AP

Mark 5:41-43    [Jesus] took her by the hand and said to her, “Talitha koum!” (which means “Little girl, I say to you, get up!”).  Immediately the girl stood up and began to walk around (she was twelve years old).  At this they were completely astonished.  He gave strict orders not to let anyone know about this, and told them to give her something to eat.

This is one of several occasions when Jesus gives ‘strict orders’ to recipients and witnesses of his supernatural healing power not to tell anyone about it. This seems quite strange to us at first because this power ought to be a very powerful draw card in our evangelistic efforts to lead people to Jesus.  After all, did not he himself say to his disciples:  “Don’t you believe that I am in the Father, and that the Father is in me?  The words I say to you I do not speak on my own authority.  Rather, it is the Father, living in me, who is doing his work.  Believe me when I say that I am in the Father and the Father is in me; or at leas believe on the evidence of the works themselves” (John 14:10-11)?

But the point Jesus is making in these strict orders for silence (which commentators refer to as the ‘Messianic Secret’) is to avoid people coming to him simply because of what they might gain from him in purely material terms.  One of the devices the Devil used to tempt him at the beginning of his earthly ministry from pursuing the way of the Cross was to suggest that he win a following by doing something spectacularly impressive like base-jumping from the Pinnacle of the Temple without a parachute – and he even quoted Scriptural support for his temptation (Matthew 4:5-7)!

The Message of the Cross is that the whole human race is part of Adam’s rebellion in the Garden of Eden and therefore suffers the same condemnation that God pronounced on him (Genesis 3:22-24).  The way of the Cross is that Jesus came to earth specifically to climb the ‘tree of death’ in our place as the ONLY way for us to have restored access to the ‘Tree of Life’.

This stark, inescapable truth is so obnoxious to our proud hearts that we will do anything (believe anything) to avoid facing it, as the Apostle Paul points out so forcefully: “For the message of the cross is foolishness to those who are perishing, but to us who are being saved it is the power of God. … … Jews demand signs and Greeks look for wisdom, but we preach Christ crucified: a stumbling block to Jews and foolishness to Gentiles, but to those whom God has called, both Jews and Greeks, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God” (1 Corinthians 1:18, 24).

Jesus’ miraculous powers are clear evidence in support of his claim to be the Messiah and the only way to heaven, but recognising this must always be the result of our recognising first that we are lost sinners in desperate need of a Saviour, and so to come with a broken and a contrite heart to kneel at the foot of the cross in humble repentance-and-faith.

Let us never be tempted to use the ‘Signs and Wonders’ approach as an evangelistic tool, and so produce purely nominal ‘disciples’ who have never faced the reality and enormity of their sin and their need for forgiveness.

– Bruce Christian