Bible Study series: Luke 17:5-6. Just the size of a little mustard seed. No need to gin yourself up psychologically, mentally. Just surrender to Jesus and believe and trust him
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In the next link to the original chapter, I comment more and offer the Greek text. At the bottom you will find a “Summary and Conclusion” section geared toward discipleship. Check it out!
In this post, links are provided for further study.
Let’s begin.
Scripture: Luke 17:5-6
5 And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.” 6 And the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be uprooted and planted in the sea, then it would obey you.’” (Luke 17:5-6)
Comments:
There is a great parallel in Matthew 17:20; Mark 11:12-14 and 20-24. I think they are different pericopes which Jesus taught at different times, but their meaning overlaps.
Watch God Work When We Pray, Command, Believe, Receive.
With Faith Command Your Obstacle to Go. Then Watch God Work
5:
The apostles may have requested a teaching on increasing their faith because Jesus’ demand for forgiveness was so firm and absolute. Only a person of deep faith in him can walk in this level of forgiveness.
Here Luke uses the deeper word for disciple. It means the twelve (Luke 6:13). It refers to the twelve, so they must have been listening and standing near him, while the seventy-two and the women (Luke 8:1-3) may have been in the background. Alternatively, it cannot be ruled out that the seventy-two and the women were considered apostles, if the term is defined as “the sent ones.” That’s the basic meaning of “apostle” in the first place.
The Meaning of the Names of the Twelve Apostles
Now let’s look at the noun faith. It is pistis (pronounced peace-teace ir piss-tiss), and it is used 243 times. Its basic meaning is the “belief, trust, confidence,” and it can also mean “faithfulness” and “trustworthy” (Mounce p. 232). We live on earth and by faith see the invisible world where God is. We must believe he exists; then we must exercise our faith to believe he loves us and intends to save us. We must have saving faith by trusting in Jesus and his finished work on the cross.
True acronym:
F-A-I-T-H
=
Forsaking All, I Trust Him
In v. 5, it means total trust and belief and confidence that God is good; he has the best plan for your life; and he will guide you to minister to needy people.
Word Study on Faith and Faithfulness
6:
So how does Jesus answer their request and instruct them to build their faith? In effect he tells them they don’t need to increase their faith by working it up and following a formula. All they need is a very small degree of faith, and then miracles will happen. This answer implies that the apostles and the seventy-two and the women (and us, by extension) sometimes had faith because they saw healings and demon expulsion (Luke 9:1; 10:17). So just have even a little bit of faith. Don’t worry about putting it on steroids. God and the Word and constant prayer will cause it to grow.
Next, Jesus says to speak out the order or command. Here the verb “speak” is the standard one.
The verbs “be uprooted” and “be thrown” are in the passive commands. Often verbs in the passive in contexts like this one are called the “divine passive.” That is, God is the one who acts behind the scenes. Just because God is not mentioned does not mean he is not behind those two verbs. We pray and God works it out and “removes” the tree.
Commanding the mulberry tree is a visual image of a spiritual truth—it’s a metaphor. The mulberry tree represents any deeply and stubbornly rooted thing in your life that is an obstacle to your growth and God accomplishing his promise in your life can be removed with prayer. Speak to it to be uprooted and planted in the sea. Note that it had been rooted and planted in your life, and now you can command to be planted in the sea, far away from you.
Of course the image of the tree being “planted” in the sea is designed to appear impossible and laughable. It doesn’t belong there any more than it belongs in your life. It’s as if Jesus instructed us to tell the tree, “Hey, tree! You got rooted and planted in my life, and you don’t belong there. I tell you what! Jump off a cliff and plant yourself in the ocean! Do it, now! And I’ll laugh at you trying to plant yourself in deep salt water like that!”
In the clause about the tree, Jesus is speaking metaphorically and hyperbolically. Hyperbole (pronounced hy-PER-boh-lee) means a deliberate and “extravagant exaggeration” (Webster’s Dictionary) to make a strong point and startle the listener. Modern example: “The ice cream seller is really generous! He piled the ice cream on my cone a mile-high!” No, a “mile high” (1.6 km) is not to be taken literally.
Followers of Jesus must learn to read the Bible on its own terms, without their wearing monochrome glasses, in which every word appears the same literal color in different contexts. Yes, most of it can be taken literally, like the histories or the commands of the Torah and Epistles. But in significant sections of Scripture, the Bible is not a “flat,” one-dimensional book, on one simplistic level. It is multi-layered. And this verse about the tree is a case in point. It is not to be interpreted literally and simplistically.
