Like any other human being, the gospel also suggests that Jesus’ healing power often overwhelmed him, which portrays a man whose work often left him exhausted like a normal person. Mark 1;35 narrates of Jesus going to a lonely spot in the desert after healing at Capernaum, and his disciples are ‘forced to track him down.’ As his fame pervades, he avoids bigger towns and focuses his miracles on the countryside, but still, as the gospel narrates, ‘people kept coming to him from all sides’ Mark 1:45. Further, he seems not to like the commotion that his miracles cause among the people as he mentions ‘not a word to anyone’ to the people he heals (Mark 1:44).
Personal reflection
Isben mentions how important it is that Christians do not take the word for word these miracles as some of them were simply symbols of Jesus’s power of the kingdom of God. For instance, the author mentions how miracles played a significant role in highlighting God’s power. The healing of the blind, for instance, is no different from calming the storm. As the author puts it, ” some of these miracles help clarify some of our more central tasks of discovering what this gospel material tells us about Jesus’. For instance, Jesus calming the storm is one of God’s attributes in the Old Testament scriptures. As Psalm 89 also iterates, the mighty Lord is one who rules over the surging seas” and as the one who “stills the swelling’ waves.
Difference between believers
Isben takes his time to explain how the 21st-century believer and the 1st-century believer may differ in the way they construe Jesus’ miracles. The author makes it clear that miracles in the first century did not cause ‘surprise’ in the people but instead imbued the people with awe, reverence, and fear as only a higher person, as Jesus would be able to tackle the evil that was wrapped in sickness, death, and suffering. As such, his suggestion for the 21st-century man to view these miracles as a “therapeutic effect of extra-ordinary compassion” goes to show what most people today should embrace; genuine compassion as such healings still occur in the modern-day era like it did in the ancient days.
As such, the gospel portrait of Jesus is a man who intended for his audience to care for what he was saying rather than what he was doing-the miracles. In other words, as the Gospel of John states, Blessed are those who have not seen yet believe (20:29), all Jesus wanted was for the people to have faith in themselves and in him through God to be healed. It is for the same reason that exemplars of faith such as the sick brought down to through the rooftop to be cured and a woman touching Jesus cloak that Isben counts this as active faith that the people ought to have before believing in his miracles. Further, it is for this same reason of faith as an invaluable act for one to believe in Jesus’ miracles that he denied the Pharisee the ‘signs’ when they came demanding Jesus to prove his marvel of these miracles. However, Jesus responds by telling them ‘why does this age seek a sign, I assure you, no such sign will be given’ (Mark 8;12)…