IN THE WORDS OF JESUS–Part 157

YES, HE is Talking to YOU! (continued)

Love is the Fulfilling of the Law

We have come through three parts of these selected verses on demons and Satan and the devil and we are about to encounter the unclean spirits. We began with the casting out of the demon from the man that was dumb; Jesus healed this man of his affliction which stemmed from the lower forces of the carnal world. We can call these forces Satan or demons but that tells us little as these are not identifiable. We can also call them the forces of fear that afflict men and cause disturbance in their bodies. Fear or its children hate and worry can cause such dire emotional and mental strain that the effect on the body is a real medical issue. This is true today in a world where we have some understanding  the psychology of man; how much more severe in a time when there is no understanding. There is another place in Luke’s Gospel where there is a similar healing that we should look at here for some additional understanding; it goes thus:

“And, behold, there was a woman which had a spirit of infirmity eighteen years, and was bowed together, and could in no wise lift up herself. And when Jesus saw her, he called her to him, and said unto her, Woman, thou art loosed from thine infirmity And he laid his hands on her: and immediately she was made straight, and glorified God. And the ruler of the synagogue answered with indignation , because that Jesus had healed on the sabbath day, and said unto the people, There are six days in which men ought to work: in them therefore come and be healed, and not on the sabbath day. The Lord then answered him, and said, Thou hypocrite, doth not each one of you on the sabbath loose his ox or his ass from the stall, and lead him away to watering ? And ought not this woman, being a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound, lo, these eighteen years, be loosed from this bond on the sabbath day?” (Luke 13:11-16).

We should note the word Spirit us used to describe the woman’s affliction, she had “a spirit of infirmity“. There is no notation here that this woman was possessed, we only know that she is infirm; she has a physical malady that prohibited her from standing straight. Today we would treat the symptom with medications and likely never know nor care to know the ultimate cause whether it be emotional or mental or purely physical. In Jesus day there were no drugs for this and they assumed here the cause was “a spirit of infirmity“. In Spirit we have a word that is generally used in reference to God and the Spirit of man and the Holy Spirit but can also be used for evil spirits and ghosts. Though this is a subject for another day we should recognize this diversity of meanings. Now here again we can look at this as an evil spirit, an idea that is seemingly corroborated a bit further along for those that wish to subscribe to the Satanic idea of this, or we can see this as we did above saying that this spirit of infirmity is of the forces of fear that afflict men and cause disturbance in their bodies. Again we say that fear or its children hate and worry can cause such dire emotional and mental strain that the effect on the body is a real medical issue. Skipping all of the middle part of this sabbath day controversy for now we go to the last words of the Master where He says that this woman is “a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan hath bound“. Here we have the similar idea that we worked through previously; the idea of Satan which we see plainly as the power of the lower realms; the forces inherent in the lower levels of emotional and mental and physical being. These are the forces of fear that can prey those whose emotional or mental apparatus are deficient or those who live their carnal lives in these lower levels of feeling and thought. These forces, from wherever and for whatever reason had bound this woman in this “spirit of infirmity” and caused her to suffer physically. This should not be seen as vague because the causes in any particular case are uncertain and should be seen as a much less vague proposition than the idea of a devil and demons as beings in this Earth sphere somewhere and somehow causing this havoc or possessing persons at the direction of a personality named Satan; much like the horror films that they provoke.

From this point we looked at the matter of the strong man and found in this the better idea of the struggle between the strong conscious personality, confident in his carnal nature, and the yet stronger Inner Man, the Soul. Our other choice in this would be to believe that the Master is telling us of Satan as the strong man being overcome by the Christ but what profit is there for them or for us in telling them in these words what He had already told them regarding the house divided. He made that point. This is more likely to be the Master’s follow up to the statement that He makes that “the kingdom of God is come upon you” for in our view the stronger man is of the Kingdom of God. Lastly we spoke about His saying “He that is not with me is against me” for which we had not understood its working out in the context of these sayings but alas, the same idea can here be true as well. To follow the Master, to be with Him, is to be in this Kingdom. The other kingdom, the Earth and the lower forces, are truly against it and, by their very nature, they prevent those ensnared in them from from breaking free and reaching out to “gathereth fruit unto life eternal” (John 4:36).

