And they arrived in the country of the Gadarenes, which is over against Galilee.
The boat has just come through a storm that nearly sank it. It now lands on the far shore, opposite Galilee — where the same hostile power meets Jesus again, this time in a man.
The manuscripts spell the name of this district in three ways. A dictionary of Bible places sets out the names and the ground:
These are also called GERGESENES and GERASENES in the different Greek manuscripts. The Sea of Galilee had various names. So did the people who lived there, each group named after the nearby district it belonged to. The Gadarenes lived east of the Sea of Galilee, where the Lord cured the two demoniacs, though Mark and Luke mention only one. Travellers have found a place in that area with a steep slope down to the sea. It matches the details of the gospel account exactly.
Matthew tells this story earlier in his book than Mark and Luke do. Some have called that a contradiction. One writer answers from the order of events in Mark:
Mark 4:35 – 5 makes it quite clear when this happened. They crossed the lake, and the storm obeyed the Lord's rebuke, on the evening of the day when the Lord spoke the great parables of Matthew 13. The Lord delivered the two demoniacs on the other side after that. God inspired Mark and Luke to dwell on the more desperate case of Legion. There is not even the appearance of a discrepancy. Matthew states the facts without any note of time. He states them in the order suited to display the Lord's power in detailed testimony on earth. Mark gives them as they happened in His ministry. The design of each account explains them all.
What had been raging in wind and water now meets Him in a person:
On the lake the Lord triumphed over the power of Satan working on the elements of nature. When He arrived in the country of the Gadarenes, the same power faced Him. This time it worked much more directly over a man, through demons. We must expect opposition, but the power of His word was supreme. This man was a very extreme case of demon possession. It had lasted "a long time". It gave him superhuman strength, so ordinary restraints could not hold him. It drove him into deserts and into the place of death — the tombs.
The far shore was not neutral ground. It lay inside the land God had set apart, and that is what makes the herds of pigs there so telling:
Gadara was part of the Jewish, or set-apart, land. It was inside that country on which the eyes of the God of heaven and earth rested from one end of the year to the other. But uncleanness had long since entered that land and defiled it. By this time we find it there in herds, along with the full display of the enemy's unchecked strength. Legion and the pigs were in Gadara, to tell us what the place of the Lord's own choosing had now become. It was the very palace of the strong man. But the Son of God now enters as the stronger One. He comes to do His proper work: to show Himself the Redeemer of the captive and the destroyer of the power of death.
The crossing ends with the people asking Him to go. One writer takes their answer as a picture of the human will:
These Gadarenes, who had put up with the demons because they could not help it, will not put up with Christ, and they beg Him to leave! A man would be glad to bind Legion if he could, for he does not like the effects of the devil's power. But man's will is against Christ. He has a deliberate, settled hatred of Christ. The Lord came to the world full of love and power, to deliver from the consequences of sin. But man rejected Him and cast Him out. And God will not stay where the will is set against Him.
Yet the region is not left alone. The same writer adds that Christ sent the healed man back to them, to tell them the great things God had done for him.
- Crossing. They sailed east of the Sea of Galilee. The manuscripts give the district three names, and its steep slope to the water still matches the account.
- Order. Matthew places the crossing earlier than Mark and Luke. Mark supplies the timing. The difference is arrangement, not contradiction.
- Confrontation. The power that raged in the storm meets Him on shore. It holds a man no ordinary restraint can bind, driven out to deserts and tombs.
- Ground. Gadara lay inside the land God had chosen, now defiled — the strong man's palace, which the stronger One now enters.
- Reception. The people who had put up with the demons would not put up with Christ. They asked Him to go. He left — but sent back the healed man to tell them what God had done.
And as he got out [of the ship] on the land, a certain man out of the city met him, who had demons a long time, and put on no clothes, and did not abide in a house, but in the tombs.
Jesus steps ashore on the far side of the lake. The first person to meet Him is a man the whole district had given up on. The verse raises two questions the story goes on to answer. How far can Satan's power over a person go? And what happens when that power meets Christ?
The man's case looked hopeless. His coming was also the whole welcome the district gave to Christ.
He had been afflicted for a long time, and his case seemed hopeless. As the prey of those demons, he wore no clothes and lived in the tombs. A pitiable sight indeed! When rulers or great people visit a place, crowds gather to see them and welcome them. The Son of the Most High God set His foot on shore among the Gerasenes, and only two people — and those demon-possessed, as Matthew's account records — came to meet Him!
Luke's three details all point one way. Each marks a tie to ordinary human life that the man had cut.
He had broken with all social order; he "had worn no clothes, and had not lived in a house but among the tombs." A more dreadful picture of human degradation through the possession of demons could not be.
The damage reached every part of his life.
By living among the tombs, he cut himself off entirely from the worship of Jehovah as required by the law… He would not, and could not, be held by chains or shackles, any more than by love of home or friends or fellow citizens… He injured himself by his own choice, though he was responsible to care for the body… "He had worn no clothes" is the telling description of his appearance. This picture is darker still, because it shows the man's usual way of life. This was no sudden outburst of evil passion. The symptoms had been like this for "a long time." They had become habitual.
Men could not hold him with chains. But God set a limit the enemy could not pass.
Here we see how far Satan's power reached in the case of this poor man, and to what a dreadful extent it was allowed. He wore no clothes, he stayed in the tombs night and day, cutting himself with stones; no one could bind him, no shackle could hold him — but God kept him. That is why he was still in the wilderness, within reach of mercy. That is why he was not driven down into the deep. There he would have been beyond the reach of grace, but his God had not ordered it so. He would not have it so, and therefore the utmost extent of Satan's power could not achieve it.
Later in the story the townspeople come out and find the man changed. Christ had undone every loss listed in verse 27.
The man who had long been a trouble to the whole country, they find "sitting, clothed and in his right mind." What a beautiful picture of a truly converted soul! He is delivered from the terrible power of Satan and brought to rest at the feet of Jesus. He is no longer naked and exposed to judgment. He is clothed, cleared of every charge, justified before God, with Christ as his righteousness. He is in his right mind — reconciled, with all the enmity against God dried up.
Christ's power over the demons was plain to everyone there. The district and the man He set free answered it in opposite ways.
These Gadarenes, who had put up with the demons because they could not help it, will not put up with Christ, and they beg Him to leave! A man would be glad to bind this demon-possessed man if he could, because he does not like the effects of the devil's power; but man's will is against Christ.
