Demonized Christians: Debunking Common Myths About Demonic Possession & Oppression

Now may the God of peace Himself sanctify you completely; and may your whole spirit, soul, and body be preserved blameless at the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ. He who calls you is faithful, who also will do it (1 Thessalonians 5:23-24 NKJV).

Therefore lay aside all filthiness and overflow of wickedness, and receive with meekness the implanted word, which is able to save your souls (James 1:21 NKJV).

I want to debunk the biggest myth in the modern-day church that Christians cannot have demons!

If this is true, then I’m not sure who I’ve been casting demons out of all this time! If you have reached this point in the book, then already you will have read testimonies of Christians being set free through deliverance! As we have already covered in a previous chapter, demons inhabit the soul part of a person and not the spirit of a person, and this is the revelation that gives us the understanding that yes, indeed, Christians can have demons. When we become born again, the supernatural transference takes place in our spirit man, not the soul man. Our spirit, which was once dead because of sin, is now alive. The spirit of a person wakes up when they believe by faith in their heart that Christ died and rose from the dead for them.

For with the heart one believes unto righteousness, and with the mouth confession is made unto salvation (Romans 10:10 NKJV).

It’s our spirit man that wakes up when we believe:

It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life (John 6:63 KJV).

The supernatural part of our relationship with God is restored and the communication lines are now open.

Remember Nicodemus, the leader of the Jews in John 3 and the conversation he and Jesus had in the garden at night. Nicodemus wanted to know who Jesus really was because he knew that somehow He had come from God because of all the signs He was able to perform. Jesus made the statement in John 3:3 (NKJV):

Jesus answered and said to him, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God.”

Immediately Nicodemus’ response was, “How could one be born again? How could you go back into your mother’s womb?” Of course, we know that Jesus was referring to a spiritual birth; we are so familiar with this term born again, but back then no one had heard of anything like this. Jesus made it clear that this had to happen in order to have a relationship with the Father and enter the kingdom of God.

Jesus answered, “Most assuredly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit” (John 3:5-6 NKJV).

The soul part of man, which is made up of our mind, will and emotions, technically hasn’t changed, and so from the moment of salvation it embarks on a journey of being saved or renewed by the word of God. It is not a quick fix overnight! In an instant we are saved; our spirit man on the inside of us is made alive in Christ, and by receiving Jesus in our hearts as our Lord and Savior we are transferred out of the kingdom of darkness into the kingdom of light. The salvation, or should I say the transformation, of our soul man then begins to take place when we renew our mind in the word of God, and when the word becomes engrafted into our hearts. The word tells us in Philippians 2:12 that we continually work out our salvation with fear and trembling, which means it is a process for our souls to be saved. So, the miracle of salvation takes place in the spirit of a person in an instant, but the natural part of a man or woman begins the journey of transformation!

For He has rescued us from the kingdom of darkness and transferred us into the Kingdom of his dear Son, who purchased our freedom and forgave our sins (Colossians 1:13-14 NLT).

When we are born again, saved, and redeemed, we are born of the Spirit of God and then instructed to be baptized in water to signify the old man dying, cut off from the way we used to do things. It’s an outward demonstration or testimony of an inward act or transformation that has taken place. The old man or life is buried, and the new life, born of the Spirit of God, rises up out of the water. We are then baptized in the Holy Spirit. It’s the infilling of the power of God. Jesus specifically told His disciples to wait to evangelize until they received the power they needed to do it effectively:

And being assembled together with them, He commanded them not to depart from Jerusalem, but to wait for the Promise of the Father, “which,” He said, “you have heard from Me; for John truly baptized with water, but you shall be baptized with the Holy Spirit not many days from now” (Acts 1:4-5 NKJV).

But you shall receive power when the Holy Spirit has come upon you; and you shall be witnesses to Me in Jerusalem, and in all Judea and Samaria, and to the end of the earth (Acts 1:8 NKJV).

I feel like I need to make it clear how important it is to understand the difference between the physical and spiritual transformation that takes place during salvation. If we under- stand this, it makes it so much easier to accept that Christians can be demonized. Your spirit man is untouched by demons, and after it is born again (born of the spirit), it can and should be filled with the Holy Spirit!

