A disciple's faith: Equal or proportional?

"And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a man, kneeling to him, and saying,
' Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is epileptic, and suffers grievously; for oftimes he falls
into the fire, and oftimes into the water. And I brought him to thy disciples and they
could not cure him.'

"And Jesus answered and said, 'O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I
bear with you? Bring him hither to me.

"And Jesus rebuked him; and the demon daimonion (daimonion) went out from him: and the
boy was cured from that hour.

"Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, 'Why could not we cast it out?'
And he said unto them, 'Because of your little faith: for verily I say unto you, if ye
have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say unto this mountain, 'Remove hence to
yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you.' "

- Matthew 17: 14 - 20 -

What the disciples had difficulty in grasping from Jesus was the concept of faith. It is a concept that
challenges the majority of Christians today.

What is faith? More important, what is the faith that Jesus was talking about?

The faith Jesus referred to, and called upon directly from his Father, is the faith that goes outside of the individual human's resources. It is a one-of-a-kind faith that draws its power directly from God. Behind that kind of faith rests incomprehensible power and love, the magnitude of which is partially reflected in the heavens, and under the microscope, when one contemplates the complexity and unlimited expanse of the visible and invisible universe.

It required enormous power to create what we comprehend as the universe, and it was that same power that created life as we know it and it is that same power that sustains the status of both the universe and life therein.

It was this power that Jesus called upon to cure the epileptic boy with the casting out of his demon. Of course, Jesus was aware of this power because, if the Gospel of John is to be believed, Jesus is that power. This was a concept the disciples had no way of comprehending. They were aware of the power present at the time of the Passover, and at the time of the parting of the Red Sea, and when the Levite priests of Saul and David's time carried the Ark of the Covenant into battle against the Philistines, destroying the same with a powerful force emanating from it. This power they knew came from God directly, but it always seemed to originate from
a god outside of themselves.

Then comes Jesus, God incarnate, and this person demonstrated in front of his disciples the power of God. This was not a case where a whirling cloud, or pillar of fire, or an angel came forth with power, but was instead power manifested by a flesh and blood man in the disciple's presence. This power was coming through and out of the man called Jesus. It not only was a public display of God's power, but it was a display of power that was first called for by, again, the man Jesus.

What Jesus was doing for his disciples' edification was to show them the physical proof of how faith manifests power. He was saying in the passage above that in order for the disciples to exercise the powers of healing the sick - and even raising the dead - they had to believe beyond all doubt that they could do the same as their Master if only they would call upon God to deliver to them the healing power. Such belief is called faith.

There are no doubts with faith. The petition, in the form of prayer, is placed before God and accompanying the petition is the expectation that God will deliver. This is the faith Jesus demonstrated in front of his disciples. Again, it comes down to the simple, but most profound, declaration on the part of the disciple: Either you believe,
or you don't.

Now, let's consider the question asked at the very beginning: Is a disciple's faith equal among all believers, or proportional based on the purity of belief within each and every person who comes to Christ?

When we come to Christ, not as hypocrites but as true believers, we receive the full measure of faith; meaning the same amount of faith that Jesus had when he walked the earth. When we become a follower of Jesus, we have as much faith in us as Jesus had in himself. The problem for most of us is that we either cannot comprehend such a concept, or we just don't believe it to be true. At the curing of the epileptic, the disciples did comprehend the enormity of the power that Jesus had imparted to them, and as such, the power had to be demonstrated. After the demonstration, what took place had to be explained to the disciples, and that explanation was prefaced by the word 'prayer' but centered directly on the word faith.

A disciple of Christ must exert every ounce of their existence in this life to emulate Jesus. Not imitate him, but emulate him. It is a task beyond mortals to imitate God in the flesh, but on the other hand, it is not an unreasonable request that Christian disciples reflect the charity, love, boldness, determination and compassion of their Lord. We see a wrong, we are to speak up and call for justice. We see a brother or sister believer erring in sin, we are not to sit idly by in silence, but through compassion as importuned by Jesus, we are to take action. Where spiritual ignorance abounds, it is the disciple's duty to dispel it; where sin raises its ugly head, we are to chop off that head in order to save the body. If we truly believe in Christ's teachings and the underlying message and promise of those lessons, then we will call upon the faith that's been transferred to us through the Holy Spirit. It is what God promised, it is what we are to rightfully expect. The disciple is urged to the fullest meaning of that word to not let their gift from God lay dormant. To do so is in itself a sin.

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