Judging by his past, if anyone might have been expected to keep far away from Jesus, it was this man. Satan had led him captive at his will. But he was set free, and so completely from the very first hour, that his one desire was to be with Jesus.
- Met. Christ landed and the worst case in the district came straight to Him — the only welcome He received there.
- Stripped. Verse 27 lists what Satan's power had taken: worship, home, dignity, society. A settled condition, "a long time," not a passing fit.
- Kept. No chain could hold the man, yet God held the enemy back. He stayed within reach of mercy.
- Clothed. What the demons stripped, Christ restored — dressed, sane, seated at His feet, reconciled.
- Divided. The freed man begged to stay with Christ. His neighbours had put up with the demons, but they begged Christ to leave.
But seeing Jesus, he cried out, and fell down before him, and with a loud voice said, What have I to do with thee, Jesus Son of the Most High God? I beseech thee torment me not.
A man who had lived a long time among the tombs meets Jesus the moment He steps ashore. The voice that answers Him names Him correctly, at full volume, and then begs to be left alone. Two questions run through the scene. Who is really speaking here? And why does exact knowledge of Jesus bring terror instead of trust?
The man's actions and his words pull in opposite directions. A human being is still there under the demon's grip.
There was a strange mixture in the man's condition. He cried out, "What have I to do with You," and yet he was drawn to fall before the Lord Jesus (v.28). Despite the awful power of the evil spirit, the man still had a human spirit and soul. The greater power of divine grace in the Lord Jesus drew him, while the evil spirit inside him protested, knowing that Jesus is the Son of God. The very presence of the Son of God tormented the evil spirit, and so did the Lord's command that he come out of the man.
The blending of the two voices is so complete that the man speaks the demon's mind as though it were his own.
See how completely Satan identified himself with the man's mind. The man spoke as if he were speaking his own interests and wishes, but he spoke under Satan's influence. Even so, a sense of a greater power was present. So it is here with the words: "What have I to do with you?" "I beg you, do not torment me."
The cry opens with a set phrase, which older translations render as "What have I to do with you?" Scripture uses it elsewhere to push someone away.
First, by the phrase "What have I to do with you?" the demon-possessed man expressed his own sense that darkness and light do not belong together. He knew that he had nothing in common with Jesus. This question appears elsewhere in both the Old Testament and the New with a similar sense. For example, Jephthah used it to the king of Ammon, David to the sons of Zeruiah, Elisha to Jehoram, and the Lord to Mary at Cana of Galilee (Judges 11:12; 2 Sam. 16:10; 2 Sam. 19:22; 2 Kings 3:13; John 2:4).
One writer notes the same idiom in the Greek Old Testament, where it carries the sense of wanting no quarrel — "Why should you trouble me?"
"What have I to do with you?" Compare 2 Chron. 35:21 in the Septuagint version, brought forward by Maldonatus. There the words follow: "I do not come to make war on you." And so here, "Why should you trouble me?" (Carr).
The title is not vague. It is a specific name of God, and it answers a charge the Pharisees had made against Jesus.
The man from Gadara called out to Him aloud as Jesus, Son of the Most High God. By using this title he condemned outright the false charge of the Pharisees that Jesus was under the control of the prince of the demons… "Most High" is the title of supreme sovereignty on the earth. It is tied to the promises of divine rule during the millennium, when God will remove Satan's evil agents from the earth and shut Beelzebub himself in the bottomless abyss.
The words point ahead to a day when all the powers of hell will say the same.
So all through Scripture "Most High" is a telling title of God as the Sovereign Ruler in the kingdom of men (Dan. 4:17). The demon-possessed man confessed Jesus as the Son of the absolute Lord of the universe. And such confessions point ahead to God's decree that all the beings of hell will bow the knee to Jesus and confess Him Lord, to the glory of God the Father (Phil. 2:9-10).
One thing separates this cry from the cries Jesus answered.
The man from Gadara confessed the power of the Lord Jesus Christ, but not His grace, for his words never asked for His mercy. It was the confession of an evil spirit, not of a repentant sinner… No word fell from the lips of the man lying before Him begging for mercy and forgiveness. The tax collector in the temple and blind Bartimaeus cried for mercy, and were heard, for grace and truth had come to deliver such people. But spirits that have turned away from God are already doomed and beyond the reach of mercy. They wait only for their just sentence to be carried out. Still, the gracious Lord showed His mercy to this miserable man, though not to the unclean demons.
Their begging shows a certainty about Jesus that most people never reach.
They have the most terrible dread of the Lord Jesus. This natural dread comes because they never doubt that He is a divine person. They never doubt that He is the appointed One, not only to judge the world, but to punish them in particular… As the Letter of James puts it, "Even the demons believe—and shudder!" Sadly, this is what man does not do. He neither believes nor shudders. But the day is coming when he must.
The terror in the cry comes from who had just arrived, and why He came.
The demons knew that their Conqueror was present, the Conqueror of Satan. They dreaded being crushed under His feet… The Spirit led Jesus into the desert, but the devil drove this man there in misery. Christ came in divine grace, to break the power of Satan in a righteous way.
- Recognised. The demons knew Jesus as their Conqueror. They dreaded being crushed under His feet, for He had come in grace to break Satan's power.
- Resisted. The opening phrase is used elsewhere in Scripture to push someone away. It admits that darkness has nothing in common with light.
- Confessed. "Son of the Most High God" names Him as Son of the Sovereign Ruler over the kingdom of men. It also denies the charge that He worked by the prince of demons.
- Afraid. Their belief is real, and it makes them shudder. Man's tragedy is that he neither believes nor shudders — though the day is coming when he must.
- Unsaved. The cry owned His power but never asked His mercy — and mercy was still given to the man, though not to the demons in him.
For he had commanded the unclean spirit to go out from the man. For very often it had seized him; and he had been bound, kept with chains and fetters; and breaking the bonds he was driven by the demon into the deserts.
Luke 8:29 pauses the story to explain why the man fell down crying out. It sets one command from Christ beside a long record of seizures, guards, chains and broken bonds.
Luke explains the cry of verse 28 by pointing back to an order Jesus had already given. In that cry the man's voice and the demon's voice run together.
...it belongs to the very nature of the Spirit's action to merge Himself, as it were, in the object He uses or lives in... The same is just as true of those under the power of evil spirits... It appears just as plainly in Luke 8:28-29, where the man under the demon's power said, "I beg you, do not torment me." Then the evangelist goes on, "For He had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man."
