Unchained

The Lord said, “I have indeed seen the misery of my people in Egypt. I have heard them crying out because of their slave drivers, and I am concerned about their suffering. So I have come down to rescue them from the hand of the Egyptians and to bring them up out of that land into a good and spacious land, a land flowing with milk and honey — the home of the Canaanites, Hittites, Amorites, Perizzites, Hivites, and Jebusites.”

– Exodus 3:7-8

The fifth chapter of Mark’s gospel begins with the story of a man who faced some serious problems. Or maybe a legion of problems best describes his plight.

This tormented soul had been exiled from the community to live out his days in a cemetery near Lake Galilee. The man was literally overcome by demons. And so total was his possession that he could use extraordinary strength to repeatedly break the chains and smash the leg irons that confined him.

“No one could control him,” Mark wrote. “Night and day he was in the graveyard or on the hills, yelling and cutting himself with stones.”

And that could have been the end of the man’s bizarre narrative. But then along came Jesus and his disciples from their voyage across the lake. Recognizing that Christ was God in the flesh, the demons that possessed the man begged to postpone their own eternal fate in favor of inhabiting a vast herd of pigs that roamed the hillside. When Jesus agreed, the demons fled from their victim, who was immediately delivered from his affliction.

Let's now fast-forward to 21st century America. When a celebrity, sports star, or Average Joe faces the consequences of alcohol, drugs, anger-management issues — or some other destructive force — we can count on their loved ones to explain that they struggled with their demons. Sometimes that’s a figure of speech. But literal demons really can torment people, and they do their best to make their victims’ lives a living hell.   

The fact is that everyone has their share of demons to one extent or another — even Christ-followers. And even though we’ve accepted Jesus as our Lord and Savior, asked him for forgiveness, and then received it, we still can slide back into those bad habits and behaviors that we thought we’d left far behind. And that tends to happen again and again.

Let’s consider the testimony of the apostle Paul — the unlikely Christ-follower who wrote much of the New Testament. In his 2,000-year-old lament that sounds so familiar to modern ears, Paul complains through 1 Timothy 1:15 that he continues to do the very things he despises. Yet at the same time, he fails to do the things he knows he should accomplish.

If this great Apostle to the Gentiles had so many problems with sin and temptation, what hope can we have of breaking free from our own chains? Well … quite a bit! As Christ-followers, we don’t have to accept sin’s dominance in our lives. It all comes down to our ultimate trust and dependence on a Deliverer, who long ago paid the exorbitant price of our many sins — past, present, and future.

“What a wretched man I am! Who will rescue me from this body that is subject to death?” asks Paul. “Thanks be to God, who delivers me through Jesus Christ our Lord!”