Christ Made the Demons Fear Him

You also say that the Spirit made him to be feared by the demons. The sheer horror of that statement is enough to reject and refute it, but we will still add some examples. Tell me, please, you who say that the demons’ fear of him was not his own doing but another’s, and who will have it that this was not his own power but a gift: how was it that even his name had the power which, according to you, he himself lacked? How was it that in his name demons were cast out, the sick were cured, and the dead were raised? For the apostle Peter says to the lame man sitting at the Beautiful Gate of the temple, “In the name of Jesus Christ, rise and walk.” And again, in the city of Joppa, to the man who had been lying paralyzed on his bed for eight years, he says, “Aeneas, may the Lord Jesus Christ heal you. Get up and make your bed for yourself.” Paul too says to the spirit of divination, “I command you in the name of Jesus Christ to come out of her,” and the demon came out of her. [a]

From this, understand how utterly foreign such weakness was to our Lord. I do not call even those weak whom he made strong by his name, for we have never heard of any demon or sickness that could resist any of the apostles after the Lord’s resurrection. How, then, did the Spirit make him to be feared, when he made others to be feared? Or was he weak in himself, when faith in him ruled over all things even through others? In fact, the men who received power from God never used that power as if it were their own. They credited the power to the one from whom they had received it, for the power itself could never have any force except through the name of the one who gave it. And so the apostles and all the servants of God never did anything in their own name, but in the name of Christ and by calling on him. The power drew its force from the same source as its origin, and it could not be given through the hands of the ministers unless it had come from its Author.

You say that the Lord was the same as one of his servants. As the apostles had nothing but what they received from their Lord, so you make out that the Lord himself had nothing but what he received from the Spirit, and so that everything he had, he had not as Lord, but received as a servant. Then tell me, how was it that he used this power as his own, and not as something he had received? For what do we read of him? He says to the paralyzed man, “Get up, take up your bed, and go to your house.” And to a father pleading for his child he says, “Go your way; your son lives.” And where the only son of his mother was being carried out for burial, he says, “Young man, I say to you, rise.” Did he, then, like those who received power from God, ask that power be given him to do these things by calling on the divine name? Why did he not work in the name of the Spirit, just as the apostles worked in his name? In short, what does the Gospel itself say about him? It says, “He was teaching them as one who had authority, and not like the scribes and Pharisees.” Or do you make out that he was so proud and haughty as to credit to his own might the power that, according to you, he had received from God? And what do we make of the fact that the power never submitted to his servants except through the name of its Author, and could have no effect if the one using it claimed any of it as his own?