Luke 11:17 Commentary and Bible Study

Christ now shows them how they should have reasoned. Indeed he shows them the only way they could have reasoned, given the minds with which they had been furnished at their inception into the world. He says this to take away all excuse for their unbelief. He observed their thought directly, having access to their minds, and it was a most disturbing sight.They knew, and they did not need to be told, that what they had said was nonsense. They knew that Satan’s kingdom was, in this respect, no different from any other kingdom, or for that matter any other household. The explanation that they had come up with was division. Christ will not let them get away with that. When the unbelieving world throws up arguments against the truth of God, it is our responsibility to ‘[cast] down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ’ (2 Corinthians 10:5). On the Day of Judgment, no argument against God’s truth will be allowed to stand. Every attempt to overthrow truth or to justify sin will itself be overthrown. The argumentation will reach its final conclusion. Not that men in their terror will have the courage to enter into contest with the Lord – they will be silenced and every mouth stopped. But the reason that mouths will be stopped is that the heart will know that it is defeated and cannot must a single valid argument in its defence. Every kingdom strives to maintain unity and to root out any division within it, because division is weakness, and weakness will lead to collapse, and that will be the end of that kingdom. The same is true of a household. It is true of a physical house, that the walls and the structures within it cannot be divided but must support each other, and it is very much true of the people that live within that house. The head of the house must keep all members of the house in general agreement with each other, or else there can never be peace in the house. To the limited extent that Satan is able to maintain ‘peace’ in his kingdom and in his house, the same is true of him also. Satan does not tolerate any diversity of views, but insists on a uniform way of thinking in line with his strategy.