Tying Up The Strong Man The Kingdom Of God As A Warfare Concept

For example, Jesus diagnosed a woman “with a spirit that had crippled her for eighteen years” as one whom “Satan bound” (Lk 13:11, 16). Far from trying to discern some secret, sovereign, divine blueprint behind her grotesque deformity, Jesus treated her as a casualty of war. The one ultimately responsible for her affliction, Jesus claimed, was the captain of the opposing battalion himself. James Kallas poignantly expresses Jesus’ approach to such matters, in sharp contrast to our typical modern Western approach:

We see polio or crippling and we piously shake our heads and cluck all the trite absurdities of a non-thinking people by saying “it is the will of God . . . hard to understand . . . providence writes a long sentence, we have to wait to get to heaven to read the answer.” . . . Jesus looked at this and in crystal clear terms called it the work of the devil, and not the will of God.48

As difficult as Kallas’s assessment may be to accept, from a strictly scriptural perspective he is surely correct. In the minds of the disciples, such things as back deformities and diseases were, as Raymond Brown argues, “directly inflicted by Satan.” So for them, to be “saved” was not simply about “spiritual regeneration” but also about being delivered “from the evil grasp of sickness, from the dominion of Satan.”49

Further, as Brown and others also make clear, Jesus and the Gospel authors sometimes referred to the diseases people had as “scourgings” or “whippings” (mastix; Mk 3:10; 5:29, 34; Lk 7:21).50 The only other times ancient authors used this term to describe physical maladies were to refer to afflictions sent by God upon people.51 In these particular instances, God was punishing people with a scourging. But this clearly cannot be its meaning here, since Jesus sets people free from this scourging.

For example, after the woman who had been bleeding for twelve years touched his cloak, Jesus says to her, “Daughter, your faith has healed you. Go in peace and be freed from your scourging [mastix]” (Mk 5:34).52 Jesus was certainly not freeing this woman from a God-intended twelve-year whipping. But whose whipping is Jesus freeing her from? In the total context of Jesus’ ministry, the only other possibility is that he understood himself to be setting this woman (and all like her) free from the whippings of “the strong man,” Satan.

Along the same lines, though Jesus never endorsed the apocalyptic tendency to speculate about the names, ranks and functions of various fallen angels, he does go so far as to rebuke a deaf and mute spirit (Mk 9:25), and Luke describes another exorcism as the driving out of “a demon that was mute” (Lk 11:14).53 There are apparently various kinds of demons within Satan’s army who have differing particular functions in afflicting people.

Elsewhere Jesus does not specify that a demon is causing an infirmity, but his exorcisms have the effect of freeing the person from a physical ailment, clearly showing that it was demonically induced (Mt 9:32-33). Other times the Gospels state that a person is demonized, but then note that Jesus heals the person, without mentioning exorcism (Mt 12:22; cf. 4:24; Lk 7:21). Clearly, the line between healing and exorcism in the Gospels is a fine one.54

Still other times a demon is not specifically mentioned, but Jesus treats the illness as though it were a demon. For example, Jesus rebukes Peter’s mother-in-law’s fever as though it were a demon, or at least demonically induced (Lk 4:39). Indeed, Jesus rebukes a threatening storm in a similar fashion (Lk 8:42; Mk 4:39). Finally, Jesus’ general response to people when they came to him with their ailments was a response of compassion, revealing his conviction that what was afflicting them ought not to be there (Mk 1:41; Mt 9:36; 14:14; 20:34). There was no thought here of pious resignation or of seeking to discover what perfect plan God might have behind the illness. To the contrary, so far as we can discern from the Gospels, Jesus simply viewed these unfortunate people as casualties of war.

Thus the Peter of Luke’s history of the early church can be understood to be reflecting Jesus’ own attitude when he later summarizes Jesus’ ministry by saying that Jesus “went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with him” (Acts 10:38). When Jesus healed people, he saw himself as setting them free from the power, and the whippings, of the devil.55

It is crucial for us to recognize that Jesus’ view about the rule of Satan and the pervasive influence of his army was not simply a marginal piece of first-century apocalyptic thought that he happened to embrace. It is, rather, the driving force behind everything Jesus says and does. Indeed, Jesus’ concept of “the kingdom of God” is centered on these views. For Jesus, the kingdom of God means abolishing the kingdom of Satan. As Kallas argues:

This world [in Jesus’ view] was a demon-infested world in need of liberation, and the advance of God’s sovereignty was in direct proportion to the rout of the demons. . . . Exorcisms of demons was the central thrust of the message and activity of Jesus.56

So too Gustaf Wingren writes:

When Jesus heals the sick and drives out evil spirits, Satan’s dominion is departing and God’s kingdom is coming (Matt. 12.22-29). All Christ’s activity is therefore a conflict with the Devil (Acts 10.38). God’s Son took flesh and became man that he might overthrow the power of the Devil, and bring his works to nought (Heb. 2.14f.; I John 3.8).57

