Mark 1:21-28; Luke 4:31b-37
Besides coming to reconcile the
world to the Father through His substitutionary sacrifice of Himself on the
cross offered once for all, the main focus of Jesus’ ministry appears to have
been to mobilise a disciple making movement by transferring His spiritual DNA,
as it were, to those who followed Him, primarily through teaching and
modelling. Jesus did not only teach them what they needed to know, He showed
them how to apply truth to ordinary every day situations as well as situations
that were rather out of the ordinary.
Neither Mark nor Luke recorded
the precise content of Jesus teaching at the synagogue that day. The reason for
this apparent omission is simple: it was not their primary focus. His authority
was. “The authority of Jesus’ teaching is a major theme in this unit. This is
highlighted quite explicitly: people are amazed at Jesus’ authority at the
beginning of the scene, and they comment on it again at the end. The exorcism
itself visibly demonstrates the theme.”[1]
Jesus’ authority was two-fold –
His teaching and His authority over demonic forces. Both were totally unlike
what would have been considered the norm at the time. Exorcisms were usually
performed by means of rituals or incantations.[2]
In stark contrast, Jesus simply told the demon to be silent and to leave the
man. “There had been no technique, no spells or incantations, no symbolic act.
There had been only the word…(the people had) been confronted by a word
invested with power to which there were no analogies in their experience.”[3]
Likewise, when we encounter the demonic there need not be any elaborate
methodology employed. Jesus has given us His authority and His power to deliver
possessed and oppressed people from the demonic.[4]
It seems that Mark was making a
statement about Jesus from the very beginning of the Gospel bearing his name.
Jesus had come to restore creation – He had come to take what was lost through
the disobedience of our ancestors away from the usurper.[5]
In Genesis chapters one and two, we are told that God created humankind to be
His vice-regents over His creation. By submitting
to the authority of Satan rather than to that of God, our common ancestors
forfeited this role and Satan became what Jesus called “the god of this world”,
ruling over the hearts and minds of all people. But God promised that someday
the “Seed of the woman” would come to reverse the effects of what is commonly
referred to as the “Fall” by bruising the head (i.e. permanently damaging the
authority) of the devil.
As we have already seen in the
section on the wilderness temptations, Jesus bound the strongman so that He
could plunder his household. The true King had come and one of the signs that
His Kingdom had arrived was the casting out of demons.[6]
There are two very interesting
aspects to this particular story. The first is simply the location. The
demoniac was found in a place of worship, namely the synagogue. The lesson
learned is that we will find non-believers in religious places as well as
non-religious places.
The second is that, while human
individuals did not identify Jesus’ divinity, the demons did. “That the demonic
powers possess a certain knowledge of Jesus’ identity is clear from the cry of
recognition, ‘I know who You are, the Holy One of God.’”[7]
In recording this, Mark was clearly telling his readers right from the start that
Jesus was no ordinary human, even though His followers only realised the fact
much later. His absolute authority over the demons revealed Who He was…“For one
dramatic moment the curtain is parted and everyone sees who is really on the
throne.”[8]
The lesson here seems to be that
while the real identity of Jesus is known in the spiritual realm, it is not
always clearly seen by people. Some may be quite willing to acknowledge Him as
a good person or a great moral teacher, but not as God.
Jesus was and still is both God
and Man.[9]
The same authority displayed here in the synagogue in Capernaum is ours in His
Name.[10]
Like Jesus, we who walk as He walked are called to announce His kingdom come in
bearing witness to His authority as legitimate owner of this world through
teaching, healing, and resisting the demonic forces and principalities of
darkness.
[1] Interpreting Gospel Narratives: Scenes, People, and Theology,
Timothy Wiarda, B&H Academic, Nashville, TN, 2010, 82
[5] “For Jesus
and the evangelists, they (the exorcisms) signaled something far deeper that
was going on, namely, the real battle of the ministry, which was not a round of
fierce debates with the keepers of orthodoxy, but head-on war with the satan.”
Jesus and the Victory of God, N.T. Wright, Fortress Press, Minneapolis, MN,
1996, 195
[8] Sitting
at the Feet of Rabbi Jesus, Ann Spangler, Lois Tverberg, Zondervan, Grand
Rapids, MI, 2018, 199.
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