How to “take every thought captive” without becoming a slave to your sin

People tell me they’re “taking every thought captive” (2 Cor 10:5). I think they mean they’re trying to ignore the plaguing thoughts that arise out of emotional or spiritual sin and weakness. Thoughts born of worry, lust, despair, fear, and doubt. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t.

I think the popular use of this verse is really just a religious form of “think happy thoughts”. Of course, the motive to please Christ is pure—I’m not questioning that—but the method is the same: take those frowns and turn them upside down. Think about joy. Think about peace, and love. Think, think, think.

But thinking about joy isn’t really joy, is it? So many times when we think we are “taking every thought captive” we still seem, somehow, to be in captivity ourselves. All tied up in our own heads, thinking our way out of sin and out of its hold over us. Self-aware and self-centered.

Is this what Paul has in mind? Probably not.

First, 2 Corinthians 10:5 is not about psychology, but about false doctrine. “We destroy arguments and every lofty opinion raised against the knowledge of God, and take every thought captive...” Paul says. Second, Paul is not encouraging his audience to take their own thoughts captive. He’s exerting his authority over them and saying, “Let me straighten out your wrong understanding of God”.

Paul is not a counsellor, encouraging us to explore our inner thoughts, coaxing us to take a new perspective. He’s a minister of the Word, defending his ministry of reconciliation, and he’s going to wrangle up those domineering thoughts and turn them into slaves for Christ. He’s at spiritual war against the strongholds that would bind up the free people of Christ:

For though we walk in the flesh, we are not waging war according to the flesh. For the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh but have divine power to destroy strongholds. (2 Cor 10:3-4)

If we want to find this passage helpful in personal struggles against the private emotional thoughts in our own heads, we need to use it correctly. Which means that first we need to acknowledge that every renegade thought is rooted in wrong thinking about God—in false doctrine, to be precise. You may have your theology of end times or spiritual gifts all straight, but if you’re sucked into the cycle of self-pity yet one more time, you have a doctrinal problem. You’re thinking wrong about God.

Not only that, but you’re likely hurting someone else with your wrong-thinking, too. Popular psychology respects the sacred privacy of personal pain and weakness. Often the way a person’s inner struggles are hurting those outside them is overlooked, underestimated, and excused. But sin, though it may start in the privacy of your own heart, always plays out in the way we treat others.

Which means taking captive every thought involves confession of sin and repentance. This is where the Bible’s ‘psychology’ parts ways with the world’s. It’s also why the Bible’s help actually works.

Finally, what does Paul do with those “captive thoughts” once he’s got them in his power? Here it is: “[we] take captive every thought to obey Christ”. Active, Spirit-empowered gospel obedience is the necessary final step in taking thoughts captive. It’s not enough just to wrestle your thoughts down and pin them there. Now they have you captive with them, thinking, thinking, thinking, struggling always to overpower them by the strength of your thoughts. Most of the time we wear down and lose the battle. The solution? Give those thoughts work to do. Make them slaves of Christ.

But the only kind of obedience that will keep those captive thoughts down is self-emptying, sacrificial, and costly love—for this is the law of Christ (Gal 6:2). Volunteering for a day won’t do the trick. You have to change your life. You have to reorient it. Get outside your own head and take on someone else’s burden. Counter the inner agony of sin with the blessed suffering of Christ. 

Taking thoughts captive isn’t a mental game we play inside our own heads. It’s war, waged with external weapons—the word of God—on an external battleground—your relationships with others. We have, in the gospel, the resources to be free. Let’s use them.

We know that our old self was crucified with him in order that the body of sin might be brought to nothing, so that we would no longer be enslaved to sin. For one who has died has been set free from sin. (Rom 6:6-7)