The “kingdom of God,” as Jesus uses the term, refers to nothing other than his ministry, and the ministry he gave to his disciples, of setting up God’s rule where previously there had been Satan’s rule. If “the kingdom of God” was the central concept of Jesus’ ministry and teaching, as all scholars recognize, then the “kingdom of Satan” was, as a correlary concept, central as well. An increasing number of scholars are also coming to recognize this.58

The kingdom as a warfare concept. While no orthodox first-century Jew or Christian ever doubted that there existed only one Creator, or that this Creator would reign supreme in the eschaton, it seems equally clear that the New Testament authors also never doubted that in this present world the Creator’s will was not the only will that was being carried out. Wills, human and angelic, oppose God, and he must fight against them. The kingdom of God, therefore, was something the New Testament authors prayed for, not something they considered already accomplished (Mt 6:10; Lk 11:2).59 The only way it would be brought about, they understood, was by overthrowing the illegitimate kingdom that was now in place. In this sense, one might say along with John Newport that the New Testament authors, like the apocalyptic authors of their day, held to a “limited dualism.”60

In any event, in New Testament terms the kingdom of God and the kingdom of Satan are correlative concepts. The former can be understood to be expanding only as the latter is diminishing. This is precisely why healings and exorcisms played such a central role in Jesus’ ministry. “If it is by the finger of God that I cast out the demons,” Jesus says, “then the kingdom of God has come to you” (Lk 11:20). To accomplish the one was to accomplish the other.

Susan Garrett correctly summarizes this point: “Every healing, exorcism, or raising of the dead is a loss for Satan and a gain for God.”61 Or, as James Kallas again puts it, “The arrival of the kingdom is simultaneous with, dependent upon, and manifested in the routing of demons.”62 For Jesus, healings and exorcisms clearly did not merely symbolize the kingdom of God—they were the kingdom of God.63 They were not byproducts of the message he proclaimed—they were the message. Warring against Satan and building the kingdom of God are, for Jesus, one and the same activity.64

Among the many ways Jesus’ warfare conception of the kingdom of God is illustrated is the Gospels’ association of Jesus’ pronouncements about the kingdom and his demonstrations of the kingdom. This is a recurring phenomenon throughout the Gospels, but two examples pertaining to the thematic beginnings of Jesus’ ministry in Mark and Luke make the point clear.

In the opening of Mark’s Gospel, Jesus begins his ministry by announcing: “The kingdom of God has come near; repent, and believe in the good news” (Mk 1:15). This is the total content of what Mark tells us Jesus preached. But everything that follows informs us what this kingdom preaching means, and it does so by illustration.

After calling his disciples (vv. 16-20), Jesus amazes the people with the authority of his teaching (vv. 21-22). Immediately, however, a man demonized by an unclean spirit cries out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us?” The first-person plural here perhaps indicates that the demon is speaking on behalf of the entire army he is a part of. But he continues in the singular, “I know who you are, the Holy One of God” (vv. 23-24). In contrast to all earthly players in Mark’s narrative, those in the demonic kingdom know who Jesus is and have suspicions about what he has come to earth to do (see v. 34; 3:11).65 He has come to “destroy the works of the devil” (1 Jn 3:8), and the demons know this means their destruction.

Jesus rebukes the demon, telling him to “be silent” (Mk 1:25), literally, “be strangled” (phimoo). After Jesus strangles the demon with his divine authority, the demon throws the man to the ground and leaves him with a shriek (v. 26). This is what the kingdom of God means! Mark then notes that the people were again “amazed” at this “new teaching” and new “authority” (v. 27). The two, we see, go hand in hand.66

Mark then records Jesus’ healing of Peter’s mother-in-law’s fever (vv. 30-31), which Jesus assumed to be demonically induced in the Lukan parallel (Lk 4:38-39). That very evening “the whole city” brought “all who were sick or possessed with demons” to Jesus, and he “cured many” and “cast out many demons” (Mk 1:32-34). The kingdom of God was indeed near.

Next in Mark’s account, Jesus tells his disciples that he wants to go into other villages and “proclaim the message there also” (v. 38). This he proceeds to do, and Mark summarizes his activity by noting, “He went throughout Galilee, proclaiming the message in their synagogues and casting out demons” (v. 39). Jesus then heals a man of leprosy (vv. 40-45), followed immediately by an account of Jesus healing a paralytic on the sabbath (2:1-12). After a brief interlude, we find Jesus again healing people, setting crowds of people free from the “scourges” of the enemy (3:10) and driving out evil spirits (3:11-12).67 Several verses later we have Mark’s account of the Beelzebul controversy, in which Jesus presents himself as the one who has come to tie up “the strong man” by the power of God (3:20-30). And we are not yet out of Mark’s third chapter!

