Luke 4:31-44 Commentary

Jesus Drives Out an Evil Spirit
31 Then he went down to Capernaum, a town in Galilee, and on the Sabbath he taught the people. 32 They were amazed at his teaching, because his words had authority.

33 In the synagogue there was a man possessed by a demon, an evil [h] spirit. He cried out at the top of his voice, 34 "Go away! What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are—the Holy One of God!"

35 "Be quiet!" Jesus said sternly. "Come out of him!" Then the demon threw the man down before them all and came out without injuring him.

36 All the people were amazed and said to each other, "What words these are! With authority and power he gives orders to evil spirits and they come out!" 37 And the news about him spread throughout the surrounding area.

Jesus Heals Many
38 Jesus left the synagogue and went to the home of Simon. Now Simon's mother-in-law was suffering from a high fever, and they asked Jesus to help her. 39 So he bent over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her. She got up at once and began to wait on them.

40 At sunset, the people brought to Jesus all who had various kinds of sickness, and laying his hands on each one, he healed them. 41 Moreover, demons came out of many people, shouting, "You are the Son of God!" But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew he was the Messiah.

42 At daybreak, Jesus went out to a solitary place. The people were looking for him and when they came to where he was, they tried to keep him from leaving them. 43 But he said, "I must proclaim the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns also, because that is why I was sent." 44 And he kept on preaching in the synagogues of Judea.


Dig Deeper
I just finished watching the most recent Super Bowl between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts. The game was only so-so in terms of excitement, unless you’re a Saints fan, of course. But what I found far more compelling than the game itself was the new show that came on immediately following the game. It was a brand new show called “Undercover Boss.” Normally I absolutely despise reality shows and try to avoid them like the plague but this one looked a bit more interesting and it was already on, so I figured why not. In it, the President of a major corporation went around the country completely undercover working in different locations of his nationwide business, Waste Management. He worked in different locations doing different jobs for one day and was even fired once for not being able to cut the muster when it came to picking up debris in a landfill. What was compelling to both viewers and the boss was what he learned about the regular people that were working for him on the street level. He simply couldn’t believe how decisions that he made from corporate headquarters, decisions that seemed so good from that vantage point, were actually horrible and oppressive from the vantage point of his employees. One cost cutting measure that he had encouraged left one woman working at a waste management site to do the jobs of three or four people by herself. The boss simply could not believe how hard she worked all day, every day and was still making the same money that she did before the other employees, whose jobs she was now doing were let go. On top of that, she was in danger of losing her home because she could no longer afford the taxes on it. After seeing the impact that his decisions had, the CEO realized that he needed to do something immediately. He risked blowing his cover by meeting with the woman’s immediate boss and instructing him to give her a promotion and significantly increase her salary immediately. The on-site manager immediately agreed to do this, but if you didn’t see the show you might wonder why. The reason was that this manager knew who the President was and had been sworn to secrecy. So when they met to discuss this woman’s plight he immediately recognized the authority of the man with whom he was meeting, even if no one else did.

This present passage is all about authority. Authority is the key to getting things done. Do you have the authority to do that or not? The President of the company could make immediate changes based on what he found because he had the authority to do so. Luke has laid out that Jesus has come as the unique Son of God and is already setting about his business of revealing God in a way that no one expected. If Jesus is going to be the conduit through whom the kingdom of God is going to break into the present age and if he is going to challenge the preconceptions of nearly everyone, then the question that must be answered before we even begin reading is, “does he have the authority to do this?” Luke’s clear answer throughout this passage is that “yes,” he does have the authority. The question of Jesus’ authority will continue to hang in the minds of those who would have just as soon rejected his message but Luke has made the truth of his authority quite clear to his readers.

The common style of teaching for the spiritual teachers of Jesus’ day (at least from what history can tell us) was to not just teach what the Scriptures themselves said, but to focus on the interpretation of said Scriptures. The way they achieved that, however, was to constantly quote the interpretations and teachings of other Pharisees or rabbis and to appeal to precedent. Thus, their teaching was a constant appeal to things like “this Scripture says this and rabbi so-an-so says that this means this, thus what we need to know is this.” There is nothing inherently wrong with that style of teaching in so far as it can go, but Jesus’ style of teaching was different. He occasionally appealed to things that were written but generally he made few appeals to Scripture (and would actually adjust what was written in Scripture such as in passages like Matthew 5:17-42). Jesus never quoted other rabbis, he didn’t need to. Jesus rarely even made assertions like the Old Testament prophets who would declare that they were speaking the words of YHWH that had come to them. This is what amazed people. He simply said, “I tell you the truth.” The only one who had the authority to speak on his own authority without appeal to another witness was YHWH himself, the God of Israel.

