<p>3:23 <em>And he called them to him, and said to them in parables: How can Satan cast out Satan?</em>- 'Satan' was a parable and is being used here in a non-literal sense. The Lord reasons with them on their own ground, assuming for a moment that their wrong ideas were true- hence &quot;<em>if</em>&nbsp;Satan...&quot;. The one who cast out Satan / demons was of course Jesus personally. Their false logic and theology had led them to label a good man as Satan just because He did a good work of healing. So quickly, false logic and theology drives jealous people along a path of demonization, negative labelling of others and religious hatred.&nbsp;</p><p>But the argument is about casting out of&nbsp;<em>demons, </em>yet here 'satan casts out satan'. One thing we learn from this use of language is that beliefs about 'Satan', demons and the casting out of demons were very vague and poorly defined. And that is how it is to this day with those who believe in the literal existence of 'Satan' and demons. When pressed for definition and a more connected theology, they flounder.</p><p>When accused of being in league with &lsquo;satan&rsquo;, the Lord didn&rsquo;t read them a charge of blasphemy. He reasoned instead that a thief cannot bind a strong man; and likewise He couldn&rsquo;t bind &lsquo;satan&rsquo; unless He were stronger than Satan (Mk. 3:23-27). He doesn&rsquo;t take the tack that &lsquo;Satan / Beelzebub / demons&rsquo; don&rsquo;t exist; He showed instead that He was evidently stronger than any such being or force, to the point that belief in such a concept was meaningless. Faith must rather be in Him alone.</p><p>Judaism had taken over the surrounding pagan notion of a personal &lsquo;Satan&rsquo;. And the Lord Jesus and the Gospel writers use this term, but in the way they use it, they redefine it. The parable of the Lord Jesus binding the &ldquo;strong man&rdquo; &ndash; the Devil &ndash; was really to show that the &ldquo;Devil&rdquo; as they understood it was now no more, and his supposed Kingdom now taken over by that of Christ. The last Gospel, John, doesn&rsquo;t use the term in the way the earlier Gospels do. He defines what the earlier writers called &ldquo;the Devil&rdquo; as actual people, such as the Jews or the brothers of Jesus, in their articulation of an adversarial &lsquo;satanic&rsquo; position to Jesus.</p>