What does "according to your faith" mean in Matthew 9:29?

He questions the two blind men, do they believe in His ability to answer their request? No doubt He does this to draw out the decision of their faith. In answer to their affirmative response, He speaks and acts according to their faith: their eyes are opened. He is indeed the Son of David, fulfilling the prophecy of Isaiah 42:7.

The cry of the two blind men (verse 27) had in it the accents of faith. They recognized Him as the promised Son of David. He recognized their faith, and challenged it. They responded and affirmed their belief in His power. Hence, in this case, He granted their prayer, according to their faith. He knew their faith was real; and we know it to have been so, for at once their eyes were opened. Let us each ask ourselves, if my requests are to be answered according to my faith; what shall I get?

"Jesus saith unto them, Believe ye that I am able to do this" (ver. 28)? They want mercy from Him, and believe He has got ability to meet their need. "Then touched he their eyes, saying, According to your faith, be it unto you." The first one they gazed upon was their Deliverer. It is very sweet for us to think of what is in store for Israel. The Lord had His own fitting reason for telling them not to advertise it (ver. 30). But they were disobedient. Oftentimes you get a thing stated without any comment. An old writer has said of "straitly charged," that He spoke to them in thunder, but we may dismiss this as chimerical. I judge the Lord's reason was that He knew He had come to that part of His ministry wherein He was rejected as Messiah. And just after, we get the rulers attributing His wondrous works to the devil himself; they could not deny them. Just to confirm this I was thinking of chap. 16, where the Lord charges the disciples that they should tell no man He was the Christ, and from that time forth began to speak of His sufferings and death.

Probably they never thought about their faith, and certainly did not speak about it. What engrossed them was just this—we have a need, and He is able to meet it. Or, if they had expressed their conviction after the model of the Lord's own words, it would have been this: “ According to Thine ability be it done unto us.”

And was this enough to secure the longed-for boon? Yes. In this ground it was that the Lord said, “According to your faith be it unto you.”

It springs from what He is, and hence the importance of seeing that there is another “according” to consider, one that looks in another direction, not at your faith , but His faithfulness .

"According to your faith, be it unto you!" was the Lord's word to the two blind men. Wondrous and blessed indeed, that thus in any wise our faith, or patience, or expectation of hope, should be allowed to measure the active and bounteous power of our Lord! but so was it. "According to your faith, be it unto you;" and again, "As thou hast believed, so be it done unto thee" (Matt. 8, 9).

'According to your faith be it unto you' — a precious sentence — and we want the believing mind and not the agitated intellect.

"According to your faith be it unto you," is a divine principle for blessing between the needy soul and a giving God. Whitefield expected blessing, and the Lord gave it, first a retired place for prayer, then a way to the hearts of many, and eventually opportunities in which to minister to the sick, and the frequent preaching of the gospel, till the blessing of the Lord had spread over the ship. Looking back on this voyage, he thus wrote in after years: "A consciousness that I had in view the glory of God, and the good of souls, from time to time, afforded me unspeakable satisfaction."

And just so is it with the Lord's people, now. There is no limit to the blessing which we might enjoy, could we only count more fully upon God. "All things are possible to him that believes." Our God will never say, "You have drawn too largely; you expect too much." Impossible. It is the joy of His loving heart to answer the very largest expectations of faith.

He did not pass by the two blind men. "When He was come to the house (which always stands for relationship), the blind men came to Him, and Jesus says to them, Do ye believe that I am able to do this? They say to Him, Yea, Lord. Then He touched their eyes, saying, According to your faith, be it unto you. And their eyes were opened." So He healed them by coming in touch with them not absent and unseen, but present and touching them. He is absent from the earth now unseen to the eyes of men, yet we believe in Him and through Him on God; we believe, too, that He is able, that all power is given to Him in heaven and on earth and it is also now "according to your faith." But He who is absent will come back to earth again, back into definite relationship with His earthly people, and then and not before will Israel 's blindness be ended. And what these two healed men did, spreading His name abroad in all that land, believing and seeing Israel will do in that day.