To think biblically is to learn where believers are being challenged to trust that what looks impossible is in fact possible, and, at other times, to acknowledge honestly that certain things, by the very will and nature of God, are genuinely impossible. Both truths belong to a mature faith, and both words—possible and impossible—appear throughout the pages of Scripture. It is worth slowing down to consider them together.
The question arises naturally out of the work of ministry. As the leaders of PassionLife have weighed an expanded effort in the land of India, the more they read about the country, the more the word impossible has risen up in their minds. India is a nation of staggering complexity: hundreds of distinct cultures, sprawling regions, peoples of the north and peoples of the south, and communities from neighboring countries living along its borders. There are 456 languages spoken across the country, twenty-two of them official languages, quite apart from the countless local and tribal tongues. It is, to borrow the old expression, an elephant far too big to eat. Standing before a challenge that feels beyond all reach, the honest response is to be driven back to the question that ought to govern all Christian thinking: what does the Bible actually say about what is possible and what is impossible through faith in Jesus Christ? Rather than reason from fear, it is better to walk through the New Testament in something like the order it was written, and let Scripture instruct.
The Camel and the Needle
The first example comes from Matthew chapter 19. There Jesus is speaking about salvation, and He makes what can only be called an outlandish statement: it is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a sewing needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. The disciples are thrown into shock. If this is so, they reason, then salvation itself is impossible; it simply cannot be done. And Jesus, looking at them, answers, “With man this is impossible, but with God all things are possible.”
The true force of this must be handled carefully. The camel was the largest animal known to that region of the world; there was nothing bigger. Over the centuries some have tried to soften the saying by proposing that there was a certain small gate in the wall of Jerusalem, so low that a camel could pass only by stooping down, exhaling, and shimmying through with great effort. That theory should be rejected outright. It completely misses the point and drains away the very shock that gripped the disciples. If Jesus had merely meant that entering the kingdom was really, really hard—difficult but achievable through enough effort—the disciples would not have been astonished. Their astonishment came precisely because He was describing something impossible. A camel does not squeeze through the eye of a needle by trying harder. It cannot pass at all.
Does this mean, then, that every person who has prospered in this world, including those who have given generously to churches and to ministries, stands outside the possibility of salvation? No. That is not the point. The whole weight of the teaching rests on those two words: with God. It is unrealistic, indeed impossible, to imagine that anyone—rich or poor—could measure up to God’s holy standard on their own. The rich simply carry an additional set of temptations. Wealth invites a person to rest on his own resources, to feel self-sufficient, to imagine he has done it all himself and needs help from no one. Money genuinely does solve a great many problems in this life; it can hire a fine lawyer, open closed doors, and smooth over troubles. But it cannot solve the problem of the soul. The point is not that a rich person cannot be saved, but that he cannot rely on his riches to save him. Salvation is impossible for anyone apart from the grace and mercy of God—and with God, it is possible for all.
If You Can
The next example comes from the Gospel of Mark, where a father brings his son, who is deaf and unable to speak, and begs Jesus for help. “If you can,” the father says, “please help my son.” Jesus takes hold of those very words and turns them back: “If you can! All things are possible for one who believes.”
This is the near-opposite of the lesson of the camel. There, Jesus insisted that something was impossible for man; here He declares that what appears impossible becomes possible for the one who has faith. It is a real challenge to ordinary, everyday faith—particularly, perhaps, to those shaped by the American experience, where wealth, means, and technology allow so much to be accomplished by human hand. This father, however, stood before a need utterly beyond all human means, and Jesus pressed him to believe for something great: to believe Him for great things, for He and the Father are one, and He can do all things. The healing of a boy both deaf and mute was no small thing to ask. It required tremendous faith. And that is exactly why such events are called miracles—because they are precisely the things that cannot be accomplished by trying hard. To watch that boy hear his father’s voice for the first time and begin to speak must have been an extraordinary, glorious moment, a display of the resplendent glory of God. The lesson for every believer is plain: they are called to believe well and to believe big.
The Cup That Could Not Pass
A third example takes the reader to the Garden of Gethsemane, as Jesus prepares for the cross. In Mark 14 He prays, “Abba, Father, all things are possible for you. Remove this cup from me. Yet not what I will, but what you will.” Another Gospel records the plea as, “If it is possible, let this cup pass.” And there emerges a striking thing: in this moment, it was not possible.
Was it truly impossible for God to spare His Son that hour? In one sense, yes. Not because the Almighty lacked the power, but because the cross was the moral will of God—good, unchanging, and unbendable. This passage does not speak to the omnipotence of God but to His moral character, His moral beauty, and the beauty of the gospel that was unfolding in the world. Jesus, in His true humanity, gives voice to the trembling reality of what He is about to endure, and even as He asks for the cup to be removed, He acknowledges that it cannot be—because the cross is the perfect will of God.
