Mark 9 and John 20 · Story · Faith
I Believe; Help My Unbelief
Mark's Gospel records a boy whom the disciples could not heal and the confession of mixed faith that his father made to Jesus.
Mark sets the father's prayer between two scenes of the disciples, their public failure below the mountain and their private question in a house.
Immediately the boy’s father cried out, “I do believe; help my unbelief!”
- Who
- Jesus of Nazareth, Thomas
- When
- after the Transfiguration (Mark 9:2 to 9)
Summary
Coming down from the mountain of the Transfiguration, Jesus told Peter, James and John to tell no one what they had seen until He had risen from the dead (Mark 9:9). A father had brought his son, who had suffered from a spirit since childhood, first to the disciples and then to Jesus. The spirit left the boy at Jesus' command.
- Of Mark's three uses of apistia, the Greek word for unbelief, only the father's stands inside a prayer.
- Jesus told His disciples that this kind comes out only by prayer; the Byzantine text adds fasting (Mark 9:29).
- Thomas refused to believe without seeing, was offered the wounds, and confessed Jesus as his Lord and his God (John 20:24 to 29).
A Father's Cry
Mark gives the father's confession in a single verse.
Mark sets the account in Mark 9:14 to 29, between Jesus' first and second foretelling of His death and rising (Mark 8:31 and Mark 9:31). The father who answered Him from the crowd called Him Teacher (Mark 9:17). After the healing Jesus and His disciples went on from there and passed through Galilee, and He did not want anyone to know (Mark 9:30). The disciples did not understand His second foretelling and were afraid to ask Him about it (Mark 9:32).
In the Greek the father's words are pisteuo, I believe, and boethei mou te apistia, help my unbelief. Mark uses apistia at Mark 6:6, at Mark 9:24 and at Mark 16:14, in the longer ending, and only at Mark 9:24 does it stand inside a prayer.
The Account in Nine Events
Mark tells the healing in sixteen verses, where Matthew and Luke each take seven.
The father's cry comes after his plea and Jesus' answer to it, and the healing follows it.
- The disputeJesus found a large crowd around His disciples and scribes arguing with them.Mark 9:14
- The failureThe father had asked the disciples to drive the spirit out, and they were unable.Mark 9:18
- The rebukeJesus answered, "O unbelieving generation!" and said, "Bring the boy to Me."Mark 9:19
- The convulsionSeeing Jesus, the spirit threw the boy to the ground, and the father said it had been so from childhood.Mark 9:20 to 21
- The pleaThe father asked Jesus to have compassion and help them, "if You can do anything".Mark 9:22
- The answerJesus took up the father's words and turned the doubt from His own power to the father's believing.Mark 9:23
- The cryThe father cried out that he believed and asked for help with his unbelief.Mark 9:24
- The healingJesus rebuked the deaf and mute spirit and lifted the boy by the hand.Mark 9:25 to 27
- The questionIn the house the disciples asked why they could not drive it out, and Jesus named prayer.Mark 9:28 to 29
A sequence of nine events from Mark 9:14 to 29, each with its verse.
The cry, The healing, The question
The Boy and the Crowd
The father speaks three times in Mark's account, in Mark 9:17, Mark 9:21 and Mark 9:24.
Peter, James and John had been with Jesus on the mountain. The other disciples had stayed below, and when the four came down the crowd was gathered around them while scribes argued with them. As soon as the people saw Jesus they ran to greet Him, and He asked what the dispute was about. A man in the crowd answered for himself.
Whenever it seizes him, it throws him to the ground. He foams at the mouth, gnashes his teeth, and becomes rigid. I asked Your disciples to drive it out, but they were unable.”The father describes the spirit's attacks and reports the disciples' failure in his own words.
Jesus' answer was addressed to more than one man, and Mark's word for the generation, apistos, is the adjective of the father's later word.
“O unbelieving generation!” Jesus replied. “How long must I remain with you? How long must I put up with you? Bring the boy to Me.”Jesus rebukes the unbelief around Him before He turns to the boy.
When the boy came near, the spirit threw him into a convulsion on the ground. Jesus asked the father how long this had been happening. The father answered, "From childhood," and his request ended with a condition.
“It often throws him into the fire or into the water, trying to kill him. But if You can do anything, have compassion on us and help us.”The father's plea for compassion carries the doubt that the disciples' failure had left him with.
