Confusing Sayings: Matthew 17:20
Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move.
This article is part of a series explaining Jesus’s Confusing Sayings. Many of these sayings do not look confusing in English translation, but that is because much of what Jesus originally said is simplified or obscured in English.
Know a confusing verse? Write me in a comment so I can analyze its Greek in a future article. This verse is a reader’s suggestion.
This verse is interesting because it seems to promise infinite power, but does it? Can we all become superheroes capable of anything?
The context for this verse is that a father had a boy with seizures and asked Jesus to heal him. The father says that Jesus’s followers tried but they couldn’t do it. When Jesus hears his apostles couldn’t heal the boy, Jesus talks about a perverse and unbelieving type of people, asking how long he must put up with them. He then asks the father to bring the boy, and Jesus casts out a demon. Then his students ask why healing didn’t work for them. Jesus answers with Mathew 17:20:
NIV Because you have so little faith. Truly I tell you, if you have faith as small as a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.
The words in boldface are explained in this article.
So Little Faith
While the English translation makes it sound like Jesus was accusing his followers of not having enough religious faith, that is not how they would have heard this. The noun translated as “little faith” has a prefix meaning “small” in front of the root word that primarily means “confidence,” "assurance," "trustworthiness," and, as a character trait, "faithfulness." Jesus often uses it to specifically mean “confidence in what someone says.” The concepts of trusting in others and being trustworthy ourselves are not only related, but they are described by the same word. Those who trust are also those who can be trusted.
Our lack of confidence makes people distrust us. As Jesus says over and over, he heals people because they believe he can heal them. We may attribute this to Jesus’s power, or the Holy Ghost but Jesus attributed it to power from people’s confidence in the Divine.
The Mustard Seed
As Jesus tells us elsewhere, (Matthew 13:31 , Mark 4:31, and Luke 13:19), what makes the analogy of a mustard seed interesting is how the seed grows over time. Its growth may depend on its environment, but it is from the growth plan that is put inside of every seed. The seed doesn’t need to start out large just because it has a large potential.
Jesus’s point is that, when it comes to confidence in Divine power, we all have the seeds of greatness within us. We simply must trust, not in our own view of our capacities, but that the Divine can make whatever is needed from what is hidden within us. What we are born with and where we are born are not random events. To see this, we must trust in what we have been given and where we have been planted.
The smallness of the apostles’ confidence and the smallness of the mustard seed are described with the same Greek word. However, from the context, we know that his followers’ confidence was smaller than the seed. If their confidence had been as large as the seed, they would be capable of this healing and more.
A Little Wordplay
The word translated as "mountain" means "mountain" or "hill." However, in this form, it also can means “mule.” In both cases, from the story’s narrative, we know that this is a metaphor for the stubborn evil spirit who would not come out of the boy. “Mules,” of course, are famous for their stubbornness. However, Jesus always uses this word elsewhere to mean “mountain” or “hill.” This word "to" before “mountain” comes from its dative case. “To” is the most common, but "about" works better because what is really said is about the mountain, not "to" it.
What is said to the mountain (or mule) is not a command, as it appears in English. Jesus is not telling the apostles to command the mountain but to say something about it. He is telling them to say that it moves. This is easy to see in Greek because verbs have a special form when used in a command but this is the statement form of the verb. The verb tense means only “at some point in time.” The mountain/mule has moved, is moving, or will move at some time. This would make more sense to say about a mule, but the Apostles expect interesting not just sensible.
Because of the verb forms and tenses, this is can be a scientific observation. Mountains have, are, and will move in the future even though we cannot see the move. Where Jesus pointed when he said “from here to there” would have been the past or future course. Relating this idea to confidence, we must be confident in things that can be true even though we can’t see them.
The end of this paragraph, “and the mountain will move,” is a prediction of the future. What Jesus doesn’t say is when it will move, but he says that it will “move itself,” not that the command moved it. This is another test of their confidence in his words. The fact that even mountains move is worth thinking about. Over two thousand years, we can understand at least some of this.
The Apostles Heard
Why did the apostles hear about their ability to heal when Jesus said this?
Listeners Heard: Through this lack of confidence of yours! Because, Amen, I tell you, when you have trust like a seed of mustard, you will say about this mountain/mule here. "It moves from here to there." And it will move itself. Also nothing will be impossible for you.
Of course, this is the last line so it is the punchline. It second meaning? On the immediate level, that no healing will be impossible. On a deeper level, for us, like mountains and mules, doing nothing is impossible. We are always moving forward.
One last word about confidence. It does make miracles possible. The universe came into existence because of nothings confidence in the Divine. Of course, we can understand the mountains move today, but we cannot say at all where they came from and where they are going.
Thanks for this. Of having confidence in the divine. Reminds me of before the feeding of the 5,000 in Matthew 14, when the disclples bring the need of food for the people to Jesus, but he tells them "You feed them". Also Galatians 2:20 where most translations, such as the NIV, tell us to live by faith "in" the son of God, but a few, such as CJB, say "live by the same trusting faithfulness that the son of God had." ie not looking to Jesus to "do it all", but we seek to live ourselves by the same faith as Jesus had.