NOTES for Mat 8:23-27

What, then, actually happened during that crossing of the Sea of Galilee? A miracle? God’s supernatural intervention in the events of our untransformed world? One can probably view the situation that way too. And yet all the miracles performed by Jesus during His earthly ministry are signs of the Kingdom. Could this demonstration of authority over the elements also be regarded as such a sign? What does it prove? The strength and authority of the Saviour Himself? Probably so. But only that? To answer the question, we must try to understand what power calmed the storm. The power of God? The power of Jesus Himself, who bears within Himself all the fullness of God? Or something else? And most importantly: did the storm actually subside? At first sight, the question may seem strange. But what, in fact, is a miracle? Is it simply a change in the laws of nature that occurs at a particular place and time? Such a change would instantly destroy our world, because the world exists only because the laws on which it is founded operate in it invariably and everywhere. Yet this world was created by God together with the laws on which it rests. Does God, then, contradict Himself? Hardly. It is more reasonable to suppose that, in this case, other laws belonging to another world come into play because that world has suddenly touched ours. But the Kingdom is precisely such a world! It lives by other laws, different from those of the untransformed world, and it touched our untransformed world through Jesus, who brought it to us. The world around Him lives by the laws of the Kingdom, not by the laws of the untransformed world. And there are no storms in the Kingdom; its nature is wholly subject to the spirit. While Jesus sleeps, the Kingdom does not manifest itself at all, because His will takes no part in what is happening. But the moment He wakes, the world around Him becomes the Kingdom. And the storm subsides, because there is no place for it in the Kingdom.