The first demon Jesus encountered said: “Ha! What have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth?” The Lord might well have answered, “Nothing whatever!” As Paul writes, “What fellowship has light with darkness?” (2 Corinthians 6:14) Do you believe that unclean and holy things cannot coexist? This unclean spirit clearly said they cannot. (It appeared to know more than some people.)
The demon asked: “Did you come to destroy us?” Jesus came to save sinners, not destroy demons. Do you believe that everyone who hates and opposes God and Jesus Christ will be judged? Demons do — this one said so clearly. It then said, “We know who you are – the holy One of God!” The unclean spirit in the man confessed before anyone else who Jesus was.
“The holy One of God” is another way of saying “The Son of God.” (Matthew 8:29) The terrified demon voluntarily confessed who Jesus was as a reaction to the Lord’s holy presence. Jesus would not allow the unclean spirit to continue but commanded it to be quiet and to come out. Likewise, Paul was upset with an evil spirit in a young woman identifying him and even proclaininging his ministry (Acts 16:18). Paul put up with it for days and then evicted it as Jesus had done.
These days, Legion would be a welcome guest on a television talk show. (“So, tell us something about your multiple identities?”) We know the encounter worked out well for the Legion, but they didn’t for nearby pigs. The demons fled out of the man and into a herd of swine on a nearby hill. The herd panicked, stampeded to the edge of a cliff, plunged over it into the lake, and drowned.
The man known as Legion then fell down at the feet of Jesus. Soon after he was clothed and in his right mind. The locals (who were not Jews) saw the carcasses of their herd of pigs floating in the sea, and begged Jesus to get back into the boat and leave! The man wanted to go with Jesus, but the Lord told him to go and tell his family and friends what great things God had done for him.
Jesus had journeyed through a raging storm at night in the middle of a lake to dispossess the demons and bring the man back to his right mind. People on the Jewish side of the lake did not keep pigs, but many had personal demons.
Personal demons are still around, 2000 years after this incident. They are not psychological problems (“personal demons”) but are spiritual entities. We hear them in the demented screams of wide-eyed fanatics on the television news. We see them also in video footage of road rage and in unexpected “coward punches” — ‘king hits’ — that often kill.
Jesus wants to save those who do these things, just as he did the demented Legion, and we have his authority to calm sudden storms of family violence, to minister peace, to set free those who are crazed by drugs, and send them home to their families — clothed again and in their right minds.
Problems are legion, but through the Lord Jesus are as solvable now as they were then.