What is the gift of miracles?
Question 04052
The gift of miracles occupies a specific place in Paul’s description of the Spirit’s distributions, yet it tends to be either exaggerated into something sensational or quietly passed over in churches that are uncomfortable with the supernatural. Neither response does justice to what the New Testament actually says. Understanding this gift requires looking at the language Paul uses and the evidence Scripture provides for how it operated in the early church.
The Language of the Gift
Paul’s description in 1 Corinthians 12:10 is energēmata dynameōn, which translates literally as “workings of powers” or “operations of powers.” The word dynamis, from which the English word dynamite derives, carries the sense of inherent capacity, ability, or force. In the New Testament it is used for the power of God at work in the world (Romans 1:16; 1 Corinthians 1:18) and for specific acts of power that interrupt the ordinary course of events. The plural form throughout suggests, as with the gift of healings, that this refers to occasions of divine working rather than a permanent ability to produce miracles on demand.
The scope of this gift is broader than healing. Healing addresses physical sickness; the working of miracles encompasses any act of divine power that transcends natural processes. In Acts, this includes the judgement falling on Ananias and Sapphira (Acts 5:1-11), Paul’s blinding of Elymas the sorcerer (Acts 13:11), Paul’s survival after snakebite on Malta (Acts 28:3-6), and Peter’s raising of Tabitha from death (Acts 9:40-41). These events are diverse in their character but share the common quality of being unmistakably divine action working through human instruments.
Miracles and the Mission of God
In the New Testament, miracles consistently serve the mission of God rather than existing for their own sake. The Gospels describe Jesus’s miracles as signs (sēmeia) pointing beyond themselves to his identity and authority (John 20:30-31). The miracles accompanying the apostolic mission serve a similar function. They confirm the message being proclaimed and establish the credibility of those delivering it in situations where the gospel is arriving for the first time. Hebrews 2:3-4 describes the signs and wonders of the apostolic period as God’s own testimony to the message of salvation.
This does not mean miracles were purely evidential with no other purpose. Many of Jesus’s miracles responded directly to human suffering, and compassion is never absent from the narrative. But the pattern in Acts is that extraordinary displays of divine power accompany proclamation in new territory, where God is doing something unprecedented. Understanding this helps calibrate expectations without either dismissing the gift or treating it as something to be routinely performed on a conference platform.
Are Miracles Still Possible?
The question is not whether God can perform miracles. That would be to question his omnipotence. The question is whether the gift of miracles, in the sense of the Spirit working through a particular person to bring about specific acts of divine power, continues in the present age. There is no clear exegetical basis for concluding it does not. The Spirit distributes gifts “as he wills” (1 Corinthians 12:11), and nothing in Paul’s treatment of the gifts suggests that some are operative only in the apostolic period while others continue indefinitely. That argument is almost always derived from systematic inference rather than from anything the text itself says.
At the same time, honest acknowledgement is required that what passes for miraculous in many contemporary contexts does not approach the standard of the New Testament examples. The miracles of Acts were public, verifiable, and sufficiently undeniable that even opponents could not deny them (Acts 4:16). Whether the Spirit distributes the working of miracles today with the same pattern and frequency as in the early church, or whether the rarity of such events reflects something about this particular moment in redemptive history, is a question that can be held open without forcing an answer that Scripture does not provide.
So, Now What?
The gift of miracles should neither be manufactured nor dismissed. Where God acts in power, he does so for his own purposes and by his own initiative. The appropriate response is what it has always been: prayer that is genuinely open to God acting in extraordinary ways, combined with honest discernment about whether what is claimed in his name actually reflects his character and serves his purposes. Sensationalism is not a fruit of the Spirit. Neither is a naturalistic reduction of the Christian life that leaves no room for God to do what only God can do.
“God also bore witness by signs and wonders and various miracles and by gifts of the Holy Spirit distributed according to his will.” Hebrews 2:4
