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2 Corinthians 10:4

“bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ”

The Christian discipline is by no means simple or easy. Some would have us think that all the work is God’s in a monergistic fashion, and that all we have to do is have faith that God will work us off to regeneration and sanctification. Not so, according to Paul.

Here, the battle is described clearly in verse 4: “The weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh”; in other words we are not battling against the flesh of our bodies, or its internal organs like in a field battle with swords or guns piercing the heart and bleeding the body, the war we battle is not fleshly, it is as Paul explains in verse 5: “we cast down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God”. These are internal, where our mind and spirit are personally involved, not like in Ephesians 6:12 were the battle is external, but rather here we are battling against ourself !!

We are disciplining our own self and capturing every imaginery thought and every thought that thinks higher than the highness of God’s thoughts, and once captured, we bring them into captivity, and once brought into captivity, we train them to be obedient to Jesus Christ, until ALL of our self has arrived to a fulness of obedience and all previous disobedience has been avenged.

What a thought, huh?

I am obviously a synergist, unlike Calvanists (/Reformed) who are monergists, and so I believe that sanctification and regeneration is a work done, not just by God through the holy Spirit, but with our own participation also, just as I believe is described in the imperative of our verses today.

Here’s another example of the discipling that results in the winning the above battle, another imperative plead on us by all prophets and apostles, the greatest of which is our Savior and Priest Jesus Christ: Rom 6:13 “do not present your members unto sin as instruments of unrighteousness; but present yourselves unto God, as alive from the dead, and your members as instruments of righteousness unto God”. The “alive from the dead” here is contextually relevent to our new birth (re-generation) through water baptism from verse 4 to verse 14.

None of these are the works of God exclusively, but ours too, in which we must excel every moments of our life to the praise of the glory of the grace of God in Christ, for this is how we know we are children of God: Romans 6:16-23 (I missed verse 15 on purpose) and 1John 3:10

Who is in the battle, battle, knowing your redemption is nearing.
Be blessed.