By Brandon D. Crowe, TGC. (photo: Pedro Kümmel/Unsplash)
When I was younger, a particular kind of 3D picture was popular: You could easily identify the picture at first glance, but if you stared at it long enough, another picture would appear as if magically protruding from the first. The key was looking at it the right way. The same is true for understanding Jesus’s miracles in the Gospels. They’re clearly demonstrations of Jesus’s power. But they communicate more about who he is and what he came to do than may first meet the eye.
With this in mind, let’s revisit Jesus walking on the waters of the Sea of Galilee (Mark 6:45–52; see Matt. 14:22–33; John 6:15–21). In this context, Jesus’s disciples had difficulty rowing their boat in a windstorm. Jesus came to them, walking on the sea amid that same storm. He rescued his disciples from danger, and in so doing, he revealed he is the divine Son of God who leads his disciples in a new exodus.
Old Testament Background
To help us see this miracle in 3D, we need to pay attention to the Old Testament resonances in Mark’s narrative.
1. Lord of the New Exodus
Mark presents the salvation that Jesus accomplishes as a new exodus. In the first exodus, God walked through the sea. In Psalm 77:16–20, Asaph observes that in the exodus, God led his people through the waters of the sea (see Ex. 14:29; 15:19). Further, in Isaiah 43, the Lord makes his way in the sea (v. 16), and the Lord will be with his people when they pass through the waters (v. 2). This chapter looks back on the first exodus as the precedent for a new, future exodus when the Lord would climactically redeem his people.
By walking on the water and saving his disciples in a windstorm, Jesus fulfills that anticipation from Isaiah. He’s the divine Savior who brings the long-anticipated salvation of a new exodus.
2. Theophany on the Water
Mark also tells us that Jesus “meant to pass by” his disciples (6:48). These words open to us a world of scriptural resonances that reveal Christ’s divinity. The language of “pass by” presents Jesus’s walking on the water as a theophany, or appearance of God.