And he asked him, What is thy name? And he says to him, Legion is my name, because we are many.
Jesus has crossed the lake and met a man no chain could hold. Before setting him free, He stops to ask the man his name.
The Lord's question is not for His own information. One writer links it to the time God asked Jacob the same question.
Think for a moment about how He set this man free from the terrible bondage on him. He asks him, "What is your name?" ... I have no doubt that this was the intention the blessed Lord had in drawing this man's name out of 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 was not religious language. It came from the Roman army, and it carried a number.
In the Roman army, a legion was a body of troops of between three and five thousand. The term is also used for a number that is not fixed. The Lord said that if He asked, His Father 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."
One writer notes what lay behind the man's choice — and what became of that power.
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 described his condition better... "Legion" and "Come out of the man" stand here together, and how wonderfully that brings out the power of our Lord Jesus Christ. He broke that power.
The grammar itself is unsettling. "My name" is singular; "we are many" is plural. One writer calls this mixture the horror of the case.
Here is a fact outside human understanding, on the evil side of the spiritual world, and horrible beyond measure. One man held such a host of evil spirits in him that the well-known name of a Roman battalion fitted. He was a man with a personal consciousness, and yet he merges his own personality in theirs — Legion, for we are many!
Another writer shows how the Lord separated the two.
The Lord addressed the man as the responsible person, asking him, "What is your name?" He also made a difference between the man who was oppressed and the evil powers that possessed him. To those powers He said, "Come out of the man, you unclean spirit." The man is treated as one in whom the evil spirit lives.
The New Testament letters show the same closeness with a different occupant.
This case was one of a man indwelt by unclean spirits for purposes of evil. The Epistles show us the opposite. Those who believe the gospel of salvation (Ephesians 1) are indwelt and sealed by the Holy Spirit of God. He is certainly distinct in His personality from those whom He indwells, and He bears witness with our spirit that we are children of God (Romans 8:16). At the same time He, in a blessed way, identifies Himself with us, helping our weaknesses...
The verse names the size of the opposition. One writer sets out what the man faced.
This man was an extreme case of demon possession. It had lasted a long time. It gave him superhuman strength, so ordinary restraints did not hold him. It drove him into deserts and the place of death — the tombs. What is more, not one demon enslaved him but many. For some reason he had become like a fortress, firmly held for Satan by a whole legion of demons. So when Jesus met him there was a real trial of strength.
Chains had already failed. One writer applies that to our own day.
The world may try to bind the power of Satan by things like legislation, rehabilitation and moral reform. But these things fail. Satan drives his victim into a moral wilderness.
- Name asked. Christ draws the confession from the man's own lips, as He did with Jacob — He already knows, but He will hear it said.
- Name given. "Legion" was a Roman military unit of three to five thousand. The man borrowed the most frightening word in his world to describe himself.
- Name divided. "My name... we are many" mixes singular and plural, showing a personality swallowed up in the spirits that possessed him.
- Name held. Even so, the Lord speaks to him as a responsible person. He orders the spirit out of the man — occupant and victim are not the same.
- Name changed. Chains failed, and every human remedy since has failed too. One word from Christ broke that power. The believer is now indwelt not by a legion but by the Spirit of God.
And he besought him much that he would not send them away out of the country.
The man in the tombs has just given his name as Legion, and now the spirits are the ones asking. A power no fallen man could overcome now only pleads — and what it pleads for shows what it fears.
Fallen man cannot overcome the power of Satan. Christ meets that power, and it gives way.
Fallen man has no hope of overcoming the power of Satan. But that power meets in Christ a power it must give way to. In these Gospel accounts the demons never once openly resist Him, even here, where there was a legion of them. They plead against the judgment they foresee, though its time has not yet come, and argue their own case. They beg Him not to send them out of the country, and ask leave to enter the herd of swine.
Their manner of asking is itself a confession about who He is.
These demons feared the time of future torment. They brought their requests to the One they knew and addressed as the Son of the Most High God. They acknowledged His supreme authority, just as Satan did when he came before the LORD about His servant Job.
Luke's account of the same moment names what they wanted to avoid.
Here they begged the Lord not to send them out of the country, and, as Luke states, not to command them to go into the deep, or the abyss.
In Luke's wording they "begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss" (Luke 8:31, ESV). One writer draws out what that instinct reveals:
Jesus asks him, "What is your name?" And he said, "Legion," for many demons had entered him. And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss. They dreaded their hour. There was the instinctive sense in these demons that Jesus would commit them to the abyss.
Scripture uses this word for one definite place:
The abyss is the Scriptural term for the place of confinement of evil spirits. Revelation translates the Greek word as "bottomless pit." From there the "beast" will rise who will make war on the two witnesses and overcome them. The same set of prophecies says Satan will be shut up in the abyss through the thousand years of glorious peace under the reign of Christ.
Notice the grammar of the verse. One man speaks, but he asks about "them." The same blurring runs through the scene.
It is remarkable how the man is identified with the unclean spirit. In grace the Holy Spirit now blends just as closely with the believer. The man cries, "Do not torment me," though it was a question of dealing with the spirit. So he answers, "My name is Legion, for we are many. And he begged Him earnestly not to send them out of the country."
The spirits plead because they have already lost.
Though we are ruined and helpless, in the Person of Christ there is One with power and grace to deliver us from all the power of Satan. The poor man's body is the dwelling place and instrument of the demon, who acts and speaks through the man. But demons have to bow in the presence of One they know is the Son of God, with all power to consign them to their just doom. Men may be ignorant of the glory and authority of Christ, but demons are not.
What they asked for next shows what they are after, in animals and in people.
At Gadara the fate of the swine is a plain and unmistakable example of what Satan and his demons aim at. The violent end of the animals pictures the final end of those under the direction and power of darkness. The animals lacked the higher nature that man has. So destruction followed at once when the demons entered them. With man the end is the same, though it may come more slowly. Men may be deceived into thinking otherwise. The aim of the evil one is to destroy. The aim of the Holy One of God is to deliver and save.
- Beg, never battle — the spirits never resist Christ. All they can do is plead against a judgment they see coming.
- Beg means bow — to ask Him for anything is to admit His supreme authority. Satan admitted the same when he came before the LORD about Job.
- Beg for delay — they ask to stay in the country because they dread the abyss, the prison where Scripture says Satan will one day be shut up.
- Beg with one voice — one man speaks for a legion. His body had become their dwelling place and instrument.
- Two opposite aims — the evil one aims to destroy; the Holy One of God aims to deliver and save.