The
following is an edited transcript of the audio.
Do
you believe in casting out demons? How would you go about it?
I
do, and I think there is a steady state, normal way to go about it
from 2
Timothy 2:24-26.
And I think occasionally there is what David Powlison would call
an ekballistic form.
David doesn't think that is the normal way to do ministry, and we may
or may not see things eye to eye there.
So I would
say, occasionally you see a manifestation of demonic power that is so
in your face and so possessive and controlling of a person's life
that an extraordinary intervention and exorcism is called for.
I've been
involved in one in my life—only one. But I've read about others and
it is much more common on the mission field, of course, where you are
moving immediately into places where they are more explicitly
demon-driven than we are explicitly demon-driven here.
The steady
state, ordinary way of bringing people out of the clutches of the
devil is described in 2 Timothy 2 where it says, "Teach
with gentleness, correct your opponents in love. God may perhaps
grant them to repent and come to a knowledge of the truth and be
delivered or escape from the power of the evil one who had taken them
captive." That's a paraphrase. So clearly in that passage,
teaching and love and patience and God's sovereignty—maybe he'll
intervene—is the normal way that Timothy is being told to free
people from the will and the bondage of the devil.
I don't
think in order to be seriously engaged in spiritual warfare (where
you are freeing people from the powers of the evil one), you have to
do exorcisms week in and week out. You have to be a faithful, loving,
humble, and repenting teacher—a lover of people. Satan is a liar
and therefore he will not abide truth. He is a murderer, and
therefore he will not abide love. So if you are a truth-giver and a
deep, self-sacrificing lover, you will win.
That
text from Revelation
12:11—"They
overcame the devil by the blood of the lamb, for they loved not their
lives even unto death"—what does that say? You overcome the
devil by the gospel, by believing you are covered by the blood. You
overcame by applying and teaching and preaching the blood of Christ,
and then by being so sacrificially dedicated to people's lives that
you are willing to die rather than run away from a situation. When
that happens, when martyrs covered by the blood loving people
happens, Satan is defeated.
So there
are lots of ways, at least the three that I'm describing here. This
teaching way, this self-sacrificing, gospel way, and this occasional
exorcistic way.
Demons are
real, Satan is real, and every pastor should do a serious study of
the devil and of his ways and of demons, and decide how he is going
to deal with that. Because there is an attack on the church in
various forms all the time.
Can Christians Be Demon-Possessed?
- Questions
- QA191
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By John MacArthur
We
must remember, first of all, that God’s Word is our only reliable
source of truth about Satan and demons.
Princeton
theologian and scholar Dr. Charles Hodge rightly warned:
No amount of learning, no superiority of talent, nor even the pretension to inspiration, can justify a departure from the . . . truths taught by men to whose inspiration God has borne witness. All teachers must be brought to this standard; and even if an angel from heaven should teach anything contrary to the Scriptures, he should be regarded as anathema, Gal. 1:8. It is a matter of constant gratitude that we have such a standard whereby to try the spirits whether they be of God (Commentary on the Epistle to the Romans [Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1972], p. 395).
What
does God’s Word, the touchstone of truth, say? Can demons inhabit
or spatially indwell a true believer? Can they walk through an open
door and become a squatter? Proponents of today’s spiritual warfare
movement say yes, but they base their answer on subjective
experience, not on God’s Word. The Bible makes it clear that such a
claim has no justifiable basis.
There
is no clear example in the Bible where a demon ever inhabited or
invaded a true believer. Never in the New Testament epistles are
believers warned about the possibility of being inhabited by demons.
Neither do we see anyone rebuking, binding, or casting demons out of
a true believer. The epistles never instruct believers to cast out
demons, whether from a believer or unbeliever. Christ and the
apostles were the only ones who cast out demons, and in every
instance the demon-possessed people were unbelievers.
The
collective teaching of Scripture is that demons can never spatially
indwell a true believer. A clear implication of 2 Corinthians 6, for
example, is that the indwelling Holy Spirit could never cohabit with
demons:
What harmony has Christ with Belial, or what has a believer in common with an unbeliever? Or what agreement has the temple of God with idols? For we are the temple of the living God; just as God said, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people” (vv. 15–16).
In Colossians
1:13,
Paul says God “delivered us from the domain of darkness, and
transferred us to the kingdom of His beloved Son.” Salvation
brings true deliverance and protection from Satan. In Romans
8:37,
Paul says we overwhelmingly conquer through Christ. In 1
Corinthians 15:57,
he says God gives us the victory. In 2
Corinthians 2:14,
he says God always leads us in triumph. In 1
John 2:13,
John says we have overcome the evil one. And, in 4:4, he says the
indwelling Holy Spirit is greater than Satan. How could anyone affirm
those glorious truths, yet believe demons can indwell genuine
believers?
DEMON
POSSESSION AND TRUE CONVERSION
Many
of the leading voices in today’s spiritual warfare movement are too
quick to hail every profession of faith in Christ as proof of
salvation. That reflects the easy-believism that has swept this
generation.
A
thorough biblical understanding of the doctrine of conversion makes
it clear that demons could never indwell or possess a believer.
Jonathan Edwards wrote about true conversion:
Scripture describes conversion in terms which imply or signify a change of nature: being born again, becoming new creatures, rising from the dead, being renewed in the spirit of the mind, dying to sin and living to righteousness, putting off the old man and putting on the new, becoming partakers of the divine nature, and so on.
It follows that if there is no real and lasting change in people who think they are converted, their religion is worthless, whatever their experiences may be. Conversion is the turning of the whole man from sin to God. God can restrain unconverted people from sin, of course, but in conversion he turns the very heart and nature from sin to holiness. The converted person becomes the enemy of sin.
What, then, shall we make of a person who says he has experienced conversion, but whose religious emotions soon die away, leaving him much the same person as he was before? He seems as selfish, worldly, foolish, perverse and un-Christian as ever. This speaks against him louder than any religious experiences can speak for him.
In Christ Jesus, neither circumcision nor uncircumcision, neither a dramatic experience nor a quiet one, neither a wonderful testimony nor a dull one, counts for anything. The only thing that counts is a new creation (The Experience That Counts! p. 99).
In
Matthew 12, Christ rebuked those who were following Him just for the
sake of witnessing great signs and wonders:
When the unclean spirit goes out of a man, it passes through waterless places, seeking rest, and does not find it. Then it says, “I will return to my house from which I came” ; and when it comes, it finds it unoccupied, swept, and put in order. Then it goes, and takes along with it seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there; and the last state of that man becomes worse than the first. That is the way it will also be with this evil generation (vv. 43–45).
Instead
of responding with spectacular signs and wonders, Christ addressed
their need for salvation. Many people appear to have their lives in
order. But in reality, they have not trusted Christ as Savior and
Lord. Their souls are “unoccupied” — that is, the Holy Spirit
does not indwell them. Thus they are open to demonic invasion. That
cannot be true of those whose bodies are temples of the Holy Spirit
(cf. 2
Cor. 6:16).
According
to 1
Peter 1:5,
when Christ reigns in a person’s life, that person is kept by God’s
power. As a result, “the evil one does not touch him” (1
John 5:18).
When the Holy Spirit inhabits a person, no demon can set up house as
a squatter. Indwelling by demons is only evidence of a lack of
genuine salvation.
This
article originally appeared in Pulpit
Magazine ,
an online magazine of the Shepherds’
Fellowship , Grace
Community Church .
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