2 Corinthians 6

Today’s Passage: 2 Corinthians 6

Paul has just told the Corinthians that God made Him who knew no sin to be sin on our behalf, and that we are ambassadors carrying the appeal of God to the world. Now he turns that appeal on the church itself. Do not receive the grace of God in vain, he says. Do not take this treasure into your hands and then let it lie there doing nothing. He reaches back to Isaiah for a word the LORD once spoke about His Servant, and lifts it into the present with a shout that has been ringing down the centuries ever since: now is the time of favor, now is the day of salvation. From there the chapter opens out in three movements, and each one is different in temperature from the last. First a defense that turns into one of the most magnificent passages Paul ever wrote, a catalogue of everything his ministry has cost him, twenty-eight items running from beatings and sleepless nights through purity and kindness and the Holy Spirit, and ending in nine paradoxes that hold sorrow and joy, poverty and wealth, dying and living, all in the same hands. Then, without warning, the argument breaks and becomes tenderness. He calls them by name, tells them his heart is standing wide open, and asks them, as a father asks children, to open theirs. And last, the reason their hearts had narrowed in the first place: a divided allegiance. Five questions fall like hammer blows, and behind them lies a promise so warm that the call to come out ends not in isolation but in adoption.

As you read, hold this: Now is the day of salvation, and the God who calls His people out from every rival allegiance calls them not into loneliness but into His own house, as sons and daughters of the Lord Almighty.

2 Corinthians 6:1–2 (BSB)

¹ As God’s fellow workers, then, we urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain. ² For He says: “In the time of favor I heard you, and in the day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is the time of favor; now is the day of salvation!

Notice first what Paul dares to call himself and his companions. Fellow workers, laboring together with God. Sit with that a moment before you rush on, because it is a staggering thing to say. The God who needs nothing has arranged His work in this world so that ordinary people are put to labor alongside Him, and He does not send them out as errand boys but calls them colleagues. And their first errand is an urgent one: do not receive the grace of God in vain. He is not warning them that their salvation might evaporate. He is warning that grace can be received and then left lying idle, admired but never spent, the way a man might accept a rich gift and then set it on a shelf and go on living exactly as he lived before. Then Paul reaches for Isaiah, where the LORD speaks to His Servant and promises an appointed moment when the answer will come.

"This is what the LORD says: “In the time of favor I will answer You, and in the day of salvation I will help You; I will keep You and appoint You to be a covenant for the people, to restore the land, to apportion its desolate inheritances," Isaiah 49:8 (BSB)

That promised moment, Paul says, has arrived. The Servant has come, the covenant is made, the door is open, and so he cannot keep his voice down: “Behold, now is the time of favor (εὐπρόσδεκτος) euprosdektos, pronounced yoo-PROS-dek-toss. Strong's G2144, well-received, acceptable, heartily welcome. Paul quotes Isaiah with one Greek word for “favor” and then, in his own comment, reaches for a stronger one. Euprosdektos is dektos, acceptable, with the prefix eu, well or good, laid on the front of it: not merely acceptable but heartily welcome, gladly received, the kind of welcome that leans toward you. It is the word he uses for the offering of the Gentiles that God delights in, and Peter uses it for the spiritual sacrifices that are acceptable to God through Jesus Christ. Weigh what it means here. Paul does not say that this is the season in which God will tolerate a sinner’s approach if the sinner behaves. He says this is the well-welcomed hour, the time when coming to God is met with open arms. That is the character of the God who set the day. He is not waiting behind the door to see whether you are worth admitting. He is the Father in the story who saw the boy while he was still a long way off and ran. The urgency of the now is real, and so is the warmth of it, and the two belong together. Do not turn a welcome like that into a shelf ornament. ; now is the day of salvation!” Twice he says now. Not someday, not when circumstances improve, not when you have made yourself more presentable. The window in which God is pleased to receive sinners is standing open at this exact hour, and no one is promised another. If you have never yet closed with Christ, this is your day. And if you have, then the same urgency applies to the grace already in your hands. Today is the day to use it.

