Jesus Answers the Accusing Leaders in the Streetby CBPepper
3:23Mark 3:23
And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan?
The question was asked just after Jesus for the second time healed a demon-possessed man who was both blind and dumb, when the Pharisees repeated the charge that He cast out devils by the prince of devils. It belongs to the same reply to that charge of casting out demons by the prince of demons that is stated in Matthew 9:34 and told at length in Matthew 12:22-50, on the same occasion that raises the question of who His brethren are. The charge came while He spent whole nights in prayer and His days were crowded by large multitudes, laboring incessantly without even time to eat. His friends thought He was wearing Himself out and could not account for His attitude toward the Pharisees, and some feared His reason was becoming unsettled and His mind was failing.
At the same time His brothers, stung by the reproach brought upon them through relation to Him, disturbed by the tumult His words and works created, alarmed by His bold statements and indignant at His denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees, decided He must be persuaded or constrained to stop this manner of labor. They enlisted Mary to join them, in hopes that His love for her would make Him more prudent and they might prevail upon Him to be more prudent. In the verse He answers the accusation that His works came from Satan by exposing its self-contradiction, that Satan does not cast out Satan.
Unable to deny His works or explain them naturally, His accusers attributed God's holy power to the devil, and this deliberate rejection of clear evidence was sin against the Holy Spirit that led to the unpardonable sin. To attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan cuts the person off from the fountain of blessing, because by wilfully declaring the Spirit's work to be from Satan men cut off the channel by which God can communicate with them. Speaking against Jesus Himself without discerning His divine character can be forgiven, because through the Spirit the person can still be brought to see the error and repent, and whatever the sin, if the soul repents and believes its guilt is washed away in the blood of Christ. But the one who rejects the work of the Holy Spirit places himself where repentance and faith cannot come to him, since it is by the Spirit that God works upon the heart, so that when the Spirit is finally rejected there is nothing more God can do for the soul.
The question was asked just after Jesus for the second time healed a demon-possessed man who was both blind and dumb, when the Pharisees repeated the charge that He cast out devils by the prince of devils. It belongs to the same reply to that charge of casting out demons by the prince of demons that is stated in Matthew 9:34 and told at length in Matthew 12:22-50, on the same occasion that raises the question of who His brethren are. The charge came while He spent whole nights in prayer and His days were crowded by large multitudes, laboring incessantly without even time to eat. His friends thought He was wearing Himself out and could not account for His attitude toward the Pharisees, and some feared His reason was becoming unsettled and His mind was failing.
At the same time His brothers, stung by the reproach brought upon them through relation to Him, disturbed by the tumult His words and works created, alarmed by His bold statements and indignant at His denunciation of the scribes and Pharisees, decided He must be persuaded or constrained to stop this manner of labor. They enlisted Mary to join them, in hopes that His love for her would make Him more prudent and they might prevail upon Him to be more prudent. In the verse He answers the accusation that His works came from Satan by exposing its self-contradiction, that Satan does not cast out Satan.
Unable to deny His works or explain them naturally, His accusers attributed God's holy power to the devil, and this deliberate rejection of clear evidence was sin against the Holy Spirit that led to the unpardonable sin. To attribute the work of the Holy Spirit to Satan cuts the person off from the fountain of blessing, because by wilfully declaring the Spirit's work to be from Satan men cut off the channel by which God can communicate with them. Speaking against Jesus Himself without discerning His divine character can be forgiven, because through the Spirit the person can still be brought to see the error and repent, and whatever the sin, if the soul repents and believes its guilt is washed away in the blood of Christ. But the one who rejects the work of the Holy Spirit places himself where repentance and faith cannot come to him, since it is by the Spirit that God works upon the heart, so that when the Spirit is finally rejected there is nothing more God can do for the soul.