Are We as Obedient as Demons?

After Jesus had crossed the lake, he came to shore near the town of Gadara and started down the road. Two men with demons in them came to him from the tombs. They were so fierce that no one could travel that way. Suddenly they shouted, “Jesus, Son of God, what do you want with us? Have you come to punish us before our time?”

Not far from there a large herd of pigs was feeding. So the demons begged Jesus, “If you force us out, please send us into those pigs!” Jesus told them to go, and they went out of the men and into the pigs. All at once the pigs rushed down the steep bank into the lake and drowned.

The people taking care of the pigs ran to the town and told everything, especially what had happened to the two men. Everyone in town came out to meet Jesus. When they saw him, they begged him to leave their part of the country. (Matthew 8:28-34)

Are we as obedient as the demons? When Jesus told some of them to go somewhere, that’s where they went. Demons were very limited in what they could and could not do. Though they did not care what people thought or what people wanted, whenever Jesus spoke, they did exactly what he said. Did they lack free will? Weren’t they evil? Didn’t they, by definition, usually disobey God?

In fact, demons in the Bible appear to take Jesus’ words more seriously than many of the human beings. They knew who Jesus was, they knew that he was God and they knew that they’d better obey him or else. Certainly, the demons were free to do whatever they wanted to do. But they knew better than to ever disobey Jesus. They knew that disobeying Jesus would be disastrous for them. Of course, entering the pigs did not turn out so well for them: the man they had possessed was freed of them and the pigs were dead. But that was their idea. They had asked for it. Jesus had them go into the pigs because he knew what the outcome would be. The demons thought they would escape. Jesus knew it would bring about their destruction.

Demons are the definition of evil, and yet they still obeyed Jesus’ commands and asked for his permission. Jesus controlled them. Unlike demons, we will sometimes resist doing what Jesus wants us to do. Like demons, we sometimes come up with our own ideas. We should, instead, unlike the demons, seek only to discover Jesus’ will and to do that.

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