“If You can?” echoed Jesus. “All things are possible to him who believes!”Jesus repeats the father's condition back to him and names believing as the thing in question.
The father's answer came immediately. As a crowd came running, the spirit left the boy with a shriek and a convulsion, and he lay so still that many said he was dead.
But Jesus took him by the hand and helped him to his feet, and he stood up.Jesus raising the boy by the hand is the help the father had begged for in Mark 9:22.
Later, in a house, the disciples asked Him privately why they had failed, and Mark ends the account with His answer.
Jesus answered, “This kind cannot come out, except by prayer.”Jesus answers the disciples' question by naming prayer as the means they lacked.
Mark 9:22, Mark 9:23, Mark 9:27, Mark 9:29
The Account in Three Gospels
Matthew and Luke tell the same healing, each with details Mark lacks.
Matthew 17:14 to 20 and Luke 9:37 to 43 tell the same event after the Transfiguration. In Matthew the father kneels and asks for mercy, and in Luke the account ends with the crowd astonished at the greatness of God.
“Because you have so little faith,” He answered. “For truly I tell you, if you have faith the size of a mustard seed, you can say to this mountain, ‘Move from here to there,’ and it will move. Nothing will be impossible for you.”Matthew gives the reason for the disciples' failure as their little faith and sets a mustard seed against a mountain.
Suddenly a man in the crowd cried out, “Teacher, I beg You to look at my son, for he is my only child.Luke records that the boy was the father's only child, which explains the weight of his plea.
The Readings of the Greek Editions
The Greek editions differ at three places in this account and its parallel in Matthew.
Mark 9:29, Mark 9:24 and Matthew 17:21The Berean footnotes and seven printed Greek editions
The Berean Standard Bible ends Mark 9:29 with "except by prayer" and notes that the Byzantine text and the Textus Receptus add fasting after prayer. The printed Greek editions divide the same way. Westcott and Hort (1881), Tischendorf's eighth edition, the Nestle Greek New Testament of 1904 and the SBL Greek New Testament of 2010 end the verse with prayer. Stephanus's Textus Receptus of 1550, Scrivener's of 1894 and the Byzantine Majority Text of 2005 add kai nesteia, and fasting, which the King James Version translates.
The same footnotes record that the Byzantine and Received texts have the father cry out with tears in Mark 9:24. The Byzantine Majority Text of 2005, Scrivener and Stephanus carry meta dakryon, with tears, and add kyrie, Lord, while Westcott and Hort, Tischendorf, Nestle and the SBL edition have neither. In Matthew's account the Berean text leaves Matthew 17:21 empty, because the critical editions do not carry the sentence that names fasting there.
What Mark Leaves Unsaid
Mark leaves several details of the account unrecorded.
Mark does not give the father's name or the town, or say on which mountain the Transfiguration took place. He gives the boy's age only as the father's "From childhood" (Mark 9:21). He does not say what the disciples had done when they tried to drive out the spirit. He records Jesus naming prayer in the house, and he records no prayer spoken by Jesus at the healing itself.
The Second Doubter
John calls Thomas Didymus, the Twin.
John shows Thomas three times before his doubt. When Jesus resolved to go back to Judea after Lazarus died, Thomas said to the others, "Let us also go, so that we may die with Him" (John 11:16). At the Last Supper, when Jesus spoke of going away, Thomas said that the disciples did not know where He was going or how they could know the way (John 14:5). He was not with the others when the risen Jesus first came to them.
So the other disciples told him, “We have seen the Lord!” But he replied, “Unless I see the nail marks in His hands, and put my finger where the nails have been, and put my hand into His side, I will never believe.”Thomas sets three conditions on his believing, each of them a sight or a touch of the wounds.
Albert Barnes, in his Notes, Explanatory and Practical, judged the refusal to be "in part, at least, the effect of deep grief". He named it the "despondency which fills the mind when a long-cherished hope is taken away."
Eight days later Jesus came again, with the doors locked, and offered Thomas exactly what he had asked for. He told him to stop doubting and believe, and Thomas answered with the confession of John 20:28, "My Lord and my God!" The scene has its own study, The Man Who Asked to Touch.
Jesus said to him, “Because you have seen Me, you have believed; blessed are those who have not seen and yet have believed.”Jesus' last word to Thomas names sight as the ground of his believing and blesses believing without it.