2 Corinthians 6:3–5 (BSB)

³ We put no obstacle in anyone’s way, so that no one can discredit our ministry. ⁴ Rather, as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way: in great endurance; in troubles, hardships, and calamities; ⁵ in beatings, imprisonments, and riots; in labor, sleepless nights, and hunger;

Before he lists what his ministry has cost, Paul states his rule. He will put no obstacle in anyone’s way. He will not let his own conduct become the stone a seeking soul stumbles over on the way to Christ. There is a whole way of life packed into that sentence. It governed his refusal to take money at Corinth, his willingness to give up liberties he had every right to keep, his care to be above suspicion in handling the collection. The gospel is offensive enough on its own terms, and Paul is determined that nothing else about him will be. He wants the cross to be the only thing anyone trips over.

Then the catalogue begins, and it is important to see what kind of list it is. His rivals commended themselves with letters and eloquence. Paul commends himself as a servant of God, and his first credential is great endurance (ὑπομονή) hypomonē, pronounced hoo-po-mo-NAY. Strong's G5281, steadfast endurance, remaining under a weight. Hypomonē is built from hypo, under, and menō, to remain: to stay under a weight instead of crawling out from beneath it. Our word “patience” is far too mild for it. This is not the mild temper of a man waiting quietly in a queue; it is the quality of a soldier who holds his ground when the line is buckling, and the Greeks used it of a city under siege that would not open its gates. Scripture never treats it as something we manufacture. James says the testing of your faith develops perseverance, and Paul says elsewhere that suffering produces it, which means God grows this particular grace only in weather you would not have chosen. Note too where it stands in the list: at the head, before every hardship, as the umbrella over all of them. Paul is not saying he suffered. Anyone can suffer. He is saying he remained. And that, in the end, is the credential God writes on His true servants, not brilliance or applause but the plain fact that they were still there in the morning, still preaching Christ, still loving the same difficult church. If you feel you have nothing impressive to offer God, consider that His own apostle’s first credential was simply that he did not quit. . Everything that follows hangs on that word. Three of the hardships come upon a man from the general trouble of life: troubles, hardships, and calamities, which is to say pressure that squeezes, tight places with no way out, and blows that fall from nowhere. Three come from human hands: beatings, imprisonments, and riots. Paul had been flogged with rods and with the thirty-nine lashes, had sat in stocks at Philippi, had watched cities erupt against him at Lystra and Ephesus and Thessalonica. And three he brought on himself for love of the churches: labor, sleepless nights, and hunger, the ordinary exhaustion of a man who worked leather half the night so that no congregation would have to feed him. Read those nine items and then remember what the men at Corinth were saying about him. They said his sufferings proved God was not with him. Paul says they are his letter of recommendation.

2 Corinthians 6:6–7 (BSB)

⁶ in purity, knowledge, patience, and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love; ⁷ in truthful speech and in the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left;

The list turns now, and the turn is beautiful. Having told them what he suffered, Paul tells them what he was like while he suffered, and this second half is the harder half. Any stubborn man can endure a beating. It takes the grace of God to come through beatings and riots and hunger with purity, knowledge, patience, and kindness still intact. Kindness especially. Hardship sours people; it makes them brittle and quick and self-protective. Paul had every excuse to be a hard man by now, and he was not. Then he names the source, because he is not building a monument to his own character: “in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love.” The word behind sincere is unhypocritical, love without the actor’s mask, and it is the Spirit of God who produces it. Everything in the first list was endured by a man; everything in this list was grown in him by God.

Then two more, and then an image. “In truthful speech and in the power of God” answers the two things his rivals traded in, for they had glittering speech and a claim to power, and Paul says the real article is a word that is simply true and a power that is simply God’s. And finally: “with the weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left.” The picture is a soldier fully armed, sword in the right hand and shield in the left, equipped both to press forward and to stand and take a blow. Righteousness is his whole armory. He has no other weapon and wants no other. He will not defend himself with cleverness, or with maneuvering, or by returning the slanders that were flung at him. He fights with integrity and leaves the rest to God, which is a slow way to win an argument and the only way to win it worth having.

