Joab’s charge to play the man still endures, immortalized in Scripture. “Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him” (2 Samuel 10:13).

Joab, facing enemies from the front and from the rear, took some of his best men and faced the Syrians ahead. The rest of his army would turn with his brother, Abishai, to meet the Ammonites to their back. Here we find the iconic words of Joab to his brother:

“If the Syrians are too strong for me, then you shall help me, but if the Ammonites are too strong for you, then I will come and help you. Be of good courage, and let us be courageous for our people, and for the cities of our God, and may the Lord do what seems good to him.” (2 Samuel 10:11–13)

This battle scene, equal to the best of Braveheart, Gladiator, or 300, began, if I may comb things out just slightly, with a man’s beard. Or, to be precise, the beards of several bushy men.

Sheered Like Sheep

David had sent several bearded messengers to meet the newly crowned King Hanun of the Ammonites, who succeeded his father, Nahash. David expressed his condolences for the deceased Nahash by dispatching these warm-chinned chums to “console [Hanun] concerning his father” (2 Samuel 10:2). Nahash had remained loyal to David — the neighboring kings kept the peace between each other. David’s delegates extended, as it were, the right hand of good will to Hanun.

A hand Hanun would not shake.

Led by the folly of suspicious counsel, the princes of the Ammonites convinced Hanun that these servants did not come to comfort but to conquer. “Has not David sent his servants to search the city and spy it out and to overthrow it?” (2 Samuel 10:3). And this is where things get rather hairy for the King. How should he respond?

He decides to shame David’s men and make them a spectacle. “Hanun took David’s servants and shaved off half the beard of each and cut off their garments in the middle, at their hips, and sent them away” (2 Samuel 10:4). He left multiple cheeks exposed.

Like sheep, Hanon sheered these men. These trees lost half their leaves; these lions, half their manes. When David heard of the barber-ous deed, he sent to meet them because they were “greatly ashamed.” The king acknowledged their humiliation and told them, “Remain at Jericho until your beards have grown and then return” (2 Samuel 10:5).

And what would David do next? Touch a man’s goat, and it’s time for court; touch a man’s beard, and it’s time for war.

Still Waiting in Jericho

In the twenty-first century, we might miss how hostile this act really was, how deeply shaming for an Israelite man in that day. If King Hanun cut off half of our beards today, it would be considered less shameful than strange. Also, not very effective — for each could just shave the other half off and still fit in with society. So why did this razor cut them to the heart? Why wait outside Jerusalem until it grew back? One historical commentary states, “What may seem like a ‘prank’ was in fact a direct challenge to David’s power and authority, and precipitated a war between the two nations” (336).

And beyond its spitting upon David’s outstretched hand of peace, consider the prominence of the beard in Israel.

First, in Israelite culture, the beard served as a sign of mature masculinity. All Israelite men grew beards; God commanded it, “You shall not round off the hair on your temples or mar the edges of your beard” (Leviticus 19:27). Beards were a facial billboard for manhood, distinguishing men, at first glance, from boys and women.

The full, rounded beard was a sign of manhood and a source of pride to Hebrew men. It was considered an ornament, and much care was given to its maintenance. In fact, the wealthy and important made a ceremony of caring for their beards. Custom did not allow the beard to be shaved, only trimmed (Leviticus 19:27; 21:5), except in special circumstances [such as great lament or distress, see Jeremiah 41:5; Ezra 9:3]. (Dictionary of Biblical Imagery, 80)

Thus, to cut off the peacekeeper’s beards was, quoting again, to “symbolically emasculat[e] them and by extension David” (IVP Bible Background Commentary, 336). Not to split hairs, but the beards also served as a sign of masculine might: “Beards worn during ancient periods were viewed with great reverence and often symbolized strength and virility” (Eerdman’s Dictionary of the Bible,158). To hack at it was to hack at a symbol of their manliness.

What of the Beardless?

The connection between manhood and unmown cheeks today has flowed down through church history, like oil running down the beard of Aaron (Psalm 133:2).

Augustine, commenting on Psalm 133, writes, “The beard signifies the courageous; the beard distinguishes the grown men, the earnest, the active, the vigorous. So that when we describe such, we say, he is a bearded man” (Augustine’s Commentary on Psalms, John, and 1 John). Or take Charles Spurgeon, who told his students that “Growing a beard is a habit most natural, Scriptural, manly and beneficial” (Lectures to My Students, 99). Or take ministers during the Reformation who grew manhood’s symbol to defy the celibate, clean-shaven faces of the Catholic priesthood.

