apostles had to preach. Jesus, a poor Jewish carpenter from the backwater village of Nazareth, just recently executed as a criminal by means of the Empire’s most extreme and degrading form of capital punishment, is risen from the dead and is the long-awaited Messiah and Lord of the whole universe! The gospel sounded no less absurd in the first century than it does today. What is amazing is not that some did not believe, but that anyone believed at all. They did so because of the gospel’s own self-authenticating power — its power to make present the reality it announces — and also through the miraculous healings by which God himself bore witness to the spoken message and disposed the hearts of the listeners to believe it.39
Luke underscores again and again the relationship between miracles and the growth of the Church. In Jerusalem “many signs and wonders were done among the people by the hands of the apostles…. And more than ever believers were added to the Lord, multitudes both of men and women” (5:12–14; cf. 2:43–47). When Philip evangelized in Samaria, the people gave heed to his preaching “when they heard him and saw the signs he did” (8:6). The extraordinary miracles worked by Paul in Ephesus became known throughout the region, and “fear fell upon them all; the name of the Lord Jesus was extolled … and the word of the Lord grew and prevailed mightily” (19: 17, 20).
The growth of the Church hardly went smoothly, however. It encountered many forms of opposition, human and spiritual. The early Christians experienced their first taste of persecution when Peter and John were arrested, then forbidden by the Sanhedrin to teach in the name of Jesus (4:18). It was a demand to privatize faith, to stop speaking publicly about the gospel and its implications, not unlike what Christians experience in many parts of the world today.
The believers’ response is instructive. They gathered to pray, realizing that intercessory prayer is essential for the success of the Church’s mission. Surprisingly, they did not pray for the Lord to overthrow their persecutors, or even for themselves to be kept safe. Rather, they prayed for even more confidence to preach the gospel accompanied by supernatural signs. “Lord, look upon their threats, and grant to your servants to speak your word with all boldness, while you stretch out your hand to heal, and signs and wonders are performed through the name of your holy servant Jesus” (4:29–30).
Times of greater trouble require a greater release of the Holy Spirit: greater zeal for the gospel, greater faith to move mountains, more healings, more joy, more courage in the face of persecution. If the Church, feeling external pressures against its evangelistic mission, boldly prayed for signs and wonders then, how can we not do so today?
When they finished praying, “the place in which they were gathered together was shaken; and they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and spoke the word of God with boldness” (4:31). It is a kind of replay of Pentecost, a fresh outpouring of power from on high to meet the new challenges of the day. The Lord has more than answered their prayer.
Not Eloquence but Power
The letters of Paul, written earlier than Acts, give further insight into the role of healings and miracles in the early Church. For Paul, manifestations of the Spirit’s power were an essential part of the preaching of the gospel. Although he was capable of eloquent arguments, he deliberately refrained from them so as to preach the unvarnished kerygma, the message of Christ crucified and risen.40 In fact, Paul believed there was a grave danger in people coming to Christ on the fragile basis of human persuasiveness rather than the firm basis of God’s power. Reason can provide a support for faith, but it cannot produce faith itself. So Paul insists, “My speech and my message were not in plausible words of wisdom, but in demonstration of Spirit and power, that your faith might not rest in the wisdom of men but in the power of God” (1 Cor 2:4–5). By “demonstration of Spirit and power” he probably meant both the convincing power of the Holy Spirit at work in the hearts of the hearers, convincing them that the gospel is true, and the miracles that accompany the gospel, proving that Jesus is indeed alive and at work in the world.
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