2 Corinthians 6:8–10 (BSB)

⁸ through glory and dishonor, slander and praise; viewed as imposters, yet genuine; ⁹ unknown, yet well-known; dying, and yet we live on; punished, yet not killed; ¹⁰ sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.

Now the passage rises into one of the summits of the New Testament, and it deserves to be taken slowly, a phrase at a time, the way you would walk a path with a view on either side. Through glory and dishonor, he says. In one town they tried to offer him sacrifices as a god; in the next they stoned him and dragged him out for dead, and it was sometimes the same town in the same week. Slander and praise: he learned to be governed by neither, which is a rarer freedom than we imagine. Then the paradoxes proper begin, seven of them, each one holding the world’s verdict and God’s verdict side by side.

Viewed as imposters, yet genuine. The word is the one used for a wandering charlatan, and that is what the men at Corinth were calling him. He does not deny that this is how he looks. He simply says it is not what he is, and lets the two stand together. Unknown, yet well-known. No one of importance in the Roman world had heard of Paul the tentmaker; his name never crossed a senator’s desk. He was known in the only place where being known matters. Dying, and yet we live on. He carried the sentence of death about with him and had come out the other side of it more times than he could count, and he says it with a kind of wonder, as a man who keeps waking up alive. Punished, yet not killed. Chastened, disciplined, brought low, and yet always the hand stopped short, because his times were in the hands of God and not of his enemies.

And then the last three, which are the deepest. Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing. Not sorrowful and then afterward rejoicing, as though joy were the reward for getting the grief over with, but both at once, in the same hour, in the same heart. This is the great secret of the Christian life and there is no learning it in comfort. A believer can weep real tears and hold real joy in the same breath, because the grief belongs to what is passing and the joy belongs to what is not. Poor, yet making many rich. Paul owned almost nothing. He had no house, no land, no savings, and a cloak he had to ask someone to bring him. Yet whole cities were made eternally wealthy through his preaching, and every believer reading this page is one of the heirs. Having nothing, and yet possessing everything. There is the crown of it. A man with empty hands who is a joint heir with Christ owns more than any emperor, and knows it, and can therefore be robbed of nothing that counts. Praise God for a gospel that can put words like those into the mouth of a hungry prisoner and make them simply, literally true.

2 Corinthians 6:11–13 (BSB)

¹¹ We have spoken freely to you, Corinthians. Our hearts are open wide. ¹² It is not our affection, but yours, that is restrained. ¹³ As a fair exchange—I speak as to my children—open wide your hearts also.

And here the whole letter softens, and you can almost hear the old man’s voice drop. He has been arguing, defending, listing, and suddenly he stops and calls them by name. “Corinthians.” He uses that address only once in the whole correspondence, and it lands like a hand laid on a shoulder. My mouth is open to you, he says, holding nothing back; “our hearts are open wide (πλατύνω) platynō, pronounced plah-TOO-no. Strong's G4115, to widen, to enlarge, to open wide. Platynō comes from platys, broad or wide, the root that also gives us the word for a broad street. It means to make roomy, to enlarge, to widen out. Paul uses it twice here, first in the perfect tense for his own heart, which means it was thrown open at some point in the past and has simply stayed that way ever since, and then as a command to theirs. The same word is used in the Greek Old Testament for the psalmist’s great line about running in the way of God’s commandments when the LORD enlarges his heart, and there is the clue to how any of this is possible. A heart does not widen by being scolded. It widens when God does the widening. The opposite is the condition Paul diagnoses in verse twelve, a heart grown narrow and tight, and if we are honest that is the default drift of every one of us. Disappointment shrinks us. Being misjudged shrinks us. We begin protecting a smaller and smaller space and calling it wisdom. So ask Him to do here what only He does: to make room in you again, for the people who have hurt you, for the church as it actually is, for the ones who have not yet come in. A wide heart is not a weakness. It is the shape of a soul that has been loved by God. .” Then the gentlest rebuke in Paul: it is not our affection, but yours, that is restrained. The trouble between them was never on his side. He had never narrowed toward them, never withdrawn, never cooled. They had cramped their hearts against him, and he tells them so without the least bitterness in it.

