Monday: Two Methods of Binding the Strong Man
WEEK 14
MONDAY
TWO METHODS OF BINDING THE STRONG MAN
Colossians 3:12-15
When we allow the Holy Spirit to bind the strong man by the cords of love to Jesus, then his goods may be taken easily. Then temper, pride, covetousness, irritability, and rampant sex desires drop away as irrelevant. A consuming love for Christ takes possession of us, and by the “expulsive power of a new affection”* these lesser loves are cast out. We love something, Someone, better. Two illustrations of methods for binding the strong man illustrate what I mean:
A man possessed by an evil spirit came out of the tombs, and no one was ever strong enough to restrain him, even with a chain. He had been secured many times with leg irons and chains, but he broke the chains and smashed the leg irons. No one was tough enough to control him. Night and day in the tombs and the hills, he would howl and cut himself with stones. (Mark 5:2-5)
That was one method—a failure. Then came the commanding word from Jesus, and this picture ensues: “They came to Jesus and saw the man who used to be demon-possessed . . . sitting there fully dressed and complete sane” (v. 15).
That is an illustration of the two methods of binding the strong man: one from without, a failure; and the other from within, a success. Is the self thus bound by cords of love and loyalty to the new center, Christ, reduced to a nonentity or canceled? No, the self, surrendered to God, is given back to itself. This man who was a torment to himself and others was told by Jesus, “‘Go home to your own people . . . and tell them what the Lord has done for you.’ . . . The man went away and began to proclaim in the Ten Cities all that Jesus had done for him, and everyone was amazed” (vv. 19-20). Here was a man who had been a problem to himself and others, who was now a proclaimer of good news about Jesus and himself. Only to the degree that we surrender ourselves to God does our self come back to us, released and happy and constructive. The deepest law of the universe is this: “Those who find their lives will lose them, and those who lose their lives because of me will find them” (Matt 10:39)—a self we can now live with and love, love because we love something more than ourselves. Love Christ supremely, and you can love yourself subordinately.
O Christ, you are teaching me how to find self-release. I find it at the foot of the cross, where I lay down my life, lay it down to find it again. Amen.
AFFIRMATION FOR THE DAY: I love Christ supremely; now my lesser loves fall into their places.
* Thomas Chalmers, The Expulsive Power of a New Affection (1857).