Or overhear our day questioned by C.S. Lewis in The Screwtape Letters as the senior demon writes his nephew, “Thus we have now for many centuries triumphed over nature to the extent of making certain secondary characteristics of the male (such as the beard) disagreeable to nearly all the females — and there is more in that than you might suppose” (118).

So, what of the beardless?

Rome’s men were clean-shaven in biblical times (as were the Egyptians). When these beardless came to the bearded Christ, they not need grow one to enter the kingdom of God. They, like we, are saved by grace alone through faith alone in Christ alone — apart from any strands of good works, lest the hairier among us boast. Of course, on the face of it, beards hold no salvific design, nor are they commanded. Even the shaved can be saved. Nor do beards make us men. Some boys living in basements, addicted to video games and porn, grow beards. But here we walk a fine line. Does this then relegate the beard, that ancient landmark, to a matter of obsolete decoration, of mere preference?

“If you walk according to your God-given masculinity, you are a bearded man, whether you have hair on your face or not.”

I know more than a few godly men who testify that though they try, the fig tree does not blossom, nor is fruit found on the vine. Little islands of hair sprout, but the lands never form the continent. They are more Jacob than Esau — whose mother glued “the skins of the young goats on his hands and on the smooth part of his neck” (Genesis 27:16) to pass as his hairy brother (and the older did come to serve the younger, Genesis 25:23; 27:15, 42). Chin wigs, my brother, are no solution.

The solution is to be the man God made you to be. Many today, if not most, will not have beards and are not the lesser for it. This article, with all its bearded banter, has nothing negative to say to you. We agree with Shakespeare that, “He that hath a beard is more than a youth,” but not when he continues, “and he that hath no beard is less than a man” (Much Ado about Nothing, 2.1). For if you walk according to your God-given and God-matured masculinity, you are a bearded man, whether you have hair on your face or not. To understand that statement, consider the wonder of why God made beards.

O Beard, Where Art Thou?

Why did God make men with the capacity to grow beards? Why grow beards at all, or why not give them to children and women, like some speculate of the dwarves of middle earth?

Is it not because God delights in the distinctions he made? The day and the night, the land and the water, the heavens and the earth, the man and the woman — “Good.” For centuries, he hid the chromosomal signatures in every cell in our bodies, where only he could delight in them, but he did not leave himself without a witness, even to the unscientific. He shaded the man’s face with his pencil from the very beginning. What ecstasy of Adam observing the beautiful and smooth face of Eve — like me, yet not.

“We paste false beards on women and shave the beards of men, catechizing the children that there isn’t any difference.”

This appreciation is under assault in many places today. Figuratively speaking, our culture dislikes everything about beards. We paste false beards on women and shave the beards of men, catechizing the children that there isn’t any difference. Hair is just hair. With enough hormones, anyone can grow them. Claiming to be wise, we have become fools, exchanging the glory of God for images (Romans 1:22–23) — and now we barter away our own.

That makes literal beards, in my opinion, worth having. Beards protest against a world gone mad. In other words, beards beard. They testify, in their own bristly way, that sex distinctions matter, that manhood will not be so easily shaven, shorn, or chopped by the Huruns of this world. Its itchy and cheeky voice bears witness, “Male and female he created them” (Genesis 1:27).

My grandfather is no longer here for Christmas.

I scarcely remember one without him, and yet now his absence is becoming the new normal. We no longer gather in his living room to read Luke’s account of Jesus’s birth, sing “Joy to the World,” open presents together, or eat the Christmas dinner he prepared. His chair, once so full of fondness, infectious laughter, and gentlemanly repose, now sits silent, full of memories.

A new sensation now dines with me during my favorite time of year. As the dining table crowds with new faces, new grins, and new babies, nostalgias of past Christmases unfold in the background. Here, more than at any other place or time, days past and days present meet. Here I behold fresh holiday scenes with old eyes. So much is the same, and so much is different.

Loss has made me older.

I look around the table at the bright eyes of the children, and see a joy unburdened. The Christmas they have known is the same today. They can’t see what their parents see. They cannot detect the soft-glowing faces or hear the unspeaking voices. To them, chairs aren’t empty, they’re yet to be filled. They don’t know the ache in our celebration, the wounds that never fully heal.

I now know Christmas as my grandfather had for years — as a mixture of gladness and grief, gratitude and regret, Christmas now and Christmas then. I could not discern the others who dined with us around the table from another life ago — parents, friends, his beloved wife. I never realized his Christmases filled with more than just that single Christmas. I now see the unspoken dimension. I better understand that weathered smile, brimming fuller, yet sadder than once before.

