In the Gospels, whenever Jesus heals those possessed by demons, we often see the spirits falling before Him and crying out, “You are the Son of God!” or “The Holy One of God!” Why did these demons confess Jesus’ identity so readily? To understand this, we must look back at the beginning of Jesus’ public ministry the 40 days in the wilderness where He was tempted by Satan.
The temptations in the wilderness were threefold: turning stones into bread, jumping from the pinnacle of the temple, and gaining all the kingdoms of the world. While we often interpret these as moral lessons for believers, the core purpose of Satan’s temptation was to force Jesus back into His identity as the “Son of God” in a way that bypassed the cross. Each time, Satan prefaced his lure with the condition: “If you are the Son of God…” He was pressuring Jesus to prove His divinity through miraculous power.
Jesus came to this earth as a complete human being. He had to be fully human to bear the weight of our sins and become the unblemished sacrifice on the cross. If Jesus had succumbed to Satan’s bait by proving His divinity through power, He would no longer have been the representative of humanity who could die in our place. In essence, Satan’s temptations were a cunning trap designed to keep Jesus from the cross by urging Him to return to His seat of divine glory.
Returning to the main point, we must reconsider why the demons screamed, “You are the Son of God!” Although this is often interpreted as the demons simply recognizing who He was, their “confession” was fundamentally different from Peter’s declaration, “You are the Christ, the Son of the living God.”
The demons’ objective was clear: to prevent Jesus from becoming the human sacrifice. Only if Jesus failed to die as a man could they keep humanity bound under the power of death forever. Therefore, by calling Him the “Son of God,” the demons were persistently trying to pull Jesus back from His humble human path into His divine status. Their confessions were an extension of the wilderness temptations—a subtle form of spiritual interference. Knowing this, Jesus rebuked them, commanded them to “be silent,” and drove them out.
Jesus’ love for our salvation never wavered. Despite Satan’s persistent lures and the demons’ tactical “confessions,” He chose to set aside His divine privileges and walk the path of a vulnerable human until the very end.
As we journey through this Lenten season, let us meditate on the love of Christ, who refused to “prove” His divinity so that He could die for us as the “Son of Man.” I pray that we all approach His death and resurrection with a holy trembling and a heart of deep gratitude.