My Reflection on Jesus' First Miracle

As the month comes to an end, I want to do another reflection. This time, I would want to focus on Jesus' first miracle on John 2:1-11. Here, the Papists or Roman Catholics have insisted to use this chapter to justify their devotion to Mary. Others seek to use it to justify drinking hard liquor and getting drunk. But I would like to reflect on the meaning of this chapter.

Mary told us to follow only Jesus

I could think about the encounter of Mary and Jesus. This is the Mary of the Bible - she's no proud Madonna, she's a humble woman and she knew why Jesus rebuked her. I find it so irritating to why Roman Catholics insist that this chapter is where Mary mediates. They say they have read John 2:5 but why do they insist in still praying to Mary? 

They need to further study it what it says. Mary here was gently rebuked in John 2:4. The Good News Bible even has Jesus gently telling His earthly mother, "Do not tell me what to do. My hour has not yet come." In other versions, He told her, "Woman, what have I to do with thee? Mine hour has not yet come." He does not call her mother at all. Instead, he called her "gune" which was a term used for women of older age. This alone should tell Roman Catholics that Jesus clearly drew a line between His divine nature (as God and Mary's creator) and His human nature. It's just like why David called Jesus as Lord even when in His humanity He was David's son (Matthew 22:45, Mark 12:37, Luke 20:44) and Romans 1:3 draws that clear distinction.

When Mary told people, "Do whatever He tells you." then it's no surprise. She was an obedient follower of God. She knew the was bearing the Son of God in His humanity.  When she said those words - she wanted people to understand that she could not mediate between men and Jesus. They had to come to him. Nowhere in Scripture did Mary invite people to herself. Such is a respectable woman who knew her duties in God's plan of salvation. She displayed such obedience to God where she stood still as she didn't disturb her Lord's final moments. 

The commentator John Gill said of the matter, "She took the reproof in good part and by the words he said, and the matter in which He spoke them, or by the looks He gave and the gestures He might use, she hoped and even believed, that the things he moved for would be done; and therefore went immediately to the servants and gave them the following instructions: whatsoever he saith unto you, do it; puncutually observe and obey His orders in every circumstance."

This was in no way disrespecting His earthly mother. Rather, it was time to finally draw the line. I could think of what Mary was probably thinking in her head. She probably thought something like, "I may be His mother in His humanity but He is my Lord in my divinity." when Jesus gently rebuked her. With that in mind, she said, "Do whatever He tells you to do." She felt that it would be time for Jesus to finally take charge because He even created His own earthly mother. Mary knew that Jesus and not her had the higher authority now.

Was the wine alcoholic or not?

Some Christians tend to debate and various sources say that yes, Jesus produced alcoholic wine wine. It's true some wine in the olden times were fermented but they didn't contain much more alcohol than what is found in today's hard liquor. Some argue that Jewish tradition dictated that fermented wine was always served. If that was so then that kind of fermented wine does not contain as much alcohol as many of the drinks today that have led to so many disasters.

This would be very interesting words by John MacArthur from the sermon "Christians and Alcohol":

Furthermore, as we will see, alcoholic, fermented beverages in ancient times were designed to produce safety, not harm. They were designed to produce and protect life, not to produce death. How is this the case? Well, wine was low in alcohol content. The typical family vineyard that you would find in ancient times, biblical times, Old Testament, New Testament, this would be a local growing of grapes, a family would have some kind of a jar in a house and they would store the fruit of the grapes in there for best I can tell from looking at the history of it, two or three days…two or three days. Two to four percent alcohol content, the Greeks would have wine that sat longer than that, and there’s some indications among the Greeks it could be as high as twelve to fourteen percent historically. But in the culture of the Bible, it had very low alcohol content. And it was also local and it was also limited. 

In other words, even if the wine that Jesus produced fermented wine but it was certainly not the ones that are used today. They would have very low alcoholic content compared to the intoxicating beverages that the worldly get involved today. 

What is more interesting we can read it from the same sermon with the following words:

For example, do you remember John 2, the wedding at Cana? And do you remember that they had a wedding for the whole village and let’s assume there were 500 people in the village that would be probably be close to reality, they would all come. The wine ran out. The wine ran out. That’s the biggest event in the village, that’s the biggest event for the people and they didn’t have enough wine for a week. A wedding lasts a week and a few days they’re out. This is not a vast consumption of alcohol, and it was limited. Today there is an unlimited supply…unlimited. Now let me tell you something else about it. It was a thousand years after the New Testament that the process of distillation was developed and invented…a thousand years later. What did distillation do? It increased the alcohol content potentially from 40 percent to 75 percent. That’s what distillation did. A little after that, during the time of Napoleon, some kind of process known as chapitalization(?) was developed and that added another potential five percent alcohol. That’s where you get things like whisky, hard liquor, with this high alcohol content. Today fortified wines would be as high as twenty percent alcohol and even higher than that.

This is the big problem today. How can anyone think of using Jesus' miracle in Cana to justify drinking hard liquor or which the Hebrew is referred to as shakar? If Jewish tradition dictates that fermented wine was used then that fermented wine had very low alcoholic content. In short, it may even take a barrel for a person to drink before he or she got drank but no one can drink too much at one time. Such is not a case today in the alcoholic beverages that are served in saloons and heavily drank by people such as some Roman Catholics and Antinomians who think it is no sin. 

With this in mind, I think about it that Christians do have the right to drink wine with very low alcoholic content. But what they should abstain is anything that would intoxicate them so fast or contain too much alcohol in them. This is a matter of discernment. Why is hard liquor bad? It's not because it contains alcohol. Such wine with low alcoholic content was also used to disinfect woulds but such is not the case of hard liquor. This is a call for discernment on what is shakar (strong drink) and what is yayin which is wine with very low alcoholic content.