There is the claim that the statement is a hyperbole, a deliberate exaggeration to get a point across. I do not object to the idea that Jesus sometimes uses hyperbole as a rhetorical or literary device to communicate a teaching; however, verse 23 cannot be thus interpreted. In fact, to understand it as solely hyperbolic would produce blasphemous implications.

Let me explain. To suggest that it is hyperbole to say that through faith we can command even a mountain to move implies that we can accomplish lesser things through faith. That is, if moving a mountain is an exaggerated picture of the power of faith, then it means that faith can still perform lesser things than moving a mountain.

However, notice that Jesus says, "Have faith in God," and not "Have faith in yourself." What is accomplished is done in utter trust and dependence on God, through the power and energy of God. When we have faith in God for something to be accomplished, such as to move a mountain, it is really God who performs the task.

Therefore, to say that this statement is mere hyperbole is to say that it is an exaggeration of what God can accomplish, so that even God cannot uproot a mountain and throw it into the sea. Otherwise, the interpretation implies that anything that is accomplished by faith is in fact our own doing, so that a faith that moves a mountain is an exaggeration because in ourselves we cannot move a mountain. The former denies God's omnipotence; the latter amounts to deism. I will leave it up to you to decide which one is worse, but suffice it to say that both implications are wrong. And because both implications are wrong, the position generating them must also be wrong. The statement cannot be mere hyperbole.

Then, more than a few commentators suggest that verse 23 refers to precisely the type of miracles that the Jews demanded from Jesus, and which he refused to perform. First, from reading the Gospels, I question whether the Jews ever required from Jesus a miracle of this magnitude. It might have never crossed their minds to demand something like this. Second, Jesus did perform tremendous signs and wonders – in fact, more than what was demanded of him. He walked on water, calmed the storm, and here he cursed the fig tree and caused it to wither. Not all the great miracles were performed only before his disciples, for he also raised Lazarus from the dead before many witnesses and multiplied the fish and the bread before thousands of people (John 11:19, 45; 6:10). Neither did he refuse to perform miracles before his critics. For example, he publicly healed a man with a shriveled hand before the Pharisees and the scribes (Luke 6:7-10).

What Jesus did refuse to do was to perform miracles – great or small – on demand, especially when the challenge came from hardened unbelievers, who already knew he could work miracles, and who were not looking for reasons to believe, but for reasons to convict him of some crime. So, since Jesus did perform very great miracles, and since he even did many of them in public and before hostile skeptics, we conclude that what the commentators say about Jesus refusing to perform great miracles is misleading, and in fact outright inaccurate.

(to be continued)

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