This is what the kingdom of God means. The point is hard to miss. Whatever else the rule of God is about, it is about vanquishing the rule of Satan, and thus about setting people free from demons and from the ungodly infirmities they inflict on people.

Luke’s (and Matthew’s) account of Jesus’ ministry begins, quite appropriately, with Jesus confronting the devil in the desert. The cosmic war that has raged throughout the ages has now come to center on one person: Jesus.68 Jesus withstands each temptation, including Satan’s offer of all the kingdoms of the world he had authority over; and the devil, defeated, finally leaves him (Lk 4:1-13).

Unlike all other humans, Jesus did not come under Satan’s power by becoming “a slave to sin” (Jn 8:34). As Jesus states in John, “The ruler of this world . . . has no power over me; but I do as the Father has commanded me” (14:30-31; cf. 8:29). Rather, it is Jesus who has gotten hold of the devil. One stronger than “the strong man” has finally arrived. Having now defeated him in his own life, Jesus could set out to defeat him for the entire cosmos.

In Luke, Jesus launches his mission from his hometown. As in Mark, but in a slightly expanded manner, he begins by announcing that the kingdom of God has arrived in his own person. Standing up in the synagogue, Jesus reads from Isaiah:

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to bring good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim release to the captives and recovery of sight to the blind, to let the oppressed go free, to proclaim the year of the Lord’s favor. (Lk 4:18-19)

After a moment of awkward silence, Jesus adds, “Today this scripture has been fulfilled in your hearing” (v. 21). After some dispute, he is driven out of town (vv. 22-30); then, as Luke organizes his material, we begin to see what this proclamation of the kingdom means concretely. As in Mark, Jesus immediately confronts a demon-possessed man in a Capernaum synagogue who cries out, “What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth?” (v. 34). As in Mark, Jesus strangles the demon and sets the “prisoner” of Satan free (v. 35). Jesus’ exorcism, clearly, demonstrates his application of the Isaiah passage to himself. This is the kind of freedom Jesus is talking about.

Jesus then proceeds to “rebuke” a demonic fever (v. 39), heal multitudes of sick people (v. 40) and cast out multitudes of shrieking demons (v. 41). Shortly thereafter he heals a man of leprosy (5:12-16), a paralytic (5:17-26) and a man with a withered hand (6:1-10). As Clinton Arnold argues, the point is that the prisoners who are to be set free are “trapped in the bondage and oppression of Satan’s kingdom.”69 What the kingdom of God means, therefore, is that the hostile alien kingdom of demonic captivity, oppression, poverty and blindness (physical and spiritual) is coming to an end through the ministry of Jesus. He is the bringer of the kingdom of God, for he is the vanquisher of the kingdom of Satan.

Jesus the healing exorcist. The centrality of warfare for the Gospels’ understanding of Jesus’ preaching of the kingdom of God is also clearly illustrated in the summary statements of Jesus’ ministry that are sprinkled throughout the Gospels. In almost every instance, teaching (or preaching) about the kingdom is mentioned in the same breath as healing or casting out demons, activities that demonstrate the kingdom.70 Consider the following verses:

Jesus went throughout Galilee, teaching in their synagogues and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom and curing every disease and every sickness among the people. So his fame spread throughout all Syria, and they brought to him all the sick, those who were afflicted with various diseases and pains, demoniacs, epileptics, and paralytics, and he cured them. (Mt 4:23-24)

For he had cured many, so that all who had diseases pressed upon him to touch him. Whenever the unclean spirits saw him, they fell down before him and shouted, “You are the Son of God!” (Mk 3:10-11)

He came down . . . with a great crowd of his disciples and a great multitude of people from all Judea, Jerusalem, and the coast of Tyre and Sidon. They had come to hear him and to be healed of their diseases; and those who were troubled with unclean spirits were cured. And all in the crowd were trying to touch him, for power came out from him and healed all of them. (Lk 6:17-19)

Jesus had just then cured many people of diseases, plagues, and evil spirits, and had given sight to many who were blind. (Lk 7:21)

That evening they brought to him many who were possessed with demons; and he cast out the spirits with a word, and cured all who were sick. This was to fulfill what had been spoken through the prophet Isaiah: “He took our infirmities and bore our diseases.” (Mt 8:16-17; cf. Is 53:4)

Jesus went about all the cities and villages, teaching in their synagogues, and proclaiming the good news of the kingdom, and curing every disease and every sickness. (Mt 9:35)

People at once recognized [Jesus], and rushed about that whole region and began to bring back the sick on mats to wherever they heard he was. And wherever he went, into villages or cities or farms, they laid the sick in the marketplaces, and begged him that they might touch even the fringe of his cloak; and all who touched it were healed. (Mk 6:54-56)

Many crowds followed him, and he cured all of them. (Mt 12:15)

He left Galilee and went to the region of Judea beyond the Jordan.

