Last updated on August 3, 2022
31 And he went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath, 32 and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority. 33 And in the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice, 34 “[Leave us alone!] What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God.” 35 But Jesus rebuked him, saying, “Be silent and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm. 36 And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” 37 And reports about him went out into every place in the surrounding region.
Jesus Heals Many
38 And he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to him on her behalf. 39 And he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them.
40 Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. 41 And demons also came out of many, crying, “You are the Son of God!” But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.
Jesus Preaches in Synagogues
42 And when it was day, he departed and went into a desolate place. And the people sought him and came to him, and would have kept him from leaving them, 43 but he said to them, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” 44 And he was preaching in the synagogues of Judea.
Jesus has now endured temptation from Satan himself and was then run out of his own home of Nazareth. He is beginning his ministry, and he heads to the little fishing town of Capernaum on the north shore of the sea of Galilee. As NT Wright observes, “Jesus had evidently decided to make it his base of operations, after he’d left Nazareth. It was where the two pairs of brothers, Peter and Andrew, and James and John, had their homes and their small fishing business.” (Luke for Everyone 50)
Fittingly, perhaps, this narrative begins with Jesus casting out a demon. What do we do with this? After all, today the devil is barely taken seriously except by the alarming number of people who explicitly worship him and by some Christians. The existence of “demons” is considered mere myth while the terms “demonic” and “demon possession” are viewed suspiciously as primitive adjectives for psychological maladies explainable by science. Mental illness and demon possession are equally real and they may or may not be related in a given instance. Indeed, as this passage shows, not everyone coming to Jesus for healing (such as Simon’s mother-in-law) was demon possessed.
I don’t want to dwell on the existence of demons and the devil here, other than to make it clear that I have no doubt they exist. Evil is not simply the absence of Good. It is a physical and spiritual reality at work in our lives in powerful and personal ways. Perhaps the greatest account of their activity, outside the Bible, is C.S. Lewis’ brilliant Screwtape Letters, but the accounts of exorcists, missionaries, and many of my friends and family testify to their existence.
What’s more important here, especially in the way Luke presents it, is the authority of Jesus that is demonstrated in these actions. Rather than calling on some supernatural power beyond himself to rebuke demons – the way a an ancient sorcerer or witch of the time may claim to do – He rebukes the demons by his own authority and by His own words. Jesus and his Words are more powerful than anything or anyone; more powerful than sin, death, and sickness, as well as the devil and his demons.
Consider the words of John Calvin on this passage (when he says “The Evangelist” he’s referring to Luke, in the plural it seems to refer to all the Gospel writers):
The Evangelists signify that the power of the Spirit shone in the words of Christ, so that even his impious and indifferent listeners were compelled to admire him. Luke says that his words were ‘with authority,’ that is, full of majesty. Mark speaks more fully by adding an antithesis: ‘it was different from the words of the scribes.’ They were false interpreters of Scripture, and so their teaching was literal and dead, breathed nothing of the efficacy of the Spirit and had no majesty at all in it. . . . In short, the Evangelists mean that the way of teaching at that time was so inferior and corrupted that it did not touch human minds with the reverence of God. But the divine power of the Spirit was conspicuous in the words of Christ, which gained him their confidence. This is the power, or rather the dignity and authority, at which the people were astounded.
Commentary on a Harmony of the Gospels. Quoted in Reformation Commentary on Scripture, Vol. III: Luke. Ed. By Beth Kreitzer. IVP Academic, 2015. p.106.
Calvin’s words remind me of a problem I see especially in the more charismatic and evangelical churches. There, “speaking with authority,” seems to be interpreted as speaking with greater volume, more emotion, and more bluntly. They’ll point to how boring those “other” churches can be where the pastor or priest sounds more like a lecturer; more scripted and insincere.
I think both sides of this are mistaken. Jesus could speak with his own Words in His own authority because He is the Son of God. We cannot speak with authority on our own power. We require grace, the guidance of the Holy Spirit through Jesus’ words and authority. Volume, passion, fancy robes, pulpits, and erudite phrases do not give us the kind of authority Jesus speaks with here. We cannot bring it out of ourselves, but if we rely on the Holy Spirit and the Scriptures, that same authority can speak through us. It may come out as an impassioned fiery sermon or it may come out as a humble exposition. It may come through as a song, a poem, a work of art or architecture, a story or whatever. We just cannot claim the authority of Jesus as ours, but we can submit to it and allow it to claim us and use us.
Lets look at the words of Johannes Brenz, commenting on the same passage:
Christ commanded the devil to hold his peace that he might now confirm the gospel, which he had hitherto preached in words, by a miracle as by a certain seal. He preached that he was sent by God to bring deliverance to captives and give sight to the blind, that is to say, that he would deliver people from sin and from the power of Satan. Therefore when one possessed by a devil was shown to him in the synagogue, he commanded the devil to hold his peace, and he was silent. He commanded him to go out of the man, and the devil threw the man down in the midst of everyone but did him no harm, and by and by went out of him. Christ did this miracle in the demoniac to confirm by an external seal that power was given to him over Satan, and that it was true what he had preached, that he was sent to deliver all those that believe in him from their sins and from death, and to restore them to perfect felicity. For to this end Christ worked his miracles, that they might be sure seals of the gospel and public testimonies of the doctrine of remission of sins by faith in Christ. By these words, “when the devil had thrown him,” we have to understand that the nature of Satan is such that he raises up great tumults against the gospel of Christ and against the faithful. But if one stands fast in the word of Christ, Satan will do no harm at all to him.
