The First Miracle

After John recounted the miracle at Cana of turning the water into wine, he commented, “This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory” (John 2:11).  This was therefore the first miracle of His ministry, and surely as such it was a foreshadowing of many things.  John rarely gave details in his stories of the Savior that didn’t have great meaning, and I believe there is a lot of symbolism in this story for us to learn from.

               It seems to me that this miracle helps us to understand the atonement itself.  The Savior turned water into wine, taking something pure and clean and turning it red.  This is exactly what would happen to the Savior Himself three years later when He, the only pure and perfect person, would take upon Himself the sins of the world.  He literally became red when “blood cometh from every pore” as He was in the garden suffering (Mosiah 3:7).  It was in one sense the opposite process of what Isaiah promised telling us that though our sins be “red like crimson, they shall be as wool” (Isaiah 1:18).  Because the Savior became red like wine as He suffered for our sins, we can have our stains washed away and be clear like water.  I wonder if the number of pots that He transformed was also symbolic.  We read that they brought him “six waterpots of stone” (John 2:6).  The number six was the number of days in the Creation (before the day of rest) and in that sense represents the totality of Creation.  If we take D&C 77:10 literally than we also believe there are approximately six thousand years of man’s time on earth, and therefore Christ’s changing of water to wine in six vessels could be taken as a representation of the whole of humanity.  Christ’s atonement can cleanse all of those who have lived on the earth, from Adam and Even down to the end of creation. 

Perhaps another symbolic element of the miracle is found in the fact that when the ruler of the feast tasted of the wine that Jesus had transformed, he “knew not whence it was: (but the servants which drew the water knew;)” (John 2:9).  The man did not know that he was enjoying the wine due to a miracle of Jesus, and in a similar vein most people on earth do not realize the blessings that are theirs now and in the future because of the Savior.  For example, King Benjamin taught that God—and I believe we could take that to mean the Father or the Son—“is preserving you from day to day, by lending you breath, that ye may live and move and do according to your own will” (Mosiah 2:21).  The Savior also testified that He is “the true light that lighteth every man that cometh into the world”—that means all men whether or not they know of Him or understand the power He gives us (D&C 93:2). We know as well that it is only “through the merits, and mercy, and grace of the Holy Messiah, who layeth down his life according to the flesh, and taketh it again by the power of the Spirit, that he may bring to pass the resurrection of the dead, being the first that should rise” (2 Nephi 2:8).  Christ will bring salvation to all men who have every lived in the form of the resurrection, even though most do not understand that, just as the man drinking the wine did not know from whence it came.  But we who are His “servants” do know and have the responsibility to testify of such.  This first miracle of His ministry foreshadows the great sacrifice He would make for us, attesting to its ubiquity and the blessings Christ provides to all mankind.