I Am That Man
“No one had the strength to subdue him.” (Mark 5:4)
When Jesus sails across the Sea of Galilee, the country of Gerasenes provided quite the sight. Here was a man roaming through the graveyard – unclothed and unhindered. Like the mad dog in To Kill a Mockingbird, this man was fit to be put down, but human decency instead abandoned him among the dead. This man could not be bound by intellect nor by iron. Have you ever met such a man? I have. I was that man. We all were that man (and some of you still are).
Before Christ came to us, we walked among the dead, for we were dead in our sins and trespasses (Eph. 2:1). The only sign of life among us was the fake flowers, long since faded from our eviction from Eden. As we walked among the dead, our steps were guided by the Captain of that Legion, by “the prince of the power of the air.” (Eph. 2:2) We were enslaved to do his bidding, going from one area of filth to another. How often our friends reasoned with us! How often their pleas tried to bind our consciences, to keep us from that deadly path. And yet, we never listened. We broke every bond and rushed headlong into a land of death. At that point, everyone gave us up as a lost cause. “He won’t listen to anybody.” “He’s too far gone.” Or my personal favorite, “Bless his heart.” In the end, we had no strength to subdue ourselves. New Year’s Resolutions, promises to ourselves, high hopes and dashed dreams – nothing could subdue us, restrain us, or any way detain us from that downward descent of death.
That is, until Christ Jesus came. Our sinful selves did not want Jesus, but Jesus wanted us. In the same way as Jesus made a special trip for the poor man of Mark 5, so too He intentionally sought us. When his “day of visitation” came, He exercised His kingly office to subdue us to Himself. His Spirit did what no man could do. He convinced and converted us; He persuaded and enabled us to embrace Jesus Christ, to sit at His feet with a new mind and a new will and a new desire to follow Him. Never had such a strong love subdued someone so unruly and unlovely.
My friends, there is no sinner of which Christ Jesus cannot subdue. Do you know an unruly sinner? Are you that unruly sinner? Then Jesus Christ is for you. Cry out to Him from among your wanderings and look for the day of his visitation.