The last part of this series of sayings is what we had called the actual parable and gave it a name for these next verses calling it the Parable of the Unclean Spirit. These verses are:

“When the unclean spirit is gone out of a man, he walketh through dry places, seeking rest; and finding none, he saith, I will return unto my house whence I came out. And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished. Then goeth he, and taketh to him seven other spirits more wicked than himself; and they enter in, and dwell there: and the last state of that man is worse than the first” (Luke 11:24-26).

We must remember that these sayings are parables and, as we have seen in the review of past parables, they do not need to have meanings that are in any way related to the outer appearance of the story. Staying with our premise that the Master spoke to these people first in parable and second in words and phrases that they knew and understood, let us find the real meaning for us who today have no predisposing superstitions. As we know, the words of the Master apply to us all in every age; what can we find in this story that can help define for us the Kingdom on God and how to attain it.

Unclean spirits again depend on what and how one believes. They are the same type demons as the Master cast out earlier from the man with the dumb spirit or the woman with the spirit of infirmity above. We can see them as the minions of Satan which presumably are Spirit beings, as we also are albeit they are evil ones, of some kind or we can see these as the forces and the powers of the lower realms; the power of carnal living which can be seen essentially as the power of selfishness and fear. This lower realm seeks its own; thoughts of self and the lower emotional states of an almost animal nature swirl through the emotional and mental world in which we live; the same type of powers the fuel mob rule and public panic on the lower side fuel  public opinion as well and even upward to the altruistic giving seen in times of catastrophic world events. These powers attract to themselves people of like mind at every level and in varying degree dependent on the amount of ‘like mind’ one may have; however, they only work out in one’s life if he pays them attention. If one’s focus is on the things of the world the things and the ‘spirits’ of the world will have effect; conversely if one’s focus is on the things of the Spirit then the things of God and of the Soul will have effect. Of course there is again an infinite range of combinations to be seen in this from the totally God focused to the totally carnal and to this add varying degrees on each level, the physical, the emotional and the mental, as well as the suitability of one’s working apparatus for each of these ‘natures’. We can believe that these unclean spirits are personalities belonging to Satan and his realm, or we can believe that they are the powers and the principalities of the worlds in which we live.

The story the Master tells is of a man out of whom an unclean spirit leaves. We are not told that this man is possessed or of the nature of his possession, we assume this from the context of the whole of the Master’s sayings and from the words of the Apostle Luke who starts out speaking of Jesus casting out a devil or, rightly translated, a demon. This casting out leads to the people’s accusations that Jesus is, or is working with, Satan or Beelzebub and while there is no more mention of either devils or demons through the next two parts regarding the strong man and the idea of  “He that is not with me is against me“, most all assume and believe that they are still the subject matter of the Master. Then comes this next part and the same assumptions take hold because we are told here of the unclean spirit which is gone out of the man. What is this unclean spirit is then dependent upon what it is that one believes.

For us, staying with our ideas that this spirit is these same principalities and powers that we started this series with in part 154, we should see that this is a man who had some fear or some phobia or some emotional or mental distress that he is able to shed and from here the Master’s story begins. Let us call this an emotional disorder and a feeling of persecution and say in a single word it is the man’s symptom. Jesus then is telling us that this man loses this symptom, it leaves him. Remembering that this is a parable, we see next that this spirit leaves and goes to “dry places, seeking rest” which, according to some commentators and Vincent is an allusion to the haunts of evil spirits (Isa. xiii. 21, 22; xxxiv. 14)⁴. Vincent goes on to tell us that by satyre in these two passages are meant goblins shaped like goats, which were sacrifices to by some of the Israelites (Lev. xv11 7; 2 Chron. xi. 15); a remnant of the Egyptian worship of Mendes or Pan, who, under the figure of a goat, was worshiped by the Egyptians as the fertilizing principle in nature⁴. We should see here how the superstitions and the legends and the myths were still seen and observed by the Jews and, because they understood things this way, the Master spoke to them in these terms.