The verse lists what people had tried: guards, chains and shackles. One writer reads that failed hardware as a picture of every human attempt to hold evil down.
The power of the evil spirit was frightening. The man broke chains and shackles with superhuman strength (v.29). The world may try to bind the power of Satan by things like legislation, rehabilitation and moral reform. But these things fail, and Satan drives his victim into a moral wilderness.
Outward restraints fail, and so do inward ones. Another writer points to the one thing that works.
A man may be respectable and religious and still be under Satan's power. All the features that marked Legion in his natural state are true of him spiritually, if he is away from God. The good resolutions he makes, and the obligations others place on him, will never change him. If he is to be set free, he must come under the power of the Lord Jesus.
Jesus went out into the desert, and so did this man. One writer sets the two journeys side by side and asks who did the leading.
The demons were aware that their Conqueror was present, the Conqueror of Satan. They dreaded being crushed under His feet, for Christ had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man... The Spirit led Jesus into the desert, but the devil led this man there in misery. Christ went in divine grace, and to break Satan's power in a righteous way.
The verse shows Satan's reach at its widest. Even here it stops short: the man was driven into the wilderness, but he was not destroyed there.
Here we see in a wonderful way how far God's power reaches over the utmost power of Satan... We learn how far Satan's power extended in the case of this poor man, and how far God allowed that dreadful power to go. He wore no clothes. He lived in the tombs night and day, cutting himself with stones. No one could bind him and no shackle could hold him. But God kept him. That is why he was still in the wilderness, where mercy could reach him. That is why he was not driven down into the deep. There he would have been out of the reach of grace, but his God had not ordered it so.
The seizures had come many a time. A few verses later, one word from Christ has ended the whole record.
Just as the wind and water had obeyed His word, so the demons had to obey. The man was completely delivered, and his whole character changed. In the words, "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind," we may see a beautiful picture of what grace does for people who have been held captive by Satan's power... We too are not yet allowed to be with our Deliverer: we have to go back to our friends and show what has been done in us.
- Grip. "Many a time it had seized him" describes a settled condition, not a single episode. The demon's hold had lasted a long time and shaped the man's whole way of living.
- Chains. Guards, chains and shackles are the world's remedies in miniature. Legislation, reform and personal resolutions all snap. Freedom comes only when a person comes under the power of the Lord Jesus.
- Limit. Satan could drive him into the desert. Satan could not put him beyond the reach of mercy — no shackle held him, yet God kept him.
- Command. Christ had already ordered the unclean spirit out before the man ever cried out. Luke merges the man's voice with the demon's, so that one speaks in the other's words.
- Release. The man driven into the wilderness ends up at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind. He goes back to his friends to show what grace has done in him.
And Jesus asked him saying, What is thy name? And he said, Legion for many demons had entered into him.
Jesus meets a man in the country of the Gadarenes, held by a crowd of demons. Before He sets the man free, He asks him a question. Why ask a name He already knew, and what does the answer tell us about how far Satan's grip on a human being can go?
The Lord knows the answer before He speaks. One writer says the point of the question was to bring the answer out of the man's own lips. He compares it with the same question God asked Jacob.
Notice this. While He was delivering this man out of the terrible bondage on him, He asks him, "What is your name?" I have no doubt that was the intention the blessed Lord had in drawing this man's name from his own lips. You remember how He asked Jacob, "What is your name?" And I believe the Lord makes us answer that question... He knows, but He will have it from your own lips.
The word comes from the Roman army.
In the Roman army, a body of troops of three to five thousand; but the term is also used for an indefinite number. The Lord said that His Father, at His request, would send Him more than twelve legions of angels (Matthew 26:53). The demons who possessed the man among the Gadarenes said, "My name is Legion; for we are many" (Mark 5:9, 15; Luke 8:30).
The man chose that word out of his own experience.
This poor man had seen the awful power of the Roman legion, that terrible instrument of oppression. He could not think of any word that would describe more exactly where he was. The word "legion" struck fear and shame into the heart of the oppressed Jew. The Roman legion, made up of thousands of men, was a great terror to every conquered enemy who came under its power. So, to say with his own lips what his name was, he uses this word "legion."
Look at the grammar. Jesus asks one man his name, and the answer comes back in the plural. One writer traces this to what had happened inside him:
The words the man used to the Lord showed that he had given up his own personality. He had lost his own will and his individual responsibility. So the demons speak and act in him and through him: "My name is Legion; for we are many," was his reply to the question of Jesus.
Yet the man himself has not disappeared. Another writer holds both sides together:
On the evil side of the spiritual world there is a fact outside human knowledge, horrible beyond measure. Here is a man with such a host of evil spirits in him that the well-known name of a Roman battalion fitted him. And here is a man who still had his own consciousness, yet who also merged his personality in theirs! — Legion, for we are many!
Some treat the whole story as mental illness described in old language. One writer rejects that:
Here, as everywhere, it is pointless to confuse possession by demons with madness or disease. One or both might also be present, or neither, and the possession by evil spirits would still be real.
What happened to this one man is more than a strange story from a far country. Another writer sees a picture of something wider:
Man's subjection to the power of Satan is the fruit of the fall, and is a terrible reality not to be underrated. Again and again, while the Saviour was here, people with demons in them came face to face with Him. In each case this was a special affliction. But it also pictures the spiritual condition of every person who has not been born again.
The size of the answer shows the size of the victory. One word from Christ was enough for that whole army:
Christ comes and finds the world completely under the power of the devil. Demons possessed a man of the Gadarenes, but He delivers him, showing that the Lord had complete power over the enemy. With a word from Christ the demons were gone. "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil." ... Man would be glad to bind Legion if he could, for he does not like the effects of the devil's power; but man's will is against Christ.
- Asked — Christ questions a man He already knows. He draws the answer from the man's own lips, as He did with Jacob.
- Named — "Legion" is army language. It means thousands of Roman soldiers, and no other word said so exactly where the man was.
- Emptied — one man answers in the plural. He had given up his own will and his own responsibility, yet he was still conscious of himself.
- Real — writers here call this possession, not madness or sickness. Illness may come with it, but it never explains it.
- Broken — one word from Christ ended what no man could bind. The sad part is that man's will still stands against the One who sets him free.
And they besought him that he would not command them to go away into the bottomless pit.
The demons speak here, and their words are a plea to the very One who is driving them out. They dread not being wiped out but being shut away, and their fear shows what they know about their own future and about Jesus.
