Of course, all of this is not commonly so recognized.  It seems immensely more to heal the body than to change a man’s course of action, or, at least, it appeals immensely more to the imagination.  The man who can heal is magnified in our eyes above the other.  The miraculous always seems the greater.  It is more unusual.  Stronger wills are influencing others daily.  That’s a commonplace.  Bodily healing is rare.  And all the world is ill.  Things are ripe to have such power seize upon the imagination then and always.

And then, too, there are interlacings here of things we see and things we don’t see.  There is the element of the use of the human will in all miraculous action, whether in nature or among men.  Behind both nature’s forces and human forces are unseen spirit personalities, both evil and good.  The real battle of our human life lies there in the spirit realm.  Victory there means full victory in the realm of nature and of human lives.  There is a devil with hosts of spirit attendants.  The wilderness was a spirit-conflict of terrific intensity, ending in Jesus’ unqualified victory.

Jesus’ power was more than simply creative, or healing, or over human wills.  It was the power of a pure, strong, surrendered will having the mastery over a giant, unsurrendered, God-defiant will.  This underlies all else.  But we’ve run off a bit.  Come back to the simple story, and see how the power of Jesus is revealed more and more before their eyes.  And in seeing the faithfulness and winsomeness of His power, see His wooing.

Intenser Wooing.

A look at the miraculous power first.  The turning of the water into wine was simple creative power at work, creating in the liquid the added constituents that made it wine.  The healing of the nobleman’s son rises to a higher level.  The power overcomes diseased weakened conditions and creates new life in the parts affected.

The healing of a thirty-eight year old infirmity rises yet higher in the scale of power seen at work.  The Roman’s child was an acute case; this an extreme chronic case of long standing.  The acute case of illness may be most difficult and ticklish, demanding a quick masterful use of all the physician’s knowledge and skill.  The chronic case is yet more difficult eluding his best studied and prolonged and repeated effort.  Clearly the power at work is accomplishing more; and so it is pleading more eloquently.

The feeding of the five thousand is creative power simply, like the water-wine case, but it moves up higher in the greater abundance of power shown, the increase of quantity created, and the far greater and intenser human need met and relieved.

The walking on the water was an overcoming one of nature’s laws, a rising up superior to it.  The universal law of gravitation would naturally have drawn His feet through the surface of the water and His whole body down.  He overcomes this law, retaining His footing on the water as on land.