Deliverance from the Evil One

Through knowledge the righteous shall be delivered (Proverbs 11:9). See also Turning Curses to Blessings | Spiritual Warfare and Breaking Curses

Table of Contents

• Spiritual Warfare
• Satan's Plan and Purpose
• Who can have a demon?
• The Difference between Flesh and Demons
• Marks of a Person needing Deliverance
• How Demons Get Into People
• How to Get Yourself and Others Free of Demons

Spiritual Warfare

The time has come in our series of foundational studies to consider the truths and principles related to spiritual warfare and deliverance from evil spirits. As we saw in lesson two, the Bible reveals to us the existence both of Satan, the chief enemy of God and mankind, and that army of evil spirits also known as demons which operate under Satan’s command. We briefly considered their main activities as they relate to us. The Bible teaches us that we as true disciples of Jesus are engaged in a warfare against these dark powers.

For we wrestle not against flesh and blood, but against principalities, against powers, against the rulers of the darkness of this age, against spiritual hosts of wickedness in the heavenly places. Therefore take up the whole armour of God, that you may be able to withstand in the evil day, and having done all, to stand (Ephesians 6:12,13).

We observe from this passage the following principles:

1. As Christians we are involved in spiritual battle whether we like it or not. We are involved in close combat - wrestling - not combat from a distance only. God permitted Satan to come close to Jesus (Matthew 4:4-10) and at times permits dark powers to come close to us. We are at times going to be aware of their presence (especially in the evil day mentioned). In the midst of temptation and possibly oppression, we must resist and trust God for deliverance. There is a struggle that we must personally be involved in - against demonic powers which seek to influence our minds, wills and emotions against God and His will. To be effective in prayer and spiritual warfare we must deny ourselves and persist in resisting the devil.

2. There are various degrees of dark powers - there is rank in Satan’s kingdom.

a. Some evil spirits are called “principalities”. It is reasonable to suppose that “principalities” refer to strong spirits that seek to exercise dominion over particular geographical zones. The angel Gabriel was resisted by “the prince of the kingdom of Persia” (a demon prince) for twenty-one days (see Daniel 10:13). The prince of Greece is also mentioned as an ascending demonic power which will rise to power after the prince of Persia will be defeated.

b. Under the command of these demon princes are various “powers” - stronger spirits that perhaps influence the respective culture in certain negative ways. For example, there is a power of religious tradition strongly at work in some cultures working to blind peoples eyes to the gospel (2 Corinthians 4:4). In other cultures there may be powers of strife, or lust, or idolatry, or witchcraft all operating to varying degrees.

c. At the lowest level there are vast multitudes (“hosts”) of evil spirits at work in the heavenly places, in the atmosphere. There are more than enough demons in existence for every single person on earth to be attacked or influenced in various ways by them. These are the foot-soldiers in Satan’s kingdom - it is with these spirits that we must first of all learn to deal effectively. These spirits are not just in the atmosphere - they are also in people. Paul talks about the spirit which is now at work in the sons of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2).

3. God has provided a spiritual armour for us to put on. We must do this daily by faith. Without our armour on we will be vulnerable to satanic invasion and attack. Therefore we must every day walk in honesty, righteousness, faith, love, hope, peace, readiness, speaking the Word and praying always in the Spirit. These are all necessary ingredients for success in the warfare against Satan. (See Ephesians 6:14-18).

4. God expects us to stand, and not be overcome by Satan’s attacks.

Satan’s Purpose and Plan

Remembering what we learned back in lesson 2, we know that Satan was originally created as a good angel - but because of pride and rebellion he was thrown out of heaven. Christians also must beware not to follow his example by walking in pride or rebellion against God’s Word or God’s leadership, lest they fall into the same condemnation as the devil (1 Timothy 3:6).

Having been rejected by God and thrown out of heaven, Satan is full of hatred, bitterness and hostility towards God. Unable to directly overthrow God by force, Satan wishes to attack God’s children and if possible cause them to fall. Satan is working also to further pervert and trample on the image of God which remains in man from the time of creation. Satan wants to cause God pain through destroying his prize creation - people - and by leading them to do evil against God. Jesus said, “The thief comes not but for to steal, to kill and to destroy.

I have come that they may have life, and that they may have it more abundantly.” (John 10:10). So Satan is working to steal from people, to kill them and to destroy both people’s eternal souls and also all the good heritage of godly people.

How does Satan operate? His main weapon is deception. Operating through his vast armies of evil spirits, he is influencing people with all kinds of untrue things which keep them in bondage to evil until the light of the gospel breaks through. Satan is today using all kinds of philosophies, lies, religion and idolatry to keep people’s eyes blinded to the gospel and resistant to the message of God as long as possible.

