“She has a demon,” my cessationist friend whispered in my ear.
A woman had just erupted into screaming in the middle of the worship service and I had asked my Baptist friend what was happening. He had little patience for speaking in tongues as an ongoing gift, but this demonic manifestation was no surprise to him.
This was my first Sunday in Zambia on a three month mission trip during Bible College. Needless to say, I asked him again, quite sure that I had not heard him correctly. I had no category for what I was seeing.
When I returned from that trip and shared my experience, people began to ask me questions I had no good answers for: “Why do we see no (or very little) of ‘that kind of thing’ here?” I would often mumble out something about sorcery and witchcraft being more common there, but this answer has never really satisfied me.
And the reason I find it unsatisfying is that, before Christ’s redemptive work in our lives, we lived “according to the age of this world, according to the rule of the authority of the air, the spirit who is now working in the sons of disobedience” (Eph. 2:2). This accords well with what John says when he calls Satan “prince of this world” (John 12:31), which is surely a reference to his demonic rule in human lives.
Thus, the New Testament’s portrayal of all who are outside Christ is that we were ruled by Satan. It’s not just the really bad people or the people who were involved in witchcraft, but it is every perishing human. Everyone outside of Christ is under the one who holds the power of death (Heb. 2:14).
Evangelical Christianity in the parts of the world shaped by the legacy of Western rationalism has often made it a goal of evangelistic ministry to convince people that they are sinners, ruled by their own sinful desires. So far so good, but this is only a partial diagnosis. Even if being sinful wasn’t palatable, it at least sounded plausible to the modern mind. But ruled by Satan? That’s something we have too often failed to articulate clearly because of a weakness in our own biblical worldview, myself included.
With this in mind, I want to explore the mission of Jesus, the one who has come to defeat Satan through his own death (Heb. 2:14-15). To do this, I will begin by focusing on how God plans to free his people through the Servant of the Lord. Then, with this background, I will examine Jesus’ own mission of defeating Satan and bringing God’s Kingdom. In closing, I will consider how we can embrace this area of the gospel more clearly in our lives and fellowships.
The Lord’s Plundering in the Servant
Although it may not always be immediately perceptible, the correct background for the passages about the Servant of the Lord is a mighty show of the power of God. Indeed, the Servant is the coming of the arm of the Lord (Isa. 52:10; 53:1), a paradoxical showing of power in weakness. The Servant coming is the coming of the reign of God and peace (Isa. 52:7).
The gospel is the news from the battlefront that God has triumphed. The picture is truly cosmic in Isaiah, “On that day the Lord will punish the host of heaven, in heaven and the king of the earth, on the earth…for the Lord of host rules” (Isa. 24:21-23).
More specifically, although the Servant of the Lord suffers, the Lord will “divide him a portion of the many” and the Servant himself will “divide the spoil (Gk. skula) of the strong” (Isa. 53:12). This is the language of a man who has conquered foreign armies (Exod. 15:9; Josh. 22:18). Yahweh himself will act in a similar way when he will take the prey (LXX: skula) of the mighty and the captives of the tyrant, contending with Israel’s enemies and saving them (Isa. 49:24-25).
Indeed, Yahweh himself, having no help from Israel, will bear his “arm” (Isa. 53:1) in holy battle, donning “the breastplate of righteousness” and “the helmet of salvation,” punishing the wicked and redeeming Israel (Isa. 59:15-19). Of course, this is of one piece with what we read in the first half of Isaiah where the Messiah will come to rule, girding up his loins for a battle of judgment and justice (Isa. 11:4-5) and abolishing all violence (Isa. 9:1-7; Isa. 11:6-7).
It’s no wonder that when the Servant comes to announce the good news of the battle being won, he speaks to a people who are longing for the good King Yahweh to win and rule (Isa. 61:1-3). He will abolish the evil rule they have experienced and free them as captives (same Greek word as in Isa. 49, referenced above). All this is Yahweh’s gospel-work of defeating the enemies of God’s people and setting them free through his Servant.
Jesus, the Stronger Servant
It is with this background of the liberating Servant that we come to Jesus’ own ministry. Elsewhere I have discussed how Jesus’ makes clear that he is the Servant of the Lord in the synoptic gospels, so here I will only focus on how this intersects with Luke’s presentation of Jesus, the freedom-maker.
We get hints of Jesus’ mission before he even emerges publicly. John the Baptist prophesies a stronger one than him who comes later (Luke 3:16). And Jesus is stronger than any other man or Israel, for he resists Satanic attack which seeks to lure him away from his mission (Luke 4:1-13). And then, when he begins his ministry in Capernaum, he reads “the Spirit of the Lord is upon me because he has anointed me to proclaim good news for the needy, he sent me to proclaim release for the captives, and restoration of sight to the blind” (Luke 4:18).
When Jesus exits the synagogue and begins to minister, showing people what that calling really means, what is the first thing he does? He exorcises a demon which cries out, “Have you come to destroy us, Jesus of Nazareth? I know who you are, the Holy One of God!” (Luke 4:34). Just as Jesus rebukes a spirit and it leaves a person, so also Jesus rebukes a fever and it leaves a person.
Moreover, he heals those who are troubled by unclean spirits (Luke 6:18). Indeed, when Jesus confronts the Jewish leadership who has thrown in their lot with Satan, he exposes their hypocrisy: they would release an ox from its burden of being bound on the Sabbath, but they would not release this woman whom Satan had bound (Luke 13:15-16). Jesus will not stand for this, so he sets this woman free indeed (13:11-12).
