¹¹God was performing extraordinary miracles by the hands of Paul, ¹²so that handkerchiefs or aprons were even carried from his body to the sick, and the diseases left them and the evil spirits went out.

Miracles abounded; God was powerfully at work. Some consider miracles normative for all Christians; others see them as limited to the time before Scripture was finally put into writing. The book of Acts is often the battleground between these two factions in Christendom. What do we make of this?

On the one hand, Paul often invited people to follow his example (see 1 Cor. 4:16, etc.). Yet, on the other hand, the apostle did not instruct all believers everywhere to perform miracles. The spiritual gift of healing was given to some, not all (see 1 Cor. 12:8), so the instructions to imitate Paul could not have meant to include everything he did—we certainly don’t limit our travel to walking and boats just because that is how Paul traveled! Rather we are to imitate Paul as he imitated Christ (1 Cor. 11:1), which we take to mean in his character and Christian behavior.

Admittedly, dividing between that which was incidental in the apostle Paul’s life and that which is precedent-setting and worthy of being imitated can be difficult—but the distinction exists. The question for us now is whether his miracle-working is intended to be repeated throughout Christian history. Later in his ministry, Paul instructed Timothy to “take a little wine for the stomach’s sake” (1 Tim. 5:23) rather than perform a miracle from afar or call on Timothy to have faith in order to be healed. Whether this speaks to the slow diminishing of the miraculous in Paul’s ministry or not, we do not have space here to settle. However, we must admit that even the apostle Paul did not have free reign to perform miracles at will.

Yet, we cannot overlook or minimize the fact that what we see in Ephesus are “extraordinary miracles.” That means even for Paul, these miracles were unusual (more so than in Acts 13:11; 14:3, 10). They firmly demonstrated that he was no less an apostle and no less spiritually enabled than the original twelve apostles (Acts 5:12–16). He referred to such occurrences as validation of his apostolic ministry: “The signs of a true apostle were performed among you with all perseverance, by signs and wonders and miracles” (2 Cor. 12:12).

Unfortunately, religious fakes have, through trickery, mimicked these biblical stories like the Egyptian magicians imitated some of the miracles of Moses. But we must not be deterred from recognizing that God was doing remarkable things in establishing the Word of God in the city of Ephesus and in Asia.

Lord, help me distinguish between the bogus and real miracles You are doing.