Confronting Our Stinking Thinking

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Nate Devlin. July 19, 2026. 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28.

Summary

Nobody likes confrontation, unless there is something off with your personality. The word literally means that something is placed in front of us, nose to nose, and we usually perceive that something as threatening. But perceiving a thing as a threat does not make it one. Often we are confronted by the good: the truth, God himself, his Word, his church. King Jesus is good, but he is not safe. Confrontation is necessary for growth, for maturity, and for a sound mind.

Two weeks ago we were away visiting our son and worshiped at a small Reformed church that had been founded as a Methodist congregation. I met a woman who had grown up in that church. When she learned I was a Presbyterian pastor, the predictable questions came in rapid succession: predestination, election, sovereignty and free will, heaven and hell. Each was animated by zeal and, if you listened closely, a tinge of anxiety, because it was not just doctrine on the line but a sense of self that needed defending. I engaged, with her and her husband, a former Wesleyan pastor, and confronted the old familiar objections I once held myself, because it was the most loving thing I could do for them.

And I did it because that is exactly what happened to me. As a junior at Geneva College I took my first class in Reformed theology with Dr. Byron Curtis, and I was confronted with the sovereignty of God and the justice of election and reprobation. I hated it. I was offended, because what was being offended was my sense of self, my autonomy, my self-justification. I found myself, and I am not ashamed to say it, at one point after class in tears, arguing with my professor: are you telling me that I might go to heaven and my twin brother might go to hell because of God’s choice? I was angry. But I was not really angry because of the doctrine. I was angry because I was losing my sense of self and my grasp on who I thought God was. I was learning in real time that God was sovereign and I was not. The great thing about being confronted by the Word of God is that it requires you to deal with God on God’s terms. When I finally said, God, you are God and I am not, I was set free from burdens I did not know I was carrying. I had been trying to be God, responsible for everything and everybody, and it was making me quietly miserable, fearful, and anxious. The human mind is not capable of carrying the weight of God. It makes us, as Paul says, idle, fainthearted, helpless, and weak. But God wants us to have a sound mind and to be at peace.

The big idea: the path to a sound mind, the path to peace, runs right through confrontation. God has appointed pastors and elders to confront the unbiblical behavior and confused thinking of the congregation so that the people of God can be at peace (1 Thessalonians 5:12-14). The ESV says admonish, but the Greek is noutheteo, from which we get nouthetic; good counsel is confrontational. And Paul is concrete: leaders are to confront the idle. There is idolatry, and there is idle-atry. Idle does not mean merely lazy. In Scripture it means disordered, like a disorderly military retreat. To be idle is to be unbridled in one’s passions, to live without a plan, to set oneself outside God’s order. Idle is stinking thinking, and that kind of thinking must be confronted.

Our minds are idle because of what theologians call the noetic effects of sin: the way sin has damaged the mind (nous) itself and its capacity to know and rightly interpret truth about God. People “suppress the truth” and their “foolish hearts were darkened” (Romans 1:18-23); “the mind that is set on the flesh is hostile to God” (Romans 8:7); the Gentiles walk “in the futility of their minds” (Ephesians 4:17-18). The Gerasene demoniac in Luke 8 is the great sign of this. The man was running around, naked, living among the tombs. Jesus confronts him, and the people find him sitting at the feet of Jesus, clothed, and in his right mind. Jesus must do the same for us, because our minds are darkened.

What does confronting our stinking thinking mean? It means dealing with God on God’s terms. It means accepting our duties as Christians. Gilbert Meilaender’s The Way That Leads There, which we are reading in our book study, says that every time we speak the truth we come into agreement with God’s order. It means serious engagement with the Word of God, being “transformed by the renewal of your mind” (Romans 12:2), which is why weekly worship is irreducible and daily Bible reading matters. It means honoring the Session and the elders who labor among us. And it means not running from our problems. When God in his love says, I need to speak to you, walk toward Christ and let him deal with you. This is an article of faith: there is peace on the other side of confrontation. So when the moment comes, have faith, listen, and receive it, for this is God’s work in your life.

Key texts: 1 Thessalonians 5:12-28; Romans 1:18-23; Romans 8:7; Ephesians 4:17-18; Luke 8:26-39; Romans 12:1-2

For reflection

• Where am I dealing with God on my terms rather than his, and what burden am I carrying because of it?
• What stinking thinking in my own life is God currently confronting through his Word, his church, or my circumstances?
• Am I running from a problem that I should be walking toward with Christ?