The Bible teaches that Jesus was both fully human and fully divine. 

He was born of Mary, grew up in a modest home in Nazareth, and experienced hunger, sadness and pain. 

When it comes to his divinity, we tend to focus on what he said (he identified with the one eternal God), what he did (i.e. forgive sins and receive worship), or what others said about him (that he was God incarnate).

But there is more, and it’s something that people don’t tend to talk about very much. It has to do with his role as an exorcist.

In the ancient world as well as today, exorcists invoke the name of a higher power as they battle the demonic. Demons are disembodied spirits who have rebelled against God. They tend to know a lot (they’ve been around for a long time), and are very strong. So a human certainly has his hands full when he tries to help someone who is suffering from some sort of demonic oppression. That’s why we need the intervention of God himself.

Back to Jesus. Unlike some of his contemporaries, he didn’t invoke the name of a higher power to battle evil spirits. Why? Because he was that higher power! In Mark 1 a man was tormented by a demon in a synagogue. It was provoked by Jesus’ presence and attempted to silence and intimidate him. In response, Jesus said: “Be quiet! Come out of him!” At that, “The impure spirit shook the man violently and came out of him with a shriek” (verses 25-26).

Jesus uttered commands, and demons submitted.

Let’s be honest. This isn’t the sort of thing that we talk about every day. In fact, some of you may be a bit unsettled reading about it. Christians in North America and Europe tend to shy away from this subject, even though our brothers and sisters in virtually every other part of the world continue to take the demonic realm seriously. 

I say all of this to encourage you. The more we learn about Jesus, the more confidence we have in him—the more awe-inspiring we discover him to be. 

Yes, that King radiating both love and power is our King! 

Just as a mama bear is ferocious in the protection of her cubs, so is our Good Shepherd ferocious in the protection of his flock, including you.

---

Notes and extra content:

–“Steel Your Nerve.” There’s a new online publication called “Living in Truth”! The publishers asked me to contribute an article about leadership and I was pleased to do so. You can read it here, and also take some time to check out the various pages.

–Bible quotes are from the NIV.