There is great care in this gospel to show the connection of Satan with men; just as we have seen the privilege of the believer in the possession of the Holy Ghost. The Spirit of God is the power of communion for the new man, for those that are born of God. So Satan is pleased to fill with the power of the demon the old nature of man, in certain cases where God permits him; and the Lord shows the link between the demon and the sickness, weakness, or other malady of body or mind, as we find here of the dumb man: “And he was casting out a devil, and it was dumb. And it came to pass, when the devil was gone out, the dumb spake; and the people wondered.” It is evident from this that what produced the lack of speech was not physical infirmity, but the demon that dwelt in the man. Directly the demon left, he that had been dumb spake. What the Lord was occupied with here below was in giving a specimen of that which will characterize the world to come. The powers that He exercised, as others afterward in virtue of His name, were “the powers of the world [or age] to come,” as they are called in Hebrews. The millennial age will thus be the full display of the defeat of Satan, to the glory of God, and this in and by man. The Lord's curing of bodily diseases, and casting out of demons, was a partial exhibition of what will be public and universal in that day.
“The people wondered” on this occasion; but the spirit of unbelief is stronger than the power of evidences. Hence, “some of them said, He casteth out devils through Beelzebub the chief of the devils.” We must distinguish between the instruments of Satan's power, and the devil himself. The word “devils” confounds the two things. It would be better to say “demons.” “He casteth out demons through Beelzebub the chief of the demons.” Others did not go quite so far as this; but still, “tempting, they sought of him a sign from heaven.” Satan does not lead all in the same way, but he suits his action to the flesh of each. Some men are violent in their unbelief, while others are more religious. Some “tempting him, sought of him a sign from heaven.” They were not content with what God had given, though there could be no external proof more convincing than the expulsion of Satan's power. Hence this was strongly marked at the starting-point of the Lord's ministry in this gospel as well as Mark's. So it was throughout. The Lord, answering their unbelieving thoughts, says, “Every kingdom divided against itself is brought to desolation; and a house divided against a house falleth.” It would be suicidal for Satan to undermine his own influence. “If Satan also be divided against himself, how shall his kingdom stand? because ye say that I cast out devils (demons) through Beelzebub.”
But there is more to be noticed. God had before this occasionally given power to Jews to cast out demons. Faith is always honored of God; and on the darkest day the Lord did not fail to keep up as it were the holy fire, that His light should not absolutely go out on the earth. “And if I by Beelzebub cast out demons, by whom do your sons cast them out? therefore shall they be your judges.” No unbelief on their part ever irritated the Lord. Far from this, He could calmly acknowledge what had been of God among them, though this in no way hindered them from denying God Himself present among men. “But if I with the finger of God cast out demons, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you.”
This is an expression of no small importance, “the kingdom of God is come upon you.” In another sense it might be said that the kingdom of God was nigh. Here it is said to be come, because Christ was there. Christ brought, as it were, the kingdom of God in His own person. All others require the kingdom of God to come, for them to be in the kingdom; but Christ, being a divine person, brought that kingdom in Himself, displaying it by His own power, manifestly such by the overthrow of Satan, by casting out demons. And yet man was blind, more guiltily so than the poor soul before us was, who could not through his dumbness speak the praises of God. For here, when God had proved His power, they were as blind as ever, they could not see God in it or rather in Jesus.
When the kingdom of heaven is spoken of, it is never said to be come. It could not be said according to scripture phrase, the kingdom of heaven is come unto you. Thus “the kingdom of heaven” and “the kingdom of God” are not quite identical. They agree so far that what in one gospel is called the kingdom of heaven is called in another gospel the kingdom of God. Matthew alone speaks of “the kingdom of heaven,” as Mark, Luke, and John do of “the kingdom of God.” But what is in Matthew called “kingdom of heaven” is called in the other gospels “kingdom of God,” of which last Matthew himself speaks in a few passages. The difference is this; that the kingdom of heaven always supposes a change of dispensation consequent on the Savior's having taken His place above. He may by and by bring His power below, but He must have come from heaven to bring in the kingdom of heaven. Hence in the future to establish it in power and glory, it is the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven who receives that kingdom and makes it good over all the earth.
The kingdom of heaven never means heaven itself; but rather the rule of the heavens over the earth. When the actual departure on high of the Lord Jesus is spoken of it is always said to be into heaven, and not into the kingdom of heaven. When the Lord then was here below, and manifested His power over Satan, it was the kingdom of God: it could be so called because the king—the power of God—was there. So here in this place He, by the power of God casting out demons, proved that the kingdom of God was come. What better proof could be asked? Man was totally insufficient for such a work; others might have done so in special answer to prayer. God is always superior to the devil, and it was important that He should prove this from time to time in expelling demons by the sons of Israel who possessed the place of relationship to God that no other people had. But in the Lord's case it was not occasional, exceptional, or partial, but uniform and universal: even where the disciples themselves using His name failed to cast them out, He always did it with a word. The kingdom of God therefore was come as a witness of His power, not yet as a state and sphere of manifestation. Both morally and in power the kingdom of God was come in Him who bound the strong man and stripped him of his goods.