Now this spirit is not cast out, there is no healing required as was the normal method as in: “…and a great multitude of people out of all Judaea and Jerusalem, and from the sea coast of Tyre and Sidon, which came to hear him, and to be healed of their diseases; And they that were vexed with unclean spirits: and they were healed” (Luke 6:17-18). This spirit, as we read it, just leaves and goes to where these spirits would go; back to where it is they come from which for us would be the all of our environment; physical, emotional and mental. The story line goes on to say that this spirit is seeking rest which word means much as we would understand it though Strong’s suggests that is could also be a resting place³. This is an odd saying here that a spirit whose nature it is to be evil and unclean would first, need or want rest from his natural state and second, can not find it in the place his kind naturally exist. So if our inclination is to believe in the personality of these spirits, this is where we are; a spirit that leaves the man and goes to his place for rest but cannot find any. Continuing with this line of thinking this spirit then goes back to the man and finds that the mans psyche, if you will, “swept and garnished” or clean and in order and then calls his friends, his more wicked friends, to come an join him in this cleaned dwelling. Jesus then states that the now state of this man, having freed himself, or having been freed in some other way, is worse than before with now eight unclean spirits or demons haunting and possessing him.

It is interesting that the commentators are strangely quite on this parable; John Gill’s Exposition of the Bible⁸ seems to just repeat the story with reference to some Jewish and Old Testament text as did Vincent and to go into his own understanding of Satan and demons which is similar to the Christian reference. The Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible⁸ just ignores this altogether; they go around these verses in both the Gospel of Matthew and here and they refer readers in Matthew to the story of the strong man for explanation.

What does this all mean to us? First we must remember that a parable is, in our view, a story based on some real time occurrence or belief that the Master uses to explain a thing that is spiritual in nature and which the common people would not readily understand unless they were focused spiritually and not carnally. Second we should see that there are no wasted words on the Master’s part, no idle talk; He is not telling a story without meaning to those who can understand or those who do not as in doing this there is no profit; there is no redeeming value. The intent here, as we see it, is to show us a man, any man, who has a “spirit of infirmity” which the Master is calling here an “unclean spirit” and which we are calling his symptom; this goes out of the man, why and how we do not know. The forces that caused this symptom leaves the man and are still forces in the environment in which the man and we live. The part next about seeking rest and finding none is just a story part; the next part of importance is that this man’s consciousness is “swept and garnished“; it is clean and nothing has replaced the symptom that left. The man was freed of this infirmity and did not seek any thing to fill this part of his life nor his consciousness; remaining empty and void and with no higher thoughts, the man drifts back into the old emotional and thought patterns and attracts to himself again this same symptom but in coming, this symptom brings with it seven more.

Let us put a practical face on this. We have someone with drinking problem, this is his symptom, his unclean spirit. He is able to stop drinking but does not fill this space in his life with anything better and especially not with thoughts of his Inner Life. He finds himself now bored; he was accustomed to going out at night and drinking and now he is sitting home alone. The thought of a drink comes to him and he goes out to drink and meets a crowd of drug users and gamblers and loose women and drunk drivers and hooligans and now, with this crowd, he is not only a drinker again but is taking part, in his new found life, of all of the new symptoms of the new crowd. I counted five new spirits that are more wicked that drinking; two more and we are at the level of the parable. You should see the idea and the ease with which these things can happen if we are not focused on the Lord. This is the message that the Master was giving to them and that He is giving to us. There is an old saying that ‘nothing can exist in a vacuum’ and this is the principal here; our minds and our emotions and our physical activities must be about something and if it is not about the realities and the goodness of life then it will be about the carnal and the base.

To close out this theme and series of essays let us go to the words of the Apostle Paul from is letter to Timothy where, while encouraging him to a more ardent focus on the Lord, he says: “For God hath not given us the spirit of fear; but of power, and of love, and of a sound mind” (2 Timothy 1:7). We need only to seek these things.

Note on the Quote of the Day