Barnes reads the verse as a comparison: "Jesus here approves the faith of Thomas, but more highly commends the faith of those who should believe without having seen."
Each doubter answered Jesus in words of his own.
| The doubter | His doubt in his own words | Jesus' answer | The outcome |
|---|---|---|---|
| The father of the boy | "But if You can do anything" | "If You can?" ... "All things are possible to him who believes!" | "I do believe; help my unbelief!", and the boy was healed |
| Thomas | "Unless I see the nail marks in His hands ... I will never believe." | "Stop doubting and believe." | "My Lord and my God!" |
Voices on the Two Doubters
One quotation speaks to the healing and one to Thomas.
died 444 · Cyril of Alexandria
“The greatest marvels are always attended by incredulity, and any action which seems to exceed the measure of probability is ill-received by those who hear of it. But the sight of the eyes succeeds in banishing these doubts, and, as it were, compels a man by force to assent to the evidence before him. This was the state of mind of the wise Thomas, who did not readily accept the true testimony of the other disciples to our Saviour's Resurrection, although, according to the Mosaic Law, in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word shall be established.”
Cyril of Alexandria · Commentary on the Gospel of John, Book 12 · on John 20:25Patristic
1802 to 1910 · Jamieson, Fausset & Brown
“But the Lord of life was there; the Healer of all maladies, the Friend of sinners, the Seed of the woman, ‘the Stronger than the strong man armed,’ was there. The very faith which Christ declared to be enough for everything being now found, it was not possible that the serpent should prevail.”
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown · Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible · on Mark 9:26Reformed
Did Thomas Touch the Wounds?
John records the offer and the confession, and he does not record a touch.
The reading of Cassian and AugustineJohn Cassian; Augustine
John Cassian, in On the Incarnation of the Lord, Against Nestorius (book 6, chapter 19), writes that "Thomas, when he touched the flesh, believed that he had touched God". Augustine, in his Tractates on the Gospel of John (121.5), writes, "He saw and touched the man, and acknowledged the God whom he neither saw nor touched". The strongest point for this reading is that Jesus offered Thomas the very touch he had demanded, and in Luke the risen Jesus tells the disciples, "Touch Me and see" (Luke 24:39).
The reading of Jamieson, Fausset and BrownJamieson, Fausset and Brown
Jamieson, Fausset and Brown (1871) hold that Thomas did not do what Jesus invited him to do, and they read it from John 20:29, where Jesus says, "Because you have seen Me, you have believed". Augustine allows the same possibility in the passage cited above. He writes that "it may be affirmed that the disciple dared not so to touch", since "it is not written, And Thomas touched Him". Those who hold it point to the silence of the text and to Jesus' own word, seen.
Faith That Asks for Help
The value of faith includes faith that knows its own weakness.
The father's prayer asks Jesus for the very faith He asked of him, and the healing that followed shows that such a prayer is heard.
A reader whose faith is mixed with doubt can pray the father's words as they stand, and bring the unbelief to Christ with the belief.
Sources
Scripture is the Berean Standard Bible.
- The Holy Bible, Berean Standard Bible, with its footnotes to Mark 9:24 and 9:29.
- The Greek text of Mark 9:29 in Westcott and Hort (1881), Tischendorf (8th edition), Nestle (1904), the SBL Greek New Testament (2010), Stephanus (1550), Scrivener (1894) and the Byzantine Majority Text (2005)
- The Greek text of Mark 9:19 and 9:24 in Westcott and Hort (1881), Tischendorf (8th edition), Nestle (1904), the SBL Greek New Testament (2010), Stephanus (1550), Scrivener (1894) and the Byzantine Majority Text (2005)
- Strong's Greek 570, apistia, with its New Testament occurrences, and the Greek text of Mark 16:14 in the same seven editions.
- Augustine, Tractates on the Gospel of John, tractate 121, section 5, translated by John Gibb, Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series, volume 7 (1888)
- John Cassian, On the Incarnation of the Lord, Against Nestorius, book 6, chapter 19.
- Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset and David Brown, Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871), on Mark 9:26 and John 20:28.
- Albert Barnes, Notes, Explanatory and Practical, on John 20:25 and John 20:29.
- Cyril of Alexandria, Commentary on the Gospel of John, book 12, on John 20:25.
Keep Studying
Studies5
In this value5
People and groups4