Some may seize on this and try to exploit it as a contradiction: how can anything be impossible for a God who can do all things? But it is essential to remember how Scripture speaks. The Bible often uses ordinary human language, describing things from the perspective of the speaker. The psalmist writes of the sun rising and going down, though it is the earth that moves; the language captures how things appear to human eyes. So here, it may look as though God is limited by an impossibility, but the only limit is that He is morally pure, and His own righteous law required that His Son go to the cross in that hour.
This is why the old riddle—can God create an object too heavy for Him to lift?—is, as C.S. Lewis called it, simply nonsense. It sounds verbally clever, but it collapses into meaninglessness. The living God possesses a real moral character, and there are indeed things He cannot do. Hebrews 6 speaks of “two unchangeable things,” God’s witness and His oath, “in which it is impossible for God to lie,” so that those who have fled for refuge might have strong encouragement to hold fast to their hope. Part of the believer’s whole confidence in God is built upon this: it is impossible for Him to lie, to connive, to abuse. Does this make Him less powerful? Not at all. It means He has rooted Himself in His own moral beauty, so that it is impossible for Him to do evil. That is a magnificent thing to be able to say about God.
Reaching for the Stars
With this biblical thinking in hand, one can return to India and to every task that feels too daunting to attempt. These passages affirm again and again that with God all things are possible, and the history of missions bears witness to it.
PassionLife’s own experience in China illustrates the point. During the ministry’s first Children’s Day campaign there, its leaders were challenged to name a big number of people they hoped to reach in a short span of time. The strategy was a series of strategic trainings across the four weekends leading up to Children’s Day—people studying what the Bible says about life, then immediately teaching pastors, who would teach their churches, who would share it with their families, a design that reached across four generations. On paper, if things went generally according to plan, it came to one million people trained in a single month. It felt utterly impossible. It was what some call a BHAG—a big, hairy, audacious goal, one that could not be met without the power of God, going out on a limb with the certainty of looking foolish unless the Lord was in it.
And God honored it. So the following year, the Chinese house church leaders wanted to reach still more. When the aim of something like eight million people in a single month drew astonishment, those leaders answered simply, “You only asked for one last year.” It was a gentle, backhanded rebuke of small faith. What had seemed like reaching for the stars had forgotten that China holds some 1.4 billion people, while the ministry’s home country numbers around 320 million, and that the house churches there are remarkably well organized. God honored that second effort too.
This is the true glory of Christian biography. Across the history of missions, men and women literally packed their belongings into coffins before they sailed, because they knew they were not coming home; their life expectancy in those fields was only a few years. They went off to the islands, to Africa, to India, to China, to do what was literally impossible apart from the grace of God. It is worth encouraging anyone to go and read a few of these lives—Hudson Taylor, George Mueller, Brother Andrew, James O. Fraser, Amy Carmichael, Gladys Aylward. They were genuine pioneers, the first to crash through doors that seemed shut forever, and they were people who took Christ at His word: all things are possible to the one who believes. They resolved to carry the gospel in, and if they died, they died—but they believed God would tear down the walls of the evil one and give them a way through.
The same faith can be seen today in Cuba, where PassionLife’s leaders have been eyewitnesses to it. There, believers who have nothing themselves do miraculous things—feeding others when they have no food, scraping together their meager resources to provide diapers, formula, and clothing for pregnant and vulnerable women alongside the free training they offer. It is impossible, and yet, where their effort and their faith are joined together, God honors it and gets it done. They have taught and led others by their example.
That is precisely the reason to go to India, in spite of every difficulty. If Jesus has truly risen from the dead, and if the same Spirit that raised Him lives in His people, then they may go and find out what kind of power He will unleash. And if they are called home along the way, then so be it. It is far better to fail in the attempt to saturate India with the gospel of life than never to try at all.
As Far As It Depends on You
Two final passages round out the picture. Romans 12:18 offers a striking, real-world acknowledgment: “If possible, so far as it depends on you, live peaceably with all.” There is a frank recognition here that a person may find himself in a situation he cannot fully resolve—an adversary who will not bend or reconcile—yet he is still to do everything within his power. Many believers carry broken relationships within their own families. The question Scripture presses is not always can this be reconciled? but is everything in one’s power being done to be reconciled? Or has a person simply made peace with the injury and decided he wants nothing more to do with the other? To assume it could never work, and therefore not to try at all, is not the same as pouring out everything within one’s power. Where the outcome is uncertain, the Word of God directs believers to trust that peace is possible and to pursue it, as far as it depends on them.
And finally, Hebrews 11:6: “Without faith it is impossible to please him, for whoever would draw near to God must believe that he exists and that he rewards those who seek him.” This runs alongside the close of Romans 14, “whatever does not proceed from faith is sin”—anything done that does not spring from faith simply fails to honor God. Faith is the starting point of everything. Whether a person is eating a simple meal or setting out for India, without faith he cannot please God; but with faith, even the smallest act becomes pleasing to Him. A believer can eat his dinner in faith. He can go to India in faith. He can love others in faith. And in doing so, he begins, at last, to please God. That is the closing challenge for everyone: to move toward God in faith, trusting that what is impossible with man is possible with Him.
This article is adapted from the episode transcript.