The word behind "the abyss" carries a precise meaning. It names a prison, not the final sentence.
The word is ἄβυσσος, literally "without a bottom," an abyss. From the passages in Revelation we learn that the abyss is where the satanic powers are shut up. It is not the place of their punishment; that is the lake of fire. The demons cast out by the Lord in Luke 8:31 begged Him not to send them into the abyss.
That distinction explains the plea. The abyss is a holding cell, and they want to stay out of it.
These spirits are not sceptics. They are sure of what is coming, and that certainty leaves them terrified, not trusting.
A spirit is mighty, above all when massed in such a huge and tyrannical force of evil. Yet demons are no bold sceptics. They believe and shudder (James 2:19). So they begged Him not to command them to depart into the abyss. Their certain doom was before their eyes. They knew that when He reigns they will be cast there, and they dreaded that even now.
Their theology was accurate. It saved nobody.
Notice what the demons do not do. They do not resist, argue, or bargain from strength — they ask. Everything in the scene turns on who holds authority.
The abyss is their prison. That explains their urgent plea to the Lord — that He would not send them there at that moment. That is what they asked in Luke 8:31. How conscious they were that One was present who had absolute power over them! His word of command forced them to leave their victims. They admitted they could go nowhere without God's permission.
Even a legion of them put up no fight. Their only move is an appeal about the timing of judgment.
In these gospel accounts these demons show no trace of open resistance, even here, where there was a legion of them. They plead against the judgment they foresee. Its time has not yet come, and they argue their own case.
Their words assume a calendar. They know a day is coming, and they know this is not it.
This was the witness the devil gave of His power when He came on earth: "Have you come here to torment us before the time?" So there is a set time, and they know it. Then full judgment will fall on them... A time is coming when He will bind them in everlasting chains, to roam no more. Even then they trembled before Him. They recognised this almighty power in the Person of Jesus Christ, though He seemed weak.
So why did He not send them there? Because this visit had another purpose.
It was the reluctant owning of a power they could not avoid. The time was not come to cast them into the pit, but to deliver man.
This chapter holds more than one request, and the comparison stings. The people of the region ask the same favour the demons asked — to be left alone.
The people of the district saw Jesus. He had delivered the demon-possessed man, but in their view He had destroyed their pigs. So they all wanted Him to leave the area at once. It was an ungracious, indeed an insolent, request, yet He granted it — just as He granted the demons' request to enter the pigs instead of going to the abyss... They would rather stay undisturbed with their naked, howling, demon-possessed men and their filthy pigs.
- Prison — The abyss is the holding place of evil spirits, not their final punishment; that is the lake of fire. They begged Him not to send them there yet.
- Dread — They believed every fact about Christ and shuddered. Correct knowledge held with terror is not faith.
- Permission — They offered no resistance, only a request. They confessed they could not move a step without divine leave.
- Delay — Their words assume a day already fixed. On that day the One they trembled before will bind them for good.
- Deliverance — That day had not come; this visit was to rescue a man. The demons asked Him to hold off, and He agreed. The townspeople asked Him to leave, and He agreed too.
And there was there a herd of many swine feeding on the mountain, and they besought him that he would suffer them to enter into those; and he suffered them.
A herd of pigs feeds on the hillside. Nearby, a legion of spirits holds a man. Told to come out, the spirits ask to go into the animals instead, and the Lord agrees. Why would He allow that, and what does the strange bargain show about the powers at work?
The spirits do not act on their own; they ask. One writer notes what that asking admits about them:
They admitted that Jesus had authority to throw them out. As Matthew reports, they said, "If you cast us out" (Matt. 8:31). Their desire was to enter the unclean swine, as if to display and satisfy their love of destruction... "Permit us," they said, in this way owning, like Satan of old (Job 1), their powerlessness apart from the Supreme Will.
Commentators find the demons' desire for a body strange. One also notes that under the law the herd should never have been there at all:
It seems a strange fact that demons want a body to live in. Angels who never fell are spirits too, but clearly they have no such desire... When commanded to leave the man, they asked permission to enter into a herd of swine, which the Lord permitted (v.32). According to law Jews had no right to be keeping swine (Lev. 11:7), and the Lord allowed the results as a pointed lesson to them.
Both the spirits and the animals were unclean. That match decides what happens next:
The demons had to ask the Lord's permission even to enter the swine that were feeding not far away. The swine were unclean animals under the law, so they ought not to have been there. The spirits were unclean too. There was something in common between them and the swine, and it proved fatal for the animals. The demons had driven the man toward self-destruction with the sharp stones. With the swine the drive was instant and complete. The man was delivered: the swine were destroyed.
What happened to the herd settled the question of what had been living in the man:
So, when they begged to enter a great herd of swine feeding on the mountain side, the Lord gave them permission. As soon as the swine — about two thousand of them — received the unclean spirits, they rushed down the steep slope and drowned in the sea. For everyone who believes Scripture, this was the witness of the Lord's delivering power on one side, and of Satan's destructive energy on the other. It is pointless here, as everywhere, to confuse possession by demons with either lunacy or disease.
The animals had nothing in them to slow the ruin down. The end came at once, and that speed makes the lesson plain:
The violent end of the beasts was only a picture of the ultimate end of those who are under the direction and power of darkness. Animals lack the higher nature that man has. That is the only reason destruction followed at once when the demons entered the swine. They at once rushed to their death. With man the end is the same, though it may come more slowly. Whatever men may be deceived into thinking, the aim of the evil one is to destroy. The aim of the Holy One of God is to deliver and save.
Commentators differ on how far the picture extends. One reads the herd as a sign concerning the nation that refused Christ:
The swine appear to represent the state of the Jews after their rejection of Christ. The Lord, no doubt, permitted the demons to enter the swine. The swine had no such passions of their own, so it was the demons in them that made them rush to destruction. This shows that it was not merely the evil passions in men, but wicked spirits in possession of them, that hurried them on to destruction.
The people who kept the pigs then made their own choice:
But the keepers of the unclean swine in that place were not ready for this. It was a trespass on them, and they wanted Jesus to leave their region... They had seen the grace and power of the Stronger Man among them, and still they did not want Him. They would sell all their interest in the Son of God for a herd of swine.
- Permission. The spirits had to ask permission to touch even a pig. Apart from the Supreme Will they were powerless.
- Purpose. They wanted a body to live in — and the nearest bodies were unclean animals that had no business being in that land.
- Proof. The Lord's permission made possession undeniable. No illness or madness makes two thousand animals run off a cliff.