Suffice it to say, Christmases these days aren’t quite the same.

Out with the Old?

With this new experience of Christmas with an empty chair, comes certain threats and temptations.

Jesus once warned about sewing a piece of new cloth onto an old garment; or putting new wine into old wineskins. The wineskins might burst, he taught; the cloth might tear. But here we are. In the mind of the man or woman who has lost, the new is patched with the old; new wine pours into old family wineskins.

Perhaps you can relate. The pressure of sitting and eating and singing where he or she once sat and ate and sang can tear at the heart. You may have lost more than a grandfather. The strain of grief you feel around the holidays nearly concusses. The spouse whose name inscribed upon the ornament is no longer here. One stocking is missing. The beloved child you watched run down the stairs Christmas morning has not made it down for some years now. Christmas, this side of heaven, will never be the same.

I do not pretend to know such depths of despair. But I do know twin temptations that greet those of us who have lost someone. I hope that naming them might help you this Christmas.

Past Swallows Present

The first temptation is to the variety of grief that kidnaps us from life today. This bottomless ache comes when we begin to stare and stare at the empty chair. The grief overwhelms all gladness; the past swallows the present. The good that arrives is not the good that once was, so all current cause for happiness becomes spoiled or forgotten.

This is to step beyond the healthy grief and remembrance of our losses. It poisons the heart by entertaining the question the wise man bids us not to: “Say not,” he warns, “‘Why were the former days better than these?” For, he continues, “it is not from wisdom that you ask this” (Ecclesiastes 7:10). This grief poisons the what is with the what used to be. It hinders the ability to go on.

Grief threatens to lock us in dark cellars of the past, keeping us from enjoying the child playing on the floor or the new faces around the table.

Over-the-Shoulder Guilt

Second is the temptation to bow to the over-the-shoulder guilt bearing down on us. Lewis captures this in A Grief Observed:

There’s no denying that in some sense I “feel better,” and with that comes at once a sort of shame, and a feeling that one is under a sort of obligation to cherish and foment and prolong one’s unhappiness. (53)

“The empty chair can threaten to overwhelm all joy in this Christmas or shame us for feeling any joy this Christmas.”

This temptation sees the empty chair frowning at us. “Why aren’t you sadder? How can Christmas still be merry? Didn’t you love him?” The memory, not remaining in its proper place, looms over our shoulder, patrolling our happiness in the present. This shame is a sickness that tempts us to hate wellness.

So, the empty chair can threaten to overwhelm all joy in this Christmas or shame us for feeling any joy this Christmas — both must be resisted.

Melt the Clouds of Sadness

So what do we do? There the empty chair sits.

Fighting both temptations, I need to remind myself: Christmas is not about family around a dinner table, but about Jesus. And Jesus has promised that for his people — for my grandfather — to be absent from the Christmas table is to be present with him.

I ask myself, Should I wish my grandfather back? Would I, if it stood within my power, recall him from that feast, reunite his soul with his ailing body — reclaim him to sickness, loneliness, sin — summon him from the heaven of Christ himself to a shadowy celebration of Christ on earth?

Somedays I half-consider it.

But I know that if I could speak to him now, he wishes me there. The empty chair heaven longs to see filled is not around our Christmas dinner, but the empty chairs still surrounding Christ. Our places are set already. Better life, real life, true life, lasting life lies in that world. That empty chair of our loved ones departed is not merely a reminder of loss, but a pointer to coming gain.

“That empty chair of our loved ones departed is not merely a reminder of loss, but a pointer to coming gain.”

This place of shadows and darkness, sin and Satan, grief and death, is no place yet for that Happy Reunion. The dull Christmas stab reminds me that life is not what it should be, but it can also remind me life is not what it will soon be for all who believe.

Jesus will come in a Second Advent. He will make all things new. Christmases with empty chairs are numbered; these too shall soon pass. And the greatest chair that shall be occupied, the one that shall restore all things, and bring real joy to the world, is Jesus Christ, the baby once born in Bethlehem, now King that rules the universe. He shall sit and eat with us at his eternal supper of the Lamb.

And until then, while we travel through Christmases present and future, I pray for myself and for you,

Melt the clouds of sin and sadness;Drive the dark of doubt away;Giver of immortal gladness,Fill us with the light of day!

