“And the whole city came out to meet Jesus; and as soon as they saw Him, they begged Him to leave their region.” – Matthew 8:34
“The people begged Jesus to leave?!”, you may be asking. Why would the whole city ask Jesus to leave their region? I believe the answer lies in a tolerance of evil, sin, pride, and a desire to control the outcome that they didn’t really want freedom from. Rather than choosing to walk in obedience to God, it seems to me that they would rather alter their path and let evil stay. We could point to many cities, regions, people groups, organizations, and even churches in America that are unfortunately doing the same thing today.
To go back to recap the Bible story laid out in Matthew 8:28-34, there were two violent and scary demon-possessed men who were living in the tombs outside the city. The demons recognized Jesus as the Son of God right away and they begged Jesus that if he was going to drive them out, they wanted to be sent into the herd of pigs rather than tormented. Jesus then commanded them to go from the men, and they went into the pigs, who rushed down the steep bank and into the sea, where they all died in the water.
In reading this Gospel account slowly today, though, I pictured the two demon-possessed men coming out of the tombs to meet Jesus and the disciples. In verse 28, it says they were so extremely fierce and violent that no one could pass by that way. Yet the whole city begged Jesus to leave their region AFTER he had freed the men from the demons that were making them behave dangerously, which would have allowed them to pass by to the city without fear of harm from that point forward. Why?
As I pondered it with Holy Spirit, I realized that the people were used to navigating around the area where the scary possessed men were. The people tolerated the fact that there were men outside the city that they didn’t want to deal with. They didn’t make them leave, they didn’t try to come up with a better way to manage their outlandish behavior, and they didn’t think of them as humans who had demons that were influencing their every move. They didn’t see the men as people who were lost, trapped, or as men who also had been created in the image of God. They didn’t see the men through the eyes of love like Jesus did. The people were incredibly afraid of them, but they were simply content to avoid them and stay out of their way. They may have even thought of the situation as THEM versus US, just as we see as an epidemic in today’s culture.
(ENTER JESUS…) When Jesus came and changed the dynamic, went against the status quo, cast out the demons, freed the men, and made the path to town simpler and straighter, the people of the city banded together to kick him out.
The people of the region could’ve seen Jesus as a hero, but they didn’t.
They could’ve seen him as their Savior, but they didn’t.
They could have welcomed him and asked him to stay, but they didn’t.
They wanted things to stay the way that they were. When Jesus brought them freedom that they never knew they could have, they refused to receive it. They wanted to hold onto their control, their way of doing things, their traditions, their complicated pathway between one thing and the next, and their self-given identity as higher class people who were set apart from the crazy men who lived in the tombs in the country. Sound familiar?
How many times do we choose a different path to avoid a conversation that might bring up conflict? How often do we tolerate bullies around us, at work, in school, at church, or in our community? How many of us are afraid to be like Jesus and offer someone freedom in his name because of the backlash that we will face from others?
How many of us allow people in a position of leadership or authority to get away with behavior that isn’t loving or good for the people who were made in the image of God… without saying a word?
There is a lot of conversation that believers could and should have about this, but I want to emphasize this: JESUS IS LOVE. If it isn’t loving, it isn’t being led by Jesus, even if the words being used are from Scripture, in a church building, or from someone who claims to be a Christian.
If we believe that Jesus is our only path to heaven and an eternal relationship with God, would we beg him to leave if he showed up in the flesh to free those who were possessed, to heal the sick, and to perform miracles in those around us, or would we welcome the freedom he offers that we never knew was possible?
What sins in our lives might we be tolerating that are hindering us from receiving freedom from a life of choosing our own path which forces us to navigate around things we fear rather than inviting Jesus in to change everything?
Are you willing to be like Jesus to go against the status quo to do the loving thing for others who were also created in the image of God, even if it may get you ostracized from your church, your organization, or your community? Let’s stop tolerating, and start loving others into a relationship with Jesus that will set them free.
(Originally posted by Stephanie K Ford on Facebook, January 16, 2026)