I read some Bible study notes on Acts 3, the healing of the lame man by Peter and John. After wise words about not everyone being healed, and questions about how we might sense God calling us to some unusual action, the study urged Christians to be bolder in praying for miraculous healing on the following logic:
- The disciples were acting under Jesus’s authority.
- But all of us as believers have his authority, because we have a commission from him (ref. Matthew 28:18-20).
- Ergo we are in exactly the same position as Peter and John, and look what they did!
Now I’m sure that such arguments have been used since the Healing Crusades of the 1940s, and even before, as an alternative to “healing is in the atonement” based on Isaiah 53. I’m sure Benny Hinn is pushing the same line in his current healing Crusade in Zimbabwe (minus the “silver and gold have I none” line). But it’s actually a theological con trick, and a dangerous one at that.
The first point to note is that the Great Commission of Matthew 28 is not a mandate to heal, but to preach the gospel, baptise, and disciple. Now, one might also point out that even that Commission was given by Jesus, in actual fact, only to the eleven apostles. But given that it would be impossible for them to fulfil it alone in their lifetimes, and that the Book of Acts shows how the mandate was executed to the nations primarily by a supernumerary apostle, Paul, and also by the believers as they were scattered during the first Jerusalem persecution, we are justified in universalising Jesus’s meaning to his whole Church.
But the same is not true for healing. It’s perhaps over-simplistic to say that the Jerusalem Church of Acts 3 numbered 3,120 people (the 120 in the upper room plus 3,000 saved by Peter’s Acts 2 sermon). Many of those were piulgfrims for the Pentecost feast who would have gone home, and others were being added daily. But what is plainly stated in 2:43 is that many miraculous signs were done by the apostles, ie they were not done by the other 3,108, or whatever, believers. This is consistent with the “notable miracle” of ch3 being performed by two apostles. Not only that, but in the summary in 5:12 we read that “The apostles performed many miraculous signs and wonders among the people.”
Ignoring this rather clear limitation on miracle-working by Luke, Charismatics point to 1 Corinthians 12 as evidence that the Corinthian church was “moving in the gifts” of healing and miraculous powers as a matter of course. But then how does one explain the same apostle, writing to the same church, to say that signs, wonders, and miracles were the marks of an apostle that validated his preaching to them, in 2 Corinthians 12:12? He could scarcely claim as a badge of authority that which many believers with sufficient faith was doing in all the churches (except Jerusalem!).
Now, there are indeed exceptions to this “apostles only” working of miracles in the New Testament, but as far as I can recall only two non-apostles are named as doing them. The first is Philip the Evangelist, who one might argue was acting in an apostolic role among the Samaritans, and Stephen. Other than that, the only two “possibles” (unless you can remember any I’ve missed) are firstly Hebrews 2, in which God is described as having testified to the gospel through signs, wonders and various miracles: but given the context of a contrast between the old giving of the law and the new giving of the gospel apostolic miracles may well be in mind. Secondly, Paul castigates the Galatian church in Galatians 3 for forgetting that they received the Spirit (through Paul) by faith, and adds, “Does God give you his Spirit and work miracles among you because you observe the law, or because you believed what you heard?”
It seems to me that in the context of Paul’s reminder of how they first received the Spirit, this quotation may well be a kind of “historic present,” referring to Paul’s own miracles done without their own merit when he evangelised them. Even if not, though, one verse is a slim basis on which to encourage people to expect miracles on a frequent basis. For even the list of ministries in 1 Corinthians 12 starts with “apostles,” showing that he has in mind giftings given to the whole temple of Christ’s body – the worldwide Church. And there is no need to deny that from time to time miraculous healings and other wonders do occur, even now, as God wills.
Why do so many of the New Testament texts emphasise miracles as an apostolic gift, then? The answer is, of course, simple. The apostles were proclaiming a new teaching for a new Covenant, on the level of that of Moses, whose signs and miracles had validated the Old Covenant. Indeed, In Peter’s Acts 3 explanation of the miracle (Acts 3:22-23) he directly describes Jesus as the “prophet like Moses” foretold in the torah.
So why does it matter if we mistakenly equate ourselves with the apostles, if it increases our faith to pray for big things? It matters because we are not apostles, any more than the thousands of Jerusalem believers were, and as Charismatic experience shows when examined dispassionately, oft-repeated false declarations of miracles raise false hopes and, in many cases, destroy the faith of those who remain sick or whose loved ones die. It encourages a host of excuses for failure that amount to pious lies, whether they be about invisible healing or lack of sufficient faith. And if miracles validate the gospel, then it follows that a trail of failed miracles discredits it. Praying for the sick needs as much skill and sensitivity as doctors need when dishing out the pills: there is a fine line between encouraging faith and inducing a shortlived placebo effect through the power of suggestion.
It remains the case that, all the way down church history, miracles have occurred that it is foolish to deny. Sometimes very saintly believers have had “Peter and John moments” in which the Spirit has given them authority to proclaim and witness wonders. They had no problem knowing when God spoke to them in that way. And many or most Christians can attest to surprising answers to prayers, and providences of many kinds. But that is not the same as taking “miracle worker” as the usual modus operandi of our God (despite Waymaker), or treating every recovery from illness or sunshine for the church bazaar as a miracle.
After all, even the aposotolic one with the lame man leaping and dancing and praising God was sufficiently uncommon to be the talk of Jerusalem.
