A Word in Season: The Stronger Man (Luke 11:21–22)

Luke 11 and the Parable of the Stronger Man

I don't know if you've ever seen two strong men fighting. Perhaps it's simply an arm wrestle, perhaps it's something even more intense, but you can see who is the stronger when the other man is overcome.

It's something of that imagery that our Lord Jesus Christ has in mind in Luke's Gospel and chapter 11 when he says, when a strong man, fully armed, guards his own palace, his goods are in peace. But when a stronger than he comes upon him and overcomes him, he takes from him all his armour in which he trusted and divides his spoils.

Christ's Victory Over Satan

The Lord Jesus is illustrating a point that he's made to the scribes and the Pharisees who have accused him of casting out demons by the power of the devil. The Lord Christ has said that the principle is obvious, a kingdom divided against itself must fall, the devil is not casting out devils, rather the finger of God is at work, the spirit of God is working and the kingdom of God has come.

And here then is the illustration that drives home the point. Satan is like a strong man, fully armed, guarding his own palace with his goods in peace. Until the coming of the Lord Christ there seems to have been a sense in which Satan has been able to take his ease and do what he wishes.

But now a stronger man has come and that stronger man overcomes the strong man and he takes away his armour and he divides the spoils of his conquest. That's what the Lord Jesus Christ is doing in his campaign against Satan.

He is successfully overcoming that strong man. The light is triumphing over the darkness, Christ is conquering sin and death on behalf of his beloved people. Christ is liberating those who are in darkness, they're being transferred from that dominion into the kingdom of the Son of God's love, their spiritual reality that was taking place in those days.

The Cross as Christ's Climactic Triumph

And the same spiritual reality is among us in these days. For Christ remains the stronger man and at the cross he achieved that climactic triumph over Satan and all his hosts. He has conquered death and hell on behalf of his people.

He has forever demonstrated the fact that he truly is the conqueror. And Satan then cannot hold those for whom Christ has given his life. They do not belong to him and Christ, having bought them with his blood, now takes them from the grip of Satan and brings them into his kingdom and ultimately into his glory.

Christian Confidence in the Stronger Man

And that is the Christ in whom a Christian trusts. We trust him for ourselves. It is that strength overcoming wickedness, overcoming evil, not just generally around us but the evil that is within us, setting us free from the law of sin and death, delivering us from the bondage of Satan, bringing us out of darkness into God's marvellous light, setting us truly free that we may have life and have it more abundantly, liberating us for a life of service to the God most high, to willing and cheerful obedience to the new and best of masters.

And it is this confidence that we have not only for ourselves but also for others that if we've been set free, then we can preach the same Christ to others. We can be confident that the same power that was at work not just in him but in us when God raised him from the dead will work in others who are now dead in their trespasses and sins, that you may be confident if you are not yet a Christian, that you are not so dead, so dark, so needy, so lost that Christ cannot rescue you.

Christ is the stronger man and no matter how strong, how powerful, how obstinate Satan may be, Christ has overcome, Christ is overcoming, Christ is well able to deliver all who put their trust in him.

So let us not doubt the strength of the stronger man, the Christ who triumphs over all and the Christ who has triumphed over Satan himself.