- Picture. The herd's quick end is what the power of darkness always aims at; the aim of the Holy One of God is to deliver and save.
- Price. The neighbourhood weighed a rescued man against lost livestock, and asked the Son of God to leave.
And the demons, going out from the man, entered into the swine, and the herd rushed down the precipice into the lake, and were choked.
A whole herd of pigs dies in seconds, and the Gospel records it without a word of explanation. Readers still ask why Jesus allowed it, and what the stampede shows about the spirits that drove it.
The demons could not touch the herd until Jesus allowed it. One writer sets their request beside the way Satan works elsewhere in Scripture:
They admitted that Jesus had authority to drive them out. As Matthew reports, they said, "If you cast us out" (Matt. 8:31). What they wanted was to enter the unclean swine, as if to display and satisfy their love of destruction. Satan disguised himself as the serpent for subtlety (Gen. 3). Now, to deceive the unwary, he transforms himself into an angel of light (2 Cor. 11:14), and he also walks about as a roaring lion to devour those who do not resist (1 Peter 5:8). In the same way, here the unclean spirits sought permission to enter the herd of unclean swine. "Allow us," they said, admitting, like Satan long ago (Job 1), that they are powerless apart from the Supreme Will.
The pairing was not random. Pigs were unclean animals under the law of Moses, so the herd should never have been there at all:
The swine were unclean animals under the law, so they ought not to have been there. The spirits were unclean too, so there was a kinship between them and the swine. That kinship had fatal results for the animals. The demons had led the man toward self-destruction, using the sharp stones. With the swine the impulse was immediate and complete. The man was delivered: the swine were destroyed.
People have long tried to explain demon possession away as madness or illness. What happened on the cliff edge makes that reading impossible:
For all who believe Scripture, it was the witness of the Lord's delivering power on one side and of Satan's destructive energy on the other. It is pointless here, as everywhere, to confuse possession by demons with madness or disease. Either or both might also be present, or neither, and the possession by evil spirits still be real. The event made that reality clear. The effect on the swine made the fact undeniably plain, and it made the suggestion of a physical or mental disorder inexcusably false.
With animals there was nothing to slow the process down, so the aim of the demons showed at once:
The violent end of the beasts was simply a picture of the ultimate end of those who are under the direction and power of darkness. Animals lack the higher nature that man has. That is the only reason destruction followed at once when the demons entered the swine. They rushed straight to their death. In the case of man the end is similar, though it may be reached more slowly. Men may be deceived into thinking otherwise. But the aim of the evil one is to destroy, while the aim of the Holy One of God is to deliver and save.
Even so, the herd's blind panic shows a limit worth noticing:
The terrified swine were not in control of their senses. Yet this occasion also proves something else. Evil spirits do not hold complete control of their victims, whatever measure of control they exercise.
Some object that a gracious Saviour should not have allowed the loss of a man's property. One writer answers by setting the loss beside all that God permits:
Everything below and above belongs to the Lord. He does not need man's apology to justify what He permitted here. Nor does He need one for the sickness and death, the plague and the famine, the storm and the earthquake, which He uses in His providence in this fallen world. And to what purposes of grace does He not turn every one of these afflictions, for those who hear His word? So it doubtless was then, whether Jews or Gentiles owned the swine.
One writer sees more than an incident here. He reads the rush to the water as a picture of a nation's course:
The swine appear to represent the state of the Jews after their rejection of Christ. The Lord doubtless permitted the demons to enter the swine. The swine had no passions of their own. It was the demons inside them that made them rush headlong to destruction. This shows that it was not merely the evil passions in men that hurried them on to destruction, but the wicked spirits that held them. And history tells us, from Josephus and others, how the Jews rushed on to their own destruction. One can hardly imagine such madness. It came when the Gentile powers ploughed up the holy city.
- Permission — The demons could not enter even a pig without permission. They own that they are powerless apart from the Supreme Will.
- Proof — The herd's reaction made possession an undeniable fact. It ruled out illness or madness as the explanation.
- Destruction — The spirits did to animals in seconds what they had been doing slowly to the man: driving him toward self-harm.
- Deliverance — One event shows both aims at once. The evil one destroys; the Holy One of God delivers and saves.
- Picture — One writer reads the herd's plunge as the course of a people rushing to ruin after they refuse Christ.
But they that fed [them], seeing what had happened, fled, and told [it] to the city and to the country.
The demons had left the man, and the whole herd of pigs had drowned in the lake, so the men paid to watch them ran. Their report brought a whole city and countryside out to see Jesus, and the crowd that came asked Him to leave.
The New Testament uses two Greek words for feeding animals. Luke picks the one that nearly always means feeding pigs.
The Greek words bosko and poimaino are both translated "feed." The first word is used for the feeding of pigs, except in John 21:15-17. See Matthew 8:30, 33; Mark 5:11, 14; Luke 8:32, 34; and Luke 15:15.
The men in charge of the herd had just lost every animal in it. That loss is what set them running.
This at once roused those who had the charge of them. "When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country." The people come out, and find the man from whom the demons had gone out, "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind."
Their news spread fast and pulled a whole district out to see for itself. What the crowd found did not soften them.
The pig herders reported what had taken place, for Mark 5:13 tells us that the herd numbered about 2000. This stirred up the interest of the whole country. They found the man who had been demon-possessed sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind (v.35). But instead of rejoicing at the grace and power of God so plainly shown, they were afraid. They feared more for their unlawful trade than they feared the power of Satan.
The whole city came out to Jesus. What they asked Him for shows what they felt.
And here we face the more ordinary working of Satan's power. When the pig herders reported it all, the whole city came out to meet the Saviour and begged Him to leave their district! They saw the man who once had the legion of demons sitting there, clothed and in his right mind. They were afraid — not of Satan, but of the Saviour!
Thanks would have been the natural answer. It never came.
If there had been one bit of right feeling in them, they would have given thanks to God. They would have been in the presence of One who was to break Satan's power for ever, though Satan was to bruise Him.
Once the herdsmen's report circulated, the town did its arithmetic. A restored neighbour on one side of the ledger, a drowned herd on the other.
With such a display of the grace and power of the Stronger Man among them, still they did not want Him, but would sell all their interest in the Son of God for a herd of swine.
The same weighing goes on in every generation, and writers are blunt about how cheap the trade still is.