Large crowds followed him, and he cured them there. (Mt 19:1-2) Such summary statements make clear that, in the mind of each Synoptic author, Jesus was first and foremost an exorcist and a healer. His preaching the good news had unprecedented “authority” (e.g., Mk 1:22, 27; Lk 4:32, 36) precisely because it was preached in deed as well as in word. Jesus not only talked about the kingdom but embodied it. Hence wherever he went, he was about freeing people from the scourges of the ruler of darkness (Acts 10:38).

What also illustrates the centrality of exorcism and healing in Jesus’ conception of the kingdom of God is that Jesus never commissions his disciples to proclaim the latter without also commissioning them to perform the former.71 Mark notes that he designated his twelve disciples as apostles “to be sent out to proclaim the message, and to have authority to cast out demons” (3:14-15). Word and deed go hand in hand.

Before Jesus sends out his twelve apostles on a particular mission, he tells them to “proclaim the good news, ‘The kingdom of heaven has come near.’ Cure the sick, raise the dead, cleanse the lepers, cast out demons. You received without payment; give without payment” (Mt 10:7-8).

Tell people “the kingdom has come near,” Jesus is saying, with words and with action. Thus Jesus “gave them authority over the unclean spirits” (Mk 6:7; cf. Lk 9:1-2), and they “went out and proclaimed that all should repent,” while they also “cast out many demons, and anointed with oil many who were sick and cured them” (Mk 6:12-13; cf. Lk 9:6). To proclaim that the kingdom is near is virtually synonymous with pushing back the kingdom of Satan by freeing people from their sin as well as from demons and disease.

In similar fashion, when Jesus at another time prepares to send out 72 disciples, he simply instructs them: “Whenever you enter a town and its people welcome you, eat what is set before you; cure the sick who are there, and say to them, ‘The kingdom of God has come near to you’” (Lk 10:8-9).

Nothing more is needed to carry out Christ’s ministry. Demonstrate the reality of the kingdom, and then interpret the demonstration for the people.72 When the 72 return they are overjoyed with their success: “Lord, in your name even the demons submit to us” (Lk 10:17). In the light of Jesus’ commission to them to heal, their response is somewhat puzzling—unless we understand that, for Jesus and his followers, healing the sick was centrally about having authority over demons (Acts 10:38). As such, it was about defeating the kingdom of Satan.

Jesus himself immediately exclaims, “I watched Satan fall from heaven like a flash of lightning” (Lk 10:18).73 As one chasing a scared enemy on the run, he reiterates to his disciples, “I have given you authority to tread on snakes and scorpions [demons?], and over all the power of the enemy [viz., Satan and demons]” (v. 19). This is what his disciples are to preach.

In the light of all this, it must strike us as highly peculiar that many New Testament scholars over the last several hundred years have concluded that the historical Jesus was, in one way or another, simply a moral teacher. This can only testify to how thoroughly naturalistic presuppositions can filter one’s reading of the evidence.74 But it is hardly less puzzling that so many believing Christians today can read these same Gospels, while committing themselves to following this Lord, yet never seriously consider treating sickness and disease (to say nothing of demonized people) the way Jesus treated them. Far from considering such things as scourges of the devil, as Jesus did, we modern Christians are likely to attribute them to God’s “mysterious providence.” Rather than revolting against such things as scourges of the enemy, we are likely to ask God to help us accept such things “as from a father’s hand.”

This undoubtedly testifies to the strength of the post-Augustinian classical-philosophical theistic tradition as well as to the Western Enlightenment presuppositions that, until recently, have tended to dominate the thinking of everyone in the West, believer and nonbeliever alike. It also goes a long way toward explaining why our “problem of evil” is not the “problem of evil” Jesus and his disciples confronted.

If, in contrast to Jesus’ approach, one believes that a good and wise divine purpose ultimately lies behind sickness, disease and all the atrocities that make the world a nightmarish place, then one subtly shifts the problem of evil from something one has to war against to something one has to think through. Rather than being a problem of overcoming the evil deeds of the devil and his army, our problem of evil has become a problem of intellectually explaining how an all-good and all-powerful God could will what certainly are evil deeds of the devil.

Perhaps most tragically, in trading problems in this fashion, we have surrendered a spiritual conflict we are commissioned to fight and will (despite ourselves) ultimately win for an intellectual puzzle we can never resolve. It is an exceedingly poor trade, whether considered on philosophical, biblical or practical grounds. If we were to follow the example of our Savior instead, our basic stance toward evil in the world would be characterized by revolt, holy rage, social activism and aggressive warfare—not pious resignation.