An Ecclesiastical Exposition upon Saint Luke 4. Quoted in Reformation Commentary on Scripture, Vol. III: Luke. Ed. By Beth Kreitzer. IVP Academic, 2015. p. 106-107.
The Gospel is not simply a feel-good story for inspiring moral and ethical behavior. The ministry of the living God has physical, this-worldly consequences. Healing, deliverance from sin, sickness, and the devil – all of this is part of what Jesus did and what he is still doing. I like how James Edwards reads this particular passage:
The greatest number of exorcisms in Scripture occurs in the Synoptic Gospels [(Matthew, Mark, and Luke)] in contrast to their paucity or absence in the OT, John, Acts, and the Epistles. The fact that Jesus’ first miracle is an exorcism, and that he frequently encounters and heals the demon-possessed, testifies that vanquishing Satan and dividing his plunder (11:21-22) was central to his mission (1 John 3:8). Jesus is sent into the world not simply as a moral example, but as a heavenly combatant on a mission to rescue those possessed and oppressed by demons. Not surprisingly, demons recognize the power, purpose, and person of Jesus before mortals do.
James R. Edwards. The Gospel According to Luke. Eerdmans, 2015.
In contrast to many modern, American Christians especially, or to the crusaders of old, Jesus did not view the enemy of the Gospel as flesh and blood. The battle was not against the Roman Empire: its government, economy, or military. It was against the very real forces of the devil at work on earth. Some may view this as a violently “transcendent” perspective, casting Jesus and Christianity as too “other-worldly” – a common criticism of Christianity, to be sure. But the this-worldly and other-worldly distinction doesn’t make sense in the context of this passage. The natural and the supernatural are not in two separate places or realities. They are both in the here and now. The battles we face against racism, abortion, injustice, heresy, poverty, cancer, and nihilism, for example, are not primarily electoral conflicts, policy problems, scientific quandaries, or “culture wars” – even though politics, education, medicine, policy, court cases, etc. certainly matter. They are battles within the soul against sin, against the devil and his demons. As Paul will later explain in Ephesians 6:10-18, this means we must fight and defend ourselves differently.
Let’s conclude with a look at verses 42-44. Looking closely at the Greek used by Luke in this instance, James Edwards explains that:
The people of Capernaum thus want to control Jesus. True, Capernaum has received Jesus eagerly, as Nazareth did not; but Capernaum’s desire for “exclusive rights” to Jesus misunderstands and impedes his mission, for it prevents him from proclaiming “the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns.” Satan sought to redefine Jesus’ mission in the temptation, and the Nazarenes, in threatening to throw Jesus from a cliff, sought to end it. But even Capernaum’s desire to “be fed by” Jesus, as we say today, is self-serving and thus an overture of self-will over God’s will. Jesus seizes the misunderstanding to clarify his purpose, “I must proclaim good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent.” And “he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea” (vv. 43-44). The three verbs with which Jesus defined his mission from Isa 61:1-2 in vv. 18-19 — sending, proclaiming good news, and preaching — also describe his ministry in vv. 43-44.
James R. Edwards. The Gospel According to Luke. Eerdmans, 2015.
Jesus does not belong to me or to you. We belong to Him. He is meant to be shared. His healing, his redemption, his deliverance, his salvation, his Word – all of Him and all his work – is for everyone. This is not, as it may seem, an argument for “universalism,” that all religious are the same, or that all people will be saved (though I wish the last point were so). It is simply to say that Jesus is not your personal genie to be kept in proverbial “box” – in one city, town, or country. This is, in part, what Jesus means by the incredibly important phrase, “the kingdom of God.” As Edwards explains (emphasis added):
The kingdom of God is not a result of human effort, nor does it evolve toward its completion, nor is it associated with Torah obedience. The primary purpose for which the Father sent Jesus the Son was to embody, proclaim, cultivate, and effect the kingdom in those who would receive it. It is an inscrutable mystery of God (8:10) that cannot be deciphered and calculated (17:20); it is God’s doing (10:9, 11; 11:20), and it is best portrayed in analogies or parables. At present the kingdom is hidden, although it awaits future manifestations of unprecedented proportions, including power and glory (9:27). Its future manifestation makes it urgent for people to respond to it in its present hiddenness. In a reversal of human values, the poor, insignificant, and even children will be offered the kingdom (18:15-17), whereas it will be more difficult for the powerful and rich (18:24-25). Even though the kingdom is not yet fully realized, it is already present in nuce wherever people respond to the gospel (17:21; 18:16). The kingdom of God was the substance of Jesus’ teaching (4:43; 9:2), and it corresponded in the closest possible way with his own person and ministry. In Jesus of Nazareth the kingdom of God makes a personal appearance. The kingdom is God’s doing, not humanity’s, and it cannot be taken captive by any people or ideology. The kingdom must reach “the other towns” (v. 43), indeed “the ends of the earth” (Acts 1:8)…The focus of Jesus’ ministry in Jewish synagogues indicates he is not an itinerant Greco-Roman philosopher, a wandering Cynic sage, a Qumran rigorist, or even a hermetic moral reformer like John. Jesus proclaims the good news of God’s reign in practicing communities of Jewish faith to signify that his message and mission are the fulfillment of God’s revelatory history in Israel.
James R. Edwards. The Gospel According to Luke. Eerdmans, 2015.
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