Satan is working hard to deceive Christians also, by opposing the central truths of God’s word which would have power to destroy his influence. It is Satan who is opposing Bible study, the baptism in the Holy Spirit, baptism in water, salvation by grace through faith and not by works and tradition. It is Satan who is doing all he can to make new believers separate themselves from fellowship and involvement in Biblical churches. It is Satan who is opposing free praise and worship in the churches. It is Satan who is opposing the message of faith and and the message of repentance. It is Satan who is opposing revival, evangelism and the call to prayer and fasting. Satan is also doing what he can to keep Christians from learning the truths about deliverance from demons so he can keep them in bondage. Through all these means of deception, he works to keep Christians from doing the will of God and therefore from being effective.

Satan is also working through fear, discouragement, accusation and strife. These are only just some of his devices. We need wisdom and power from God to overcome them, and a steadfast refusal to compromise with sin. God is calling us to walk in love, in the Word, and by the Spirit of God. Then we can overcome Satan’s devices and frustrate his purposes.

Who Can Have a Demon?

There are very few people who are totally owned or possessed by demons. Many Bible translations talk about people being “possessed” by demons when

in reality that is not the meaning of the Greek word used. The Greek word in these cases is “daimonizomai” which would be better translated “demonized”. It means to be affected by demons, to be under the influence of demons or to have demons. No doubt a Christian cannot be “possessed” by a demon because Christians belong to God through the blood of Jesus Christ. Whether a real Christian can have a demon is a controversial question to some but for those of us who have been set free from demons after we gave our lives to Jesus it is not so hard to determine. Let us now consider this matter from a biblical point of view.

Without a doubt, demons are at work in the sons of disobedience (Ephesians 2:2). The truth is, people who are disobeying God are giving evil spirits a right to work not only around them but also in them. This applies also to church members. Peter declared that Satan had filled the heart of Ananias. All Ananias did was pretend that he was giving to God more than he really was. Therefore, anyone who is lying could have their heart filled by Satan.

Paul told the believers in Ephesus: “Neither give place to the devil” (Ephesians 4:27). This implies that it is possible for a Christian to give place to the devil. There is strong biblical evidence that a Christian doing this will later need deliverance from evil spirits, because they have by their own choices given ground to Satan.

Although the spirit of a born again Christian is regenerated, recreated and not possessable by evil spirits, the salvation of the soul is a process which is not automatic and requires firstly persistent faith in God, and secondly, knowledge of the truth. It is clear that evil spirits do have access to our minds to inject thoughts of all kinds from time to time. We must be watchful so that we do not accept these thoughts so as to let the evil one build strongholds in our mind that are not pleasing to God. There is a battle for the mind of every Christian. In order to keep demons out of our minds, we must fill our minds with something else. We must be full of the Holy Spirit and full of the Word.

“When an unclean spirit goes out of a man, he goes through dry places, seeking rest, and finds none. Then he says, ‘I will return to MY HOUSE from which I came.’ And when he comes, he finds it EMPTY, swept, and put in order. Then he goes out and takes with him seven other spirits more wicked than himself, and they enter and dwell there, and the last state of that man is worse than the first.” (Matthew 12:43- 45)

Every unsaved man is a child of the devil and being a son of disobedience it is a fact that evil spirits are at work in him, If those spirits are forced to leave - either by the fact that the person receives Christ or the Word of God, or by a special operation of the Holy Spirit, they will do exactly what Jesus said they would do in the passage mentioned above. If indeed after the evil spirit goes out, the person’s life remains empty - that is, not full of God’s Word and God’s spirit, there will be a possibility for that evil spirit to enter into that man again - even if he has prayed to receive Christ. Why? Because although he may have confessed Christ, by ignorance or disobeience he denied Christ the first place in his life. He didn’t put the Word first, and he didn’t get really filled with the spirit. Therefore demons can be in Christians, as we know them.

Demons can’t stay in anyone who consistently submits to God and resists the devil. (James 4:7). The devil and all demons must flee from such a person. Such a Christian who is submitting to God in this way is not grieving the Holy Spirit (Ephesians 4:30). Therefore the Holy Spirit is making sure that no demon remains in the temple of God. Such a person is “keeping themselves, and the evil one touches him not” (1 John 5:18).

