Folake brought a notebook to our first conversation. It was an ordinary exercise book, the kind with a multiplication table printed on the back, and she held it in both hands on her lap for a long time before she opened it.
She was twenty-six, a graduate trainee at an insurance firm on the Island, and one of the most earnest young women in her fellowship. Some months earlier, during a week of prayer and fasting, a guest minister had preached on 2 Corinthians 10:5. “Every thought,” he had said, pacing the platform. “Not some thoughts. Every thought. If you let one wrong thought pass without arresting it, the enemy has a foothold in your life.” The congregation had shouted amen. Folake had gone home and taken it as literally as she knew how.
She showed me the pages. Each day was divided into columns. In the first column she wrote down every thought she judged to be negative, impure, fearful or ungodly. In the second she wrote the verse she had used to “take it captive.” In the third she put a tick if the thought had gone and a cross if it had returned. Some days had forty entries. Some had more. There were crosses all the way down the third column. On one page, in the margin, she had written in small, tight letters: Why can I not get victory?
“I am tired, sir,” she said. “I spend the whole day watching my own head. At work, I miss things people say because I am busy rebuking a thought. In church I cannot enjoy worship, because if my mind wanders even for a second I have to start again. I feel like a prisoner, but I thought I was supposed to be the one taking prisoners.”
I asked her if she had ever read the whole of 2 Corinthians 10, from the first verse. She had not. She knew verse 5 by heart, and verse 4, and perhaps verse 3. She had never read what Paul was actually talking about.
That afternoon, we read it together.
A letter to a church that had begun to doubt its apostle
To understand what Paul meant by taking every thought captive, we need to know why he was writing at all. Second Corinthians is the most personal and painful of his letters. He had founded the church in Corinth, stayed there for a year and a half, and loved its people deeply. But after he left, others arrived. They carried letters of recommendation, which Paul refers to with a touch of irony: “need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you” (2 Corinthians 3:1)? They were impressive speakers. They boasted of their credentials. And they had begun to persuade the Corinthians that Paul was not a real apostle at all.
Chapters 10 to 13 of the letter are Paul’s response to these men, whom he sarcastically calls “the very chiefest apostles” (2 Corinthians 11:5). He quotes what they were saying about him: “For his letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible” (2 Corinthians 10:10). They accused him of walking “according to the flesh” (2 Corinthians 10:2), of being bold on paper and timid in person, of lacking the polish and power a true apostle ought to have.
Corinth was a city that loved eloquence. Travelling orators drew crowds and charged fees, and a man’s standing was judged by how well he spoke and how confidently he carried himself. Above the city towered the Acrocorinth, a great rock fortress that could be seen for miles. The Corinthians knew what strongholds looked like. They also knew what it was to be impressed by power.
So chapter 10 opens in the middle of a crisis in the church. Rival teachers had built an alternative account of what an apostle should be, and behind that, a different account of what the gospel itself looked like. Their version valued strength, status, eloquence and self-promotion. Paul’s gospel centred on a crucified Messiah whose power was made perfect in weakness (2 Corinthians 12:9). The whole of 2 Corinthians 10 must be read inside that conflict.
When Folake heard this, she frowned. “So it is not about my thoughts at all?”
PunchlineIt is about thoughts, I told her. But it is about a particular kind of thought, and a particular kind of war.
Weapons that are not carnal
Here is the passage in full, including the verse that is usually left off:
For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh: (For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds;) Casting down imaginations, and every high thing that exalteth itself against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ; And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.
“For though we walk in the flesh, we do not war after the flesh.” Paul admits that he is a man living in an ordinary human body, with all its limits. His opponents mocked his weak presence, and he does not deny it. But his warfare is not conducted on their terms. “The weapons of our warfare are not carnal.” He will not fight with the tools they valued: self-commendation, manipulation, impressive rhetoric, intimidation.
