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THE SPIRIT OF AN UNCLEAN DEVIL

Luke 4:31–7

Jesus came down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and he was teaching them on the Sabbath day; and they were astonished at his teaching because his speech was with authority. There was in the synagogue a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon and he cried out with a loud voice, ‘What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are – the Holy One of God.’ So Jesus rebuked it. ‘Be muzzled,’ he said, ‘and come out of him.’ And after the demon had thrown him into the midst of them, it came out of him and it did him no harm. Astonishment fell on them all and they kept saying to each other, ‘What word is this? because he gives orders to unclean spirits with authority and with power and they come out.’ And the story of him went out to every place in the surrounding district.

WE would have liked to know as much about Capernaum as we do about Nazareth, but the strange fact is that there is even doubt as to the site of this lakeside town where so much of Jesus’ mighty work was done.

This passage is specially interesting because it is the first in Luke where we encounter demon-possession. The ancient world believed that the air was thickly populated with evil spirits which sought entry into people. Often they entered through food or drink. All illness was caused by them. The Egyptians believed there were thirty-six different parts of the human body and any of them could be entered and controlled by one of these evil spirits. There were spirits of deafness, of dumbness, of fever; spirits which took a person’s sanity and wits away; spirits of lying and of deceit and of uncleanness. It was such a spirit that Jesus exorcised here.

To many people this is a problem. On the whole, we regard belief in spirits as something primitive and superstitious which we have outgrown. Yet Jesus seemed to believe in them. There are three possibilities.

(1) Jesus actually did believe in them. If that is so, as far as scientific knowledge went he was not in advance of his own age but under all the limitations of contemporary medical thought. There is no need to refuse such a conclusion for, if Jesus was really human, in scientific things he must have had the knowledge available at that time.

(2) Jesus did not believe in them. But the sufferer did believe intensely and Jesus could cure people only by assuming their beliefs about themselves to be true. Saying to someone who is ill, ‘There’s nothing wrong with you’, is no help. The reality of the pain has to be admitted before a cure can follow. The people believed they were possessed by devils and Jesus, like a wise doctor, knew he could not heal them unless he assumed that their view of their trouble was real.

(3) Increasingly people are prepared to admit that perhaps there is something in demons after all. There are certain troubles which have no bodily cause as far as can be discovered. There is no reason for the illness, but the person is ill. Since there is no physical explanation some people now think there must be a spiritual one and that demons may not be so unreal after all.

The people were astonished at Jesus’ power – and no wonder. The middle east was full of people who could exorcise demons. But their methods were weird and wonderful. An exorcist would put a ring under the afflicted person’s nose; he would recite a long spell; and then all of a sudden there would be a splash in a basin of water which he had put near to hand – and the demon was out! A magical root called Baaras was specially effective. When anyone approached it, it shrank into the ground unless gripped, and to grip it was certain death. So the ground round it was dug away; a dog was tied to it; the struggles of the dog tore up the root; and when the root was torn up the dog died, as a substitute for the one who was possessed. What a difference between all this hysterical paraphernalia and the calm single word of command of Jesus! It was his sheer authority which staggered them.

Jesus’ authority was something quite new. When the Rabbis taught they supported every statement with quotations. They always said, ‘There is a saying that . . .’ ‘Rabbi so and so said that . . .’ They always appealed to authority. When the prophets spoke, they said, ‘Thus saith the Lord.’ Theirs was a delegated authority. When Jesus spoke, he said, ‘I say to you.’ He needed no authorities to buttress him; his was not a delegated authority; he was authority incarnate. Here was a man who spoke as one who knew.

In every sphere of life the expert bears an air of authority. A musician tells how when Toscanini mounted the rostrum authority flowed from him and the orchestra felt it. When we need technical advice we call in the expert. Jesus is the expert in life. He speaks and we know that this is beyond human argument – this is God.