Faithful Steward Ministries and FSM Women's Outreach

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Building upon yesterday’s Soldiers Devotional about Surrender, we bring you a Sermon by C.H. Spurgeon that begins with ” THIS chapter presents the remarkable spectacle of a minister of the gospel of peace going forth to
war.” Even after surrendering our lives to Christ, the battles will rage and our duty remains.

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CONTEXT and COMMENTS

10:3–5 In keeping with his personal strategy in engaging in discussion with Jews in synagogues and Athenians on the Areopagus (Mars Hill), Paul here advocated the importance of depending upon divine resources rather than human methods and strategies. When we use theological and philosophical reasoning in presenting or defending the gospel, we are to do so graciously, humbly, and prayerfully (1Pt 3:15–16).

Paul W. Barnett, “2 Corinthians,” in CSB Apologetics Study Bible, ed. Ted Cabal (Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers, 2017), 1459.

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10:4–5 weapons of our warfare are not carnal. Because the battle is spiritual, the weapons are not swords and spears, nor human wisdom and tricks (2 Corinthians 2:17; 1 Cor. 2:4), but the Word, prayer, and the power of the Spirit (2 Corinthians 6:6–7). mighty through God to the pulling down of strong holds. God’s power works through God’s means to overcome all of Satan’s devices: worldly strategies, philosophies, and everything set up to reign in God’s place.

Joel R. Beeke, Michael P. V. Barrett, and Gerald M. Bilkes, eds., The Reformation Heritage KJV Study Bible (Grand Rapids, MI: Reformation Heritage Books, 2014), 1681.

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(“We,” v. 3) Casting down imaginations—a word alluding to ‘reckon’ (v. 2), ‘reckonings’ [logismous], calculating ‘reasonings.’ Whereas “thought” [noema] expresses men’s own device, intent of living after their own will. high thing [hupsoma]. So it ought to be translated, Rom. 8:39: distinct Greek from Eph. 3:18, “height” [hupsos], and Rev. 21:16, which belongs to God and heaven, whence we receive nothing hurtful. But “high thing” is not so much “height” as something made high, and belongs to those regions of air where the powers of darkness ‘exalt themselves’ against Christ and us (Eph. 2:2; 6:12). exalteth itself. 2 Thess. 2:4 supports the English version [so Vulgate: epairomenon, ‘extollentem se’], rather than it ‘lifted up.’ Such were the high towers of Judaic self-righteousness, philosophic speculations, and rhetorical sophistries, the “knowledge” so much prized by many, which opposed the “knowledge of God” at Corinth. True knowledge makes men humble. Where self is exalted God is not known. Arrange: ‘Bringing every thought [i.e., intent of the mind: noema] into captivity to the obedience of Christ’—i.e., to obey Christ. The apostle’s spiritual warfare (1.) demolishes what is opposed to Christ; (2.) leads captive; (3.) brings into obedience to Christ (Rom. 1:5; 16:26). The ‘reasonings,’ “imaginations,” are ‘cast down.’ The ‘mental intents,’ ‘thoughts,’ are made willing captives, rendering the voluntary obedience of faith to Christ the conqueror.

David Brown, A. R. Fausset, and Robert Jamieson, A Commentary, Critical, Experimental, and Practical, on the Old and New Testaments: Acts–Revelation, vol. VI (London; Glasgow: William Collins, Sons, & Company, Limited, n.d.), 361.

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SERMON

FORTS DEMOLISHED, AND PRISONERS TAKEN

“Casting down imaginations and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge
of God, and bringing into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.”
2 Corinthians 10:5.

NO. 1473
A SERMON
DELIVERED ON LORD’S-DAY MORNING, MAY 11, 1879,
BY C. H. SPURGEON,
AT THE METROPOLITAN TABERNACLE, NEWINGTON.