The Pre-Christ You
Mark 5:1-20 — They came to the other side of the sea, to the country of the Gerasenes. 2 And when Jesus had stepped out of the boat, immediately there met him out of the tombs a man with an unclean spirit. 3 He lived among the tombs. And no one could bind him anymore, not even with a chain, 4 for he had often been bound with shackles and chains, but he wrenched the chains apart, and he broke the shackles in pieces. No one had the strength to subdue him. 5 Night and day among the tombs and on the mountains he was always crying out and cutting himself with stones. 6 And when he saw Jesus from afar, he ran and fell down before him. 7 And crying out with a loud voice, he said, “What have you to do with me, Jesus, Son of the Most High God? I adjure you by God, do not torment me.” 8 For he was saying to him, “Come out of the man, you unclean spirit!” 9 And Jesus asked him, “What is your name?” He replied, “My name is Legion, for we are many.” 10 And he begged him earnestly not to send them out of the country. 11 Now a great herd of pigs was feeding there on the hillside, 12 and they begged him, saying, “Send us to the pigs; let us enter them.” 13 So he gave them permission. And the unclean spirits came out and entered the pigs; and the herd, numbering about two thousand, rushed down the steep bank into the sea and drowned in the sea.
14 The herdsmen fled and told it in the city and in the country. And people came to see what it was that had happened. 15 And they came to Jesus and saw the demon-possessed man, the one who had had the legion, sitting there, clothed and in his right mind, and they were afraid. 16 And those who had seen it described to them what had happened to the demon-possessed man and to the pigs. 17 And they began to beg Jesus to depart from their region. 18 As he was getting into the boat, the man who had been possessed with demons begged him that he might be with him. 19 And he did not permit him but said to him, “Go home to your friends and tell them how much the Lord has done for you, and how he has had mercy on you.” 20 And he went away and began to proclaim in the Decapolis how much Jesus had done for him, and everyone marveled.
Here’s another spiritual reality which comes forth from Mark 5:1-20: before the demoniac’s encounter with Jesus Christ, he represents our spiritual condition before our encounter with Christ. Do you view yourself like this as you think back to your pre-converted days as a spiritually dead person, walking according to the world’s ways with no hope of escaping the pathway you were on to Hell—even if you were a religious, church goer? If so, do you then realize what kind of power it took to make you right with God and set you free from your natural, worthless mind, which was in bondage to living destructively for oneself? Or do you think you came to your own senses one day and decided to start living a better life. Here’s how we know how biblically we think about Christ’s salvation—do we find ourselves telling others all that the Lord has done for us and how he has had mercy on our pitiful soul? That’s exactly what we see in the saved demoniac and that’s what made him a faithful preacher of the gospel. So the principle is that to the degree you see yourself as hopeless without Christ, is the same degree you will speak of his marvelous mercy. However, if we see ourselves as not that bad off or at least not as bad as the really wicked people in the world, then we won’t have anything on our lips that glorifies Christ’s work.