Mark 3:20-27: in context

The crowds press in on Jesus so that he cannot even eat, and the reactions turn hostile. His own family, hearing of it, come to seize him, saying he is out of his mind. The scribes from Jerusalem accuse him of casting out demons by the prince of demons. Jesus answers their charge with logic, a kingdom or house divided against itself cannot stand, so Satan does not cast out Satan, and then with an image: no one can enter a strong man's house and plunder his goods unless he first binds the strong man; then he can plunder the house.

The image Jesus gives is a picture of what he has come to do. The strong man is the enemy who holds people captive, and his house is full of goods, the lives, the souls he keeps bound. And Jesus says the only way to plunder that house, to free those captives, is first to bind the strong man; and the plain implication is that he is the one who has come to do it. His casting out of demons was not collusion with the enemy, as the scribes charged, but the opposite: it was the evidence that a stronger one had arrived, had bound the strong man, and was carrying off his captives to freedom. There is good news in this that runs beneath the hostile scene. The enemy that holds people bound, in sin, in fear, in the grip of powers too strong for them to break, is real and strong; but Jesus is stronger. He came precisely to enter the strong man's house, to bind him, and to set his captives free. Whatever holds us, whatever power we feel too weak to break on our own, is not stronger than Christ, who has come to plunder the enemy's house. This is not a battle we fight in our own strength against a foe we can overcome; it is a rescue accomplished by one stronger than the enemy, who binds him and frees those he held. The captives do not free themselves; the stronger one comes and frees them. Christ has entered the house, bound the strong man, and the plundering, the setting free, is his work.

Whatever holds me bound, a sin, a fear, a power I feel too weak to break on my own, can I trust that Jesus is stronger than the one who holds me, that he came to bind the strong man and free his captives, and that my freedom is not a battle I win in my own strength but a rescue accomplished by the stronger one?