This Kind Only Comes Out by Prayer

“Luke 9, Matthew 17, and Mark 9 all record the same story. This story appears to end differently in each gospel account, with Jesus providing a different answer to the events that occurred within. Or does He? In Luke 9, Jesus speaks on the necessity of His being handed over to be killed; in Mark 9, He says this kind can come out by nothing but prayer;” and in Matthew 17, He claims faith is the answer. But what if all of these are pointing to the same conclusion? In fact, they are. They’re all touching on the necessity of aligning one’s will with the Father’s.

Luke’s Account of Hidden Information

Let’s start with Luke 9. It appears to be a non-sequitur kind of answer, going directly from verse 43, “And they were all astonished at the greatness of God…” to verse 44, “’The Son of Man is about to be betrayed into the hands of men.’” What a downer. But it’s not if we analyze it in the context of the other two accounts and of the picture the disciples are getting to see very slowly. Then we get to see a bigger picture of Jesus’s meaning. Verse 45 follows this statement with a conclusion about the disciples we should all be used to by this point, “But they did not understand this statement; it was concealed from them so that they could not grasp it.”

This is reminiscent of other points in the Scriptures where God hides information that would be detrimental for people until the time when it is no longer, such as Moses not being able to see God’s face (His future work of redemption) or the Israelites not knowing they were sacrificing the Messiah as stated by Paul in 1 Corinthians 2:8-10. There’s a picture God was putting together with all of this information just as He was slowly revealing to the disciples Jesus’s true nature and purpose. Paul’s words, especially, reveal to us the motive of this statement in Luke 9 as it reminds us that, sometimes, our ignorance is required in order to do what is best for us—after all, if Israel had known what they were doing, they would not have done it.

Matthew’s Direction to Childlike Faith in Unknowing

Thus, Matthew 17, which begins to step into the faith needed to act knowing that it is sometimes not in our best interest to have all the information. There’s a logical byway that I’m going to exploit to explain Jesus’s answer as recorded by Matthew, which states in verse 20, “’Because of your little faith,’ he told them. ‘For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you will tell this mountain, “Move from here to there,” and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.’”

Have you ever tried to do something that you shouldn’t be able to do and done it with ease? One time, I was tricked into repping a 225 pound bench twice. My workout partner slid weight onto the bar without me noticing. Thinking I was doing 205, I performed my reps and racked the weight, did the math, and realized I did something I didn’t think I could do. When you don’t realize what you can’t do, it’s often the case you can do it. A more poignant example might be the adrenaline-filled mom or dad who lifts a 2,000 pound or more car off their child to save their life. But under normal circumstances and our own power, we think these things are impossible. This is the other side of the childlike faith coin. Some of us react to God like the father of the boy in this story, “’But if you can do anything, have compassion on us and help us’” (Mark 9:22b).

Many of us have grown up being told Jesus is saying that a small amount of faith is enough to do big things, but what He’s really doing is accusing the disciples of having not even that much, that they lack faith the size of a mustard seed, thus giving evidence of no faith at all. Many of us also live in this same way, not really having faith at all. Sure, we trust that Jesus saved us; we confess with our mouths that Jesus is Lord and believe God has raised Him from the dead (Romans 10:9), but when it comes to living our lives, we do everything under our power and lack of faith that God can provide. That’s what worry is, after all, as Jesus declares in the Sermon on the Mount.

Moreover, we betray our own beliefs that God can do above and beyond all that we ask or think according to the power that works in us (Ephesians 3:20); many of us think God can only do what we ask or think (which is why some think prayer—and not the One who answers it—has power, but that’s a post for another time). It is of the utmost importance that we have faith not only for salvation but also for sanctification, that God will complete the good work He started (Philippians 1:6), and that He will do that good work even when we cannot comprehend it, cannot even imagine it.

