How exactly is the power of God made operative in our lives? This is critical information if we are to have more than a “form of godliness.”
Matthew 14:22-33 says:
22 Immediately He made the disciples get into the boat and go ahead of Him to the other side, while He
sent the crowds away. 23 After He had sent the crowds away, He went up on the mountain by Himself to pray; and when it was evening, He was there alone. 24 But the boat was already a long distance from the land, battered by the waves; for the wind was contrary. 25 And in the fourth watch of the night He came to them, walking on the sea. 26 When the disciples saw Him walking on the sea, they were terrified, and said, “It is a ghost!” And they cried out in fear. 27 But immediately Jesus spoke to them, saying, “Take courage, it is I; do not be afraid.”
28 Peter said to Him, “Lord, if it is You, command me to come to You on the water.” 29 And He said, “Come!” And Peter got out of the boat, and walked on the water and came toward Jesus. 30 But seeing the wind, he became frightened, and beginning to sink, he cried out, “Lord, save me!” 31 Immediately Jesus stretched out His hand and took hold of him, and *said to him, “You of little faith, why did you doubt?” 32 When they got into the boat, the wind stopped. 33 And those who were in the boat worshiped Him, saying, “You are certainly God’s Son!”
Now, when this scripture is ever discussed, everyone usually agrees that the lesson here is that we are to keep our focus on Jesus at all times and not on the vicissitudes of daily life. In this way we are able to walk above our circumstances and not be overwhelmed by them.
That is a helpful message, but I think it is far from a complete explanation of what the Lord really hopes we learn as we meditate on the passage. Let’s go a bit deeper and see what we find, especially with respect to how we might ourselves literally perform the miraculous, and thereby fulfill Jesus’ prophecy that His believers would do “even greater works” than He Himself did (Jhn 14:12).
Carefully consider the following:
- Jesus always operated and lived out from His humanity (Jhn 5:19, 30; Jhn 14:10-11). By that I mean that He never did anything on earth as God. He had abdicated His co-equality with God and emptied Himself in the incarnation of His divine prerogatives and power (Ph. 2:5-8), so that He might become an example for us (1 Pe. 2:21), in living in complete dependence on the life and the power of the Father’s Spirit in Him. The works that He did on earth were the works of the Father operating through Him as a man, as He walked in full obedience and submission to the Father, never doing anything of Himself (Jhn 8:28; Jhn 5:30).
- Likewise, we are to live through the life of Christ living in us (Col. 1:27; Gal. 2:20), walking in full submission to Him, reckoning ourselves dead to sin but alive to God in Christ Jesus (Rom. 6:11), never doing anything of ourselves. When we do, declare, or command anything in His Name, according to His will, He says He will do it through us, so that the Father may be glorified through the works of the Son ( Jhn 14:13-14).
- But here’s the key: when we do so we must be living in complete obedience or submission to Jesus as Lord. For the power of God to flow to us through Jesus, we must be wholly under His authority. When we walk in His shadow His power can flow through us (Ps. 91:1), as typified by Peter in the Book of Acts (Acts 5:15). This is what Jesus made so clear to all who would listen in Matthew 8 and the incident with the centurion’s sick servant. Remember that the centurion stated exactly how he understood authority to flow, that authority can only be validly exercised by one under authority. In his case in the temporal realm, authority flowed from Rome through his commanders down to him. Rome was the only secular authority. In the supernatural realm, all authority flows from the throne of the Father. He is the only supernatural authority. Jesus credited the centurion with great faith for his understanding of how authority worked, and realizing that supernatural authority flowed through Jesus because Jesus was wholly under the Father’s authority, walking in complete submission to Him.
- And this is the critical point that Matthew 14 seeks to illustrate. As stated above, we need to understand this in order to do “the greater works” Jesus promised we would do in Jhn 14:12. In Matthew 14, the first thing to note is that Peter did not leave the boat until Jesus commanded him to “Come”, thus authorizing Peter to walk to Jesus on the water. Without this command, Peter would’ve been operating out from himself, and he would’ve sunk immediately, as in and of himself he had no authority over the natural elements.
- The second thing to note is that Peter obeyed Jesus’ command to “Come.” And this despite the fact that He was being commanded to actually walk on water to Jesus. At that moment Peter was operating under the authority of Jesus – his mind was obviously stayed on Jesus’ command to “Come”, considering it authoritative over any natural fear of the water and drowning. He clearly decided to fearlessly do exactly what Jesus had commanded him to do, even though it made no “natural” or common sense to do so. And he did it! This is what we seem to forget. Peter walked on water all the way to Jesus, solely on the basis of his obedience to Jesus’ command!
- But then a problem arose which destroyed Peter’s ability to do the miraculous or operate in the power of God. He took his focus off Jesus, and looking at the waves, decided that the reality of possibly drowning, rather than the word of Jesus to “Come”, was authoritative for how he should think and act. As a result, fear entered into him and pushed out the faith in Jesus as Lord by which he was mastering the waves and overcoming the laws of physics. Clearly, Peter’s change of mind, his decision to receive fear, rather than to exalt the Word of God over fear, was a denial of the authority of God as King. This, then, destroyed Peter’s belief in his authority to walk over the waves, the authority he had received from Jesus via the command. And Jesus chastised Peter for this: “Why did you doubt”?
- So there we have it. To do the miraculous, the “greater works”, we have to act under the authority of Jesus, and that means to exalt the word of Jesus over whatever natural assessments our brain may be making. Otherwise we make the world, our own mind’s assessments of the world, the God of our lives. The incident of the Ten Lepers (Lke 17:10-19) is also an excellent example of this.