Luke 8:30 Commentary - Dr Peter Masters

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Luke 8:30

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Almost every verse in this record causes you to ask questions. Why did Christ ask him his name? He knows all things. He knew his name. He could read the thoughts of those around him when he chose to. The disciples discovered that on numerous occasions. He always knew what he would do, where he was going, who he would meet. He was God as well as man. So why does he ask, what is your name? For the man's sake, for the sake of the observers, the disciples, for the sake of the record, for our sake. It is necessary that we should hear this man speak his name, what he says about himself, how he describes his own condition, because that is what this name signifies. The reply he gives is this, ‘He said, Legion.’ That is straight out of the Greek New Testament; the word has just been transliterated, not translated. But it's not a Greek word, it’s a Latin word. This man, a Jew, living in a Jewish town along a shoreline in Galilee, says his name and he uses a Latin word, ‘Legion’. A legion is a Roman regiment. It can consist of as few as 3,000 men or as many as 6,000 men. The larger number was the most frequent and always a legion included a cavalry detachment as well as infantry. It was an entire regiment and the name he gives is ‘Legion’. That wouldn't be his real name. That's how he describes himself and the explanatory note follows because many devils, demons, were entered into him. He is describing his condition. So we are learning something in this miracle.

Application

First of all, with regard to Christ and the man who is in such a desperate state and such need, we are learning about ourselves, because his approach to Christ and his reaction to Christ does actually picture us. We are remarkably like this. We are filled with a kind of inborn hostility to God, an antipathy to him and to everything spiritual and divine. That is the truth about us, and yet at times we have deep needs and life doesn't work out, and we pretend to ourselves it does, and that we can make it a success, that we can enjoy ourselves and do whatever we want and have what we want. We convince ourselves of this, but there are times life doesn't keep its promises. It turns out badly. We get deep disappointments and rebuffs, and we become depressed and feel a kind of void within us, and we begin to think there must be much more to life and its purpose. We realise atheism cannot be right when it says that we are all just a sheer accident, the end point of colossal series of accidents, and there is no purpose to life, and one day we will be gone and that will be the end of us. The particles that of which we are composed will be reabsorbed elsewhere, and there will be no memory of us and no purpose in it all. We feel that cannot be true, and we begin to feel an openness and a need to God. But almost as soon as we feel that, we hear something else. Perhaps a friend tells us about God, about Christ, about conversion. Perhaps we read something about God and we have an inclination, but then we are divided people. Immediately that is challenged, and like the man of Gadara we are saying, ‘Go away, have nothing to do with me. This is nothing I want, this has nothing for me’, and we are recoiling away from it and pushing it from us. What a picture of us and our inner hostility to God. ‘I don't want to give up my self-determination’, we say. ‘I don't want to give up the things that I enjoy, I don't want to give up the things that these people tell me are sins. I don't want to be subject to God's guidance and rule’, and so we reject it.

And then Christ's approach is to say to the man of Gadara, what is your name? By which we realize he means, what is your condition? Others went to Christ for healing or restoration and he would say, ‘What is it that you want me to do for you?’, and he made them spell it out. ‘Lord give me my sight’; ‘Lord help me in this or in that.’ You have to know what you need if you are approaching God. You can't approach him vaguely, not realizing what he will do for you, and what your need of him is. So Christ knows that he is asking this man, ‘What is your need? What is your condition?’ And he replies, ‘Legion’, because he is possessed by many demons.

Part of him seems to be saying, ‘Lord help me. Lord do something for me, set me free from this, set me free from this condition which makes me a wild man, a deranged man, a man without family, without life, without hope. Set me free.’ And another part says, ‘Go away, I've nothing to do with you. Don't torment me, don't torture me.’ It is so with us also. You are intrigued by the message. There is a certain part of you that is open: ‘Oh, if only I could know God and heaven and eternity, and meaning and purpose.’ But another part says, ‘No, no. Be silent, leave me alone, don't talk to me about the gospel, don't tell me about Christ and salvation.’ That's the condition we find ourselves in before conversion, which this miracle reflects.

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Luke 8:30 Commentary and Bible Study