When we come to Luke 4:41, near the end of this message, we are going to see something that has a direct bearing on your life in 2023 and on how you relate to demons and fevers and death and sin and the sovereignty of Christ over all of it. I point this out now lest you be tempted to think that these two-thousand-year-old stories are interesting, but not really relevant to “my issues today” or the problems swirling in our culture. That would be a big mistake.

Luke writes in verse 41 that “demons also came out of many, crying [to Jesus], ‘You are the Son of God!’ But he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak.” Why? Why won’t he let them talk? They just spoke one of the greatest truths in the world: “You are the Son of God.”

That’s better than what their master, Satan, said back in Luke 4:3 in the wilderness: “If you are the Son of God, command this stone to become bread.” These demons aren’t playing that game. They came out crying, “You are the Son of God.” There’s no if about it. They know whom they’re dealing with. So why does Jesus silence them when they speak such truth?

He gives the answer at the end of verse 41: “ . . . because they knew that he was the Christ.” Eventually, the word Christ became virtually a proper name along with Jesus — Jesus Christ. But in our text, it’s a title: “the Christ.” Luke tells us, “They knew that he was the Christ” — which is the English transliteration of Christos, which is the Greek translation of the Hebrew Mashiah (1 Samuel 2:10), which means “anointed one” or “Messiah.”

So the demons know that Jesus is the long-expected Son of David, the kingdom-bringing, world-conquering, enemy-defeating Jewish Messiah. They know this. And at the end of verse 41, Luke says that precisely because they know this truth, Jesus silences them. My point here is simply this: in that act of Jesus, when he silences that truth, there is a worldview that has everything to do with your life today. That’s where we are going. But let’s get there by starting at the beginning of the text.

Utmost Authority

His own hometown of Nazareth has just tried to throw him off a cliff (Luke 4:29). But they couldn’t. Because, for now, Jesus is untouchable. He will decide when he is to be killed. “No one takes [my life] from me, but I lay it down of my own accord” (John 10:18). So he walks away unscathed through the crowd. And after a twenty-mile journey, he comes to Capernaum, where Simon Peter lives (which becomes significant in Luke 4:38). And on the Sabbath, he enters the Jewish synagogue and does the same thing he was doing in Nazareth. He teaches:

He went down to Capernaum, a city of Galilee. And he was teaching them on the Sabbath, and they were astonished at his teaching, for his word possessed authority. (Luke 4:31–32)

In other words, he spoke as one who had the right to tell them what they ought to believe about God. We know that’s the focus of his teaching because down in Luke 4:43, when he leaves to go teach elsewhere, he says, “I must preach the good news of the kingdom of God to the other towns as well; for I was sent for this purpose.” When he mentions “other towns as well,” he means that’s what he was teaching here, in Capernaum — the good news of the kingdom of God.

And his teaching came with authority. In other words, he claimed to have the right to tell them what they ought to believe about God and his kingdom — the way God would rule the world, and the way people should live under his rule. And verse 32 says, “They were astonished.”

The authority of Jesus is astonishing. I mean, if it doesn’t astonish you, you’re not paying attention, or your emotional capacities are out of whack. Listen to the way he teaches in his first extended sermon in Luke, one chapter later.

Why do you call me ‘Lord, Lord,’ and not do what I tell you? Everyone who comes to me and hears my words and does them, I will show you what he is like: he is like a man building a house, who dug deep and laid the foundation on the rock. And when a flood arose, the stream broke against that house and could not shake it, because it had been well built. But the one who hears and does not do them [my words] is like a man who built a house on the ground without a foundation. When the stream broke against it, immediately it fell, and the ruin of that house was great. (Luke 6:46–49)

If I spoke like that — if I said, “What you do with my words determines whether your life will be swept away in the final judgment” — you’d think I was a nutcase. That’s breathtaking authority. And, of course, they did call him a nutcase (Mark 3:21) and worse: “possessed by Beelzebul” (Mark 3:22).

Demons in the Light

But here in the synagogue of Capernaum, that’s not the effect. The effect of Jesus’s teaching here is not only going to astonish the audience; it’s going to drive a demon out of the darkness and make him a witness to the truth.

The reason I say that’s the effect of his teaching is because Jesus doesn’t do anything — nobody does anything — to cause the demonic outburst of Luke 4:33–34. Jesus is just teaching. He’s telling the good news of the kingdom. He’s magnifying God as king and liberator (Luke 4:18–19). And he’s doing it with unprecedented authority. And the next thing we hear is this loud demonic voice: “Ha! What have you to do with us, Jesus of Nazareth? Have you come to destroy us? I know who you are — the Holy One of God” (verse 34).

