Must We Fast and Pray to Make Certain Demons Leave?
Fasting does not make demons leave. Praying does not make demons leave. The name of Jesus, used in faith, makes demons leave.
But we’ll see that you may not succeed in casting out some demons if you don’t fast and pray.
Matthew 17:14-21:
And when they were come to the multitude, there came to him a certain man, kneeling down to him and saying,
Lord, have mercy on my son: for he is lunatick, and sore vexed: for ofttimes he falleth into the fire, and oft into the water.
And I brought him to thy disciples, and they could not cure him.
Then Jesus answered and said, O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I suffer you? bring him hither to me.
And Jesus rebuked the devil; and he departed out of him: and the child was cured from that very hour.
Then came the disciples to Jesus apart, and said, Why could we not cast him out?
And Jesus answered and said unto them, Because of your unbelief: 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.
Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.
Jesus said, “This kind goeth out but by prayer and fasting.” What did He mean by that? At least five possibilities come to mind, and we need to determine which fits best with the rest of Scripture:
1. Some demons are really big and bad and praying and fasting is the special way to make them go; merely commanding these kinds to leave in the name of Jesus won’t work.
2. Some “more wicked” demons will put on big displays that will scare you and get you into unbelief if you’re used to walking by sight and not by faith. The solution is to pray and fast so that you’re not moved by physical phenomena and the flesh but are moved by the Word.
3. Jesus meant that this kind of FAITH would only come forth from you if you pray and fast.
4. Jesus meant that this kind of UNBELIEF would only come out of you if you pray and fast.
5. The whole “prayer and fasting” thing isn’t even biblical because some original manuscripts do not include Matthew 17:21 at all.
The last one can be dealt with by checking Mark’s account of the same incident, particularly Mark 9:29, and seeing if it is missing from some manuscripts like Matthew 17:21. It isn’t, so option 5 can be immediately dismissed. We will have to deal with this verse!
Option 1 is probably the most accepted explanation in the church world, but it is clearly wrong. Jesus gave His disciples authority to cast out ALL demons (Luke 9:1) before this incident (which in Luke’s gospel is later in chapter 9). ALL demons would include any “big” ones. Jesus was exasperated with the disciples because they didn’t believe they could do what He said that they could do. Jesus didn’t handle that demon any differently than He handled other ones, and the disciples did not have to handle it differently, either.
Jesus did not say, “This is a really bad demon that you don’t have enough power to cast out unless you pray and fast to get that power.” That would have been a lie. The disciples did have the power and authority to cast that demon out. In Matthew 10:1, we read that Jesus had already given them “power against unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease.” Luke makes it even clearer. The story of the demonized boy is in Luke 9:38-42. Before this incident, in Luke 9:1-2, Jesus had already given them “power and authority over all devils, and to cure diseases.” If they had power and authority over all devils, they had power and authority over the one in that boy. It was not a power issue; it was an unbelief issue. They had the right and the ability to cast it out, but their unbelief prevented them from doing it.
Jesus said to cast out devils, not fast out devils. He never once prayed one of those modern, ineffective, “Devil, I come against you” prayers. Demons don’t care if you “come against” them as long as you don’t cast them out, as Jesus said to do! You don’t harangue them. You don’t “come against” them. You command them to leave in the name of Jesus! You don’t have to scream at them about the blood of Jesus. You don’t even have to be loud. You just have to use your authority in faith. Jesus said that in His name believers would cast out devils (Mark 16:17). We have a right to make them leave in the name of Jesus.
If we accept Option 1, we’ll have to proclaim a fast-a-thon “against” the demon (I’ve seen this done!), pray endlessly to “come against” it, and do many other ineffective things. But Jesus did not need to schedule a prayer marathon or go on a fast to get rid of the demon. He used His authority and spoke to it, and it left. We have no indication that He even knew about the situation before the boy’s father approached Him. There wasn’t time to pray and fast for that specific case! Therefore, Jesus could not possibly have meant what some say He did – that if you come across a really bad demon, you have to fast and pray “against” it until it comes out. So Option 1 is “out.”
So the remaining three options come down to what “this kind” means – this kind of demon, this kind of faith, or this kind of unbelief.
At this point, I have some very bad news for your flesh. These remaining options all require praying and fasting! The only question is whether fasting helps keep your flesh from being moved by creepy manifestations, or fasting produces enough faith to cast out an evil spirit, or fasting gets rid of enough unbelief so that you can cast out an evil spirit. But in any of these cases, fasting and prayer are necessary to handle tougher situations. Your flesh hates fasting. So does mine. But I dislike being bossed around by my flesh even more than I dislike fasting, so I fast at times. I can’t afford to have my flesh in control when a serious situation arises that requires me to really flow in the Holy Spirit.
There is no question as to why the demon did not leave when the disciples tried to cast it out. Matthew, who wrote the most complete account of this incident, recorded Jesus’ direct answer to the question “Why could not we cast him out?” That answer was, “Because of your unbelief: for verily I say unto you, If ye have faith as a grain of mustard seed, ye shall say to this mountain, Remove hence to yonder place; and it shall remove; and nothing shall be impossible unto you. Howbeit this kind goeth not out but by prayer and fasting.”
