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Jesus was driving out a demon that was mute,
and when the demon had gone out,
the mute man spoke and the crowds were amazed.
Some of them said, "By the power of Beelzebul, the prince of demons,
he drives out demons."
Others, to test him, asked him for a sign from heaven.
But he knew their thoughts and said to them,
"Every kingdom divided against itself will be laid waste
and house will fall against house.
And if Satan is divided against himself,
how will his kingdom stand?
For you say that it is by Beelzebul that I drive out demons.
If I, then, drive out demons by Beelzebul,
by whom do your own people drive them out?
Therefore they will be your judges.
But if it is by the finger of God that I drive out demons,
then the Kingdom of God has come upon you.
When a strong man fully armed guards his palace,
his possessions are safe.
But when one stronger than he attacks and overcomes him,
he takes away the armor on which he relied
and distributes the spoils.
Whoever is not with me is against me,
and whoever does not gather with me scatters.
In this reading Christ is absurdly accused of casting out demons in the name of demons, as if evil would work against its own interests. Aside from pointing out the absurdity of the accusation, Christ also turns the table on his accusers. If the exorcism he had just performed had been done in the name of Beelzebub, how could they assume exorcisms done by their own people weren’t also done in the name of Beelzebub?
The next part of the passage may be the main point however. This is when Christ points to the exorcism as proof that the Kingdom of God is present. For those listening, it should have been the best news of their lives, if only they’d had the faith to believe. But even if they had believed they’d have probably made the same mistake as others and presumed the Kingdom which Christ spoke of to be a worldly, political kingdom set up after overthrowing their Roman occupiers. They were thinking small but Christ was speaking large.
They probably knew Old Testament Scripture well enough to understand that God’s nature was of Spirit. But apparently they didn’t carry that thought forward to the realization that God’s Kingdom would therefore also be a Kingdom of Spirit. They thought the Kingdom of God would be akin to the kingdoms they were already familiar with. That’s why it was so hard for them to see God’s Kingdom in it’s existent presence right before their eyes. You cannot see a Kingdom of Spirit through carnal perspective.
For we of the modern era, this passage has a similar but different lesson. It’s a reminder that the Kingdom of God has already been existent on earth for over two thousand years now. We were born into the Kingdom of God; a fact which seems to be understated in modern Christianity, with our tendency to focus on the future return of Christ in the flesh rather than the presently existing presence of Christ in the Spirit. We long so much for the second coming of Christ in the flesh that we miss the existing presence of Christ in the Spirit.
The Kingdom was here before any of us were born. But we make the same mistake as the believers of Christ made two thousand years ago. We miss the Kingdom of God or under appreciate it because it’s a Kingdom of Spirit. The presence of Christ’s Spirit isn’t self evident to us because we are still too much creatures of flesh, just as those in that passage who were listening to Christ two thousand years past.
This is not to understate the glorious culmination of God’s Kingdom when Christ finally does return in the flesh. That day shall be like no other but it shall be preceded by a continued growth of God’s Spirit in his believers.
We have a certain amount of control in that growth of Spirit. If we are all more welcoming of Christ’s Spirit within us then his Spirit shall fill us more completely. As we become more filled with the Spirit of Christ then we begin to exude the good things of God. Those good things of God; charity, grace, compassion and love will eventually overflow from us and begin to fill this earth with the divine presence of God’s eternal Kingdom. In this way we become conduits of God’s Kingdom upon the fallen realm even prior to the second coming of Christ.
The second coming will still occur in God’s own good time but that time isn’t preset to a specific temporal date. Rather than that, it’s preset to the fulness of our social evolution toward the ways of God. God certainly knows when that temporal date will be but that doesn’t mean he chose the date. It only means God foreknows exactly when we will be ready to receive the fullness of his eternal Kingdom. When we are ready for the final culmination of God’s Kingdom on earth, Christ will return. If we devolve into a more carnal and brutish species, we delay the fullness of God’s Kingdom. If we choose to evolve more quickly into a more charitable, gracious and compassionate species, we hurry the fulness of God’s Kingdom.
God could, if he chose, bring the fulness of his Kingdom upon us whenever he wished. His greater wish though is for us to seek his Kingdom by following his ways and he knows we will eventually evolve in that way. He will not force the Kingdom upon us because his wisdom, God has chosen to leave the ball in our court.
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