It’s Not a Flesh Thing

2 Corinthians 10:1–6 CSB

1 Now I, Paul, myself, appeal to you by the meekness and gentleness of Christ—I who am humble among you in person but bold toward you when absent. 2 I beg you that when I am present I will not need to be bold with the confidence by which I plan to challenge certain people who think we are living according to the flesh. 3 For although we live in the flesh, we do not wage war according to the flesh, 4 since the weapons of our warfare are not of the flesh, but are powerful through God for the demolition of strongholds. We demolish arguments 5 and every proud thing that is raised up against the knowledge of God, and we take every thought captive to obey Christ. 6 And we are ready to punish any disobedience, once your obedience is complete.

Apparently false apostles had accused Paul of being two-faced, this is why he is writing, to address this misconception.

The accusation is that Paul is weak and timid face to face but speaks boldly when away - their thought, Paul didn’t have the gravitas or presence to be an apostle.

Our standard is Jesus, not man.

People often think they know how things should be - we all have opinions right?

How we act, how we engage the world around us must be as Jesus would have, not the world’s idea of Jesus but the Biblical Jesus.

If we are to know the standard, if we are to follow the Biblical Jesus then we must read His word.

We need to understand we are in a spiritual war.

To be clear, God has already won, we have the victory…

Still, the enemy is attacking and we cannot sit idly by, we must be in the fight…

Our targets include strongholds, false arguments, and pride that denies the truth of God.

A stronghold is a deeply ingrained pattern of thought, belief, or behavior that opposes God’s will and hinders spiritual growth.

False arguments include worldly theology, false teachings and mis-interpretation of Scripture.

We all know what pride is, it is in being so arrogant to believe we have better answers that God.

Our weapons are not of this world.

If our battle isn’t against flesh then we cannot fight with weapons of flesh.

We need to get our minds right for battle.

Paul says we take our thoughts captive - we are not slaves to our thoughts.

We have the ability in Christ to turn away from thoughts rooted in the flesh and conform them to be obedience in Christ.