Then the appeal, and notice he does not appeal as an apostle with authority to command. “As a fair exchange, I speak as to my children, open wide your hearts also.” He is asking them for love, which is the one thing no office can require and no argument can extract. It has to be given. And there is something here worth carrying away from the whole chapter: a man who had been slandered by these very people, whose motives had been picked over and whose sufferings had been used against him, does not ask for an apology. He asks for their affection. That is what the love of Christ does to a heart. It leaves it too large to nurse a grievance. And it is worth asking, quietly, whether there is anyone toward whom your own heart has quietly narrowed, and whether the narrowing has been on their side or on yours.

2 Corinthians 6:14–15 (BSB)

¹⁴ Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership can righteousness have with wickedness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness? ¹⁵ What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?

Now Paul names what has been narrowing their hearts. A divided allegiance always does. And he says it with a farming word: do not be unequally yoked (ἑτεροζυγέω) heterozygeō, pronounced het-er-od-zoog-EH-oh. Strong's G2086, to be yoked together with a different kind. Heterozygeō is one of those words Paul appears to have coined for the occasion, and you can see its parts as plainly as the boards of a fence: heteros, of a different kind, and zygos, the yoke beam that lies across two necks. To be heterozygos is to be joined at the shoulder to something of another nature. The related adjective stands in the Greek Old Testament at Leviticus 19:19, in the law against mating two kinds of cattle, and the picture behind the whole family of words is agricultural rather than social. That is the key to reading the command rightly. Paul does not say “do not touch unbelievers.” He says do not get under one beam with them and try to plow. A yoke is not a friendship; it is a binding, load-bearing tie that forces two wills into one direction. And notice the mercy hidden in the warning. God is not fencing you off from people He loves and died for. He is telling you the truth about strain, because He knows what it does to a soul to be pulled year after year toward a furrow it did not choose, and He would spare you that. And remember what the yoke word does in the mouth of the Lord Jesus: take My yoke upon you, for My yoke is easy and My burden is light. There is one beam you were made for. with unbelievers. Every reader in that century knew the picture. The Law itself had made it a rule: “Do not plow with an ox and a donkey yoked together.” Two animals of different size, different stride, different temperament, bound to one beam and driven down one furrow. The ox pulls steadily and the donkey darts; the beam twists; the line wanders; and both beasts are chafed raw by an arrangement neither of them chose. It is not that the donkey is wicked. It is that the two were never made to pull together, and the strain falls on both.

Then five questions, and Paul does not answer any of them, because none of them needs an answer. What partnership can righteousness have with wickedness. What fellowship does light have with darkness. What harmony is there between Christ and Belial, an old name for the evil one that means worthlessness itself, set deliberately against the name of the Anointed. What does a believer have in common with an unbeliever. What agreement can exist between the temple of God and idols. Five times he presses the same point from a different side, and the cumulative weight of it is simply this: these are two different natures, and you cannot bind them into one team without tearing something.

Now hear this carefully, because the verse has been badly used. Paul is not telling you to withdraw from the world. He cannot be, because he had already written to this same church and forbidden precisely that reading in words there is no arguing with.

