The final word on Jesus’ first miracle, recorded in John 2, tells us why he performed that miracle. It wasn’t simply to supply a temporal need. We are told, “This beginning of His signs Jesus did in Cana of Galilee, and manifested His glory, and His disciples believed in Him” (v. 11). It was, like all New Testament signs, to establish authority. Likewise, when Jesus, in what may seem like a burst of fundamentalist moral outrage, cleansed the temple, it was not because stopping the activities being carried on in the temple was his primary concern. It was to establish himself as Lord of the temple. Calvin comments:
Why did he not rather begin with doctrine? For it seems to be a disorderly and improper method to apply the hand for correcting faults, before the remedy of doctrine has been applied. But Christ had a different object in view: for the time being now at hand when he would publicly discharge the office assigned to him by the Father, he wished in some way to take possession of the temple, and to give a proof of his divine authority. And that all might be attentive to his doctrine, it was necessary that something new and strange should be done to awaken their sluggish and drowsy minds. Now, the temple was a sanctuary of heavenly doctrine and of true religion. Since he wished to restore purity of doctrine, it was of great importance that he should prove himself to be the Lord of the temple. Besides, there was no other way in which he could bring back sacrifices and the other exercises of religion to their spiritual design than by removing the abuse of them. What he did at that time was, therefore, a sort of preface to that reformation which the Father had sent him to accomplish. In a word, it was proper that the Jews should be aroused by this example to expect from Christ something that was unusual and out of the ordinary course; and it was also necessary to remind them that the worship of God had been corrupted and perverted, that they might not object to the reformation of those abuses. —John Calvin, Calvin’s Commentaries Volume XVII, Commentary on the Gospel according to John Volume I (Baker Books, 2009), 91.
