Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Corinthians · About this commentary
The Weapons Are Not of the Flesh
2 Corinthians 10:1-6
1 Now I Paul, myself, entreat you by the humility and gentleness of Christ, I who in your presence am lowly among you, but being absent am bold toward you. · WEB
The siege language is aimed at arguments rather than people, and the offensive is held back until the congregation is ready.
The tone changes here and the letter never returns to what it was. It opens with the charge quoted as the critics phrased it: I who in your presence am lowly among you, but being absent am bold toward you.
A man who writes hard letters and arrives meek. Paul does not deny the description; he appeals by the humility and gentleness of Christ, which places the meekness he is being mocked for on the highest possible authority.
Verse 2 shows him deciding what kind of visit to make: I beg you that I may not, when present, show courage with the confidence with which I intend to be bold against some. He would rather not need to.
Then the distinction the passage rests on: though we walk in the flesh, we don't wage war according to the flesh. The first clause is conceded without qualification. He lives in a body with its limitations, which is what the earlier chapters said at length 2 Corinthians 4:7. What is denied is the method.
And the military vocabulary that follows is siege vocabulary throughout. The weapons of our warfare are mighty before God to the throwing down of strongholds — the word for demolishing fortifications. Then throwing down imaginations and every high thing that is exalted against the knowledge of God.
What is being besieged is named exactly, and it is not persons. Reasonings, and elevated things set against knowledge of God. His rivals are people, and the campaign is against their arguments.
The objective is stated as bringing every thought into captivity to the obedience of Christ. Prisoners are taken, and the destination is obedience to Christ rather than to Paul — a distinction he has already made about their faith 2 Corinthians 1:24.
And verse 6 sets the sequence, which is the most restrained thing in the paragraph: being in readiness to avenge all disobedience when your obedience is made full.
Readiness, not action. He will address the resistance only after the congregation's own obedience is complete — which means he refuses to act against a faction while the majority is still undecided. The discipline waits on their recovery rather than causing it.
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