Luke 8:28–33

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.

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."

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).

"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 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.

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).

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.

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 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.

...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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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).

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."

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.

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.