Only the followers of Jesus can do it.
Cited passages
These signs will accompany those who believe: in my name they will cast out demons; they will speak with new languages;
Who can cast out devils in the name of Jesus?
- Jesus & the Gospels
- Historical detail
- Within the New Testament
- Matthew
- Mark
- Luke
The tension
Mark 16:17 says exorcism in Jesus' name is a sign that follows 'them that believe' — a believers-only operation. Matthew 7:21-23, Mark 9:38, and Luke 9:49 all describe people casting out demons in Jesus' name who are explicitly not part of his followers — including some whom Jesus rejects at the final judgment despite their successful exorcisms ('I never knew you').
Proposed answers
People have answered this in several ways; GEBible presents them as equal peers.
Others can do it, too.
Cited passages
Not everyone who says to me, ‘Lord, Lord,’ will enter into the Kingdom of Heaven; but he who does the will of my Father who is in heaven. Many will tell me in that day, ‘Lord, Lord, didn’t we prophesy in your name, in your name cast out demons, and in your name do many mighty works?’ Then I will tell them, ‘I never knew you. Depart from me, you who work iniquity.’
John said to him, “Teacher, we saw someone who doesn’t follow us casting out demons in your name; and we forbade him, because he doesn’t follow us.”
John answered, “Master, we saw someone casting out demons in your name, and we forbade him, because he doesn’t follow with us.”
Notes on manuscript readings that bear on this passage — where the surviving witnesses differ over what the text says. Presented for transparency as the textual critic’s description, not as GEBible’s conclusion about the tension.
Examining the tension
What follows is one scholar’s way of reading this disagreement — a critical-historical view that often concludes the texts genuinely disagree. It draws on the peer-reviewed sources listed below and stands as one position among the answers above, presented for transparency, not as GEBible’s position.
How critical scholarship weighs this: Widely regarded as a genuine contradiction
This summarizes where critical scholarship tends to land on this tension — a report on the field’s center of gravity, not GEBible’s own ruling.
Mark 16:17 lists exorcism among the signs that "will accompany those who believe" (tois pisteusasin) — framing successful exorcism in Jesus' name as a marker of genuine faith. Three other texts cut against a strict reading of that. Matthew 7:21–23 is the sharpest: at the judgment, people protest, "did we not prophesy in your name, and cast out demons in your name, and do many mighty works in your name?" and Jesus replies, "I never knew you; depart from me, you workers of lawlessness." Crucially he does not deny the exorcisms occurred — he disowns the exorcists. Mark 9:38 and its parallel Luke 9:49 describe an unaffiliated exorcist successfully casting out demons in Jesus' name ("he was not following us"), and Jesus' response is "do not forbid him" (mē kōlyete). The name works in hands outside the circle of disciples.
The historic harmonization, articulated by William Lane and Craig Blomberg, distinguishes saving belief from bare invocation. Mark 16:17, on this reading, promises the sign to true believers, while Matthew 7 and Mark 9 portray outsiders wielding a power-laden name without the inner faith that saves. That distinction is theologically coherent and earns a partial harmonization, because the texts can be read as describing two different categories of person — the believing community and effective-but-faithless invokers.
Two problems keep the resolution partial. The first is textual, and decisive in its own register. Mark 16:17 is part of the "longer ending" of Mark (16:9–20), which is absent from the two oldest and best complete manuscripts, Codex Sinaiticus and Codex Vaticanus, as well as from important versional and patristic witnesses; Eusebius and Jerome both report that the most accurate copies known to them ended at 16:8. Bruce Metzger's *Textual Commentary* assigns the shorter text the highest confidence, and the longer ending is near-universally regarded as a second-century scribal supplement composed in a non-Markan style and vocabulary. The believers-only formulation, in other words, is not part of the earliest Gospel of Mark; it is a later harmonizing summary appended by a church that wished to tie the charismatic signs more tightly to authentic faith. The tension is thus partly between a late textual layer and the earlier canonical tradition.
The second problem is historical. Early Christians evidently regarded the name of Jesus as an efficacious formula whose power did not depend on the wielder's spiritual standing. The sons of Sceva in Acts 19:13–16 — itinerant Jewish exorcists with no allegiance to Jesus — attempt the formula "I adjure you by the Jesus whom Paul proclaims," and the episode assumes the name *could* be wielded by outsiders, even as it backfires on these particular pretenders. Graham Twelftree's study of early Christian exorcism documents this widespread conviction that the name itself carried power. That picture sits more naturally with Matthew 7 and Mark 9, where outsiders exorcise effectively, than with the longer ending's tighter linkage of the sign to belief.
So the belief/invocation distinction does real work and prevents this from being a flat, irresolvable contradiction. But it does not dissolve the tension cleanly: the sharpest "believers-only" statement is a secondary addition, and the surrounding canonical and Acts material assumes the name's power is portable beyond the community.
Where the critical reading lands: partially harmonizable by the belief/invocation distinction, but the key proof-text is a late, text-critically secondary ending.
Sources for this reading