Two men had been set free from Satan's hold, but at the cost of two thousand pigs. Were two souls worth two thousand pigs? In their terrible blindness, they judged that they were not. If this was to be the result of the Son of God being present, they would rather have Satan for a neighbour. Such behaviour would be unbelievable, if we did not see people today throwing away their own souls for things lighter than air.
(Fereday is following Matthew's account, which mentions two men. Luke and Mark describe one.)
The Gadarenes — the people of that district — got what they asked for, and Jesus left. That was not the end of God's dealings with them.
Man rejected Him and cast Him out, and God will not stay where the will is set against Him. When the Gadarenes asked Christ to leave, He got into a boat at once and went back again. And notice: the world we live in is carrying on as a world that has quietly rejected Christ. But does God give them up, even though Christ has gone away for a time? No, He did not give them up. He sent this man among them, the man He had healed, to tell them what great things God had done for him. This is what the disciples did in the world.
- Told. The first news of this miracle came from frightened hired men, not from disciples. They carried it into the city and the countryside.
- Seen. The whole district came out and looked at a man restored, sitting clothed and sane at Jesus' feet.
- Feared. They saw the healed man with their own eyes, and still feared the Saviour, not Satan.
- Traded. They weighed two thousand pigs against a rescued soul and chose the pigs. People still trade their souls for things lighter than air.
- Sent. Christ left, but God did not give them up. He kept the healed man there to tell the region what God had done for him.
And they went out to see what had happened, and came to Jesus, and found the man from whom the demons had gone out, sitting, clothed and sensible, at the feet of Jesus. And they were afraid.
The people of the district came out to look, and found the man everyone had feared sitting at the feet of Jesus. Commentators ask what each detail of that picture means, and why the sight frightened the onlookers.
One writer sees three details here, and each one answers something in the man's past.
We are then given the picture of the delivered man. Three things show the transformation: he is "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind." Restlessness, violence and passion are gone. The shame of his nakedness is covered. He has come to himself, and his mind is cleared. Is there any coming to oneself where there is no coming to Christ?
Commentators differ on why Luke notes where the man sat. Was it the posture of a student, or evidence of the power that freed him?
"At the feet of Jesus" — not so much as a student, but as a sign of the Lord's delivering power.
Another writer reads it as the learner's place, and ties it to the errand the Lord gives him.
They found him "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind." You could not have a better illustration of a sound mind than that. He sat at the feet of Jesus as a disciple. At His bidding he went to bear witness in the city to the delivering power of the Lord. It is the touch of the great Physician and His word that heals the mind. The sound mind thinks soberly. The man who has it is not puffed up by his knowledge. He puts Christ first, and looks to His glory and not his own interest.
Another writer weighs what each detail says about the man's new standing before God.
The man who had long been a trial to the whole region, they find "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind." What a beautiful picture of a truly converted soul! He is delivered from the terrible power of Satan and brought to rest at the feet of Jesus. He is no longer naked and exposed to judgment, but clothed. He is cleared of every charge and justified before God, Christ his righteousness. And he is in his right mind — reconciled, with all the enmity against God withered up.
Mary later takes the same place at Jesus' feet. One writer reads the two scenes as stages of one relationship.
Mary sat; a sign that every question about the state of her soul had been settled, and so that she was at rest. Like the man out of whom the Lord had driven the demons, she was sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in her right mind. That is, we first take our place at the feet of Jesus as repentant sinners, and we stay there as His servants and disciples.
The verse ends with fear, not joy. The man's earlier violence had never frightened these neighbours like this.
It is strange that those who saw this blessed change in him should have felt such alarm. We read of nothing like it during his earlier raving and violence. A faint sense of divine power may well have mixed with less worthy feelings. Still, it stands written that it was not lawlessness but grace that alarmed them most.
Another writer sets their fear beside earlier moments when God came near.
Then we read, "They were afraid." What a comment on the men of this world! They see the evidence that God has come near, and they are afraid. Guilty man is always afraid of God. Adam, fallen, was afraid; Israel at Sinai were afraid; and the men of Gadara were afraid. It makes no difference how God comes. He may come as a visitor in the garden of Eden, in majesty at Sinai, or in grace at Gadara. To guilty man, the presence of God is unbearable.
The man does not stay at those feet. What Christ has done in him becomes his message.
The man was completely delivered and his whole character changed. The words "sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind" give us a beautiful picture. They show what grace does for people held captive by Satan's power. We may not yet be with our Deliverer. We have to go back to our friends and show what He has done in us. The more complete the change, as in this man's case, the more effective such testimony is.
- Delivered. Christ broke Satan's hold on him completely. The verse shows the result of His power, not the man's effort.
- Seated. The restless wandering stops. Sitting is the posture of a settled question and of a disciple who has come to rest.
- Clothed. His shame is covered. He no longer stands exposed to judgment, for Christ has cleared him of every charge.
- Right-minded. His mind is clear and his enmity toward God is gone. Commentators call this a sound and sober mind that puts Christ first.
- Feared. Grace alarmed the neighbours more than lawlessness ever had. Yet the Lord sent the changed man home as living proof of that grace.
And they also who had seen it told them how the possessed man had been healed.
People who saw it happen told the Gadarene countryside how the man full of demons was set free. The verse turns on that report — and on what it failed to do in the hearts of those who heard it.
The word behind "healed" is the New Testament's ordinary word for "save." Commentators trace it through case after case:
It is worth noticing that the word sozo, usually translated in the New Testament "save," is used in its general sense of deliverance... It is also applied to the restoration of the daughter of Jairus, to the healing of Bartimaeus, of the Gadarene demoniac in Luke 8:36, and of the Samaritan leper... In these instances the Greek word is translated "made whole," or "healed."
The news they carried was about a man fully under the enemy's control, and about how quickly Christ ended it:
We have a solemn picture of what came of Christ's rejection by the world! Christ comes and finds them completely under the power of the devil. A man of the Gadarenes was in the grip of demons, but He delivers him, showing that the Lord had complete power over the enemy. One word from Christ, and the demons were gone. "The reason the Son of God appeared was to destroy the works of the devil."
The witnesses accounted for both the man and the missing herd. They left nothing unclear, and the city still asked Christ to leave:
When the men who kept the pigs reported everything, the whole city came out to meet the Saviour and begged Him to leave their district! They saw the man who had held the legion of demons sitting there, clothed and in his right mind; and they were afraid — not of Satan, but of the Saviour! The witnesses told them what explained everything about the man and the pigs; but all the people around began to beg Him to leave!