The Old Testament is full of examples given for our present day instruction (Romans 15:4), which contain principles of spiritual warfare and help us to see that even the temple of God can be defiled if God’s people are disobedient and break the covenant. In the book of Ezekial we see how the priests of God were idolatrous and unclean things were in the temple of God (Ezekial 8:6-17). This is the picture of the Christian who tolerates various forms of idolatry in his or her life. It was not until Ezekial 10 that the glory of God, the Holy Spirit - left the temple. This shows us that the Holy Spirit can be in the temple at the same time as abominations - but that eventually if idolatry persists the Holy Spirit will leave and the judgment of God will come.

Another example which illustrates how Christians can need deliverance is in the history of Israel’s wars, especially in the period of the judges. Every time the people of God broke the covenant and worshipped foreign gods, the Lord God sent their enemies to invade the promised land and cause them trouble. In the same way, when Christians break their covenant with God through persistent sin, inevitably the demons will come to take what has been surrendered to them. It is vital therefore that we respect the conditions of the blood covenant we have with God and give no place to the devil through sin and disobedience.

Jesus cast demons not only out of people with legions of evil spirits (Mark 5:8-9) but also out of people who were not affected by demons to anything like that extent (Mark 1:32-34, 39). The people being delivered were orthodox religious Jews - not satan-worshipping idolatrous heathen - or their modern day equivalent - drug- abusing sexually-immoral heavy rockers into witchcraft and violence. In the same way, lots of ordinary religious people need deliverance from evil spirits - evil spirits which are producing conditions such as fear, doubt, condemnation and sickness in them.

From reading the gospels we can see that Jesus cast out of people spirits which were responsible for the causing of diseases. One time a man brought his son to the disciples of Jesus. He wanted them to cast the mute spirit out of him. The disciples were not able to do it because of their unbelief (Mark 9:19) and lack of prayer and fasting (Mark 9:29). But when Jesus came, he rebuked the unclean spirit, saying to him, “You deaf and dumb spirit, I command you, come out of him, and enter him no more!” (Mark 9:25). Here we see that deafness and dumbness can be caused by the presence of an evil spirit, which must come out. The spirit was in there and Jesus told it to get out. In His healing ministry, Jesus first cast out the evil spirit responsible for creating the disease in the person before He applied the power of the Holy Spirit to their bodies to restore the damage (Matthew 4:23; Matthew 8:16,17; Matthew 9:32-34; Matthew 12:22; Matthew 17:18; Mark 1:34; Luke 4:40,41; Luke 6:17-19; Luke 8:2; Luke 9:42; Luke 18:11-16). And Jesus, knowing that mankind would always need this kind of ministry until the full inauguration of the kingdom of God on earth gave the same power and authority to His disciples to cast out demons and heal the sick by the Spirit of God as He Himself did (Matthew 10:1-2; Mark 3:14,15). This power was given to the church in the name of Jesus, and like the baptism in the Holy Spirit, was never withdrawn by God (John 14:12; Mark 16:17,18). So we as disciples are called to drive out demons just as Jesus did.

The connection between casting out demons and healing the sick should come as no surprise to those familiar with Acts 10:38, which says, “How God anointed Jesus of Nazareth with the Holy Spirit and with power, who went about doing good and healing all who were oppressed by the devil, for God was with Him.” This passage shows clearly that sickness is the work of the devil, not a work of God. That is why Jesus opposed sickness and cast out spirits of infirmity wherever He went. It is possible that many chronically sick Christians in fact need deliverance from spirits of infirmity just as that bent up woman did in Luke 13:11, named by Jesus, “a daughter of Abraham, whom Satan has bound”. Jesus did not call every Jew a child of Abraham - see John 8:39,40. Even God’s children can be bound by Satan in various areas. Jesus came to set us free. Instead of making theological excuses - calling sickness God’s blessing or just closing our eyes and saying that God’s children cannot have demons, we should be as practical as Jesus and treat spirit-based infirmities as our enemies and cast them out - just as Jesus did.

Someone may object that God has given us promises of redemption in the new covenant so that we need not fear the possibility that there could be a demon in us as Christians. In any case we should not fear. The only fear we should have is a healthy fear of God. The reality is, though, God has promised lots of things which many born-again Christians are not experiencing. Why? Because of a lack of repentance, faith and appropriate confession! God has promised healing and the baptism in the Spirit to His children. But how many Christians have until now failed to appropriate God’s provision in this matter? In the same way, many Christians, through disobedience, ignorance, pride or unbelief have failed to appropriate God’s promises in regards to deliverance from evil spirits. Having a theology that says we are free from evil spirits just can’t compare in value to actually being free of their indwelling influence.

Jesus in Matthew 15

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