2 Corinthians 6
Paul opens with urgency: you have received grace - a gift poured out at the cross, available now, yours to claim. But grace can be received and then lived as if nothing changed. The Corinthians know the good news. The question is: will they live it?
To prove his sincerity, Paul catalogs his own suffering - not as boasting, but as evidence that authentic ministry flows from Christ, not from ease or acclaim. Then he turns to the thorniest question: who can you trust your soul to? The answer shapes everything.
Tap any highlighted phrase to jump to the commentary that unpacks it.
2 Corinthians 6:1-2Workers Together; Now is the Day
1We then, as workers together with him, beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.
Paul calls believers "workers together" - synergoi - partners with Christ in His redemptive work. You are not passive spectators. Reconciliation is a gift, yes, but you are active in living it out. Grace that transforms is grace received.
Grace received "in vain" - that is, to no effect - is Paul's deepest fear for the Corinthians. They have heard the gospel. They have been reconciled1. But reconciliation that does not reshape your choices, your loyalty, your commitments is grace squandered. To receive grace is to let it work.
2(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation)
Paul quotes Isaiah 49:82 - God responding to the suffering servant with rescue at precisely the right moment. Kairos time, not chronos. This is the moment God has chosen. Right now, grace is available. The door is open. You are being called to step through.
2 Corinthians 6:3Giving No Offence
3Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed:
Paul is ruthlessly aware of how believers are watched. If a minister of reconciliation lives carelessly, greedily, angrily - the gospel itself is damaged in the eyes of those watching. Ministry is not just what you preach; it is the life behind the preaching.
2 Corinthians 6:4-5Approved in Much Patience; In Afflictions
4But in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, 5In stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings;
Paul does not prove his ministry by comfort or success. He proves it by endurance. Afflictions (Greek thlipsis - "pressure," "crushing distress") are where apostolic credibility is forged. He has been beaten, imprisoned, exhausted. And he kept working.
Paul catalogs not just external hardships but the internal strength required to bear them. Much patience - makrothymia - is not gritted teeth. It is the sustained, gentle endurance that Christ Himself modeled.
Stripes (beatings), imprisonments, tumults - Paul is not exaggerating. He would later list these in detail in 2 Corinthians 11. He was whipped repeatedly, jailed, mob-attacked. The catalog here is his credential. If he preaches reconciliation while suffering men who hate him, his message has weight.
2 Corinthians 6:6-7By Purity and Truth; Armed with Righteousness
6By pureness, in knowledge, in longsuffering, in kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, 7By the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left;
Love that is not faked - agape anupokritos. Unfeigned love is rare. It costs. Yet this is what authenticates ministry. You can bear anything if you truly love the people you are bearing it for.
The power of God is not Paul's personal charisma or rhetorical skill. It is God's dynamis - the same power that raised Jesus from the dead. Paul is a channel for something far larger than himself.
The armor of righteousness is not something you forge from your own moral effort. It is something God provides. Your defense against compromise and corruption is alignment with His character and truth.
2 Corinthians 6:8-10By Honour and Dishonour; Dying Yet Living
8By honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; 9As unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and, behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; 10As sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.
Paul is slandered as a deceiver by his enemies. Yet he is true. This is not naïveté - it is the clash between what the world says and what God knows. A believer lives caught between two verdicts: the world's verdict and God's verdict. Often they contradict.
Unknown in the cities he passes through, yet his name and work are becoming known across the empire. Obscurity and renown exist at the same time. This is the peculiar tension of faithful work: you labor whether anyone notices or not.
Paul is literally dying for the gospel - his body beaten, his life threatened. Yet resurrection is happening inside him. Death and life coexist in the believer. This echoes Jesus's own paradox: he died the death we deserved and rose to the life we craved.
Chastened (disciplined, corrected by God) but not killed. There is a difference between God's correction and condemnation. A loving father disciplines his child to shape them, not to destroy them.
Sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing. This is not denying the sorrow. It is not pretending to joy you do not feel. It is the strange simultaneity of grief and hope - mourning the cost while trusting the outcome, holding both in the hands of God.
Poor (materially depleted) yet making many rich (in faith, in hope, in the gospel). Paul possesses nothing, yet his gifts to the Corinthians are beyond measure. This is the paradox of spiritual wealth: the one who holds least gives most.
Having nothing, yet possessing all things. This is the deepest paradox: stripped of everything by the world's reckoning, yet the believer owns the promises of God, the presence of Christ, the inheritance of heaven. Externally destitute. Internally, heir to everything.
2 Corinthians 6:11-13Our Heart is Enlarged Toward You
11O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. 12Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels. 13Now for a recompence in the same, (I speak as to my children,) be ye also enlarged.
Paul opens his mouth without holding back. His heart is enlarged - wide open to the Corinthians. This is what authentic leadership looks like: full access, full vulnerability, full investment.
The heart is "enlarged" (Greek plateuno, to widen, expand). Paul's love for them is not small or conditional. It is spacious. The Corinthians are not straitened - limited, confined - by Paul. The only limit is their own willingness to receive.
In essence, Paul is asking: Will you enlarge your hearts back to me? Will you open your trust to me as I have opened mine to you? This is how relationships deepen - through mutual vulnerability and reciprocal openness.
2 Corinthians 6:14-16Be Not Unequally Yoked; Ye Are the Temple
14Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? 15And what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? 16And what agreement hath the temple of God with idols? for ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them, and walk in them; and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.
Unequally yoked - heterozygountes. The image is agricultural: an ox and a donkey harnessed together cannot plow straight. They pull in different directions. A believer and unbeliever pursuing different masters, different values, different eternal destinations will tear each other apart.
Paul uses pairs: righteousness and unrighteousness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial (a name for Satan), belief and unbelief. These are not compatible. They cannot be harmonized or split the difference.
Belial is the biblical name for the adversary. Paul is saying: Can Christ and His enemy have anything in common? Can they make a deal, a compromise? The question is rhetorical. The answer is no.
An idol in a temple of God is the ultimate contradiction - two sacred claims in the same space, pulling opposite ways. When you are the temple of God and you bind yourself to someone who does not honor God, you are trying to house two gods.
2 Corinthians 6:17-18Come Out and Be Separate; I Will Be Your God
17Wherefore come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, 18And will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.
This is not snobbery or bigotry. This is spiritual protection. The believer must guard against being pulled away from Christ by intimate partnerships with those who do not share faith in Him. The command is not to disdain unbelievers; it is to protect the sanctuary of your own soul.
To "touch not the unclean thing" is to preserve your own spiritual integrity. You are made clean by Christ. Guard that. Certain entanglements muddy what God has clarified.
But separation is not rejection. Separation is the condition for a deeper reception. God says: Come out, and I will receive you. I will be your Father. You will be my children. The promise is intimacy, not isolation.
Further study
- Reconciliation in ScriptureBible Odyssey (SBL)SBL entry on reconciliation as both cosmic restoration and personal healing through Christ's work.
- Isaiah 49:8 ↔ 2 Corinthians 6:2Intertextual BibleSide-by-side comparison of the servant passage Paul quotes: "now is the accepted time" and "day of salvation."