Objection: To Preach that Jesus COULD NOT Do Miracles at Nazareth Is to Deny His Deity and God’s Sovereignty. Therefore, the Only Reason He Could Not Would Be That People Did Not Bring the Sick.
Boy, do people ever get mad when you preach that the Son of God COULD NOT do miracles at Nazareth. “He’s God! He can do anything! He’s sovereign! You have just denied the deity of Jesus Christ!” You will be called an unbeliever and a heretic for teaching this. (I have been, actually.) This is strange because God Himself teaches this, and He is not an unbeliever, and He believes in the deity of Jesus Christ.
Of course, Mark 6:1-6 plainly states that Jesus could do no mighty work there except that He laid hands on a few sick people and healed them – which based on the narrative still qualified as doing a “few” mighty works. However, there were only a few. Matthew 13:54-58 states that He did not do many mighty works there because of their unbelief. It’s plain that mighty works were hindered at Nazareth because of the people’s unbelief.
That would seem to be plain enough, but someone took me to task on this and said that these passages do not prove that unbelief can stop God from doing miracles. The objector said that because they did not recognize Jesus as the Messiah, they did not bring the sick. Therefore, the reason that Jesus did not heal the sick at Nazareth is that they were never brought to Him in the first place. If they had been brought to Him, He would have healed them. In other words, there were no sick people present whom Jesus did not heal.
But we know that there WERE some sick people there, because Jesus laid hands on a few sick people and healed them even though no “mighty miracle” happened there. (See Mark 6:1-6 again.)
Of course, unbelief could have stopped them from bringing the sick to Jesus, and this would be at least a partial explanation. However, the assertion that there could not be a sick person present whom Jesus could not heal is not true, since there is other Scripture to support that this situation could happen. Luke 5:17-26 records that the power of the Lord was present to heal them – the religious leaders – and yet they did not get healed. As far as we know, only the paralytic got healed. The Pharisees were too busy complaining and getting offended to get healed. They figuratively “went through the roof” but only the man who literally “went through the roof” was healed. So we have just proved that the sick could be in Jesus’ presence and not be healed because they did not believe.
(Some people like to argue that Jesus did not heal them all if this were true, but it is definitely true that Jesus healed everyone who came to Him for healing. He never turned down anyone. He healed all who came to Him, though others stayed sick, like many at the Pool of Bethesda, because they did not seek healing from Him.)
When the father of the demonized boy asked Jesus to help him, Jesus told the man that all things are possible to him who believes – putting the responsibility for believing on the man, not on Himself. (See Mark 9:17-29.) This shows that the man could have continued to doubt and that the boy could consequently have stayed demonized.
Only one man at the Pool of Bethesda was healed in John 5:2-19. In other places, where all believed, all came and all were healed. In this case, the others did not believe. They stayed sick, even though Jesus Christ Himself was present in their midst. If they would have believed, they could have been healed, too. Instead, they stayed sick, apparently not knowing who Jesus was or what He was anointed to do for them.
Repeatedly in Scripture, we see that God Himself is limited by what we can believe He will do. Can man limit a sovereign God? YES – because He has limited Himself to operating according to His Word, and He has given authority over the earth to mankind (Psalm 115:16). God was just as sovereign when Peter walked on water and when he started to sink. It had nothing to do with God and everything to do with Peter’s faith and doubt. It was God’s will for Peter to walk all the way to Jesus, and Jesus actually rebuked him for doubting. God’s power let Peter override gravity, but it only operated when there was faith. It stopped operating when there was doubt. In this sense, God’s power that allowed Peter to walk on water was definitely limited by Peter’s faith and doubt.
Another Scripture that comes to mind is “They turned back and tempted God, and limited the Holy One of Israel” (Psalm 78:41), but the Hebrew word for limited used here is indistinguishable from the Hebrew word for grieved, so I would not offer this as a conclusive proof-text. (Among major translations, only the King James Version, New King James Version and Young’s Literal Translation use the word limited, though those are translations I would generally trust more than others. The others say things like pained or provoked.)
God will save anyone who confesses Jesus as his Lord. But His power to save is limited to those who believe His promises and His statements about His Son. God is still sovereign, but His saving power cannot operate in a man who will not believe. Why should it be any different for physical healing, which is the physical side of salvation? Where there is faith, there will be the power of God. Where there is unbelief, as at Nazareth, the power of God is stopped in its tracks. God has chosen to operate by making promises and then fulfilling them when we believe.
There is no power shortage on this earth, nor is there a deity shortage or sovereignty shortage on God’s part. The reason we do not see more healings is that there is a shortage of acted-upon faith!
When Jesus ministered, He did so as a Man. He stripped Himself of any advantage He could have had by invoking His power as deity (Philippians 2:5-8). Because He had to “play by the same rules” that we do, He COULD NOT heal people as deity.
Finally, the clincher is that people didn’t HAVE TO bring the sick – Jesus preached in the SYNAGOGUE (Matthew 13:54)! There were surely sick people there already, including the ones that He laid hands on who WERE healed.
For more information on this topic, see Objection: We Cannot Expect to Heal as Jesus Did Because We Are Not the Son of God and Objection: Jesus Healed and Did Miracles to Prove His Deity.