The Man Possessed by Seven Evil Spirits
Luke 11.24-26: 24 “When an evil spirit comes out of a man, it goes through arid places seeking rest and does not find it. Then it says, ‘I will return to the house I left.’ 25 When it arrives, it finds the house swept clean and put in order. 26 Then it goes and takes seven other spirits more wicked than itself, and they go in and live there. And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.”
We will start with the parable of the man possessed by seven evil spirits because it has always been a real headache for commentators. This story has been interpreted variously as a warning about the danger of a merely “negative” repentance (giving up sin without filling your life with works of obedience); or about what happens to a man who is converted to Christ but who does not persevere in his faith; or about the need for a person who has been delivered from demon possession to let himself be filled with the Holy Spirit, lest he fall again under the power of even worse demons.
Let’s try to restore this parable to its original context by first of all finding its point. In fact, it is not to hard to find at all because Jesus spells it out at the end of the story. Luke 11.26: 26 “And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.” This is the point that Jesus wants his listeners to acknowledge and give their assent to.
Now all we have to do is find the second term of the comparison: the real life situation to which that same judgment can be applied. Here again our task is not difficult, because we can refer to another explicit saying of Jesus in the Gospel. Matthew 12.45: 45 “And the final condition of that man is worse than the first. That is how it will be with this wicked generation.”
The parable is meant to cast light on the real situation of “this generation” (Greek, genea aute), an expression which refers every other time it is found in the Gospels to the Jewish contemporaries of Jesus. The Christ calls this generation “wicked”, “adulterous”, “sinful”, “unbelieving” and “perverse”. Heirs of and showing solidarity with the age-old unfaithfulness of the chosen people, this generation had settled down into a formalistic, legalistic, perverted religion that completely distorted the ways of God. Mark 7.6: 6 “‘These people honor me with their lips, but their hearts are far from me.’” Even before Jesus arrived on the scene, the spiritual situation of this generation before God was already disastrous and their future grim (Luke 13.6-9).
But an even worse fate awaits them if they persist obstinately in their sinful unbelief and deformed religion, just like the man who fell back under the power of demons more wicked and numerous than before. (In Biblical symbolism, the number 7 denotes fulness or perfection; possession by seven evil spirits is definitive and beyond remedy.) Indeed, these people refuse to recognize that God is intervening in the preaching and works of Jesus and that the reign of the Messiah is really at hand.
In the immediate context, Jesus has just cast out a demon and said, Luke 11.20: 20 “But if I drive out demons by the finger of God, then the kingdom of God has come to you.” Jesus’ miraculous signs confirm his message: the reign of the Messiah is so close that already its power is making itself felt, even before it actually arrives. This is what certain scribes and Pharisees are contesting when they protest that Jesus is casting out demons by the power of Satan.
The religious leaders of Israel have already settled on a policy of systematic obstruction toward Jesus and are doing everything in their power to turn the people away from him. And a large number of the Jews of that generation will follow them, the blind who follow the blind to their ruin.
Thus, this generation of unbelieving Jews is exposing itself to a situation much worse than the one, already horrible, in which it found itself before the coming of Jesus into Israel. In 70 A.D., the woes of the unfaithful nation will take the tragic turn that we know. “And the final condition of that man is worse than the first.”
John 15.22-24: 22 “If I had not come and spoken to them, they would not be guilty of sin. Now, however, they have no excuse for their sin. 23 He who hates me hates my Father as well. 24 If I had not done among them what no one else did, they would not be guilty of sin. But now they have seen these miracles, and yet they have hated both me and my Father.” Since they deliberately reject the divine revelation that Jesus delivers to them, not only by his teaching but also by his miracles, the situation of the Jews is desperate, for without the Messiah they have no other recourse before God. He is their last and only hope.