What, then, is he fighting against? Look at the words. Strong holds translates a word for a fortress, a fortified position. Imaginations is a word for reasonings or arguments, the calculated thinking of the mind. High thing refers to something lifted up, like a rampart or a tower raised against an advancing army. And Paul tells us precisely what these fortresses have been built to resist: they exalt themselves “against the knowledge of God.”
That phrase is the key to the whole passage. Paul is laying siege to systems of thought that stand in the way of people knowing God as He has revealed Himself in Christ. The rival teachers had built a fortress of ideas about power and prestige, and from behind its walls they were keeping the Corinthians from seeing the glory of a crucified Lord. That is the stronghold.
Some scholars hear in Paul’s words an echo of Proverbs: “A wise man scaleth the city of the mighty, and casteth down the strength of the confidence thereof” (Proverbs 21:22). Whether or not Paul had that verse in mind, the picture fits. The wise man does not admire the city walls. He climbs them, and brings down the false confidence that sheltered behind them.
Then comes the phrase Folake had memorised: “bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.” The verb was used of taking prisoners in war. Once the fortress has fallen, the soldiers who defended it are led out and brought under a new authority. The thoughts here are the very reasonings that manned the walls. Winning the argument is only the beginning. Paul wants the minds that had been held by false ideas to be brought into glad obedience to Christ.
And now verse 6, which almost nobody quotes: “And having in a readiness to revenge all disobedience, when your obedience is fulfilled.” Paul is speaking as an apostle with authority in the church. He hopes that the Corinthian believers will turn back to the true gospel. Once their obedience is complete, he is ready to deal firmly with any who still persist in rebellion. This is the language of church discipline, carried out by an apostle with authority “which the Lord hath given us for edification, and not for your destruction” (2 Corinthians 10:8).
Read in context, the passage has tremendous force. It tells us that the gospel has power to tear down entire structures of false thinking. It tells us that no argument, however eloquent or widely believed, is beyond the reach of Christ’s authority. What it does not do is instruct a young woman in Lagos to keep a register of every stray thought that passes through her mind between breakfast and bedtime.
NuggetThe strongholds Paul pulls down are fortresses of argument raised against the knowledge of God. His aim is a mind brought gladly under Christ, not a mind kept under constant inspection.
The weapons Paul refused to use
If we want to know what Paul’s “mighty” weapons were, we can look at how he first came to Corinth. He describes it in his earlier letter:
And I, brethren, when I came to you, came not with excellency of speech or of wisdom, declaring unto you the testimony of God. For I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified. And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling. And my speech and my preaching was not with enticing words of man’s wisdom, but in demonstration of the Spirit and of power: That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.
This is a remarkable confession from the man who wrote half the New Testament. Paul arrived in a city that prized polished speakers, and he deliberately chose not to be one. “I determined not to know any thing among you, save Jesus Christ, and him crucified.” He was not lacking in learning. He had studied under Gamaliel and could quote Greek poets when the occasion called for it (Acts 17:28). But in Corinth he made a decision. He would not build the church on admiration for his skill. He would preach the cross, and rely on the Spirit.
“And I was with you in weakness, and in fear, and in much trembling.” The great apostle trembled. He came without impressive credentials, and the Spirit of God moved anyway. Lives were changed, idols were abandoned, and a church was born. “That your faith should not stand in the wisdom of men, but in the power of God.”
These, then, are the weapons that pull down strongholds: the plain proclamation of Christ crucified, the demonstration of the Spirit and of power, truth spoken in love, prayer, and a life consistent with the message. They are mighty “through God.” Their power does not come from the volume or cleverness of the one who uses them.
This should reshape how we think about spiritual warfare in the mind. The fortress of a false idea falls when the truth about Christ is understood, believed and loved. A formula repeated with increasing intensity rarely touches it. Folake had been treating each verse like a hand grenade, throwing it at every thought and waiting for the explosion. But the weapon Paul used most often was something quieter and far more powerful: a clear, patient unveiling of who Jesus is.
