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What We Believe
esus is being accused of working together with the devil. The One who withstood the tempter in the desert following His baptism and repelled him with a decisive “Away from me, Satan!” (Matt. 4:10)1—the One who came “to destroy the devil’s work” (1 John 3:8)—is implicated as collaborating with the “prince of demons.” He, who sternly commanded impure spirits to “be quiet!” and “come out!” (Mark 1:25), is charged by the crowd as being “demon-possessed” Himself (cf. John 7:10; 10:20).
Unity in the Body of Christ
WHAT IS HE NOT TELLING US?
A Kingdom Divided . . . On the miracle of unity
After Jesus heals “a demon-possessed man who was blind and mute” (Matt. 12:22) the crowd watching all this draws different conclusions (cf. verses 22–30). One group calls Him the promised Messiah, the other a spiritualist: “But when the Pharisees heard this, they said, ‘It is only by Beelzebul, the prince of demons, that this fellow drives out demons’” (verse 24). This attempt to discredit Jesus is a frontal attack on His integrity: Are you really who you claim to be? Don’t you have a hidden agenda, or worse, a dark secret? Aren’t you operating covertly in the name of Satan? Associating Jesus with Beelzebul was a multiple insult: Beelzebub (from Hebrew Ba’al Zebûb) can be translated “Lord of the flies” or “Lord of the dunghill,” that is, the one who gathers followers like flies.2 Jesus sees an opportunity to share an important spiritual truth about the kingdom of God at this moment: “Every kingdom divided against itself will be ruined, and every city or household divided against itself will not stand. If Satan drives out Satan, he is divided against himself. How then can his kingdom stand? And if I drive out demons by Beelzebul, by whom do your people drive them out? So then, they will be your judges. But if it is by the Spirit of God that I drive out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you” (verses 25-28).
