Read Pastor Prince’s Entry for 4th July Here:
What Pastor Prince’s entry is about
When we feel condemned because of our sinful thoughts, it makes us anxious that our standing with God has been compromised. Instead of focusing on how we have not obeyed, we are to focus instead on how Christ obeyed. This reminds us that our righteousness comes from Christ and how he obeyed, not because of anything that we do. This is what it means to bring “every thought into the captivity to the obedience of Christ” (2 Cor 10:5).
Things to agree with and encourage
There are lots to agree with. Firstly, I appreciate and respect how pastoral Pastor Prince is here. There is a compassion for his readers, not wanting them to go through what he went through. It surely must have been very stressful feeling like you “had to confess every one of [the bad] thoughts and seek God’s forgiveness.” (para. 2) Perhaps what happened was that he feared that if he missed out on one, his salvation was in jeopardy?
Secondly, the exaltation of Christ was simply splendid! Christ indeed makes his people righteous because of how he obeyed (Romans 5:19; para. 3)! It is only only only because of Christ and his work on the cross that his people are righteous before a holy God. And it is good for Pastor Prince to keep reminding us of this glorious truth! Praise Jesus the Lamb of God whose blood washes his people white as snow!
Things that are worth taking a closer look at
Pastor Prince uses 2 Cor 10:5 to bring in the idea of taking bad thoughts that condemn us captive. Let’s take a look at it. We will use the English translation Pastor Prince uses, which looks like it is the NKJV:
5 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,
One of the things that we need to do in order to understand what the author means by what he writes is to look at what he writes in context. When we do this for 2 Cor 5:5, we find that the Apostle Paul is in the middle admonishing the Corinthians. The issue is that there are some people, perhaps outside of the church, who are slandering Paul (10:2). The Corinthians also seem to not be holding fast to the Apostle’s gospel message (11:3-6), which of course would be spiritually disastrous for them! So Paul, in his love for them (11:2), desires that they stick with him and the gospel message that he brought them. He plans to see them in person soon, he says, and that he would like to see that they have changed, so that he need not show a kind of boldness that he plans on showing the people who suspect him of ‘walking according to the flesh’ (10:2).
In context then, 2 Cor 10:5 is about Paul working to do two things. First, to disqualify false teachers who preach a false gospel. And second, to bring straying Christians who have been persuaded by the false gospel back to what is true. He wants to take the false thoughts that these two groups of people have to the obey Christ.
“Hang on a minute,” you say, “you just changed the verse from ‘Christ’s obedience’ to ‘obey Christ’. What’s up with that?” Thanks. Let me explain.
“Obedience of Christ” is a perfectly legitimate translation. But take a look at this verse in Acts which will show us how a phrase with that little word ‘of’ can work in two different ways.
31 Then the churches throughout all Judea, Galilee, and Samaria had peace and were edified. And walking in the fear of the Lord and in the comfort of the Holy Spirit, they were multiplied. (Acts 9:31 NKJV)
Here we find two phrases similar in construction to ‘obedience of Christ’. I have underlined them.
Let’s start with ‘comfort of the Holy Spirit’. Who is the one doing the comforting? The obvious answer is that the Holy Spirit is doing the comforting.
How about ‘fear of the Lord’? Who is the one doing the fearing? If we do exactly what we did with the ‘comfort of the Holy Spirit,’ then we are going to end up with the Lord being the one who is doing the fearing, which would just be ridiculous. Someone else is fearing the Lord.
So let’s go back to our verse, 2 Cor 10:5. ‘Obedience of Christ’. Which is it then? Is it Christ who is the one doing the obeying (like in the ‘comfort of the Holy Spirit’ example)? Or is it someone else who is obeying Christ (like in the ‘fear of the Lord’ example)?
Based on what we have seen in the context, it is clear that wanting to disqualify false teachers and their false teaching and bringing straying Christians back to the true gospel fits in much better with the idea that Paul is getting these people to obey Christ, which is not what Pastor Prince’s entry is saying. Therefore, this verse shouldn’t be used to ask someone to look to how Christ obeyed. It’s a very good thing to ask us to look to how Christ obeyed, but we can’t use 2 Cor 10:5 for that.
Like I said in the previous section, there are things to agree with and encourage in Pastor Prince’s entry! And perhaps it looks like I am being overly-particular about 2 Cor 10:5. But this matters, doesn’t it? Paul would want us to understand him the way he meant for us to understand him.
I suppose the bigger question that Pastor Prince is seeking to address is this: “How can we be assured of our justification as Christians when we find ourselves struggling with sin?” Instead of 2 Cor 10:5, perhaps it would be more apt to look to a book like 1 John. 1 John 5:13 is a purpose statement, telling us why the Apostle John wrote this letter. It says, ‘I have written these things to you who believe in the name of the Son of God so that you may know that you have eternal life.’ I’ll end this post by letting Beynon and Sach in their excellent book Dig Deeper take us home.
If the author has told us why he is writing, we should let that guide our interpretation of the rest of the book.
The letter of 1 John, for example, contains several ‘tests’ by which you can find out whether your faith is genuine. Do you trust that Jesus is King? Do you have a genuine love for other Christians? Is your life marked by obedience to Jesus’ commands?
They are great questions, but sometimes in the hands of people with over-sensitive consciences they can wreck havoc. One of the most loving Christians we know has regular 1 John crisis, thinking that he’s failed the loving-people test and so he can’t be a real Christian. But he would do well to look again at the purpose statement of 1 John (see above). It is a letter written to believers to assure them, and to give them confidence that they have eternal life. You’re supposed to think, ‘I love other Christians – not perfectly, but I do love them – and that’s fantastic because it means I must be a real Christian on my way to heaven!’ – page 33.
Conclusion
Pastor Prince’s desire to assure Christians who have trusted in the saving work of Jesus is fantastic, but unfortunately, the key verse he uses has been misinterpreted.
PS. Look up 2 Cor 10:5 in the ESV and NIV. In order to make clear where their translation committees stand, they have phrased things in a way that communicates that Christ is the one who is being obeyed in this verse.
Dear Pastor Prince 