What sets itself against the knowledge of God
If the strongholds stand “against the knowledge of God,” we should ask what that knowledge is. Paul answers in one of the most beautiful passages in the letter:
But if our gospel be hid, it is hid to them that are lost: In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus’ sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
“The god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not.” The word translated minds here is the same word translated thought in 2 Corinthians 10:5. Paul uses it several times in this letter, and almost every time it describes minds in relation to the gospel: minds blinded so that they cannot see (2 Corinthians 3:14), minds in danger of being led astray (2 Corinthians 11:3), and the devices of Satan himself (2 Corinthians 2:11, where devices is the same word again). In 2 Corinthians, the battle over thoughts is a battle over whether people will see the light of Christ.
And what is that light? “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” There it is: the knowledge of God, and it has a face. The knowledge that strongholds resist is the revelation of God’s glory in Jesus. To take a thought captive to the obedience of Christ is to bring it out from behind its walls and into that light.
Paul makes the danger even more personal a few chapters later:
But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ. For if he that cometh preacheth another Jesus, whom we have not preached, or if ye receive another spirit, which ye have not received, or another gospel, which ye have not accepted, ye might well bear with him .
“I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtilty, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” Paul’s fear was that the Corinthians would be drawn away from simple, single-hearted devotion to Christ. He names the threat precisely: another Jesus, another spirit, another gospel. And then, with heartbreaking irony: “ye might well bear with him.” The Corinthians were putting up with false teaching very comfortably. Their minds were being taken captive, and they had not noticed.
This is where the passage speaks powerfully to us. The real danger to most believers is not that a stray thought flickers across the mind during worship. The danger is that, without noticing, we absorb a different gospel. It might be a gospel in which God’s love must be earned by performance. It might be a gospel in which Jesus is a means to wealth rather than the Lord of life. It might be a gospel in which grace is so cheap that holiness no longer matters, or so expensive that nobody can ever be sure of it. Each of these is a fortress, raised against the knowledge of God in the face of Jesus Christ. And each can be held comfortably by people who sing in the choir every Sunday.
Two kinds of captivity
Paul wrote to the Colossians with a similar concern. False teachers were offering a more advanced spirituality, mixing human philosophy with religious rules and speculation about angels. Paul’s response begins with a reminder of how the Christian life started, and then gives a warning:
As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith, as ye have been taught, abounding therein with thanksgiving. Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit, after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ.
“Beware lest any man spoil you through philosophy and vain deceit.” The word translated spoil is a rare and vivid one. It means to carry someone off as booty, to kidnap, to lead away as a captive. Paul is warning the Colossians that there are ideas which take people prisoner. They are attractive, intelligent and religious-sounding, and they can lead believers away from Christ as surely as an invading army leads away captives.
Here we see the full picture. There is a captivity that enslaves, and there is a captivity that sets free. Philosophy “after the tradition of men, after the rudiments of the world, and not after Christ” takes believers captive and carries them off. The gospel takes those very ideas captive and brings them under Christ. Every mind is under someone’s authority. The question is whose.
And notice where Paul places the remedy. Before he gives the warning, he gives the foundation: “As ye have therefore received Christ Jesus the Lord, so walk ye in him: Rooted and built up in him, and stablished in the faith.” The defence against being carried off is being rooted. A tree with deep roots does not need to inspect every gust of wind. It simply stays where it is planted. Two verses later Paul adds the reason we can be so secure: “For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily. And ye are complete in him” (Colossians 2:9-10). You do not need a more advanced revelation. You are complete in Christ.
This was the turning point for Folake. She had thought of taking every thought captive as an endless, exhausting patrol. Paul presents it as something much more like the security of a person who has already been taken captive by Christ, and who therefore cannot easily be kidnapped by anyone else. Elsewhere he describes himself as led in Christ’s triumph: “Now thanks be unto God, which always causeth us to triumph in Christ” (2 Corinthians 2:14). The image is of a Roman victory procession. Paul is glad to be part of it. Being captured by Christ is the happiest captivity there is.
