Why doesn't God still perform miracles like in the Bible?
Few questions unsettle a believer more quietly than this one: the Bible is full of healings, opened prisons and raised dead, while ordinary life today looks nothing like that. Commentators in this collection answer it not by denying God's power, but by asking what miracles were for — and what changed once that purpose was served.
Miracles Were Always Exceptional
The pattern was never continuous, even in the Old Testament. Miracles cluster around turning points and then stop.
Numerical Bible NotesMiracles have always been temporary, gathering around certain crises in the divine history of mankind, times of special divine intervention, and then passing away; and Christianity is no exception to the rule.
Their Purpose Was Certification
Signs were not primarily comfort for believers. They were public proof that God had begun something new.
Michael HardtWhy did God give them? For evangelisation? For emotional spectacles? To reduce the sufferings of believers? None of these. God gave miraculous signs to prove that God made a new start. The time of the law was over. God had formed the church by the Holy Spirit... On some occasions there were healings (e.g. Acts 3) but not to relieve the sufferings of believers but give a sign to unbelievers.
The Promise Was Never Made Permanent
The Lord said signs would follow those who believe — and they did. What He did not say is that they would follow everyone, always.
William KellyHe never intimated that they were to follow perpetually or absolutely. And they then ceased in His wisdom, as they really could not be now without the danger, yes, the certainty, of ill results to His dishonour.
Withdrawal Follows Decline
If signs were God's stamp of approval on a message and a people, then their removal follows the corrupting of both.
F. B. HoleWhat happened when the apostles were gone? Just what happened when Moses was gone and when Elijah and Elisha were gone — rapid decline. If bestowed to accredit a people and a message as being unmistakably of God, what is likely to happen when both people and message begin to be corrupted? Obviously, the withdrawal of the authentication.
Kelly presses the point with an uncomfortable question: if God restored miracles today, on whom would He put that seal? Everyone would feel the strangeness of such an outward stamp on so much confusion.
William KellyMiracles in Rome, miracles in Canterbury, miracles among Presbyterians, Independents, Wesleyans, Baptists... all sects and denominations in Christendom would have their miracles! There may be those who would enjoy the sight, but I do not envy them.
The Written Word Replaced the Outward Sign
Something better arrived, which is why the props could go. Once revelation was complete, the evidence moved from spectacle to Scripture.
William KellyBut when all was written, miracles were not continued; for then the truth revealed was complete, and the testimony such that only inattention or self-will can dispute it.
This is why the Christian is not left waiting for tokens. The standard by which everything is now measured is a written one.
The Bible TreasuryThe Lord has revealed all the truth to the church of God, not such external tokens as would dispense with His Spirit guiding by His word... and the only standard of the truth is the written word.
Miracle-Based Belief Was Never Saving Faith
Even when the miracles were happening, they did not produce the faith people assume they would.
F. B. HoleThe verses which close the second chapter show that miracles may produce a "belief" of a certain kind. Many in Jerusalem at that time would have subscribed to the saying that "seeing is believing;" yet the belief that springs from the sight of facts, which cannot be denied, is not the God-given faith which saves. It is merely intellectual conviction which, when tested, easily collapses.
God Still Acts — Differently
None of this means God has gone quiet. Commentators distinguish a permanent gift of miracles from God's freedom to answer prayer. Darby is blunt about both halves.
J. N. DarbyI do not believe that miracles are performed today; angels no longer appear; it was not a gift that could continue... But I fully believe, according to the Lord's promise, that prayer is heard, and that the angels work in favour of the children of God as much now as in those early times.
Writers also caution that wonders alone prove nothing about their source — Hole notes that false systems can produce equally well-attested healings. And the greatest ongoing work of power is one people rarely count as miraculous at all.
Samuel RidoutHe who knows the great miracle of grace worked in his own soul, whereby he has been born again, has no difficulty about other acts of power by the same God who has given him a new life.
Summary
- Purpose — Signs were God's public certification that He had started something new, aimed at unbelievers, not at relieving believers' hardships.
- Pattern — Miracles always clustered at crisis points in God's dealings, then withdrew once their work was done; Christianity followed the same rule.
- Withdrawal — When the message and the people carrying it grew divided and corrupted, the authenticating seal was removed rather than stamped on confusion.
- Replacement — The completed written word took over as the standard and the evidence, so faith now walks by Scripture, not by spectacle.
- Continuation — What continues is greater than what ceased: prayer is answered, and the new birth remains the mightiest ongoing work of God's power.