How Do I Take My Thoughts Captive?
00:00:00.000 | [Music]
00:00:05.000 | Sarah writes in to ask this, "Pastor John, what does it mean to take captive every thought
00:00:10.160 | to make it obedient to Christ?"
00:00:12.920 | 2 Corinthians 10.5.
00:00:15.000 | How can I take this commandment and apply it to my incorrect or sinful thoughts that
00:00:19.680 | I may obey Christ and have joy in Him?
00:00:22.480 | Well, here's the text.
00:00:23.720 | Let's read it, and then we'll see if we can figure this out.
00:00:27.240 | 2 Corinthians 10, and two verses, 4 and 5.
00:00:30.760 | "For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh."
00:00:35.480 | That is, they're not merely human.
00:00:37.160 | This is not a mere battle between one philosopher with some human wisdom against another philosopher
00:00:42.160 | with the human wisdom.
00:00:43.640 | "But the weapons of our warfare have divine power to destroy strongholds."
00:00:53.420 | And then he defines this powerful stronghold-destroying activity in two steps.
00:01:01.720 | Verse 5, "First, we destroy arguments and every lofty or proud opinion raised against
00:01:11.560 | the knowledge of God.
00:01:12.840 | And second, we then take every thought captive."
00:01:17.360 | So, like, you move in a battle and you destroy the fortress, and then you take captives.
00:01:23.760 | We take every thought captive to obey Christ.
00:01:27.620 | So Sarah asks, how can she take verse 5, "taking every thought captive," and apply it to herself
00:01:36.360 | to be more obedient to Christ in her thought life?
00:01:41.140 | The first thing, I think, that needs to be said, that when we apply this to ourselves,
00:01:47.220 | we have to make sure we're in the right place in the text.
00:01:52.220 | When Paul says, first, he's destroying arguments and arrogant opinions against God, and second,
00:02:00.460 | that he is taking thoughts or minds captive, we need to realize it's the minds and thoughts
00:02:09.420 | of others.
00:02:10.420 | He's not talking about taking his own thoughts captive.
00:02:13.620 | It's the thoughts of others.
00:02:16.100 | I'm moving into these rascals in Corinth who are so boastful in their philosophical prowess
00:02:24.380 | that I am going to demolish them, not by counter philosophy, but by divine power.
00:02:31.100 | I'm going to show power, and they're going to collapse in their thinking, and then I'm
00:02:36.340 | going to take their thoughts captive so that they now obey Christ.
00:02:40.660 | So he's the warrior, and the enemy is these people whose minds and arguments are proud
00:02:46.180 | and lifted up against God, and when Paul defeats those minds and arguments in the power of
00:02:51.860 | the Holy Spirit, their thoughts and their minds are taken captive, and they become people
00:02:58.380 | with the mind of Christ or obedient to Christ.
00:03:01.140 | So I think Sarah might be misreading just slightly.
00:03:04.820 | I'm going to come around and say she's on the right track, but she might be misreading
00:03:09.220 | the verse when she says, "How can I take this command and apply it to my incorrect,
00:03:14.300 | sinful thoughts?"
00:03:16.100 | It's not a command.
00:03:18.180 | It's a statement about what Paul is doing to his opponents.
00:03:22.580 | He's demolishing their worldview and then taking their defeated thoughts captive for
00:03:28.620 | Christ so that they become thinkers rightly.
00:03:32.340 | They're obedient in the way they think about Christ.
00:03:34.540 | So verse 5 is not a command to do this ourselves, but Sarah's question is still a very good
00:03:41.420 | question.
00:03:42.420 | There is a way to apply this to ourselves.
00:03:45.460 | We just have to get ourselves in the right place, and the place we belong in is the group
00:03:51.500 | whose opinions and thoughts Paul is trying to demolish.
00:03:55.140 | That's where we belong.
00:03:56.620 | We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and we
00:04:01.660 | take every thought captive.
00:04:03.620 | So when John Piper reads that, or when Sarah reads it, I should say, or she should say,
00:04:09.900 | "Okay, Paul, here I am.
00:04:12.180 | Do your demolishing work on me.
00:04:14.920 | Do your captive-taking work on me.
00:04:18.260 | Destroy in my mind any false or proud thoughts that I have about God," which means really
00:04:25.000 | two things, I think, that Sarah and I, and anybody else, any Christian, should do.
00:04:30.740 | One, we should listen to Paul and submit all our thoughts and ideas and feelings about
00:04:37.940 | God and about life, submit them to Paul's teaching, God's apostle for scrutiny, and
00:04:46.340 | if anything is out of sync with Paul's teaching, we should let it be destroyed.
00:04:53.100 | I have experienced this very painfully.
00:04:56.380 | I mean, if you put your mind and thoughts really at the disposal of the apostolic teaching
00:05:05.180 | and say, "Anything in my thinking that needs to be destroyed, destroy it," it can utterly
00:05:12.260 | undo you.
00:05:13.260 | There have been seasons in my life where I have wept over the dismantling of what felt
00:05:19.940 | like really important structures in my brain.
00:05:24.780 | So I think that's the first thing we do.
00:05:26.820 | We listen to Paul, we submit everything we think, all of our ideas, all our worldview,
00:05:32.020 | all our viewpoints to God, and we say, "Paul, let your word dismantle me if necessary."
00:05:39.100 | The second thing we should do is we should ask the Holy Spirit to work, because Paul
00:05:46.700 | said we don't fight with mere human fleshly arguments.
00:05:55.540 | Our ministry has power, so we should expose ourselves to that power.
00:06:02.140 | Verse 4 says, "The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but have divine power."
00:06:07.420 | In other words, he's tearing down arguments and God-belittling ideas, but he's not doing
00:06:14.140 | it merely by argument.
00:06:16.900 | So when I come to the Bible, there's a lot of study I do, and I love to study, and I
00:06:21.820 | love to assess arguments and figure them out, but I should also be crying out, "Oh God,
00:06:27.700 | I know that mere intellect will not dismantle the deeply rooted errors of my mind, so I
00:06:36.020 | avail myself, I open myself to the Holy Spirit, and I seek your face."
00:06:43.340 | Paul said in Romans 15, 18, "For I will not venture to speak of anything except what Christ
00:06:49.940 | has accomplished through me to bring the Gentiles to obedience."
00:06:55.380 | Now I think that's the same obedience as in 2 Corinthians 10, 4, and 5, when he brings
00:07:01.060 | our thoughts into obedience to Christ.
00:07:03.340 | And here he says, "I won't speak of anything except what Christ has accomplished."
00:07:08.540 | So that's what I'm getting at when I say expose yourself, lay yourself open to the risen Christ
00:07:15.780 | by the power of the Holy Spirit through the words of the Apostle Paul, so that everything
00:07:22.900 | can be dismantled, and then your brain, your mind, your thoughts can be taken captive and
00:07:29.860 | everything brought into conformity to Christ.
00:07:32.540 | Excellent.
00:07:33.540 | Thank you, Pastor John, and thank you for the thoughtful question, Sarah.
00:07:37.200 | If you have a question for Pastor John about something that perplexes you in the Bible,
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00:08:21.860 | Well, God made you to seek after the greatest joys imaginable and to seek after the most
00:08:27.660 | permanent pleasures in the universe.
00:08:30.880 | Have you ever stopped to wonder why?
00:08:32.860 | Tomorrow, Pastor John Piper will explain.
00:08:35.900 | I'm your host, Tony Reinke.
00:08:36.900 | Thanks for listening to the podcast.
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