Obedience is the goal
PunchlineLook again at the end of verse 5: “to the obedience of Christ.” The captivity has a purpose. Thoughts are brought under Christ so that the whole person can obey Him.
That word obedience matters. Paul opens his letter to the Romans by describing his apostleship as being “for obedience to the faith among all nations” (Romans 1:5). For Paul, faith and obedience belong together. To believe the gospel is to submit to the Lord it proclaims. Taking thoughts captive is measured by the presence of a living allegiance to Jesus Christ that reaches every part of life. The mere absence of bad thoughts was never the measure.
This helps us see what Paul was and was not demanding. He was demanding that no idea, however popular, be allowed to stand as a rival lord over the minds of God’s people. He was demanding that the Corinthians bring their thinking about power, leadership, success and the gospel into line with the crucified and risen Christ. He was not demanding that believers achieve a perfectly controlled inner life, free from every distraction or unpleasant thought, before they could consider themselves obedient.
And the Christ to whom we are brought captive is a gentle Lord. He described Himself in words Folake had somehow never connected with this verse: “Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: and ye shall find rest unto your souls. For my yoke is easy, and my burden is light” (Matthew 11:29-30). Captivity to this Master produces rest. If your efforts to take thoughts captive are producing nothing but exhaustion and fear, it is worth asking whether you are submitting to Christ or to a harsh taskmaster you have built in your own mind.
Strongholds closer to home
None of this means the passage has nothing to say to our personal inner lives. It has a great deal to say, as long as we apply it in the shape Paul gave it.
A stronghold, in Paul’s sense, is an argument we have fortified against the knowledge of God. Many believers carry such fortresses inside them, often for years. Some of them look like this:
- “God may forgive other people, but what I did is beyond forgiveness.”
- “People from my background will never amount to anything.”
- “If I do not look after myself, nobody will, not even God.”
- “A little dishonesty in business is just how things work in this country.”
- “God’s love for me depends on how well I performed this week.”
Notice what these have in common. These are settled convictions, defended by evidence and experience, raised up as a wall against what God has revealed about Himself in Christ. Each one contradicts the gospel at a specific point. Each one shapes behaviour. And each one can survive for decades in the mind of a person who sincerely loves Jesus.
These are worth laying siege to. And Paul shows us how: with the truth of the gospel, patiently applied. “Be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). Renewal is a process. The fortress of “I am beyond forgiveness” does not usually fall with one rebuke. It falls as the believer reads, hears and finally believes passages such as 1 John 1:9 and Romans 8:1, and sees in the face of Jesus a Saviour who came looking for Peter after his denial and restored him in front of his friends (John 21:15-17).
Even the apostles had fortresses that needed to fall. When Jesus first spoke of His coming death, Peter took Him aside and rebuked Him: “Be it far from thee, Lord: this shall not be unto thee” (Matthew 16:22). Peter’s idea of the Messiah had no room for a cross. Jesus answered, “thou savourest not the things that be of God, but those that be of men” (Matthew 16:23). That was a stronghold, and it was not torn down in a single afternoon. It took the crucifixion, the empty tomb and the coming of the Spirit before Peter fully understood.
So the honest believer will ask: what convictions do I hold that stand against what God has shown me in Christ? That question is far more fruitful than “Did a bad thought just cross my mind?” It goes to the foundations. It deals with the fortress rather than chasing every shadow on its walls.
When the demand becomes a torment
I want to say something plainly to those who recognise themselves in Folake’s notebook.
If you have been living with a constant fear that every unwanted thought represents a spiritual defeat, you have been carrying a burden that Paul never placed on you. Some believers have a temperament, or a history, that makes them especially prone to this kind of anxious monitoring. Some live with a condition such as obsessive-compulsive disorder, in which unwanted thoughts become fixed and frightening, and checking or confessing them provides only brief relief before the cycle begins again. Religious teaching that tells such a person to watch every thought more closely will usually make the problem worse.
