Daily Bible Reading 12th July 2026 // Luke 8:26-39
26 Then they sailed to the country of the Gerasenes, which is opposite Galilee. 27 When Jesus had stepped out on land, there met him a man from the city who had demons. For a long time he had worn no clothes, and he had not lived in a house but among the tombs. 28 When he saw Jesus, he cried out and fell down before him and said with a loud voice, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I beg you, do not torment me.” 29 For he had commanded the unclean spirit to come out of the man. (For many a time it had seized him. He was kept under guard and bound with chains and shackles, but he would break the bonds and be driven by the demon into the desert.) 30 Jesus then asked him, “What is your name?” And he said, “Legion”, for many demons had entered him. 31 And they begged him not to command them to depart into the abyss. 32 Now a large herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, and they begged him to let them enter these. So he gave them permission. 33 Then the demons came out of the man and entered the pigs, and the herd rushed down the steep bank into the lake and were drowned.
34 When the herdsmen saw what had happened, they fled and told it in the city and in the country. 35 Then people went out to see what had happened, and they came to Jesus and found the man from whom the demons had gone, sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 36 And those who had seen it told them how the demon-possessed man had been healed. 37 Then all the people of the surrounding country of the Gerasenes asked him to depart from them, for they were seized with great fear. So he got into the boat and returned. 38 The man from whom the demons had gone begged that he might be with him, but Jesus sent him away, saying, 39 “Return to your home, and declare how much God has done for you.” And he went away, proclaiming throughout the whole city how much Jesus had done for him.
The story recorded in these verses is important not only as an illustration of what has been said in the last few notes, but particularly because of its subject-matter of demon-possession and the problems this raises for modern minds. No one who reads the New Testament could fail to realise that demon activity in general, and demon possession in particular, were realities for the New Testament writers, for the apostles and for our Lord Himself. But the modern assumption seems to be that what is called demon-possession in the New Testament would be described today in terms of psychiatric illness. In other words, the demonism of biblical times is equated with mental disease and disorder, whether constitutional or neurotic. This contention seems to many an extremely plausible one, especially since the medical profession, and particularly specialists in psychiatric medicine, can give case histories to show that the symptoms which are often regarded as being those of demon-possession are in fact well defined symptoms of recognizable mental, emotional and psychiatric disorder. Nevertheless some things must be said to dispute this assumption. The first is that the New Testament itself distinguishes between mental disorder and demon-possession as cf Matthew 4:24, where three different things are mentioned: diverse diseases and torments, demon-possession, and lunacy. Furthermore, the New Testament writers were able to distinguish between possession and illness or disease when in fact the presenting symptoms were the same in both cases. In those days, the two things were distinguished, and not confounded (cf Matthew 9:32, 33; Mark 7:32; Matthew 15:30 - where we have the dumb man who is said to be possessed by an evil spirit, on the one hand, and on the other a dumb man who is not said to be possessed, even though the symptoms are the same in each case). And Christ cast out the devil in the one and healed the other. More of this in the next Note.