How could a man speak with such authority? This is such a key issue for Luke because in the ancient world authority was the key to power. Attempting to usurp power without the proper authority was a quick way to get yourself killed. And in the Jewish mind, to usurp the power of God without the proper authority was the worst kind of offense.

The issue of authority is why Luke has placed the accounts of Jesus’ encounter with demons and sickness immediately following the description of the amazement over the authority of Jesus’ words. Someone speaking with the great authority and wisdom that Jesus was, was certainly amazing but that was one thing. To actually demonstrate that authority beyond mere words, though, that was a whole different level of authority. Luke doesn’t give us much detail about the demon or the ins and outs of demon possession here as we might like him to but none of that is his focus. The Bible gives precious little details about the origins of demons (although the early church was quite adamant that demons were the disembodied unclean spirits that were a result of the sinful union between fallen angels and human women as is described in Genesis 6). Nor does it ever draw a clear picture between things like mental illness and instances of demon possession when the symptoms seem very similar. As interesting as those topics may be, that was not Luke’s point, so we will stick to what he wanted to stress here.

As with teaching, the amazing thing was not so much what Jesus was doing but how he was doing it. It was not uncommon for rabbis or Pharisees to exorcise demons. There were many people, in fact, who claimed to do that. Whether they actually had the ability to do that is suspect, but whether they did or not, it was a common spectacle, complete with many formulas, incantations, etc. In other words, quite a show was put on when demons were “exorcised,” and it was usually done in someone else’s name, like Solomon. But Jesus was different. There was no show and no mumbo jumbo. He simply ordered these demons out and they obeyed. And he did it on his authority without the need to do it in someone else’s name (notice that his disciples would cast out demons in Jesus’ name rather than their own authority). They knew who he was and they understood his authority. They feared that he would send them to the Abyss, the the typical Jewish concept of the place of destruction for demons. Jesus’ authority was not recognized by those in his own hometown, but these demons recognized his authority.

The fact is that all of Jesus’ miracles, as already discussed in the previous passage, were a physical demonstration of a spiritual reality. The point of miracles and displays of Jesus’ power went beyond just the act itself and showed a deeper spiritual truth. Jesus cast out demons because he had authority over the forces of evil, sin, and death in the world. And he rebukes Peter’s wife’s mother to demonstrate his power and authority over the human condition. Yes, Jesus could heal a fever instantly, but more important was to learn that he had authority over all of nature.

In the final scene of this passage, Luke pictures throngs of people still coming to Jesus to help them with all kinds of illnesses. Again, there was no summoning up of powers or appealing to someone else’s name. Jesus needed no authority beyond himself. He touched, the sickness left. He spoke, the demons left. He taught, the Spirit of God moved. Everything that follows from here on out in Luke’s Gospel will rest on the identity of Jesus as the Son of God (although Luke will give constant hints that his identity was even far greater than his human distinctions as the Son of God and the Son of man) and the authority that the Godhood has given Jesus as the earthly Messiah, the one who was full of the Spirit (what Luke will only hint at, Paul made quite clear—in Jesus all the fullness of the deity dwelt in addition to him being fully human).

But if Jesus wanted to demonstrate the truth of the kingdom of God and the fact that it was breaking into the present age through his life and ministry why would he order the demons to not declare who he was? Why was he silencing them from declaring that he was the Son of God? Verse 41 makes it clear, incidentally, that the Son of God was an interchangeable term for Messiah during Jesus’ life. Later on, the Son of God would take on more significant meaning in the Christian community and come to describe the divinity of Jesus, but at this point in Jesus’ life, when the term Son of God was used, we can rest assured that all that was understood was that he was the Messiah. But isn’t that what he wanted people to know? In one sense, we cannot ever know definitively why Jesus kept his identity a secret at various times and places, all we can do is speculate. The most likely answer, however, is that Jesus was constantly dealing with misperceptions of what the Messiah was and who he would be, so quite often it was more accurate and helpful to simply avoid the distinction and let his actions define who he was. There was also the reality that directly stating that he was the Messiah would fan up the flames of his opposition who wanted him dead far quicker than he wanted.

What Luke has made clear was that God’s kingdom was breaking into the present age in a new way that no one expected through the life of Jesus the Messiah. It certainly hadn’t come in the way that anyone expected and that’s why the issue of authority was so vital. Everything that Jesus did went against the expectations of the people of his day, but he had the authority to do it. Those of us who have committed our lives to following in the Messiah’s footsteps should not miss the fact that Jesus transferred a certain amount of his authority to us to continue his mission and carry his kingdom throughout our world. We should constantly be asking ourselves what we are really doing with that authority.



Devotional Thought
It might have been easier for Jesus to stay in one place but he was determined to order his life based on his desire to spread the message of the kingdom of God. What about you? Are you equally committed to determine where you live, what you do, and how you spend your time based on what is God’s will for your life and what will be most effective in advancing his kingdom?