The crowd was not short of facts. They had the sight and the explanation. What was missing was any right feeling toward the One in front of them:
If there had been one particle of right feeling, they would have given thanks to God. They would have been in the presence of One Who would break Satan's power for ever, though Satan would bruise Him... They knew how the man had been healed; still, their own hearts were not won, and the very opposite appeared.
Another writer traces their refusal to what they valued:
The testimony was lost, however, on the Gadarene people, who had lost their pigs. Pigs they did appreciate and grace they did not appreciate, so they refused the Deliverer. Jesus accepted their refusal and returned to the other side of the lake to continue the display of His grace there.
The Gadarenes weighed a rescue against their livestock. One writer brings the same choice into our own day:
Two men had been set free from Satan's hold, but it cost two thousand pigs. Were two souls worth two thousand pigs? In their terrible blindness, they judged they were not. If such was to be the result of the presence of the Son of God, they would prefer Satan for their neighbour. Such behaviour would be unbelievable, if we did not see people today sacrificing their own souls for things lighter than air... Many judge that business, wealth and pleasure are worth more than any blessing He can give.
- Healed means saved. Luke's word here is the usual New Testament word for "save." It covers rescues of every kind.
- Saved by a word. The witnesses reported Christ's complete power over the enemy. One word from Him, and the demons left.
- Told in full. The witnesses explained both the man and the missing pigs. Nobody in that crowd had to guess.
- Told, yet unwon. They knew how he was healed, and they were still afraid. The facts reached them; their hearts stayed shut.
- Priced and refused. They valued pigs and not grace, so they sent the Deliverer away. People still make that trade today.
And all the multitude of the surrounding country of the Gadarenes asked him to depart from them, for they were possessed with great fear; and *he*, entering into the ship, returned.
A whole district had just seen Satan's power broken and a ruined man made whole. Fear made them ask the deliverer to leave — and He went.
The demons they had lived beside for years did not frighten them. The One who removed them did.
They come and see this man out of whom the demons were cast. He is "sitting" — he had never known a moment's rest before. They see him "clothed", for he had been naked and wretched under Satan's possession. They see him "in his right mind", for he had been like a madman. "And they were afraid." I know nothing more solemn than that. Man is not afraid of the devil; he is afraid of God in goodness, afraid of Christ in mercy. How striking that men are afraid when God comes near to them! They are not afraid when the devil is at their right hand. They have no fear of evil, sin, wickedness, or the inborn vileness of man. But they are afraid of God — afraid, as I have said, of God in goodness. That is the most solemn part of it. This was not a display of God in judgment, or in wrath, or in the fiery thunders of His vengeance. Here was the most blessed and gracious kindness anyone could imagine. Here was mercy that pitied. Here was compassion that looked with tenderness on a man held in bondage, and set him free. And yet the people of the region were afraid.
The fear had an arithmetic behind it. A herd of pigs had been lost, and the whole community made its calculation in public.
But those who fed the unclean swine in that place are not ready for this. It was an intrusion on them, and they would have Jesus leave their region. This is terrible indeed. Nothing we see in all the history of the Gospel gives us such a picture of the dark and unclean region of Satan as this. With such a display of the grace and power of the Stronger Man among them, they still do not want Him, but would sell all their interest in the Son of God for a herd of swine.
Christ cost them more than they would pay. Sending Him away settled who their neighbour would be.
Those who beg Christ to depart must have the devil remain. It is simply a question between the two, for nature abhors a vacuum. The Lord has shown us how an empty, swept and tidied house waits and invites such a tenant. Christ is too costly a guest: one soul at the cost of two thousand pigs is too high a price. So they beg Him, courteously, to depart — for He can be refused with courtesy and still refused — and He does depart.
Christ answered two requests in this chapter. The second is uglier than the first.
The people of the district saw Jesus. He had set the demon-possessed man free, but in their eyes He had destroyed their pigs. With one voice they wanted Him out of the neighbourhood at once. It was an ungracious, even insolent, thing to ask. Yet He granted it, just as He had granted the demons' plea to enter the pigs and not be sent to the abyss. Like Legion, these dull-witted people said, in effect, "What have you to do with us?" They valued neither His power nor His grace. They would rather live undisturbed with their naked, howling, demon-possessed men and their filthy pigs.
The last line of the verse states a principle. One writer sees the world's whole history in it. (Older translations call these people Gadarenes; the ESV calls them Gerasenes.)
These Gadarenes had put up with the demons because they could not help it. They will not put up with Christ, and they beg Him to leave! Man would gladly bind Legion if he could, because he does not like what the devil's power does. But man's will is against Christ. He has a deliberate, settled hatred of Christ. The Lord came into the world full of love and power, to deliver people from the consequences of sin. But man rejected Him and cast Him out. God will not stay where a man's will is set against Him. When the Gadarenes asked Christ to leave, He got into a boat at once and returned. And notice — the world we live in is simply carrying on, having quietly rejected Christ.
Set this appeal beside the one other crowd that made a request about His presence, and its strangeness stands out.
The Samaritans begged the Son of God to stay with them, and He stayed there two days. What confidence on their part! What grace on His! Others, more favoured, who despised them, begged Him with one voice to depart from them (Luke 8:37). Who else is ever recorded as asking such a thing about His presence? But those who asked received blessing both now and for ever, as faith in Him always does.
- Fear — they feared Christ in His kindness more than the demons in their cruelty. Man is not afraid of the devil; he is afraid of God in goodness.
- Price — one restored soul cost them two thousand pigs, and they judged the price too high.
- Vacancy — send Christ away and the devil stays; an empty, swept house only invites a tenant back.
- Granted — He answered their insolent plea as He had answered the demons'. A polite refusal is still a refusal.
- Departure — He got into the boat and returned. God does not stay where a man's will is set against Him, and the world has been carrying on without Him ever since.
But the man out of whom the demons had gone besought him that he might be with him. But he sent him away, saying,
Two requests came to Jesus on that shore: a whole countryside asked Him to leave, and the man He had just set free asked to come with Him. Only one of them got what he wanted, and it was not the man.
The plea is remarkable because of who made it. Satan had held this man completely, yet once free he wanted only to be near the One who freed him.
