Would A Video Of Jesus Have Healed People?

Indulge me for a hypothetical situation. Cell-phone video technology is present during the ministry of Jesus, and someone films Jesus saying to the lame man, “Rise up and walk”. John 5 records the miraculous moment when Christ’s spoken word restored the man’s ability to walk.

So here’s the question. If someone had taken that recording of the Son of God speaking His powerful words and played it to another lame man in another place and time, would the man have been healed? I mean none of this irreverently.

I think most people would answer ‘no’. Perhaps some would answer in the affirmative, referencing how handkerchiefs that had touched Paul could heal others, or how re-speaking the written Word of God brings the power of God. But most of us would dismiss those arguments as special apostolic cases, or as a different kind of thing altogether. We sense that a video of Jesus would not have had the miraculous power of the Son of God speaking directly to people.

Why not? Since the recording is of the very words of God spoken by the Word of God, why should a perfect digital reproduction of that moment not have efficacious power? What is missing?

What is missing is the personal, embodied presence of Jesus speaking those words with personal intention. The words of Jesus are not magical incantations. His words express His meaning and His intention, which was to heal a particular man on a particular day in particular place. You can’t capture, store and then re-use the words of Jesus like some kind of energy stored in a battery.

Let’s extend the implication and application. What is missing from a video recording of a preacher giving a sermon in a particular place and moment? If your answer is, “nothing”, then you need to answer another question: why go to church to hear preaching? If videos of sermons are identical in experience to having been at the sermon, why travel to hear preachers? You can now find enough excellent online sermons preached by the finest preachers in the world to last you the rest of your life. Your local church preacher will never be able to match those in content and delivery. So why show up?

The knee-jerk reaction is “fellowship” or “serving each other” or “worshipping corporately”, all of which are important reasons for going to church. But they don’t answer the question. Why have a live preacher? You could play videos of the best preachers, and save the money of having to pay for a full-time preacher. Or you could have people watch those videos at home, and spend your time fellowshipping and encouraging one another.

Unless, of course, something happens in live preaching which is analogous to Jesus’ healing of the lame man versus a recording of the same. No, not the same kind of miraculous power or divine authority. But it is a similar situation. An embodied person, filled with the Spirit, lovingly speaks words with particular intention to particular people in a particular place. The Spirit of God uses those words in unique ways in that very moment. There is a work of God done with personal presence that is non-replicable with a recording.

Jonathan Edwards thought the same thing. He said that preaching benefits its hearers not through perfect recall of the information preached but “by impression made upon the mind in the time of it…And though an after remembrance of what was heard in a sermon is oftentimes very profitable; yet, for the most part, that remembrance is from an impression the words made on the heart in the time of it.”

Martyn Lloyd-Jones was against the recording of sermons (though he allowed it), arguing that people experience a sermon in a very different way if they listen to it together as the gathered flock of God, seeing their pastor. Hearing it second-hand detaches you and the sermon goes from heartfelt exhortation to information.

Of course, there are differences between the hypothetical recording of a miracle and the recording of a sermon. The video of a miracle might not bring about another miracle, but a recorded sermon can bring about great change in people’s lives. Many of us have been dramatically affected by a sermon we heard through the web. I, for one, am thankful for sermon recordings.

My argument is that recordings are not the complete experience of preaching. A video may replicate all of a preacher’s verbal and non-verbal meaning, but it still lacks his embodied presence and yieldedness to the Holy Spirit on that day, for those gathered people. It often lacks the relationship of love between people who know each other that the Spirit of God uses mightily.

Conclusion: your ordinary, faithful, local-church pastor can be used by the Spirit of God to exhort and instruct you more powerfully and persuasively through in-person preaching than a recording of the greatest sermons ever preached by history’s greatest preachers.

If preaching is nothing more than information, we no longer need in-person preachers. We have enough great sermons online, and AI can do the rest. If preaching is always more than information, then sermon recordings may be helpful, but they will never suffice.