Mark’s Command to be Obedient to the Father

Enter Mark 9, which leads us to how we can get on the same page as God: prayer. Note how Jesus talks about prayer in the Sermon on the Mount, “’When you pray, don’t babble like the Gentiles, since they imagine they’ll be heard for their many words. Don’t be like them, because your Father knows the things you need before you ask him. Therefore, you should pray like this: Our Father in heaven, your name be honored as holy. Your kingdom come. Your will be done on earth as it is in heaven’” (Matthew 6:7-10).

When Jesus prayed while walking the earth, it is clear that His goal was not merely to petition the Father for things but to ensure that He was doing what the Father desired because He only does what He sees the Father doing (John 5:19). This model of prayer, then, teaches us its purpose: to align ourselves with the will of the Father.

Piecing it Together By Hearing and Professing

To put all of this together and get at what Jesus is saying, we also need to look at the state of the boy and his father. The boy is possessed by a mute and deaf spirit, keeping him from hearing the word of God and confessing Jesus is Lord, which are two of the three necessary things for salvation. If he cannot be reached by the gospel, he cannot profess, as it is God who reaches out and gives to men the ability to come to Him and profess. Jesus declares this truth when Peter states He is the Messiah (Matthew 16:16-17). Romans 10:17 reinforces this idea, “So faith comes from hearing, and hearing by the word of Christ” (NASB).

This takes us to the father who, as noted earlier, says to Jesus, “If you can…” In response, Jesus says, “’If you can?’ Everything is possible for the one who believes” (Mark 9:23). Here is the kicker that reveals to us why all of these stories are connected as the father of the boy replies, “’I do believe; help my unbelief’” (Mark 9:24)! The father has lost hope that his son can be healed, but Jesus teaches that He can do anything—and will do everything necessary for salvation and sanctification—if we merely have faith in him, believe, the third piece of salvation, yet, we must hear that first as I have previously stated.

I’ll briefly touch on an important piece of information here: that everything is possible for the one who believes is actually about Jesus, not any of us. For it was only He who believed perfectly in the Father, in the law, in obedience to death on a cross for salvation. Thus, anything is possible for Him and His Spirit He has given out to each of us.

Back to the boy, what Mark describes after Jesus’s rebuke of the spirit gives us the most poignant inclination for what Jesus later means in Mark 9:29. As the mute and deaf spirit comes out, it throws the boy into convulsions or death throes. Everyone around thinks he died. Is that not a picture of what Paul writes about salvation and sanctification? “I have been crucified with Christ, and I no longer live, but Christ lives in me” (Galatians 2:20a); just a few verses later he says, “Those who belong to Christ Jesus have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires.” Most of his writings about the old person include the word death for what is evil and sin.

Do You Want to Get Well? Pick up Your Cross Daily!

Finally, I can come around to the point I’m making: John 5:6, “’Do you want to get well?’” So many of us come to Christ in faith for salvation but don’t actually want to be made well. We want His blessings and goodness and salvation but despise the sanctification that comes with it. We have faith Christ went to the cross because He loved the world and wanted to save His creation from sin, but we don’t desire what He desires; we haven’t been conformed to His image; we want to do things our own way; we don’t want to pick up our cross daily and follow Him (Luke 9:23).

The point Jesus is making to the disciples, and to us, is that this kind of spirit does not come about except by the transformative work of God and the diligence to not be conformed to the image of the world but to be transformed into God’s image (Romans 12:2) by prayer and alignment with His will and desires. The disciples were never going to be able to cast out this spirit because first Jesus had to save the boy, and then the boy would have to be diligent to daily crucify his flesh and choose to follow Christ’s will. To borrow the phrase of baptism, the boy had to be buried with Christ in death and raised to life to walk in new life, to present his body as a living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God (Romans 12:1).

The point Jesus is making is that we, as people, cannot do the work in others all the time. In fact, we don’t ever really do that work. We plant the seed of the gospel, water it, and harvest it when it’s grown, but it is God who gives the growth (1 Corinthians 3:6, Matthew 9:38). This kind of rebellion only ceases by our own desire for it to cease; it only goes away by our willingness to let God make us decrease. It only goes away by obedience.