Thinking in Christ — Issue 17: Questions Taken Captive

Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good. (1 Thess 5:21)

The command comes first, and it comes from outside the questioner. Testing is not a power the mind grants itself. It is an order given to the mind. The question does not sit above the Word. The question is brought under it.

Therefore the first thing to settle about questioning is not technique. It is lordship. A question asked apart from Christ is not neutral ground. No mind is neutral (Rom 12:2). Every thought is either taken captive to the obedience of Christ or left to serve another master (2 Cor 10:5). The question, like the thought, belongs to one kingdom or the other.

This is why questioning must begin with a confession about the questioner. The heart is deceitful above all things, and it is exceedingly corrupt. Who can know it? (Jer 17:9). The one who asks is not a clean instrument examining a dirty world. The instrument itself needs examining. A question can be honest, and a question can be a hiding place. The same mouth that asks for light can ask in order to avoid it.

Consider the first question ever recorded. "Has God really said?" The serpent did not ask because he lacked information. He asked to loosen trust (Gen 3:1). That is the pattern of questioning apart from Christ: the question is aimed at the command, not submitted to it. It treats God's Word as a claim to be tried by a higher court, and it appoints the questioner as the judge. Every age repeats this question in new dress. The words change. The posture does not.

Yet Scripture also commands questioning, and it commands it in the opposite posture. The difference is not between asking and not asking. The difference is between the question that submits and the question that revolts.

Ask, and it will be given you. Seek, and you will find. Knock, and it will be opened to you (Matt 7:7). The asking here is not an interrogation of God. It is dependence on Him. The questioner comes empty-handed. He does not demand that God justify Himself. He asks God to give what he lacks. This is the first kind of question the believer learns: the question asked upward, in need, to a Giver who gives liberally and without reproach.

But if any of you lacks wisdom, let him ask of God, who gives to all liberally and without reproach, and it will be given to him (Jas 1:5). Wisdom is not extracted from the world by a clever enough question. Wisdom is given. The question is the open hand, not the lever. And because the gift comes from God, the question itself is disciplined: it asks for what God has promised to give, in the way God has appointed to give it.

From this posture, the testing of all things takes its proper shape. Beloved, don't believe every spirit, but test the spirits, whether they are of God, because many false prophets have gone out into the world (1 John 4:1). Testing is commanded precisely because deception is abroad. Not every voice that speaks with confidence speaks from God. Not every claim that feels certain is true. The test is not the questioner's instinct. The test is the apostolic witness, the Word that names Christ come in the flesh. A spirit is tested by whether it confesses what God has revealed, not by whether it impresses the hearer.

Likewise, the noble hearer does not receive a message and stop there. Now these were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, examining the Scriptures daily to see whether these things were so (Acts 17:11). Readiness and examination stand together. They received the word eagerly, and they checked it daily. Neither blind acceptance nor proud suspicion, but a readiness that submits every claim to the Scriptures. The question here is aimed at the claim, and the court is the Word. The questioner does not stand above the text. He sits under it, day after day, and lets it judge what he has heard.

This also governs the questions we ask of one another. He who pleads his cause first seems right — until another comes and questions him (Prov 18:17). The first telling always sounds complete. The question is the second voice that exposes what the first telling hid. This is the proper work of a probing question: not to win, not to humiliate, but to bring what was partial into the light. A claim that cannot survive a fair question was never as strong as it sounded. A claim that can survive it stands firmer for having been questioned.

But the question must also turn inward, and here the discipline cuts deepest. The reflective question is not "How do I feel about this?" The reflective question is "What does the Word say about the heart that holds this view?" The heart deceives. Therefore the questioner must ask after his own motives, his own loves, his own willingness to be corrected. A question that only ever moves outward — toward teachers, toward institutions, toward enemies — and never inward, toward the self, is a question that has exempted its asker from judgment. No such exemption exists.

At the same time, the inward turn must not become a closed circle. The self cannot be its own court, because the self is the defendant. The question turns inward only to carry what it finds outward again, to the Word that searches it and to the Christ who judges it. Self-examination that ends in the self ends in either despair or self-congratulation. Self-examination that ends in Christ ends in truth.

For all questioning finds its end in Him. The Scriptures testify of Him (John 5:39). He is the truth the questions are really after, whether the questioner knows it or not (John 14:6). A question that refuses to arrive at Christ has not finished its journey. It has only stopped early. And a question that arrives at Christ finds that He is not merely an answer among answers. He is the One before whom every question must finally stand and be judged.

This is why the believer questions boldly and humbly at once. Boldly, because the Word commands testing, and the truth has nothing to fear from examination. Humbly, because the examiner is himself examined, and the mind that asks is a mind that must be renewed (Rom 12:2). Boldness without humility becomes the serpent's question. Humility without boldness becomes silence before falsehood. Both belong together only where Christ is Lord of the question.

So ask. Ask upward, in dependence. Ask of every claim whether it stands in the Scriptures. Ask of every spirit whether it confesses Christ. Ask of every first telling what the second voice would expose. Ask of your own heart what it is hiding. And let every question be taken captive to the obedience of Christ (2 Cor 10:5).

Test all things, and hold firmly that which is good (1 Thess 5:21). The question is a servant, not a master. Where it serves Christ, it serves the truth.