"I wrote you in my letter not to associate with sexually immoral people. I was not including the sexually immoral of this world, or the greedy and swindlers, or idolaters. In that case you would have to leave this world." 1 Corinthians 5:9–10 (BSB)

There it is in black and white from Paul’s own hand. He is not calling for a Christian ghetto, and his own life would refute him if he were, for he spent it in synagogues and marketplaces and rented halls among people who did not believe a word he said, and he ate at their tables. The Lord Jesus prayed not that His people be taken out of the world but that they be kept from the evil one. So the command is not “avoid unbelieving neighbors, coworkers, relatives, and friends.” Love them, work beside them, keep faith with them, tell them the gospel. The command concerns the yoke, the binding tie that fastens two lives to one direction and one purpose. That is broader than marriage, and it takes in a business partnership you cannot walk away from, a covenant of loyalty that will one day require you to choose, and above all in Corinth a place at the idol’s table. But marriage is the plainest case and the most binding of all, because there is no closer yoke on earth than two people made one flesh and pointed down a single furrow for life. And if you are already in a marriage where only one believes, hear what Paul told this same church elsewhere: he did not tell such a believer to leave. He told them to stay, and to live so that the unbelieving one might be won.

2 Corinthians 6:16 (BSB)

¹⁶ What agreement can exist between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said: “I will dwell with them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they will be My people.”

The last question is the deepest, and it explains all the others. Why can righteousness not partner with wickedness, or light keep company with darkness? Because of what you now are. “We are the temple of the living God.” Not we have a temple, not we visit one. We are it. The Corinthians lived in a city bristling with sanctuaries, every one of them housing a god that could not see or speak, and Paul tells this small, quarrelsome, unimpressive congregation that the living God has taken up residence in them. That is the reason a believer cannot be casually bound to what denies Him. It is not snobbery and it is not fear of contamination by association. It is that the God who fills the house has a claim on the house.

Then Paul strings together a chain of Old Testament promises, and this first one gathers up words God spoke in Leviticus and again through Ezekiel, the great covenant refrain that runs from Sinai to the last page of the Bible.

"And I will make My dwelling place among you, and My soul will not despise you. I will walk among you and be your God, and you will be My people." Leviticus 26:11–12 (BSB)

Hear the astonishing homeliness of it. He will walk among them, which is the same word used of God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. This is not a deity fenced behind a curtain in a stone building. This is the living God moving among His people, at home with them, unashamed of them. Everything the temples of Corinth pretended to offer, He actually gives, and He gives it not in a shrine on a hill but in a company of ordinary believers. No wonder Paul will not have that house rented out to idols.

2 Corinthians 6:17–18 (BSB)

¹⁷ “Therefore come out from among them and be separate, says the Lord. Touch no unclean thing, and I will receive you.” ¹⁸ And: “I will be a Father to you, and you will be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.”

The words of verse seventeen come from Isaiah, spoken to the exiles as Babylon’s grip was breaking and the road home stood open.

"Depart, depart, go out from there! Touch no unclean thing; come out from it, purify yourselves, you who carry the vessels of the LORD." Isaiah 52:11 (BSB)

Notice what kind of summons that is. It is not a call to hide. It is a call to go home. The people addressed there were not being told to build a wall around themselves in Babylon; they were being told to leave it because there was somewhere better to go and something holy to carry. And to the prophet’s summons Paul adds the promise that makes it bearable: “and I will receive you.” God does not merely permit the separated to depart. He takes them in.

Then verse eighteen, and it is one of the tenderest lines in all of Paul’s writing. The words go back to the promise God made to David about his son, “I will be his Father, and he will be My son,” a promise given to one royal heir in one dynasty. Paul takes that crown and sets it on the head of a whole congregation of tradesmen and slaves in a port city, and he does something more. He adds daughters. “I will be a Father to you, and you will be My sons and daughters, says the Lord Almighty.” Every believing woman in that room, in a world that counted her for very little, hears her own name in the covenant. And look at the two titles standing in one breath: Father, and Lord Almighty, which is the Greek rendering of the ancient name for the LORD of hosts, the commander of every army in heaven. The One with all power in His hand tells you to call Him Father. That is where the call to come out ends. Not in loneliness, not in a huddle of the pure looking down at the world, but in a household, with a Father at the head of the table and room at it for sons and daughters. If you have ever felt the cost of an allegiance to Christ that set you at odds with people you love, read verse eighteen again, and again, until it steadies you.