Matthew 12:28 — Community Reflections

MATTHEW 12:28 — KING JAMES VERSION 0

“But if I cast out devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto you.”

But if it is by the Spirit of God that I cast out demons, then the kingdom of God has come upon you. The positive statement of what Jesus' exorcisms mean: if the exorcisms are by the Spirit of God — which the Isaiah Servant Song citation (verse 18) has just established — then the kingdom of God has arrived. The kingdom's arrival is evidenced precisely by the expulsion of demonic forces from human lives. The Pharisees who attributed the exorcisms to Satan were rejecting the evidence of the kingdom's presence.

Church Fathers on Matthew 12:28

After the first answer, He comes to a second more plain than the first, saying, 'And if I by Beelzebub cast out daemons, by whom do your sons cast them out? Therefore shall they be your judges.'
Chrysostom · 4th century

He alludes, as is His manner, under the name children of the Jews, either to the exorcists of that race, or to the Apostles who are by race of that nation. If He means the exorcists who by the invocation of God cast out daemons, He thus constrains the Pharisees by a wise enquiry to confess that their work was of the Holy Spirit. If, He would say, the casting out of the daemons by your children is imputed to God, and not to daemons, why should the same work wrought by Me not…
Jerome · 4th century

And they are worthily appointed judges over them, to whom Christ is found to have given that power over the daemons, which it was denied that He had.
Hilary of Poitiers · 4th century

Read all 9 entries in the readerCatena Aurea · St. Thomas Aquinas, tr. J. H. Newman · public domain

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