Mark 1:27

‘And they were all amazed in so much that they questioned among themselves, saying, “What is this? A new teaching. He commands with authority even the unclean spirits and they obey him”.'

The people were all amazed. They thought that it must be some new teaching, not in a wrong sense but in the sense of being more powerfully true. This suggests that while there were exorcists around, they had not been quite as effective as this. They had used incantations and special formulae, but they had not been able to dismiss the evil spirits with a word. And they recognised that it meant that He had a special divine authority, which went hand in hand with divine knowledge.

‘What is this? A new teaching.' We might bring in ‘with authority' here as part of the phrase and translate, ‘What is this? A new authoritative teaching (a new teaching with authority)? He commands even the unclean spirits and they obey Him?' This would agree with what seems to be the correct text. But either way the significance is the same.

‘He commands the unclean spirits and they obey Him.' Jesus will Himself later point out what this proved, that Satan in his strength was being defeated, and that this could only be by the Spirit of God (Matthew 12:28), thus demonstrating that He Himself was a man of the Spirit and a ‘man of God'. But His claim to be ‘the Stronger than he' would go even further than that.

It is noteworthy that although He did this on the Sabbath it was not at this stage questioned, (but perhaps that was only because it required simply a word of command).