If that describes you, please talk to a pastor who understands, and do not be afraid to see a qualified doctor or therapist as well. There are effective forms of help, and receiving them is entirely consistent with faith. God gave us minds, and He also gave skill to those who study how minds work.
The gospel also speaks to you directly. You do not have to be the guardian of your own acceptance. Christ has already secured it. A thought that crosses your mind against your will does not separate you from Him. Jesus Himself heard the tempter’s suggestions in the wilderness and answered them, without being defiled by them (Matthew 4:1-11). You can let some thoughts pass without a fight, the way you let a car horn in traffic pass without stopping to argue with the driver. You can save your energy for the questions that matter: Am I believing the truth about God? Am I obeying Christ in the decisions in front of me?
Paul’s deepest concern was the “simplicity that is in Christ.” Simplicity means undivided devotion. It is the opposite of a mind tied up in knots. If your practice of taking thoughts captive has left your mind more tangled, more fearful and less free to love God and your neighbour, it has drifted from the simplicity Paul wanted to protect.
Folake did not throw her notebook away. She did something more interesting with it.
She turned to a clean page at the back and drew a line down the middle. On one side, she wrote down the deep convictions she had begun to notice in herself. She ignored the passing thoughts this time and looked for the settled beliefs that seemed to drive her fear. The first one surprised her: God is always waiting for me to fail. The second: If I relax, something terrible will happen. On the other side, over the following weeks, she wrote down what the gospel said about each one, with the passages that showed it. 2 Corinthians 4:6. Colossians 2:10. Matthew 11:28-30. Romans 8:1.
“I realised that the real stronghold was not my thoughts,” she told me months later. “It was the idea that I had to watch them all, because God was watching me with a frown. That idea was against the knowledge of God. That was the one I needed to take captive.”
She still notices stray thoughts. Everyone does. But she does not record them any more. Most of the time, she lets them go by. When one of them points towards a settled lie about God, she stops, names it, and brings it to the light of Christ’s face. And she has discovered that her mind, once relieved of the endless patrol, has much more room for worship, for her work and for the people around her.
The book is still in her drawer. The old columns full of crosses are at the front. The new page is at the back. Between them lies the difference between a prisoner of her own vigilance and a woman who has been taken captive by a gentle Lord.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- Before reading this, how had you understood “bringing into captivity every thought”? How has reading 2 Corinthians 10 in context changed that understanding?
- Paul’s opponents valued eloquence, strength and status. Where do you see similar values competing with the message of Christ crucified today?
- What settled convictions do you hold that might be “exalted against the knowledge of God” as He is revealed in Jesus?
- Colossians 2 describes ideas that take believers captive. Which teachings or ways of thinking have most influenced you, and do they lead you towards Christ or away from Him?
- How would your inner life change if you saw your captivity to Christ as rest rather than constant patrol?
This Week
Read 2 Corinthians 10 and 11 in one sitting this week, as a letter rather than a collection of verses. Then take a sheet of paper and write down one or two deep convictions you suspect may stand against the gospel. Beside each one, write what God has revealed about Himself in Christ on that point, with at least one passage you have read in its context. Pray through that sheet each morning. If you find yourself trying to monitor every passing thought, practise letting minor ones go by without a fight, and turn your attention to Christ instead.
A Prayer
Lord Jesus, thank You that the light of the knowledge of the glory of God shines in Your face. I confess that I have sometimes held ideas about You and about myself that stand against that knowledge. Pull down every fortress in my mind that resists Your truth. Bring my thinking into glad obedience to You. Where I have been carried off by philosophy and vain deceit, bring me home. Where I have made myself a prisoner of fear, set me free. Keep my mind in the simplicity that is in You, and let me find rest under Your gentle yoke. In Your name I pray, Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.