Sitting at (the feet). (Luke 8:35, 10:39, John 20:12, Acts 5:10). It is hard to find much attention paid to exegeting Luke 8:35, since it only says that the demoniac, after being in his “right mind,” was found sitting at the feet of Jesus. This opens up the whole issue of Jesus and exorcism, particularly concerning the “accommodation theory,” but is marginalized by the overriding import of the figure here. The point of the image is simply that of submission, as in the scene of Jesus and Mary in the house of Lazarus (Luke 10:38–42)—the hearer and learner of the Prophetic Word contained informationally in Jesus Christ the Messiah of God. The exorcised demoniac is showing humbled attention turned to the Word which delivered him from his spiritual madness, loving and ready to know Him.
Jesus’s Messianic sign of casting out the demon is a casting out of an evil spirit of thought which causes otherwise sane spirituality into insanity. The demon is the symbol of an anti-prophetic religious confusion, contradiction, overbearing speculation, corrupt affection, and unrealistic and unprofitable results of an invasion of a false personal identity.
Did Jesus believe in evil spirits? We have no reason to doubt such phenomena, particularly at the time of Christ’s coming, in which personalized evil forces, if true, would be reasonably expected active in turning Israel from the truth. But the denotation of “evil forces” here is as much an informational entity within the carnal human spirit as Jesus Christ is an informational entity in His Word of prescience.
This website uses cookies.