Option 3 (“this kind” of “faith” comes forth) has been taught in “faith circles,” which is surprising, given that such teachers emphasize correctly that faith comes by hearing the Word (Romans 10:17). However, that Scripture contradicts the idea that you could get more faith to come out of you by prayer and fasting. The Bible never teaches that either prayer or fasting increases your faith. So it looks like Option 3 is on its way to the dumpster.
But it might have one last gasp. Could it really be that their faith was too small, and faith “big enough” to cast out that demon could only operate in people who pray and fast? We check out other Bible translations, and we find that according to about half of them, Jesus said that the problem was their little faith instead of their unbelief. Now how can that be? The Greek has to say either little faith or unbelief, and those two terms would be based on different Greek words! So who’s right? A little more digging brings us to an interesting discovery – this verse is one of the relatively few cases where “the original Greek” differs depending on which ancient manuscript you’re reading! One says little faith while others say unbelief!
So now we have to analyze the context to see which actually fits better. Perhaps it will become obvious which is a copyist error and which is consistent with the passage. Upon further examination of the verse, we realize that Jesus contradicted the idea that “little faith” was the problem with His very words! He said that if you had super-SMALL faith (like a mustard seed), that NOTHING (including casting that demon out) would be impossible to you. So the issue COULD NOT have been that they had not prayed and fasted enough to have really big faith come forth out of them to cast that demon out.
So the problem had to be unbelief, not too-little faith. And with that, we bid goodbye to Option 3.
This leaves Option 2 (prayer and fasting will keep you out of unbelief when casting out “this kind” of demon) and Option 4 (“this kind” of unbelief will come out of you if you pray and fast). These two options pretty much lead to the same place when all is said and done, but it would be unsatisfying not to delve deeper until we can declare a clear winner.
So we have to consider whether it could be true that some demons are harder to cast out than others. This is similar to asking whether some illnesses are harder to heal than others. While faith can take care of ANY demon or ANY illness, in practice, your flesh could freak out more if you are dealing with a more severe case. So in practice, some cases are harder than others. This is subject of a separate discussion called The Flesh Freakout Factor.
As far as demons go, we can prove that some are harder to cast out from a practical perspective even though Christ’s disciples have authority over ALL the power of the enemy (Luke 10:19), which would include ALL demons. You see, in Mark 6:13, which precedes the incident in question, the disciples had already cast out “MANY devils.” So the disciples certainly knew how to cast out a demon. They struggled with this particular one despite having had many past successes. Could it be that some demons are just nastier to deal with than others? Yes. In both Matthew 12:45 and Luke 11:26, Jesus referred to demons that were more wicked than a certain demon. So there are degrees of wickedness among demons, just as there are many angels that are not in a class with Michael or Gabriel. Thus, saying “this kind” could plausibly refer to “this kind” of demon – a more wicked one.
Mark’s account, which makes no mention of unbelief, certainly reads at face value that it is “this kind” of demon that Jesus refers to. The passage makes no sense otherwise. In Matthew’s account, “this kind” has before it faith, unbelief and the demon, so you could justify any of these at face value. However, I think it stretches the text a bit to force “unbelief” or “faith” to be what “this kind” refers to, as even here, “this kind” of demon still flows better with the passage. Given that “this kind” GOETH OUT, the idea of “going out” seems like a better fit for a demon than unbelief. No other Scripture discusses unbelief “going out.”
The question was “why could we not cast him out?” The reply, “This kind of demon goes out only by prayer and fasting” makes more logical sense than saying “This kind of unbelief goes out only by prayer and fasting.”
So it’s time for a Greek word study. We already determined that the word used for “going out” is never used together with unbelief, but if we can show that it is used elsewhere to describe a demon going out, we will have basically an airtight case that Jesus was talking about kinds of demons. Unfortunately, that word is never used anywhere else to describe a demon departing, either. So the “going out” round ends without a definitive conclusion.
Some situations are worse than others. A man who needs to be healed of a cold and a quadriplegic are different. The same promises apply to both, but your flesh will not get in your way as much when a condition is minor. I have precedent for this reasoning. At Nazareth, where faith was at a premium and unbelief was the norm, people got healed of a few (apparently minor) problems, but no one got a major miracle. The disciples had success casting out demons elsewhere but had trouble with the one in that particular boy. These are two similar situations where unbelief was the problem – more minor circumstances were not hindered by unbelief the way that major miracles were hindered.
So what about prayer and fasting? Why would this kind of demon not leave unless you prayed and fasted? The answer is obvious from the passage once you put religious tradition aside. Unbelief was the problem. Prayer and fasting were the antidote. What Jesus was saying was, “Unless you spend time praying and fasting, you won’t overcome your unbelief and use your faith as you should, and you will fail to cast out this kind of demon.”
You will not overcome some circumstances unless you pray and fast. But be sure that neither praying nor fasting changes God’s mind about anything, and neither one gives you additional power. They couldn’t give you more power when you already have all the power you need! It is a case of training yourself to use what is yours.
