J Philip Bible Readings

The second point here is that this miracle was a protest from the Lord against the misunderstanding of His mission and message. The miracle was in a particular sense a especially supernatural one, and one which evidenced the powers of the world to come in a marked fashion. It is a different kind of miracle from most of the others: healing is a reversal of a wrong process and principle, but this is something new. We know of no kind of life in which bodies can be upheld by water. Here was a glimpse of a new kind of world, the other world, the world to come. This is very important for a true interpretation of the significance of the miracle. For it was a reaction against the 'this-worldliness' of the multitude's reaction. This is a needful reminder today. J.B. Phillips points out somewhere that in many quarters today Christianity is considered seriously only because of its social implications. This is precisely the attitude Jesus is reacting against. The multitude wanted to make Him a king because He had power to meet their temporal, material needs. It is of course good to be able to deal with material needs - this is not in dispute - but Jesus protested, because in their preoccupation with the material they had neglected the spiritual. How often is this true today: What is the characteristic note in the Church's voice in our time? Is it not on temporal matters, things of this world, and do not its most serious and vocal pronouncements have to do with things like the H-bomb, Vietnam, the Common Market and such like? Our Lord is protesting against this kind of preoccupation in which graver issues are forgotten. The central message of the gospel is about eternal issues, and it is criminal folly and negligence to soft-pedal this message or ignore or distort it (compare 27 with Luke 12:4, 5, for the relative values of the material and spiritual, and the temporal and eternal).