Matthew uses the next set of three miracle stories to demonstrate that Jesus’s power not only is for healing but also extends over nature (8:23–27) and the demonic (8:28–34) and includes authority to forgive sins (9:1–8). Not only do these accounts show Jesus’s authority, but they also raise more deliberately the issue of Jesus’s identity (e.g., 8:27), as well as show a range of responses to …