What kinds of miracles did Jesus do, and what do they indicate about him?

Q. What were some of the miracles Jesus did, and how should we categorize them (e.g. nature miracles, healing miracles, etc.)? Also, what do these miracles indicate about Jesus? Do they help prove that Jesus is God?

The largest number of miracles that Jesus did were miracles of healing. He enabled people who were blind to see; he enabled people who could not hear to hear and speak. It is recorded that he cured people of fevers, of leprosy, of bleeding disorders, and of diseases that caused muscle weakness or paralysis. Jesus empowered his disciples to do similar miracles of healing, and he told them that when they did, they should declare that the kingdom of God was coming near. So these miracles of healing indicate that Jesus was bringing the kingdom of God, and that in God’s kingdom (that is, when and where things are done as God wishes), there is restoration and health. In other words, these miracles showed that God wants those things for people. We are not there yet, but the kingdom is coming (even as it has already arrived in a sense), and as we work to promote these same things, we declare our faith in what God wants people to experience, and we do our part toward that end now.

Jesus also delivered many people from demon oppression. The gospels clearly distinguish between demon oppression and illness. They do not reflect a belief that all illness comes from evil spirits. Through these miracles, Jesus demonstrated that he had come to bring liberty to those who were held captive, as he said about himself in a sermon in the synagogue in Nazareth at the start of his ministry. I think that we today could extend this principle to include other types of “captivity,” such as addiction, depression, abuse, human trafficking, etc. Jesus showed us that God wants people to be free from all such oppression, and the miracles he did invite us to join in his work of bringing freedom.

Jesus, as you noted, also did “nature miracles.” In what we might call a “negative” sense, he calmed a raging storm at sea, made a fig tree wither, passed unnoticed through a crowd, and appeared inside a locked room. “Positively,” he fed thousands of people from small quantities of food, turned water into wine, enabled the disciples to make huge catches of fish, and even directed Peter to find a coin in a fish’s mouth that would pay the taxes for the two of them. These miracles show that God wants people to be safe and well provided for, and once again they invite us to join in working for the same things.

Jesus even raised people from the dead, and he rose from the dead himself. These might be considered miracles of healing, or nature miracles, or miracles in a class of their own. But they show us that death is not final, and so even though we grieve when we lose loved ones, “we do not grieve as those who have no hope,” as the Bible tells us elsewhere. These resurrection miracles also show that God’s power is even greater than the ultimate enemy that we humans must all ultimately face and that we can never conquer on our own: death itself.

So do these miracles, and especially the resurrection miracles, prove that Jesus is God? I would say that that is actually something that cannot be “proved.” It is something that we must recognize and believe by faith. Moreover, as I say in this post, Jesus was actually able to do miracles on earth not because he was God and therefore all-powerful, but because he was completely yielded to his heavenly Father and so was a perfect conduit of divine power. (As that post discusses, Jesus gave up certain divine attributes, including omnipotence, when he “emptied himself” and became human.) So the miracles that Jesus did do not prove that he is God. However, they should certainly make us ask, as people did in Jesus’ own time, for example, “Who is this, that even the wind and the waves obey him?” That question can lead us, by faith, to recognize and believe that Jesus truly is God.