NOTES for Luk 11:14-23
In response to the outrageous claim by the Jews that He casts out demons by the power of their own prince, the Lord offers a rather simple argument. If, He says, this blasphemous idea is true, it means that the rule of that prince has ended and the Day of the Lord has come. If it is false, then all the more “the kingdom of God has come upon you.” Either way, such “explanations” cannot avoid acknowledging the accomplished fact of Christ’s coming. The Lord then says that, faced with this fact, each of us must make a choice: to be with Him or against Him. It is extremely important that there is no third, neutral, or intermediate option in our relationship with the Son of God: “Whoever does not gather with Me scatters.” In today’s circumstances these words are especially important, for they deprive the most widespread religious phenomena of our time of any foundation: external, nominal Christianity in the style of blessing offices, and magical practices in the style of “health at any cost.”