Making the Impossible Possible

Does God still perform miracles?

“But God…” — Ephesians 2:4a

As we survey the biblical record, we discover one primary purpose of signs and wonders was to authenticate God’s messengers and to confirm the authority of God’s message. Therefore, it should not surprise us that after the Bible was complete with the death of the final apostle near the end of the first century AD, dense constellations of miraculous activity would become less common, if not unnecessary. [1]

If we define a miracle as an act God accomplishes that is naturally impossible, we will admit miracles still take place every day. We just have to know where to look. In Ephesians 2:1–5, the apostle Paul shows us by revealing facet of grace. In theology, we call it regeneration. Jesus referred to it as being “born again.”

1And you were dead in the trespasses and sins 2in which you once walked, following the course of this world, following the prince of the power of the air, the spirit that is now at work in the sons of disobedience — 3among whom we all once lived in the passions of our flesh, carrying out the desires of the body and the mind, and were by nature children of wrath, like the rest of mankind. 4But God, being rich in mercy, because of the great love with which he loved us, 5even when we were dead in our trespasses, made us alive together with Christ — by grace you have been saved. (ESV)

Biblical Anthropology

Before he gets to the “greater than we can imagine” news, Paul begins with the “worse than we expected” news. Sinners are not merely wounded. According to biblical anthropology, every human being is dead — not physically, but spiritually.

In our natural condition, we are spiritually blind and deaf, born with a moral predisposition to rebel against the law of God, coupled with the inability to respond to…