Jesus recognized evil when He encountered it.
Have you ever sensed evil is present?
I didn’t expect to encounter evil in the mall, but I did. Once, before my mom went to assisted living, she and I were at the mall, and we came to a bookstore.. Bookstores for my family are like candy stores to children. So we rushed inside, seeking untold treasures. Not evil.
As I walked past a life-sized cardboard cutout of a man – an author of popular self-help books, I had an overwhelming sense of dread. And a revulsion. A stench of something dead. Something evil. I asked Mom if she smelled it. She did not.
I grew so uncomfortable that I had to leave the store. I tried to convince Mom to leave, too, but she stayed and bought several books. I have since avoided books by that author, and he later was revealed to be caught up in a huge scandal.
Evil comes to light.
Jesus dealt with evil head-on
There are several instances in Scripture where Jesus faced down demons – fallen angels doing evil on behalf of Satan.
Luke 4:33-36 and Mark 1:23-24 describe how evil tried to disrupt Christ’s teaching in the synagogue . During the lesson, the demon cried out from inside a man. The demon recognized Jesus – after all, they had once been in Heaven together.
What did the demon do? First it recoiled from Jesus. Evil cannot bear to be in the perfect presence of Christ. Also, note that the demon had taken possession of the man. Evil is the great imitator. If the Son of God talk human form, then Satan used the same tricks. (He entered Judas as well.)
And the demon recognized Christ from their time in Heaven.
Christ’s response
Jesus dealt with this evil in 2 steps:
- He silenced the spirit – No doubt Jesus didn’t want people’s faith in HIM to rest on the testimony of an evil source.
- Christ expelled the spirit – Angry that he can no longer interrupt the teaching verbally, the spirit caused mass chaos physically.
Healing from evil’s influence
In Matt. 9:32-35, we find another man with a demon problem. This time, evil is keeping him from hearing and speaking. His mind and body have no control.
This wasn’t a disease or injury. And Jesus immediately knows this. He then deals with the root cause — evil.Once the demonic influence is gone, the man can hear and speak.
A third encounter with evil
The story of the Gadarene demoniac is told in Luke 8:26-27, Matthew 8:28-38, and Mark 5:1-20. But first, let’s take a minute to look deeper at the idea of demon possession.
We know that Jesus believed in Satan and demons. He encountered Satan in the wilderness after 40 days of fasting and prayer, before beginning His ministry. Read about that here.And He openly declared (in this instance and others) that the evil within a person came from an evil source.
What does this tell us? The devil’s power is exercised in 3 ways:
- directly BY HIMSELF (as in Job)
- by the demons (other fallen angels) whom Satan rules over
- through humans he has influenced or taken possession of (in this case and in Judas’ betrayal of Christ)
In the case of this man, we learn there are MULTIPLE demons at work.
Signs of evil’s torment
This man lived among the dead, making him unclean. He was strong enough to break any chains or shackles others used to bind him. Luke says he was naked – and completely shameless. (Think about Adam and Eve hiding from God after they sinned because they were naked.)
He also wandered “in the mountains and in the tombs, crying out and cutting himself with stones.(Mark 5:5)”
BUT, when he saw Jesus from a distance, he ran don worshiped Him. He literally fell on his face before Christ!
Then he shouted, “What have I to do with You, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I implore You by God that You do not torment me.(Mark 5:7)”
My name is “Legion”
When the demon answers Jesus with “My name is Legion, for we are many,” the people who heard this were, no doubt, astonished. They knew that the term “Legion” referred to a unit of 6,000 Roman soldiers.
The demons begged Jesus for 3 things:
- DON’T torment us. They knew Christ’s power and authority. He could do whatever He wanted to them, and they had no recourse. (Luke 8:28)
- DON’T send us to the Abyss. Jesus had the authority to send them directly to Hell for all eternity, and they weren’t ready for that judgment.(Luke 8:31
- DO send us to the nearby herd of 2,000 pigs so we can enter them. (Luke 8:32)
Jesus allowed them to enter the pigs. (Remember, pigs are an unclean animal; to the Jews.) They left the man and entered the pigs. Then “the herd ran violently down the steep place into the sea, the drowned in the sea. (Mark 5:13b)”
Once Legion had destroyed the herd, THE JEWS who were raising the pigs ran and told everyone. Yes, these were Jews raising unclean pigs to sell to Roman soldiers! In this way, Jesus punished them for breaking God’s law about unclean animals.
What do you value?
In all 3 Gospels, those who lost their precious pigs returned to the site of the miracle. They found the man, dressed and in his right mind.
But, they didn’t care.
They were more interested in their profits than the man. They begged Jesus to leave the area. In other words, they wanted Jesus out of there before He discovered any more evil things they were involved in.
Jesus had seen the value in this one tormented man and rescued him. Then He commanded him to go and tell what had happened to him. So the man told the Decapolis — a collection of ten cities!
What this means for me:
- Jesus knew evil exists – For anyone who says demons don’t exist, tell them to read the texts. Evil still exists, too. There is a constant battle of good vs evil around us. Beware!
- Possession/Influence happens with consent – When we willingly participate in evil, we open the door – even just a crack. The more we allow, the deeper trouble we put ourselves in. We become desensitized to evil’s influence. So we must be diligent to weed out the bad and replace it with God alone.
- Evil knows exactly who Jesus is and the Power He has – The Legion who announced Jesus as “Son of the Most High God” was right. And it was the first time that title was used to describe Him! If a demon recognizes Jesus’ power, I should, too!
Thanks for stopping by today. Why not drop me a line and tell me if you’ve ever felt the presence of evil.





