Mark 9:25-29
Only by Prayer
25When Jesus saw that a crowd had come running, He rebuked the unclean spirit. “You deaf and mute spirit,” He said, “I command you to come out and never enter him again.”
26After shrieking and convulsing him violently, the spirit came out. The boy became like a corpse, so that many said, “He is dead.”
27But Jesus took him by the hand and helped him to his feet, and he stood up.
28After Jesus had gone into the house, His disciples asked Him privately, “Why couldn’t we drive it out?”
29Jesus answered, “This kind cannot come out, except by prayer.”
Berean Standard Bible
Mark begins by telling us what got Jesus moving, and it is not the thing we would have guessed. Not the father finally saying the right words. He saw a crowd running toward them, and whatever else was about to happen in that place, it was not going to happen as a performance for people arriving late. So he speaks past the boy and talks to the spirit, giving it two orders in one breath.
I command you to come out and never enter him again.
He does not explain the second half of that, and nobody in the story asks him to. This father had spent years pulling his son out of fires. A rescue that might come undone again would have been a thin sort of mercy for a man who had lived like that, so the door gets shut behind the thing on its way out.
What happens next is ugly, and Mark leaves it ugly. The spirit shrieks, throws the boy into a convulsion, and goes, and then the boy lies so still that the people standing over him begin saying he is dead. They say it out loud. For a few seconds the rescue looks worse than years of the illness ever did.
Then Jesus takes him by the hand, helps him up, and the boy is standing. Mark writes that same gesture for Simon's mother-in-law at 1:31, for Jairus's daughter at 5:41, for the blind man at 8:23, and now for a boy a crowd of grown people had already given up on.
Later, indoors, away from everybody, the disciples ask the question they could not ask in the street. Why could we not drive it out. It is an honest question and it cost them something to put it into words, because they had done this work before. He had sent them out two by two with authority over unclean spirits, it worked then, and in front of a crowd today it did not. His answer runs to one sentence.
This kind cannot come out, except by prayer.
They were hoping for a method, and he hands them a dependence, which is a heavier thing to carry home. No technique. Nothing to practice, no stronger words to say over a boy on the ground. He names the one thing they had quietly left off doing, and the passage says nothing past that, so neither will we.
How We Know
The last words of this passage are not the same in every copy. The earliest manuscripts read that this kind can come out only by prayer. Most witnesses read by prayer and fasting, and older English translations follow those.
The BSB in front of you prints the shorter reading.
What is affected is one phrase in one verse. Every copy agrees on the healing, on the disciples' question, and on the answer being about dependence rather than technique. The disagreement is over whether fasting was named alongside prayer.
- The words "and fasting" are absent from the original text of Codex Sinaiticus and from Codex Vaticanus, were added by a later Sinaiticus corrector, and appear in most witnesses.
Questions
1 Something makes Jesus step in right when he does. What was it?
AnswerMark says he saw a crowd running toward them. People were gathering, and that is the moment he moved, which suggests he had no appetite for this becoming a spectacle.
2 He tells the spirit to come out, and then adds a second order on top of it. Why would that one matter so much to this particular father?
AnswerNever enter him again. The man had been pulling his son out of fires for years, so a healing that might come undone would not have been much comfort to him.
3 Is there something you used to pray about that you have quietly stopped praying about, because you got used to handling it yourself?
AnswerWhatever gets said here is the answer, and it does not have to be tidy. The disciples had been handed authority and had used it, and somewhere between that trip and this crowd, asking turned into doing.
4 The disciples want to know why they failed. What does Jesus tell them?
AnswerThat this kind comes out only by prayer. He offers no better method and no stronger words. He names what they had stopped doing, and the passage does not explain one word further.
What This Means for Us
They had done this before, and being able to do it was the trouble.
He had handed them authority and sent them out, and it had worked. Somewhere between that trip and this crowd, a gift turned into a skill they owned, so they reached for it the way you reach for anything you know how to do, and nothing happened. Nothing goes visibly wrong in us either, for a long time, and then one day something real is standing in the room and we reach for the habit instead of for God.
So tomorrow, take one thing you always do, and pray before you do it. Badly, if badly is what you have.
Prayer
Father, we start out asking you for everything and end up asking for nothing, because we have learned how things go. Forgive us for treating your gifts as ours. Make us people who ask first. And thank you for taking a boy by the hand when everybody else had said he was gone. Amen.