It is equally important to know that the only requirement for salvation is repentance, which we know is to believe in your heart and confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord (Romans 10:9). This means that at any point of your Christian life, if you are pursuing the things of God and fearing Him, if you died you would go to heaven because your spirit man is born of God. The saved soul continues in its pursuit of holiness till Jesus comes again, so it’s the soul of a man, not the spirit of a man, that is in constant battle with the powers of darkness.

The great news is that demons cannot stop you from receiving salvation, but they can hinder every step you take as a Christian. When something is dead there is no access to it— before salvation our spirit man is dead, so demons are unable to enter this part of a man. It therefore makes sense that the only part of a person demons have access to is the flesh, the soul man, because that is the part of man that remained alive even after the fall in the garden.

I believe when we begin to acknowledge that believers can have demons, freedom will mean freedom! When we read scriptures such as “Therefore if the Son makes you free, you shall be free indeed” in John 8:36 (NKJV), while we may believe it’s the truth, so many of us do not experience the “free indeed” part. Yes, we have freedom from the sentence of a lost eternity, but even after we accept Jesus as our Lord and Savior, many of us still feel bound and not completely free. We could argue that it’s a case of renewing the mind, and I agree that this is a most important part of experiencing true freedom. I also want to say here that working out our salvation means crucifying the flesh. Many times, people will ask for deliverance, thinking that their ungodly behavior is a demon, when it’s just their flesh man unwilling to submit to the word of God. Almost the whole chapter in Galatians 5 refers to walking in freedom by dying to the flesh:

And those who are Christ’s have crucified the flesh with its passions and desires (Galatians 5:24 NKJV).

But to my point here, I am referring to those who get born again who have brought those demons with them from their past lives unknowingly attached to their flesh. They didn’t leave at the point of salvation because the saved person didn’t even know that they were there! There is only one way to get rid of those demons and that is to cast them out. This is exactly what Jesus did when He was on earth. It’s the instruction He gave to His disciples during the great commission in Mark 16:17, and it’s the same instruction we are given today, which we must do in His Name!

We can read numerous stories in the New Testament of demons that were cast out of people. Most of the accounts use the word possessed with demons; however, the Greek word is daimonion, which means “demonized, oppressed, to occupy, to seize, to rob, to impoverish, to ruin.” This makes so much more sense and gives us a greater understanding in knowing that this is what demons come to do. They rob us of our God-given personalities and character traits, they occupy our bodies and minds, they seize what rightfully belongs to us, and they cause poverty and lack to manifest in our lives.

We should be confident that possession doesn’t take place in the spirit of a person before salvation because we now under- stand that the spirit of a person is dead, and demons cannot possess something that is dead! This is the whole reason we are separated from God in the first place—Satan destroyed this supernatural relationship in the garden. Man’s spirit, which was made perfect, was the part of Adam and Eve that communicated with God in the garden, and when God said to Adam and Eve that they would die if they ate from the tree of knowledge, He was referring to their spiritual death, not their physical death. Separation from their relationship with God meant death, something they would only experience if they sinned. We know it was a spiritual death because after they sinned, the word tells us in Genesis 5:5 that Adam went on to live until he was 930 years old! Sin didn’t immediately kill the body; it immediately killed the spirit. The only reason man’s days were cut short was because of the wickedness of his heart; God could not allow man to live so long in this state. He put a stop to the long life man once had and brought it right down to 120 years!

And the Lord said, “My Spirit shall not strive with man forever, for he is indeed flesh; yet his days shall be one hundred and twenty years” (Genesis 6:3 NKJV).

I want to make it clear that to be truly free we need three things: salvation, deliverance, and the word of God. The word deliverance means “salvation, liberation, acquittal, extrication, redemption, release, rescue, saving.” It’s interesting that the word for “save” in the scripture in James 1:21 (referring to the implanted word saving your soul) is the word sozo in Greek, which means “saved, made whole, restored, healed, preserved, and delivered”!

We can easily say that the implanted word is able to save, make whole, restore, heal, preserve, and deliver our souls! This is the importance of the word of God and how it transforms our soul man. We can actually be delivered and set free many times by reading the word of God because it has transforming power for the believer. The word is God’s voice, it’s the acts of the Holy Spirit, and it’s the demonstration of God’s power.