Thoughts on faith, life, and art.
3. How does one become demonized?
Throughout Scripture, we see Jesus encountering demons. What was so profound about these instances, is that when Jesus commands them to come out of a person, they actually come out. Demon possessions and exorcisms were nothing new to the people of Jesus’ time. What was new, however, was the fact that someone (Jesus) gave a demon a command, and that demon actually obeyed him. Jesus could do that, because he sits “at the right hand of God, with angels, authorities, and powers having been subjected to him” (1 Peter 3:22). He is “far above all rule and authority and power and dominion, and above every name that is named, not only in this age but also in the one to come” (Ephesians 1:21). And it is to Jesus whom “all authority in heaven and on earth has been given” (Matthew 28:18).
Jesus had authority over demons, and the dictionary defines authority as, the “power to enforce obedience.”[1] Before Jesus, people had other ways of driving out demons, but they were usually long and protracted, and not very successful. Now, with a word, Jesus simply cast them out. That got people’s attention. But what should get our attention is that he delegated that same authority to us! Jesus said, “I have given you authority to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall hurt you. Nevertheless, do not rejoice in this, that the spirits are subject to you, but rejoice that your names are written in heaven” (Luke 10:19-20).
Wait a minute, you might say—Jesus was talking to his disciples—not us. Yes, Jesus commanded his disciples to go—“Heal the sick, raise the dead, cleanse lepers, and cast out demons. You received without paying; give without pay” (Matthew 10:6-8). But then he said to them later on, “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations. . . teaching them to observe all that I have commanded you” (Matthew 28:19, 20). What did he command them? Well, among the list of things was the command to cast out demons. His disciples were supposed to make disciples out of all the nations (which means us), and teach them to do all that he commanded (which includes casting out demons).
We’ll talk more about our personal responsibility regarding that command later on, but first I wanted you to understand the principle of authority because it’s foundational for this next section. We have the authority—the power to enforce obedience—ie., to tell a demon what to do. Many believers, especially missionaries, know this, and when they encounter a demonized person, they command the demon to leave in the name of the Lord Jesus Christ, and usually it does. I say “usually” because there have been instances where someone has given this command, and the demon says “no.” And it is the principle behind how, and why the demon can say “no,” that we are about to delve into.
As you can imagine, having a demon say “no” has caught many people off guard. I mean, we believe the Bible to be true, and the Bible says we have authority over demons so they have to obey us—and yet here we find them not obeying. What gives? Well, some people pressed forward and demanded answers as to why it wouldn’t leave. In those instances, the demons always answer that they have permission to be there—a legal right—they have been given ground, or a foothold. In turning to Scripture to understand this particular phenomenon, we find Ephesians 4:26-27.
“Be angry and do not sin;
do not let the sun go down on your anger,
and give no opportunity to the devil.”
Ephesians 4:26-27
The word “opportunity” is the Greek word topos—it’s where we get our word topography. Interestingly, this word shows up in scripture over 90 times, and is always used to mean either an inhabited space, a physical or geographical location, a place where something is found, a room to sit/stay/live in, or a place/position/opportunity or chance to act.[2]
For example, when Jesus sends out the seventy-two, he sends them into every town and topos - an inhabited space (Luke 10:1). Or, when Jesus heard that John the Baptist had been beheaded, he departed to a desert topos - a physical geographic location (Matthew 14:13). Or, when Jesus was preaching in the synagogue in Nazareth, he unrolled the scroll and found the topos where it was written - a place where something is found (Luke 4:17). Or, when Mary put the baby Jesus in the manger because there was no topos for them in the inn - a room to sit/stay/live in. Or, the instance where the religious leaders had requested a guilty verdict against Paul before he had been given the topos to make his defense - an opportunity/license to act (Acts 25:16). Or lastly, when Paul expressed his desire to go to Rome, no longer having topos to preach the gospel - a position/chance/opportunity to act (Romans 15:23).
The examples above are all different inflections of the same Greek word, and the particular inflection that is used in Ephesians 4:27 is the one that means position/chance/opportunity to act. That particular inflection shows up over 40 times in the Greek New Testament manuscripts, and is also used the same way in numerous books of antiquity (ancient works of the same era). So, when the apostle Paul exhorts us to “give no topos to the devil,” he is telling us not to give the devil a position/chance/opportunity to act against us in our lives. But, what does it mean for the devil to have a position/chance/opportunity? It means that he has a legal right, or ground to act against us where he otherwise wouldn’t have.
From the inspired language of Ephesians 4:27, it appears that [demons] potentially have the ability to occupy or control rooms or space in or on a true believer. The personal experiences of solidly Evangelical Christians, church leaders, and missionaries consistently support this conclusion, too. . . Unconfessed sin gives demonic spirits a foothold or ground against a believer. Holding ground is a phrase used by demons to explain their ability to exercise limited control over a place, space, territory, or specific area of a Christian’s life. . . Even if the person doesn’t verbalize it, he is communicating “God can control that are of my life, but not this one.”[3]
- Dr. Karl I. Payne, Spiritual Warfare
This is not an example of someone cherry-picking a random passage of Scripture and building a strange doctrine around it. This is an example of people encountering real-life situations, and trying to make sense of them through the lens of Scripture. This also perfectly explains the phenomenon of why I had that demon showing up to torment me every night for 3 months straight. I didn’t know it at the time, but there was some unconfessed sin in my life, and because of that, the demon had legal ground against me. I had my Christ-delegated authority over it, which is why it had to obey me when I said “leave me alone.” But, it also had ground against me—which is why it didn’t have to obey my command to “never come back.” As long as I had left that foothold open—it could come back as much as it wanted.
