Scripture Daily

Context No. 598 of 4322 · Luke

Context · Reflection

Luke 4:28-34: in context

28They were all filled with wrath in the synagogue as they heard these things. 29They rose up, threw him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill that their city was built on, that they might throw him off the cliff. 30But he, passing through the middle of them, went his way. 31He came down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. He was teaching them on the Sabbath day, 32and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word was with authority. 33In the synagogue there was a man who had a spirit of an unclean demon; and he cried out with a loud voice, 34saying, “Ah! what have we to do with you, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are: the Holy One of God!”

Two scenes sit side by side here, and their contrast is the point. In the first, Jesus is in Nazareth, his hometown, among the people who watched him grow up, and when his teaching challenges them they are filled with rage, drag him to the brow of a hill, and try to throw him off a cliff. The people who knew him best cannot see who he is; familiarity has blinded them, and they want him dead. Then, in Capernaum, Jesus is teaching, and a man with an unclean spirit cries out. And listen to what the demon says: I know who you are, the Holy One of God. The demon, of all things, gets the theology exactly right. It names Jesus' true identity with perfect accuracy, while his own townspeople, who should have known him, are trying to kill him.

That is a jarring juxtaposition, and Scripture means it to unsettle us. The demon has flawless knowledge about Jesus. It knows he is the Holy One of God, knows he has authority, knows he can destroy it. Its beliefs are impeccable. And it is still Jesus' enemy. Elsewhere the point is made plainly: even the demons believe, and shudder. Correct information about Jesus, accurate doctrine, right theology, is not the same thing as faith. You can know all the true things about Christ and remain utterly opposed to him, as the demon does, or blind to him, as Nazareth is. Knowing about Jesus and knowing Jesus are not the same.

That searches the nature of my own knowledge of Christ. It is possible for me to have accumulated a great deal of accurate belief about him, right answers, sound doctrine, correct statements I could pass any test on, and for that to be, at bottom, no different from the demon's knowledge: true, and lifeless, and unsurrendered. The demon knew exactly who Jesus was and would not bow. Is my knowledge of Jesus merely accurate belief about him, the kind even a demon can have, or have I actually surrendered to and come to love the one I claim to know?

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