Inside Out Living

This is a picture of the remains of the church that was built to commemorate Jesus' healing of the demoniac in Mark 5.

I was reading in Mark 5 today and observed some interesting things from this passage that I thought I might share with you.

I found it very interesting that Jesus even entertained a conversation with the "legion" of demons that were possessing this particular man. I am not quite certain what we are to make of this. It isn't as if Jesus has to grant their request to enter into the swine. We could make the argument that He was attempting to demonstrate the value of a human life over animals. While, that is indeed true and consistent with the overall teaching of Scripture, I don't think that it is necessarily the point of the passage. One thing that this interaction does demonstrate is Jesus authority over the demonic forces. They have to receive his permission to be able to enter into the swine. This doesn't mean that God is always directly granting permission to demonic forces, but it does mean that He possesses authority over these forces, and when He chooses to exercise that authority, they have no choice but to obey. The reality that we face is that for the time being, God doesn't exercise that authority on a constant basis, but the Bible gives us hope because according to Revelation, God will eventually exercise that authority in a final judgment of Satan and his demons.

The next thing that I noticed is Jesus compassion for this man. The community around him had only attempted to lock him up as a way to deal with him. As is evident from the text, this effort was met with failure and frustration. I would imagine that the community would live with his behavior until the acts were offensive enough to bother them to the point where they would try to arrest him. However, no one had attempted to deal with his spiritual condition that was causing the behavior (at least we don't know from the text that no one had attempted to do so). Jesus, knowing the condition of this mans tormented soul, goes about the process of setting him free and extending hope to him. This is the difference between compassion and justice. Certainly the community was within its right to try to exercise justice towards this man for things he had done wrong, but what he needed was compassion and for someone to deal with his spiritual condition.

This is how we need to interact with the world around us. All to often the church of Jesus Christ is so concerned with justice and protecting our own rights, that we neglect the need for compassion. We have to realize that people are not the real enemy, but rather that our "struggle is not against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the powers, against the world rulers of this darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavens." (Eph 6:12 NET)

Another interesting thing to note is that the text mentions that after the demons left the man and the people from the nearby town come out to see Jesus, they find the man "fully clothed and perfectly sane." (Mark 5:15 NLB) Why does the text mention that the man was fully clothed, probably because he was naked when he was demon possessed. So the question becomes, where did the clothes come from. I think the most logical answer would be from Jesus and his followers. Since they were constantly travelling around, they would have carried additional garments to change into when necessary. They more than likely gave the man some clothes as an act of compassion and generosity. This reminds us of the need to not only meet a man's spiritual needs, but also his physical needs.