Miraculous Signs in John’s Gospel and the Quest for Miracles in Nigeria

Abstract

The mission of Jesus was one characterized by miraculous-deeds which were motivated by compassionate-love. Jesus’ miraculous performances were geared towards restoring mankind to God and towards alleviating human sufferings. For revelatory and evangelistic purposes, John the Evangelist in his autoptic gospel by way of redaction selected, edited and theologized these miracles by designating them to be signs that unveil Jesus’ ontological and functional natures. John was consistent in highlighting these miraculous-deeds to connote signs, following this, signs formed an underlining theme in his gospel. In John, Jesus modelled the significance of miraculous-signs for the gospel commission of the Church. This consolidates that his followers in every age are to carry on the gospel commission in the same way that Jesus exemplified. But in this era, the Church has gotten a paradigm shift from the prototypical miraculous-sign characterized mission Jesus modelled. The problem of most Nigerians being obsessed with the quest for the miraculous is negatively impacting on the Church. In this obsession, there is the issue of the proliferation of the number of those claiming to be gifted with miracle working powers. Most acclaimed plenipotentiaries of God are erroneously motivated in engaging in the mission-mandate of the Church. On the other hand, significant number of Nigerians are following Jesus just for the miracles he performs. In their solution oriented dispositions, many Nigerians have become so gullible and vulnerable that they are attracted to the advertised miracles and to the acclaimed miraculous. This research therefore studied the concept of miraculous-signs as an underlining theme in the gospel of John and its implications to the gospel commission of the Church in Nigeria. It exegetically examined John’s gospel 6:1-15 and other parallel texts that underlined miracles as signs and explicated their significances and implications for the ongoing mission-mandate of the Church in Nigeria. This study adopted historical-critical method with redaction criticism as a modern, scientific and analytical methodology in Biblical research. The study found out that Jesus aims the miraculous signs he demonstrates to be appreciated from a balanced understanding of his ontological and functional natures. This study stresses that the Church is not supposed to be obsessed with the quest for the miraculous. This thesis therefore proffered hermeneutical solutions to the issue of followers of Jesus being obsessed with the quest for the miraculous in Nigeria.