At the risk of sounding crazy, I finally confided in a friend that this demon was showing up in my bed every night at 3:00 AM—and I didn’t know what to do about it. To my relief, he didn’t even bat an eye. In fact, he calmly observed that this “situation” had begun just after I returned from a trip to Vegas. I didn’t see how the two could be connected, but he reminded me that I’d told him I felt convicted of something while playing the slot machines. He told me that I should go home and try to remember what it was I’d felt convicted about, and confess it to the Lord.
I went home, and did as he suggested. I asked God to help me remember that situation, and it immediately popped into my head. The short version is—I was in Vegas to help my cousinn move for work. After unloading the truck, we walked the strip since we’d never seen it before. The very first casino we entered, my friend put a dollar into a slot machine and instantly won $1,000. We were astonished! A thousand bucks on the first pull!? He took $200 out of the winnings, gave me $100, and kept $100 for himself so we could have “play” money for the night (his wife kept the other $800 for diapers and food)!
Here’s where my sin came into play. Seeing someone win that much cash, with just a dollar, did something in my heart. I really could have used $1,000 of my own at that time in my life. I reasoned within my heart that if my cousin had won that much money with just a dollar, I now had one hundred dollars worth of chances to do the same thing. One dollar at a time, one pull at a time, I used up the $100 he gave me. I should have stopped there, but when I ran out of money, I went to the ATM to pull out another $100 of my own money. There was a brief moment at the ATM, right before I punched in my PIN number, where I realized that if God had wanted me to win something, he would have let me win it with the “free” money I’d been given.
This thought was hardly even a thought—it was a micro flash of a thought—a blink, of a blink, of conviction. That, my friends, is what you call “the still small voice” of the Holy Spirit. I pushed right past it, typing in my PIN number for a withdrawal. And that is what is known as “quenching the spirit.” That was the moment I had sinned. I put my hope in “the odds,” *cough, cough* —”the gods”—and thought that another hundred chances would give me the desired outcome rather than putting my trust in God’s timing and provision for my life.
When this memory came back to me, my heart was deeply grieved. Convicted to my core, I experienced a heartfelt and genuine repentance. It wasn’t wrong to take out $100 of my own money. What was wrong, was the reason behind why I had done it. I confessed this wrongdoing to the Lord, and I asked him to forgive me for trusting in anything else rather than him for my care and provision. I repented of my idolatry in every way that it had shown up in that situation, and concluded by saying, “and I don’t know if this has anything to do with that demon that keeps tormenting me every night, but if it does, please make it go away.”
That night I went to bed and slept the whole night through. That demon has never come back since. I was oblivious to it at the time, but my sin at the ATM had given the enemy ground against me. Once I confessed and repented of that sin, the enemy no longer had ground against me, and it could no longer have access to me in the same way. After learning about the concept of giving ground to the devil, I was able to look back and realize that this situation was a perfect example of that playing out in my own life.
Scripture says, “do not sin in your anger,” but the emphasis is on sin itself—do not sin period—in your anger, in your lust, in your idolatry, in your “whatever.” If you do sin, you will give the devil topos and open yourself up for demonization. In his Institutes, Calvin wrote, “Satan is indeed the very enemy who lays snares for our life, but it is by sin that he is armed for our destruction.”[4] Satan is armed for our destruction by our sin—because it gives him topos. He is called “the destroyer,” and when you give the destroyer an “opportunity” to destroy, he will take it. “Be sober-minded; be watchful. Your adversary the devil prowls around like a roaring lion, seeking someone to devour” (1 Peter 5:8).
Thus, yielding in one temptation, we let the devil into our trench, and give him a fair advantage to do us the more mischief. The angry man, while he is raging and raving, thinks, perhaps, no more but to ease his passion by disgorging it in some bitter keen words, but, alas, while his fury and wrath is sallying out at the portal of his lips, the devil, finding the door open, enters, and hurries him further than he dreamed of. . . [Our fight is against] a cunning devil, that will easily lose no ground he gets. Our best way, therefore, is to give him no hand-hold, not so much as to come near the door where sin dwells, lest we be hooked in.[5]
William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour (1862)
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“Authority” - Oxford English Dictionary, Second Edition (1989), Oxford University Press:
https://www.oed.com/oed2/00015072;jsessionid=5F45D6FBD7EED18BB327932188DCCCF7
(Retrieved 2023-03-12.)Bauer, Arndt, and Gingrich, A Greek-English Lexicon of the New Testament and Other Early Christian Literature, (University of Chicago Press, 1957), page 830-831.
Dr. Karl I. Payne, Spiritual Warfare: Christians, Demonization, and Deliverance, (WND Books, 2011), page 99, 110, & 126.
John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. John T. McNeill (Westminster John Knox Press, 1960), page 601.
William Gurnall, The Christian in Complete Armour, (William Tegg, 1862), page 198.
(posted 03-14-23)