Hello Readers!  Welcome to Renaissance Woman where, this week, I am posting another installment in my Whole Armor of God study series.

My study passage is Ephesians 6:10-18a and I am currently looking at the Helmet of Salvation.  In last week’s post, I quoted 2 Corinthians 10:4-6: “For the weapons of our warfare are not carnal but mighty in God for pulling down strongholds, casting down arguments and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ, and being ready to punish all disobedience when your obedience is fulfilled.”  This passage has been at the forefront of my mind as I have considered what ‘bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ’ means in terms the Helmet of Salvation protecting the head and thus our thoughts. 

Do you ever think about yourself? Of course we do but I mean paying deliberate attention to how exactly it feels when you think.  Do you recognize there is a YOU that knows YOU are thinking thoughts?  YOU are thinking and the thoughts themselves can be scrutinized, considered, and then either accepted or disregarded.  We are not separated from our thoughts because the chemicals associated with them affect our bodies but neither are they the masters of us.  Our brains are constantly absorbing information and, as we aren’t always aware of all we are absorbing, I do recognize that some of the thoughts that come into our minds are utterly foreign to who and what we know we are.  Still, the thought can be recognized as such and, while it can be exhausting, we do have the ability to decide which thought we are going to entertain and which we are not.  Therefore, it is a fact that we are the Masters of our thoughts.  It only remains to be seen whether we will choose to act in that capacity.

When we with conscious deliberation choose to act in that capacity we Believers in Jesus can find ourselves on the horns of a dilemma.  Many are they who level accusations of close-mindedness at us.  We have all seen the caricature of the close-minded person.  This is a person who will not learn either through arrogance that he or she knows all or through fear that if he or she entertains a thought that is different from his or her current belief system, he or she will be scorned and cut off.  In religious terms, there is the fear of the possibility of being led astray by a devil and ending up spending an eternity in hell.  Few people genuinely wish to be close minded and yet, there is no denying the very real danger of indiscriminate open-mindedness.  There are arguments and high things that exalt themselves against the knowledge of God and which are well worth eradicating from the fields of our minds.  We Believers must be discerning, holding fast to what is good and rejecting what is not. 

How do we do that?  I am not a proponent of deciding for ourselves what is good and evil because that is eating the fruit of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil and the fruit of that tree is death.  This passage in 2 Corinthians tells us we are to be “bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ.”  What does that mean?  Is that thinking only what our Church leaders tells us is okay to think?  Is it following the Bible like a rule book and obeying everything we read in it?  If that is so, what do we do when we encounter passages that appear to contradict each other?  And then, if we are among that group of Believers who have seen that the law of the Spirit of life in Christ Jesus has made us free from the law of sin and death (see Romans 8:2), what are we obeying?  Jesus did say, “if you love me, keep my commandments” (John 14:15) which He’d already given in John 13:34: “A new commandment I give to you, that you love one another; as I have loved you, that you also love one another.”  John the Beloved does expand on this a bit in his 1^st letter: “Beloved, if our heart does not condemn us, we have confidence toward God.  And whatever we ask we receive from Him, because we keep His commandments and do those things that are pleasing in His sight.  And this is His commandment: that we should believe on the name of His Son Jesus Christ and love one another, as He gave us commandment.”

I do think it’s important to note the Greek words translated as “keep” and “obey/obedience” in these different passages are not the same.  The Greek word translated as “keep” is number 5083 in the Strong’s Concordance: tereo which means “to guard from loss or injury”.  Obey is a bit more complicated: as I run down the list of scripture passages containing the word “obey”, I find there are 6 unique Greek words all translated as “obey” (there are 7 different Strong’s Numbers but 3980 is the verb form of 3982 [peitharchein, peitho] so I’m counting them as one word). I could spend weeks studying “obey” but, for the sake of this study, I will focus on the Greek noun translated “obedience” in 2 Corinthians 10:4: hupakoe (G5218) and the verb hupakouo (G5219) translated “obey” in various passages.

What do we think of when we hear the words “obey” or “obedience”?  The first meaning that comes to mind is “to do what one is told”.  Perhaps it is the same for you.  I admit I was surprised to find that wasn’t the meaning of the Greek word nor is it the first thing I read when I look up “obey” in the dictionary.  The first thing I read in the dictionary entry is “to hear” and that is backed up by the definitions for the Greek.  The Strong’s defines hupakoe (G5218) as, “attentive hearkening”.  It does go on to define the word as “by implication compliance or submission” but also says that hupakoe comes from hupakouo (G5219).  Hupakouo is defined as, “to hear under (as a subordinate) to listen attentively, to heed or conform to a command or authority”.  Hupakouo is a compound word formed of hupo (G5259) and akouo (G191).  Akouo means, “to hear” but I found the definition of hupo particularly interesting.

It means “under” or “beneath” but with verbs means “the agency or means-through”.  Returning to 2 Corinthians 10:5 in the Greek, I find that same little word tou which tells me the Apostle Paul is not admonishing us to force our thoughts to conform with strict obedience to some rigid system but is rather saying we are bringing every thought into captivity to Christ’s obedience.

Hebrews 5:8 says that Jesus “though He was a Son, yet He learned obedience by the things which He suffered.”  The next verse says, “And having been perfected, He became the author of eternal salvation to all who obey (hupakouo!) Him.”  The same Greek word is used by Paul in Romans 1:5-6: “Through Him we have received grace and apostleship for obedience to the faith among all nations for His name among whom you also are the called of Jesus Christ.” 

I have a 12-week study booklet on Romans.  I don’t even know how many years it has been since I first picked it up intending to spend 12 weeks in the Book of Romans and yet am still on question 2 of Week 2: “What might Paul mean by ‘the obedience of faith’?”  I still don’t have a concise answer to that beyond “it’s all interconnected and it’s all Jesus Christ.”  Romans 10:17: “So then faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God.”  Galatians 2:20: “I have been crucified with Christ; it is no longer I who live, but Christ lives in me; and the life which I now live in the flesh I live by faith OF (tou) the Son of God, who loved me and gave Himself for me.”  The meaning of obedience is “attentive hearkening”.  The emphasis has to be on hearing. 

This post is getting to be rather long so I will close with this: we bring our every thought into the captivity of the obedience of Christ.  He is the Word of the Father.  His Spirit lives in us speaking the Word that is Jesus Christ to us.  Thus, we don’t have to worry that our bringing our thoughts into captivity means we are engaging in some form of religious close-mindedness.  Neither do we have to worry that our desire to hear and learn and live accordingly will lead us to dangerous levels of open-mindedness.  The same mind that was in Christ Jesus is in us through the Holy Spirit therefore we are not closed or open minded but rather Christ-minded.  We are joined to the Lord and are thus of One Spirit with Him.  May the Spirit of Truth guide us into greater understanding of this reality in Christ over the coming days.

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Amen.

Unless noted otherwise, all Scriptures are quoted from The Holy Bible, New King James Version, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, Tennessee, 1982

References     

2 Corinthians 10:5 Interlinear: reasonings bringing down, and every high thing lifted up against the knowledge of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of the Christ, (biblehub.com)

Guralnik, David B., Webster’s New World Dictionary of the American Language, Second College Edition, William Collins + World Publishing Co., Inc., Cleveland • New York, 1970, 1976

Strong, James, The New Strong’s Exhaustive Concordance of the Bible, Thomas Nelson Publishers, Nashville, TN, 1990

Wilson, Jared C., Knowing the Bible: Romans A 12-Week Study, Crossway, Wheaton, Illinois, 2013, Page 12