And this leads me to another remark. The apostle Paul frequently speaks of the kingdom of God, not as a dispensation, but as a moral display. He says that “the kingdom of God is not meat and drink; but righteousness, and peace, and joy in the Holy Ghost.” He says too that “the kingdom of God is not in word but in power.” You could not say “the kingdom of heaven” in these cases. Thus we see the reason why Luke particularly can speak of the kingdom of God, for he is the evangelist that dwells on the moral side more than any other. Hence too there is a stronger link between his language and that of Paul than any other two writers of the New Testament.
Then the Lord introduces a remarkable figure. “When a strong man armed keepeth his palace, his goods are in peace; but when a stronger than he shall come upon him, and overcome him, he taketh from him all his armor wherein he trusted and divideth his spoils.” This was going on then. If Satan was the strong man in the figure, Jesus was now stripping him of his goods and dividing his spoils. The whole ministry of Jesus was the evidence of a power superior to Satan in the world. It is true that this did not deliver, because it did not touch the judgment of God. It was present and not eternal deliverance. It was the overthrow of Satan, not the satisfaction of God. Sin could not yet have been abolished, and judgment must still have remained. No grace, nor power, nor ministry can take away sin, nothing but the sacrifice of Himself. That infinitely deeper question was behind, and was settled not in the life of Jesus, but in His atoning death on the cross. Here He merely speaks of the power then present by a living Christ, which did deliver men from the oppression of Satan, as far as this life was concerned in the world; but not for eternity, not before God. This side of the cross, the victorious power of Christ over Satan in this life, for the earth, has been greatly forgotten in Christendom; and the more so because they bring in the living power of Christ to supplement His death for righteousness and atonement. They have made both life and death necessary for settling the question of a guilty soul for eternity. Consequently they have in practice seen little more than this, forgetting the power of Satan on the one hand, and the power of the Spirit on the other, except in a superstitious way, which only brings the truth into disrepute. These antagonistic realities have been lost sight of; and the grand witness is overlooked that the Lord was giving of a future deliverance of man from Satan's power when His kingdom will be, not merely in the Spirit's power, but in manifestation. All this has well nigh dropped out of Christendom. The Jews were feeble about eternal deliverance, but held fast the hope of the kingdom, of blessing in the earth and world by the Messiah, when the power of the serpent would be evidently broken.
Then we find a most solemn principle in verse 23. “He that is not with me is against me; and he that gathereth not with me scattereth.” The presence of Christ brought this out, and more particularly when He was being rejected. When Christ was acceptable, there was no moral test; but when public opinion was universally against Him, and it was evident that to follow Christ was to be slighted by the great and wise, then it proved the strongest criterion. So the Lord now says, “He that is not with me is against me.” If I am not with Him, I am against Him. The more He is rejected, the more I must throw in my lot with Him. And this is a test not only for one's person, but also for one's work, as it is added here, “He that gathereth not with me scattereth."The first is more particularly true for the unconverted man, and the second for the converted who is worldly in his work. A man might himself be really with Christ, but yet in his labors he might build or prop up what is of the world. Such a person, no matter what the apparent effects may be, may become the most popular of preachers, and produce wide-spread effects, philanthropic and religions; but “he that gathereth not with me scattereth,” says the Lord. There is no scattering so real in the sight of God as the gathering of Christians on false principles. It is worse than if they were not gathered at all. There is a deeper hindrance to the truth, because there is a spirit of party and denomination that is necessarily hostile to Christ. A false gathering-point substitutes another center for Christ, and consequently makes greater confusion. “He that gathereth not with me scattereth.”
Then we find the picture of the unclean spirit, that is, the spirit of idolatry. It had once possessed the Jewish nation; but here it is applied in the case, not merely of a nation, but of an individual. It acquires a more moral shape than in the Gospel of Matthew, where it is dispensational. “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.” A person might, through evidence and convictions of one sort or another profess to follow Christ, and be outwardly with Him. But the mere absence of outward evil will never bring a soul to God. God Himself must be known, and Jesus Himself received, not merely the unclean spirit be gone out. A man may leave off evil of a gross kind, he may give up false religion, or, as in this case, idolatry; but all this does not consecrate a man. It is the presence of God in possession of a soul—it is the having a new nature, and not merely the absence of this or that evil—that determines the matter. The unclean spirit can return to the house unless it is already occupied by the power of God's Spirit, which alone effectually shuts Satan out. “And when he cometh, he findeth it swept and garnished.” No doubt, as compared with heathenism there is the absence of much that is abominable and offensive. Christian truth is owned; and the unclean spirit, therefore, finds the house, when he returns, swept and garnished. This will be true in Christendom, as it may be also in an individual. After a person has through the outward influence of Christ laid aside evil, the power of Satan gathers fresh fuel; and the man falls into worse evil than if he had never professed His name at all. It is not a simple return to what he was, nor merely that the old evil re-asserts its energy, but there is a fresh and complete torrent of evil, a new and worse power of the enemy, that takes possession of the soul; and “the last state of that man is worse than the first.” An apostate is the most hopeless of all evil men. So it will be with the Jew and so with Christendom; it is the same thing with any man at any time in these circumstances. There is nothing for anyone except cleaving to the name of the Lord. Nor is it only a question of glorifying the Lord but of positive necessity for his own soul.