So is there anything else we can look at to determine if we’re talking about “this kind” of demon or “this kind” of unbelief? As we saw above, we have Scripture to back up that there are different “kinds” of demons. However, there are 2 different Greek words for unbelief, apistia (the usual) and apeitheia (which appears only in Hebrews). Thus, one might think that Jesus WAS talking about different kinds of unbelief. However, looking at the passages where these words are found, there doesn’t seem to be much difference in how the words are used. Also, Jesus couldn’t really have meant “this kind of apistia” if He were trying to make a distinction between apistia and apeitheia.
One could then consider that perhaps Paul’s “unbelief of ignorance” was a different “kind” of unbelief from unbelief that knows God’s Word and won’t act on it. However, the only place where can find that is 1 Timothy 1:13, and even then, Paul had to know what Christianity was so that he knew whom to persecute. Also, ignorantly is a separate word from unbelief; he didn’t just say he had acted solely in ignorance or solely in unbelief. So it doesn’t seem that there are different “kinds” of unbelief, though there may be degrees – but Jesus didn’t say that this degree of unbelief came out only by fasting and prayer. So the “this kind of unbelief” interpretation seems extremely doubtful at this point.
So we should at least look at the Greek word used for kind as a final clue to see if we learn anything from it. We find that it is the word genos. We then check all the other verses where genos is found in the Greek. We see that it can refer to kindred, relatives, offspring or generation in Acts 4:6, Acts 7:13, Acts 7:19, Acts 13:26, Acts 17:28, Acts 17:29, 1 Peter 2:9 and Revelation 22:16, nationality or regional origin in Acts 4:36, Acts 18:2, Acts 18:24, 2 Corinthians 11:26, Galatians 1:14, Philippians 3:5, and type (a more traditional meaning of kind in English) in Matthew 13:47 (kinds of fish), 1 Corinthians 12:10 and 1 Corinthians 10:28 (kinds of tongues) and 1 Corinthians 14:10 (kinds of voices).
So genos doesn’t seem to offer an ironclad conclusion, but I would say that it would at least lean more in the direction of a kind of demon rather than a kind of unbelief based on its biblical usage. I spelled out the usage above, but you are free to disagree with my conclusion from the word genos.
An argument to go the other way toward Option 4 would be that a demon does not go out directly “by prayer and fasting” anyway but “because of prayer and fasting – that drives out unbelief when casting a demon out. After all, we don’t pray out devils and we don’t fast out devils – we cast out devils. Thus, Jesus’ use of the term “by prayer and fasting” could point us back to unbelief being what has to come out.
So both Option 2 and Option 4 seem like solid conclusions that have some possible drawbacks, and you can make a decent argument for either of them. Fortunately, they both lead you to the same place – you need to pray and fast so that you’re ready to cast out certain demons without being tripped up by unbelief.
However, I go with Option 2 over Option 4 for a few reasons.
First, it seems to me like too much of a stretch to assume that Jesus meant “this kind of UNBELIEF” in the context, especially because that would be tantamount to saying that Mark’s version (Mark 9:17-29) is misleading! In other words, I believe that Jesus did mean “this kind of demon.” However, we must be careful to realize that demons of ALL “kinds” must bow at the name of Jesus (Philippians 2:9-11), so prayer and fasting do NOT give us some kind of extra power or authority needed to cast out “big” demons. Prayer and fasting simply help us stay out of unbelief and in faith, believing that ALL demons must go when we command them to leave in Jesus’ name.
Second, the question was “why could we not cast HIM out?” so as I stated above, talking about this kind of DEMON is more consistent with answering the question than talking about “this kind of UNBELIEF,” which the disciples didn’t ask about. A demon could be a “him” but unbelief could not.
Third, if casting out one demon is the same as casting out any other, it would not make sense that their UNBELIEF stopped them from casting out that particular demon because their UNBELIEF would have stopped them from casting out ANY demon. The Bible shows that they cast out MANY demons before they encountered this particular one, as proved above. So some demons are definitely more difficult than others.
Fourth, we don’t see “kinds” of unbelief the way we see “kinds” of demons (one could be more wicked than another) and “kinds” of faith (little faith (Matthew 14:31), dead faith (James 2:26), great faith (Matthew 8:5-13, Matthew 15:22-28). I don’t see references to “little unbelief” or “dead unbelief” or “great unbelief.” So I think it’s going too far to say that Jesus meant “this kind of UNBELIEF” when the Bible really doesn’t talk about different “kinds” of unbelief but it DOES talk about different kinds of demons.
From a practical perspective, Option 2 and Option 4 BOTH leave you with the conclusion that lack of prayer and fasting can result in failure with some demons. In the case of Option 2, it would be because some “kinds” of demons will produce a greater Flesh Freakout Factor that must be prevented by prayer and fasting as part of your lifestyle (BEFORE you encounter a demon). In the case of Option 4, it would be because some “kinds” of unbelief are harder to get rid of than others, and a lifestyle that includes prayer and fasting is again the solution (again, BEFORE you encounter a demon).
So it’s not that prayer and fasting “make” certain demons leave, but you aren’t going to cast out certain demons unless you involve yourself with prayer and fasting for the reasons stated above.