Mustard Seed Faith

Luke 17:1-6 Then He said to the disciples, “It is impossible that no offenses should come, but woe to him through whom they do come! 2 It would be better for him if a millstone were hung around his neck, and he were thrown into the sea, than that he should offend one of these little ones. 3 Take heed to yourselves. If your brother sins against you, rebuke him; and if he repents, forgive him. 4 And if he sins against you seven times in a day, and seven times in a day returns to you, saying, ‘I repent,’ you shall forgive him.”5 And the apostles said to the Lord, “Increase our faith.”

6 So the Lord said, “If you have faith as a mustard seed, you can say to this mulberry tree, ‘Be pulled up by the roots and be planted in the sea,’ and it would obey you.

     Following Jesus has never been easy. In Luke seventeen Jesus told His disciples that they must live by the divine law that says: Call out sin, but forgive sin. Hate the sin, but love the sinner. And do this over and over and over again. This is also what Jesus taught us to pray in the Lord’s Prayer... “Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us.” It is not easy to confess our sins and call out the sins of others. It is not easy to forgive those who have sinned against us. Sometimes we find it hard to believe that God can forgive our sins. How do we avoid getting angry when someone has said something inappropriate about us? How do we forgive the person who has stolen from us? How do we fight that feeling that says, “Sorry” is not good enough? How do we pray for those who promote false, wicked and destructive ideas? At its very heart and core, the Christian life is a very hard life that goes against everything in our nature. 

     The disciples rightly responded to Jesus’s teaching by saying, “Increase our faith.” This is another one of those very beautiful prayers that we find in the Bible. It is very similar to the prayer of the father of the demon possessed boy who said, “Lord, I believe, help Thou mine unbelief!” (Mark 9.24) Faith can and certainly does increase. In Psalm one we read that faith like a tree planted by streams of water. It grows and produces fruit. But for faith to increase, Jesus impresses something very important upon His disciples. He tells them that faith must be a gift from God, like a mustard seed. No one has ever created their own seed. Seeds come from God. Seeds are miraculous. Seeds that are hundreds of years old and have been planted and have sprouted to life. 

     Mustard seed faith is the gift of faith. Peter said that we were redeemed, “not of corruptible seed but of incorruptible, through the word of God that lives and abides forever” (1 Peter 1.23). So the answer to the disciple’s request, Increase our faith, is: continue to follow Jesus. Listen to all that He says. Meditate on His word and respond to it with your prayers. Follow Him to the cross for your redemption. As you continually ask God for forgiveness, you will find the power of faith in your own heart to forgive the sins of others.