Verse 33 gets us ready for this outburst: “In the synagogue there was a man who had the spirit of an unclean demon, and he cried out with a loud voice . . .” Why? This is demonic suicide. Why did he do that? He knows Jesus is the Holy One of God. This is not going to go well for the demon.

I don’t know why he made such a suicidal appearance instead of keeping his head down. But what I see, and what you can see, is this: the teaching of Jesus with authority provokes demonic exposure — and then deliverance. It was true then. It is true now.

“The steady-state, normal way that demons are exposed and removed is the teaching of truth in love.”

In 2 Timothy 2:24–26, the apostle Paul said that if the Lord’s servant teaches God’s truth with clarity and authority and love and patience and boldness, two things may happen: (1) God may grant people to repent and come to a knowledge of the truth, and thus (2) they may escape from the snare of the devil, who had captured them to do his will. The steady-state, normal way that demons are exposed and removed is the teaching of truth in love. The devil is a liar and a hater. He cannot abide a heart or a community ruled by truth and love.

Absolute Sovereignty

Now at this point in Luke 4, someone might say, “I’m not sure bringing demons out of the dark is safe.” No, it’s not safe, unless Jesus is present and on your side. If you turn away from Jesus because you want to play with the demonic (sorcery, séances, necromancy, fortune-telling, Ouija boards, mediums, crystal balls, palm reading, witchcraft, astrology, yoga), you may draw the demons out of darkness, but you won’t have Jesus’s help. That is a dangerous place to be.

But if you stand with Jesus, if you trust him and position yourself under his authority and in his care, here’s what happens:

Jesus rebuked him [the demon], saying, “Be silent and come out of him!” And when the demon had thrown him down in their midst, he came out of him, having done him no harm. And they were all amazed and said to one another, “What is this word? For with authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!” (Luke 4:35–36)

Surely this is the main thing Luke wants us to see: Jesus is absolutely sovereign over demons. The people were “astonished” at the authority of his “teaching” (verse 32), and now they are “amazed” (verse 36). For when that teaching provokes demonic exposure, there is not only “authority,” but “power” — authority and power to dispatch that exposed demon and deliver the one who was in bondage. Let the last part of verse 36 sink in and be your boldness as a follower of Jesus: “With authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out!”

No Demon Can Disobey

Why? Why do they obey? I mean, the whole point of being a demon is that you don’t obey God. Demons hate God. So what’s with the obedience? Here’s the answer: God has two kinds of willing.

He has a moral will, like the Ten Commandments: “Don’t take the Lord’s name in vain. Don’t kill. Don’t steal. Don’t lie.” That’s God’s moral will. And demons don’t give a hoot about obeying those commands. The very meaning of being a demon is to be opposed to the moral will of God.

But the other kind of divine will is not the moral will, but the sovereign will: “Let there be light” — and there was light. “Lazarus, come out” — and the dead man came out. “Demon, be silent, and come out of him” — and he came out. He obeyed.

And the people were amazed and said, “What is this word?” (verse 36). Indeed! That’s the right question. The Ten Commandments are the word of God, and they don’t get obedience from demons. What is this word?

The closest we get to an answer is the last part of verse 36: “With authority and power he commands the unclean spirits, and they come out.” The Ten Commandments have authority. God has a right to tell us how to live. But this word of Jesus comes with authority and power.

“Jesus Christ forms a thought in his mind, he turns it into a word, and that word creates reality.”

We don’t know how this works. We don’t know what kind of power this is. Electromagnetic? Bluetooth? Wi-Fi? Radio waves? Those are all mysterious enough. But Jesus Christ forms a thought in his mind, he turns it into a word, and that word creates reality — which we should expect, since Hebrews 1:3 says, “He upholds the universe by the word of his power.”

Fevers Flee Before Him

Then Luke wants us to see that this absolute authority and power of Jesus’s word extends not only to the world of demons, but also to the world of nature. So we follow him to Simon’s house in verses 38–39:

And he arose and left the synagogue and entered Simon’s house. Now Simon’s mother-in-law was ill with a high fever, and they appealed to him on her behalf. And he stood over her and rebuked the fever, and it left her, and immediately she rose and began to serve them.

Surely it’s not a coincidence that Luke uses the same word for how Jesus spoke to the fever that he did for how Jesus spoke to the demon. Verse 35: “Jesus rebuked him [the demon].” Verse 39: “He stood over her and rebuked the fever.” This is an even more graphic picture of how mysterious this power is. You might argue that a demon obeys the sovereign word of Jesus because he is a rational creature, making up his mind to do so and then obeying. But here, Jesus is talking to a fever — rebuking a fever.

