have life in his name.”

— John 20:30-31 (ESV)

Definition

The miracles of Jesus are the supernatural acts of power Scripture attributes to him: healing the sick, raising the dead, calming storms, multiplying food, and more. John’s Gospel calls them “signs” (σημεῖα): not wonders valued for their own sake, but acts that point beyond themselves to who Jesus is (cf. John 2:1-11; 20:30-31). The Westminster Confession’s definition of a miracle applies: God, who ordinarily works through means, is “free to work without, above, or against them at pleasure.”1

Biblical Basis

Jesus repeatedly appealed to his own miracles as evidence of his divine mission, not merely as displays of power: “The works that the Father has given me to accomplish, the very works that I am doing, bear witness about me, that the Father has sent me” (John 5:36); “though you do not believe me, believe the works” (John 10:38). Bavinck reads this as the pattern for all of Jesus’s miracles: they are “signs of the presence of God, a demonstration of divine power, proof of the messianic era” (cf. Matt. 11:3-5; 12:28; Luke 13:16), so that “in Jesus, miracle becomes history; his history is itself a miracle.”2

Comprehensive List

The Gospels record roughly three dozen distinct miracles, grouped below by kind. Some events (the feeding of the 5,000, the healing of blind Bartimaeus) appear in more than one Gospel; all parallel references are given together.

Nature miracles

  • Turning water into wine at Cana (John 2:1-11)
  • The first catch of fish (Luke 5:1-11)
  • Calming the storm (Matt. 8:23-27; Mark 4:35-41; Luke 8:22-25)
  • Feeding the 5,000 (Matt. 14:13-21; Mark 6:31-44; Luke 9:10-17; John 6:1-14)
  • Walking on water (Matt. 14:22-33; Mark 6:45-52; John 6:16-21)
  • Feeding the 4,000 (Matt. 15:32-39; Mark 8:1-9)
  • The coin in the fish’s mouth (Matt. 17:24-27)
  • Cursing the fig tree (Matt. 21:18-22; Mark 11:12-14, 20-25)
  • The second catch of fish, after the resurrection (John 21:1-14)

Healing miracles

  • Cleansing a leper (Matt. 8:1-4; Mark 1:40-45; Luke 5:12-16)
  • Healing the centurion’s servant (Matt. 8:5-13; Luke 7:1-10)
  • Healing the royal official’s son (John 4:46-54)
  • Healing Peter’s mother-in-law (Matt. 8:14-15; Mark 1:29-31; Luke 4:38-39)
  • Healing a paralytic lowered through a roof (Matt. 9:1-8; Mark 2:1-12; Luke 5:17-26)
  • Healing the man at the pool of Bethesda (John 5:1-15)
  • Restoring a man’s withered hand (Matt. 12:9-13; Mark 3:1-6; Luke 6:6-11)
  • Healing the woman with a flow of blood (Matt. 9:20-22; Mark 5:25-34; Luke 8:43-48)
  • Healing two blind men (Matt. 9:27-31)
  • Healing a mute, demon-oppressed man (Matt. 9:32-34)
  • Healing a deaf man with a speech impediment (Mark 7:31-37)
  • Healing a blind man at Bethsaida (Mark 8:22-26)
  • Healing a man born blind (John 9:1-41)
  • Healing a woman crippled eighteen years (Luke 13:10-17)
  • Healing a man with dropsy (Luke 14:1-6)
  • Cleansing ten lepers (Luke 17:11-19)
  • Healing blind Bartimaeus and his companion (Matt. 20:29-34; Mark 10:46-52; Luke 18:35-43)
  • Restoring Malchus’s severed ear (Luke 22:49-51)

Exorcisms

  • A man with an unclean spirit in the Capernaum synagogue (Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31-37)
  • The Gerasene demoniac(s) (Matt. 8:28-34; Mark 5:1-20; Luke 8:26-39)
  • A blind and mute demon-oppressed man (Matt. 12:22-28; Luke 11:14-23)
  • The Syrophoenician woman’s daughter (Matt. 15:21-28; Mark 7:24-30)
  • The boy with a convulsive spirit (Matt. 17:14-21; Mark 9:14-29; Luke 9:37-43)

Raising the dead

  • The widow of Nain’s son (Luke 7:11-17)
  • Jairus’s daughter (Matt. 9:18-26; Mark 5:21-43; Luke 8:40-56)
  • Lazarus (John 11:1-44)

Jesus’s own resurrection is the climactic instance of God’s power over death in the Gospels, but Scripture treats it as a distinct event, not one more item in this list; see Resurrection of Jesus.

Objections and Responses

Miracle stories are only meant to establish that Jesus’s teaching is true; whether the events themselves happened is beside the point. Hodge answers that Scripture treats the events and Christ’s identity as inseparable: a miracle’s main point is not chiefly to prove that a teaching is true but that the teacher is sent from God. Christ’s own appeals to “the works that I do” (John 10:25, 38) rest on their having actually occurred; an evidential appeal to acts that didn’t happen would prove nothing at all.3

Related Doctrines

References

  1. Charles Hodge, “Chapter XII. Miracles,” in Systematic Theology, Volume I (New York: Charles Scribner and Company, 1871), 617-618, quoting the Westminster Confession of Faith. ↩

  2. Herman Bavinck, Reformed Dogmatics: Abridged in One Volume, ed. John Bolt (Grand Rapids: Baker Academic, 2011), chap. 4, “Revelation.” ↩

  3. Hodge, 636. ↩