What is the primary role that miracles serve? In this brief clip, R.C. Sproul examines the book of Hebrews to consider how God’s miraculous works relate to His Word.
Transcript:
Now we go to the book of Hebrews in the New Testament, and we read in the second chapter of Hebrews these words: “Therefore, we must give the more earnest heed to the things we have heard, lest we drift away. For if the word spoken through angels proved steadfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just reward, how shall we escape if we neglect so great a salvation, which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed to us by those who heard Him, God also bearing witness with signs and wonders, with various miracles, and gifts of the Holy Spirit.” We often think of bearing witness as something that only we do, that it’s our task to bear witness to Christ or to bear witness to God. But God bore witness to Jesus, and the way in which He bore witness to Jesus was by miracles. John Locke, the British philosopher, once said that the primary function—not the only function, but the primary function—of the miracle in the Bible is to be the credit of the proposer; that is, to prove the truthfulness of the person who was doing them, to certify that this person was endorsed by God and was speaking the truth of God. That’s why we have to be very, very, very careful about our understanding of miracles. Because, apart from the other functions that they have of relieving suffering and so on, in biblical times, one of the primary purposes of the miracle was to prove that this person was an agent of revelation, was somebody speaking nothing less than the Word of God.
