Knowing and Trusting
Whenever the impure spirits saw him, they fell down before him and cried out, “You are the Son of God.”
-Mark 3:11
We are confronted in today’s passage with the somewhat confusing situation of impure spirits speaking the truth. We’re told that they would fall down before Jesus and cry out “You are the Son of God.” This isn’t the first time in Mark that we see the demon-possessed confessing this truth about Jesus. In a passage that I preached a week and a half ago (1:21-28), another “man with an impure spirit” accosted Jesus as he was teaching in the synagogue on the sabbath: “What do you want with us, Jesus of Nazareth?…I know who you are—the Holy One of God.”
We are (rightly) taught in the church that it is important for us to be very clear on who Jesus is. We see it in the gospels when Jesus asks Peter, “Who do you say that I am?” and Peter replies, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God” and Jesus affirms this as the basis for the church. We see it in our creeds and confessions: “I believe in Jesus Christ, his only Son, our Lord, who was conceived by the Holy Spirit and born of the Virgin Mary….” The Athanasian Creed even says that one must (in addition to the Trinity) “also believe in the incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ faithfully” for eternal salvation.
Isn’t knowing who Christ is the most important thing? What, then, did the demons lack?
One commentator puts it pithily: “no matter how orthodox may be our christological confessions, Jesus Christ remains unknown to us until we follow in his way.” But wait a minute, pastor, you might say. Doesn’t that move us into works righteousness, where what we do matters more than what God does or who he is? What happened to salvation by grace alone through faith alone?
The Heidelberg Catechism helps us out, I think, with its definition of true faith in QA21. “True faith is not only a sure knowledge by which I hold as true all that God has revealed to us in Scripture; it is also a wholehearted trust, which the Holy Spirit creates in me by the gospel….”
Don’t get me wrong. We must indeed know about Jesus in order to know him—that’s the “sure knowledge” part. But it’s not enough. We must trust him. The impure spirits knew about Jesus. They knew who he was. They knew he was the Holy One of God, and the Son of God. But they did not trust him. One asked, “Have you come to destroy us?” Trust is relying on him even when what he asks seems impossible. Trust is figuring out how you fit into Jesus’ world rather than figuring out how Jesus fits into yours.
What about you? Do you know and trust Jesus? Or do you only know about Jesus?
If you worry that you know a lot about him, but don’t know him, or don’t trust him, be assured: he wants to know you. Don’t hesitate to reach out to a pastor or elder—we’d love to help you follow his way.