Objection: you’re saying the mulberry tree would not be uprooted and thrown into the sea, like the fig tree actually withered in Mark 11:20-21. No, I’m not. It did wither, but it was an action parable. Jesus had a higher purpose than seeing a tree dry up from the roots, just for fun. What I do mean, however, is this. Don’t stand in front of a literal mulberry tree and command it to “be uprooted” and “be thrown” into the sea. You can surely, however, command an obstacle in your personal walk with God—like a disease—to be uprooted and thrown into the sea (so to speak). Remember that those verbs are the divine passive. God is their subject. God causes the tree to “be uprooted” and “be thrown.”
Renewalists love verses like vv. 5-6 because they love to confess out loud and speak out and pray out loud. This is solid teaching. Personally, my prayer life is done with an open voice, when I take my prayer walks. But as noted, I remember that those verbs are the divine passive. God is their subject. God uproots and throws the tree into the sea, so to speak.
As I have written in other similar verses in this commentary, let’s never forget that faith rests on the will of God. Certain extra-super-confident and human-centered Renewalists must be very careful about commanding God or things in nature to happen because we want them to. They have flipped the script one hundred and eighty degrees. Events depend on their words, their confession, their faith, their psychological certainty. However, even Jesus said he does what he sees the Father doing: Jesus “can do only what he sees his Father doing, because whatever the Father does the Son does also” (John 5:19). Word-of-Faith teachers say they read the Word and understand what the will of God is, so they can command things. Part of that is true because of what Jesus just said in 17:6, but also certain excessive Word-of-Faith teachers often misinterpret Scriptures which seem to indicate they can boss God around, like humans calling things into existence. (They base this on Rom. 4:17, but the verse clearly says God is the one who calls things into existence.) Or they believe that they can “legislate” reality because they are the ekklēsia or “assembly.” However, super-extra-confident faith-filled and Spirit-filled Christians must get a personal word from God. They must abide in Christ and his words abide in him so that they can hear from God about each individual and unique case. “If you abide in me, and my words abide in you, ask whatever you wish, and it will be done for you (John 15:7). They must ask according to God’s will (1 John 5:14). They must not launch out on their own and believe that God shall and must heal everyone, and if he didn’t, then they must not have had enough faith or spoken the right confession out loud. Somehow it’s their fault. No.
In my own life, I have heard from God that a sickness in a relative was “not a sickness unto death.” She has been cancer free for a long time (over a decade and a half if I recall). I also received a personal word that another relative was going to be taken home, so I should not pray for his healing (he died a few days later). No amount of commanding and pleading and rebuking and legislating would have altered the outcome. And to be honest, I have seemingly heard from God about yet a third relative and believed God would heal him, but he died. I was going through a time of personal deception in my life, but even in this case I relented and realized in his last hours that he would not be healed. I had been deceived, but I have not given up on healing because of this disappointment (even after another relative lectured me about how wrong I was). It’s in the Word. I never give up on the clear teaching of Scripture. People need to follow what Jesus said in this passage and actively do faith, not pull back or go inside their shells like a turtle and give up. Disappointments happen down here on earth. It’s the human condition.
Yes, healing is in the atonement, but not everyone will be healed in their current bodies when God says that the ultimate healing is for them to be taken from the broken-down earth-suits and brought into his presence, where there is no more disease or brokenness—the ultimate healing, also won for us in the atonement.
Why Doesn’t Divine Healing Happen One Hundred Percent of the Time in This Age?
Pray for healing fearlessly and with active faith!
More directly relevant to these verses is this post about decreeing:
Is ‘Decreeing’ Biblical for Christians?
We have to be careful about believing that our words create or cause things to come into existence. Yes, speak to already-existing obstacles, and then God may answer your words, if it is his will, but to create something out of nothing is God’s jurisdiction, not yours.
GrowApp for Luke 17:5-6
1. What is the best way to build your faith?
2. What is your personal “tree” that has taken root in your life and doesn’t belong there? How do you command it to be “planted” in the ocean—a deliberately absurd image to show how much power you have over it.
RELATED
11. Eyewitness Testimony in Luke’s Gospel
3. Church Fathers and Luke’s Gospel
14. Similarities among John’s Gospel and the Synoptic Gospels
1. The Historical Reliability of the Gospels: Introduction to Series
BIBLIOGRAPHY AND MORE
To see the bibliography, please click on this link and scroll down to the bottom. You will also find a “Summary and Conclusion” for discipleship.
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