This kind of ministry isn’t exactly what John the Baptist had expected, perhaps hoping Jesus would face off with the politicians rather than the evil powers. And so John sends word while in prison about whether they should expect another deliverer. And Jesus, after demonstrating the kind of ministry he came to do (healing and exorcism), then connects this directly to the gospel being proclaimed (Luke 7:21-22). Jesus is the good news that the Kingdom has come, that God has begun to rule (Isa. 52:7) and that the captive, the poor and sick are being cared for and released (Isa. 61:1).
Jesus’ Battle With Satan
All this is a helpful background to Jesus’ chief discussion of his battle against Satan. The narrative begins by noting how the crowds were marveling at Jesus’ ministry of exorcism (Luke 11:14), even as they would marvel at the Servant (Isa. 52:15). This causes some to criticize that he drives out Satan (Beelzebul) by the power of Satan (Luke 11:15), while others wanted a separate verification from God for the exorcisms which he was doing (Luke 11:16).
Jesus then counters with a logical principle that is directly applicable to the situation: every kingdom divided against itself is destroyed, and every house/dynasty that is against itself will fall. Jesus is saying that it is nonsense for the kingdom of Satan to resist itself in civil war. Instead, this is a different kingdom which is making war on Satan’s kingdom.
If Jesus, like Moses, confronted the evil powers by the finger of God (see Exod. 8:19), it shows that the rule of God has come (Luke 11:20). Jesus has brought the rule of God by his very actions of defeating evil.
Jesus then switches metaphors, just to make sure he is clear. He identifies himself as the stronger man who has come to plunder the house/dynasty of Satan (Luke 11:22). Indeed, he will divide his plunder (Gk. skula). In this case, the plunder is his people. This is a direct allusion to the Servant-warrior, who will also plunder a people for himself (Isa. 53:12). One is either for Jesus or for Satan in this war for freedom: there is no middle ground (Luke 11:23).
Of course, the healings and exorcisms of Jesus are proleptic: they are rooted in the ultimate defeat of Satan in the cross and resurrection. To be sure, the defeat of evil is not a different ministry, but rather yet one more beautiful gift that the cross of Jesus Christ achieves. Jesus will be crucified and rise again and it will be in the name of Jesus (Jesus’ own person mediated through the Spirit) that the power of the church will find and proclaim freedom (Acts 3:6; 10:48; 16:18).
Embracing the Freedom Jesus Gives
Jesus’ plundering mission is extremely significant for us today. First of all, it is helpful as a diagnostic tool. If Jesus begins his ministry with driving back the demonic, that is one of the major problems we also should be seeing when we look out at the world around us. Yes, a secular hedonistic society is enslaved to its own desires, but it is no less enslaved to Satan.
However, slavery isn’t the only category. When Paul wrote that Satan was at work in all of us apart from Christ, he surely did not mean that every person in the early church (including himself) had been possessed. He had a much broader view of demonic influence than we often do—and this is worth reflecting on.
Let’s take self-murder for example, whether in the traditional form or assisted in some capacity by a physician (MAiD). Often, in the West, suicide is viewed primarily through the lens of disordered desires, physical or chemical imbalances, or a compassionate end to suffering. To be sure, there may be real chemical imbalances present when a person seeks death.
However, when we read, “Often [the demon] has thrown him into both fire and water in order to destroy him” (Mark 9:22), we are reminded that, whether a person is conscious of it or not, Satan’s passion is to bring death. He has been a murderer from the beginning (John 8:44), promising life and delivering the opposite (Gen. 3:1-7). So, when a person is tempted by suicidal thoughts, it is a category error to exclude the fact that Satan is doing everything he can to nurture those destructive mental pathways, physical imbalances, and depressing algorithms.
But this is still in danger of falling into the fallacy which, it seems to me, pervades much of our thinking about the demonic: the fallacy of the excluded middle. When people asked me why they didn’t see more of Satan’s work in North America, they were talking strictly about visible demonic manifestation.
But what that question seemed to assume was that, contrary to the New Testament, quarreling and anger aren’t really a demonic thing (Eph. 4:25-27, James 3:14-15). Or that widespread Christological heresy isn’t demonic (2 Cor. 10:1-6). Or that hidden addictive sins are not from the dark realm (John 3:19-21). Or that a failure to respond to the gospel isn’t Satan’s blinding work (Luke 8:12). Or the pressure to not acknowledge Jesus is not of Satanic origin (Luke 22:31).
Sometimes it seems we have no category for the reality of real demonic work in anything other than physical manifestations of demonic possession among unbelievers or (perhaps) affliction among believers (2 Cor. 12:7). But that is not the way the Bible portrays our lives.
And if we don’t see that Satan is at work, we will fail to counter his work with the gospel. Indeed, we may diminish Christ by failing to see the full scope of his redemption. As Herman Ridderbos has made clear, the Kingdom of God is “the coming of God himself as King.” Jesus desires to reassert his rights on all human life, not just that they would cease their rebellion, but that they would be transferred from the kingdom of darkness to the Kingdom of his Son (Col. 1:13).
Perhaps then it is time that we re-embrace the historic church’s question at baptism: “Do you renounce Satan and all of his works?”
After all, is this not just one more legitimate area of repentance?
It is wonderfully clarifying for all of us to confess that our conversion is not the product of modern, Western, individual choice. Rather, we are Christ’s plunder, now belonging to the stronger Man.
