NOTES for Luk 8:26-39

How often someone tormented by the powers of evil fears the One who can free them from those powers. It is not only the legion of demons crying out within the possessed man: over the long years he himself has grown so accustomed to the demons that he habitually identifies their suggestions with his own desires and takes the Liberator for a tormentor.

But now the unfortunate man is healed. And what a reaction from those around him! Seeing their fellow countryman, whom they had known for many years, clothed and in his right mind, they were terrified. They were terrified not because the pigs had perished and material damage had been done, as many readers understand their reaction—they might perhaps have endured that alone—but because a spiritual authority stronger than the familiar dominion of demons had been revealed to them. Yet demons hold sway not only over those usually called demon-possessed, but over all who agree to live in sin, who are prepared to regard impurity as normal. That is why the inhabitants of the country of the Gadarenes ask Jesus to leave them.

Jesus sails away; He does not impose Himself by force. But neither does He wish to leave the unfortunate Gadarenes languishing in darkness. This is precisely why He did not take the healed man with Him, but sent him to his fellow countrymen. Like an apostle, or perhaps like John the Baptist, this man must prepare, in the hearts of his compatriots who are not yet ready to meet Christ, soil capable of receiving the seed of the Gospel.