What is a rebuke? It’s telling someone they’ve done something wrong, said something wrong, gone where they’re not supposed to go. So Jesus says in effect, “Fever, you should not be doing that. You don’t belong here.”

Now the fever doesn’t understand anything Jesus is saying. It has no ears. No brain. No comprehension. It has no will. And it leaves her. It obeys just like later, when the wind and the water obey him (Luke 8:25).

Do we have any scientific categories at all to explain that kind of power? No. This is the scientifically inexplicable sovereignty of the Son of God over all things. All demons. All nature. That’s what Luke wants us to see — the sovereignty of Jesus over demons and nature.

Every Demon, Every Disease

But suppose someone says, foolish as it may sound, “Well, that was a one-off. One demon. One fever. You can’t generalize this power to other situations.” Luke now shows that the power both over demons and over disease is not a one-off. Verses 40–41:

Now when the sun was setting, all those who had any who were sick with various diseases brought them to him, and he laid his hands on every one of them and healed them. And demons also came out of many, crying, “You are the Son of God!”

Various diseases. Many demons. When Jesus speaks or touches, they go. His authority and power are absolute. No demon and no disease can stand when Jesus exerts his sovereign will, which he can do whenever he pleases. Then and now.

Why Christ Came Once

And now we have arrived at the end of verse 41, where we started, and we can turn to the twenty-first century. The second half of verse 41 says that when the demons declared Jesus to be the Son of God, “he rebuked them and would not allow them to speak, because they knew that he was the Christ.”

Why didn’t Jesus want the news to spread that he was the Messiah? Jesus gives part of the answer in Luke 9:20–22, when he told his disciples not to spread this news. He says it’s because “the Son of Man must suffer many things and be rejected by the elders and chief priests and scribes, and be killed, and on the third day be raised.”

The common conception of the arrival of the Messiah did not include his crucifixion. It included his supernatural military triumph over all Israel’s enemies and the establishment of his earthly kingdom. That’s what they expected from the Messiah, and that was not going to happen for another two thousand years or more.

In Luke 4:41, when Jesus blocked the spread of that misunderstanding of the kingdom and of his Messiahship, he signaled a view of the world — a worldview — that accounts for the twenty-first century, for our place in history, and points to how demons and fevers and death and sin and the sovereignty of Christ relate to us.

The mystery of the kingdom (Luke 8:10) was that the Messiah, in his first coming, would heal the sick and cast out demons and raise the dead and forgive sins, and in this way he would give many signs of what his final, perfect, sinless, painless, deathless kingdom would be like, after his second coming. The mystery was that there would be an unspecified period of time between the inauguration of the kingdom in Christ’s first coming and the consummation of the kingdom at his second coming. That’s where we live.

God’s number-one purpose in the first coming of the Messiah was that he die in the place of sinners and so purchase forgiveness. “The Son of Man came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45).

Until He Comes Again

So, here’s our situation between the two comings of Christ. By trusting Jesus Christ, his sacrifice for sin becomes mine. It counts for me, for you. All our sins are forgiven once for all (Colossians 2:13). There is no condemnation for those who are in Christ Jesus through faith (Romans 8:1). God’s just condemnation and Satan’s legitimate accusation are gone.

The one damning weapon with which Satan and his demons could ruin you is stripped from their hands — namely, the record of your unforgiven sin. That record was nailed to the cross. “This he set aside, nailing it to the cross” (Colossians 2:14)!

“God is totally, one hundred percent for you and not against you, if you are in Christ Jesus.”

Which means this for our lives: We live in the period of time between the Messiah’s two comings. In this period, Jesus — the risen, reigning Son of God, who upholds the universe by the word of his power (Hebrews 1:3) — is absolutely sovereign over demons and disease. But he does not remove them in this period of time. That’s the next phase of redemptive history, after the second coming.

But what he does remove, absolutely and completely, is your guilt and condemnation. Which means that in this period — in your life today — God is totally, one hundred percent for you and not against you, if you are in Christ Jesus. And if God is for you, who can be against you (Romans 8:31)?

And if you say, “Demons can be against me; disease can be against me,” no, actually, they can’t be. Because in Christ Jesus, whatever disease and whatever demon assaults you, Jesus turns it for your good (Romans 8:28). This is the good news of the kingdom: Jesus is sovereign, and he is for you. Trust him. Be valiant for him until he comes or until he calls.