He begged Jesus that he might be with Him, and so he stood in moral contrast with the whole crowd that begged Him to leave them. He had been in far more terrible circumstances than they had. But such is the power of God's grace. It creates and forms what we ought to be. Judging by his background, this demon-possessed man was the last person you would expect to come near Jesus. Satan had led him captive completely, at his own will. Yet Christ set him free, and so perfectly from the first hour that his one desire was to be with Jesus. This was the first-fruit of the Spirit's work in a man whom grace had delivered — the untaught instinct of the new man to enjoy the presence of Jesus. The simplest soul born of God has this wish.
Put the two prayers side by side and see who ended up happy.
And now two more requests came to the Lord, this time from men. He granted the first and refused the second. All the people of the country of the Gerasenes asked Him to depart from them. So He left them. The delivered one begged Him that he might be with Him. The man was happy in the Lord's presence. The people of the country were miserable. He granted their prayer. He refused his, because the man was to work for Christ in the very place where Christ had set him free.
The wish Jesus refused is the one He guarantees.
In due time his desire will have a glorious answer. We know that Christ died for believers so that we should live together with Him. Very soon we shall be forever with the Lord. In the meantime we have the privilege of being for Him in a scene from which He has been rejected.
The refusal had a purpose. The Lord had a use for this man where he stood.
He shows that, no matter how true and right and fitting this feeling of grace in the delivered man's heart might be, there is still a work to be done. Those who are delivered are themselves to be deliverers. Such is the kind and generous character and aim of the ministry of Jesus. Jesus does His work. He breaks the power of Satan that no one else can touch. But He does not do it merely so that the delivered one should have his heart with Him and at once want to go and be with Him. Jesus did not please Himself. He came to serve God here below. So this man's place of service is where he could tell others the great things done for him.
He is sent home, to the people who had watched him at his worst.
He will have his desire later. For now, "Return to your home." This is precious to the Lord: to show God's wonderful works not merely to strangers, but to one's own household. People like these would know best the shame, sorrow, and degradation to which he had been reduced. So Jesus says, "Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you." The man in faith bows and understands. Whatever his heart's desire might be, he is now to do the good, holy, and acceptable will of the Lord.
The Lord told him to speak of God. He spoke of Jesus.
Notice, it is of Jesus he speaks. Jesus wanted him to tell what God had done; and God wanted him to tell what Jesus had done. This could not be so unless Jesus Himself was the Son of God.
The Lord did not keep the man as payment for the miracle.
Never in a single instance, as I believe, did He claim either the person or the service of those He restored and delivered. He never made the deliverance He worked a claim to service. Jesus loved, healed, and saved, looking for nothing in return. He would not let this freed man of Gadara be with Him.
- Grace creates the wish. Wanting to be with Jesus was not this man's own nature. It was the first sign of God's work in him, and the simplest believer shares it.
- Grace divides the shore. The crowd begged Him to leave, and He went. The man begged to stay, and He said no. The answered prayer was the poorer one.
- Grace delays the wish. Being with Him is only postponed, not cancelled. Meanwhile the believer lives for Him in a world that rejected Him.
- Grace gives an errand. The delivered become deliverers, sent first to their own household — to the people who knew the worst.
- Grace demands no fee. He never turned a rescue into a claim on the rescued. He gave, and looked for nothing back.
Return to thine house and relate how great things God has done for thee. And he went away through the whole city, publishing how great things Jesus had done for him.
The Gadara story ends with one man's assignment. The person who wanted to leave with Jesus is the one told to stay. Why did the Lord say no to him? And why did he then speak of Jesus, when he had been told to speak of God?
Two requests came to Jesus that day. The crowd and the healed man asked for opposite things, and the Lord answered each in the opposite way.
Now two more requests came to the Lord, this time from men. He granted the first and refused the second. All the people of the country of the Gerasenes asked Him to leave them. So He left them. The man who had been set free begged that he might be with Him. Having received divine grace, he wanted to go with his deliverer. The man was happy in the Lord's presence. The people of the country were miserable. The Lord granted their prayer. He refused his, because he was to work for Christ in the place where he had been set free.
The refusal was not a rebuke. One writer points to what the crowd was protecting, and to where the man was sent.
The world begs Jesus to leave. It wants its own comfort, and that comfort is disturbed more by the presence and power of God than by a legion of demons. He goes away. The man who was healed would gladly be with Him. But the Lord sends him back — into the world that He Himself had left — to be a witness of the grace and power he had received.
Jesus sent him home first. The people who had watched him at his worst knew best what he had been.
The Lord values this: showing God's wonderful works not just to strangers, but to one's own household. Those at home would know best the shame, sorrow, and degradation he had been reduced to.
That same nearness is what makes the task hard, and one writer traces the timidity to its root.
Why is it often so hard to speak to our friends? Why are people who are bold with strangers so timid in front of their own household and relatives? … We shrink from the comparison our friends are so quick and certain to make. They test our words — however clear, and good, and sweet — by what they can so easily see in our daily lives. An inconsistent walk makes a coward, at least, before "our friends."
The swap in this verse is easy to miss. The command names God; the report names Jesus. Commentators do not treat this as disobedience.
The man in faith bows and understands. Whatever his heart's desire might be, he is now to do the good, holy, and acceptable will of the Lord. "And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him." Notice, it is of Jesus he speaks. Jesus would have him tell what God had done; and God would have him tell what Jesus had done. This could not have been had Jesus not been the Son of God Himself. Though the lowliest servant of God, He was none the less also God. The man was right. He was not going against the will of God, nor breaking the command of Jesus. He kept its spirit all the more, even if the words themselves sound different. God is honoured best when Jesus is most shown forth.
Elsewhere Jesus told healed people to say nothing. One writer explains what made this case different.
This was different from some other cases, where the Lord told people to tell no one… In those cases the Lord stayed in the area where He was. Human advertising tended to get in the way of His work, because it stirred up people who came only for the miracles. In Gadara, however, this man bore striking witness to the whole city. The Man they had refused was the One who held the power of God over the cruelty of evil spirits. Some people may be tempted to exaggerate how great a change has taken place in them. In this case the change was so great it could hardly be exaggerated.
- Refused — The one prayer Jesus turned down came from the healed man. He wanted Jesus' company; Jesus gave him work instead.
- Returned — The Lord left the country, and left this man in it. Where Christ is unwanted, His witness stays behind.
- Home — The job starts with the people who knew the shame. They can measure the change, and that is why they are the hardest to face.
- Transposed — Told to publish what God had done, he published what Jesus had done. Commentators read the swap not as disobedience but as evidence of who Jesus is.
- Witnessed — A whole city heard about the Man it had begged to leave. The proof was not argument but a life too changed to explain away.