2 Corinthians — Chapter 6

Authorship & Background

Deep Dive

Setting: Paul writes from Macedonia in about AD 55–56, still inside the long reflection on gospel ministry that began at 2:14 and runs to 7:4. Chapter 5 ended at its high point: God was in Christ reconciling the world to himself and has given Paul "the message of reconciliation." So "we implore you on behalf of Christ, be reconciled to God" (5:20), because God "made him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the righteousness of God" (5:21). Chapter 6 turns that message on the Corinthians themselves. Many of them had cooled toward Paul under the influence of rival teachers, and he presses two appeals: do not let God's grace come to nothing among you, and open your hearts to us again. A sharp call to separate from unbelief (6:14–7:1) sits between the appeal "widen your hearts" (6:13) and its echo "make room in your hearts" (7:2), and how it fits there is one of the letter's well-known puzzles.

The Ministry of Reconciliation (vv1–13)

• "Working together with him, then" (v1). The ESV heading began at 5:11, and "then" ties this straight back to 5:20–21. The Greek verb (synergeō) just means "work together." The words "with him" are not in the Greek, so translators must decide who Paul works with. Most take it as God, since Paul has just called himself Christ's ambassador through whom "God is making his appeal" (5:20; compare 1 Cor 3:9, "we are God's fellow workers"). Others think he means his team (Paul and Timothy, 1:1) working together. The Tyndale notes leave the question open.
• "Not to receive the grace of God in vain" (v1). These are people who have already believed. Paul is not saying they have lost their salvation. He fears grace they received might come to nothing in practice, for example if they drift from the gospel he preached toward the "different gospel" of his rivals (11:4), or if they hear about reconciliation with God yet stay estranged from the apostle who brought it to them. Paul uses the same idea of himself: God's grace toward him "was not in vain" (1 Cor 15:10).
• "In a favorable time I listened to you" (v2). Paul quotes Isaiah 49:8 word for word from the Greek Old Testament. In Isaiah, God speaks to his Servant, promising to help him restore Israel and be "a light for the nations" (Isa 49:6). Paul reads the promise as fulfilled in Christ and spilling over to all who are in him.
• "Behold, now is the favorable time" (v2). Paul adds his own commentary, and he strengthens Isaiah's word. Isaiah's "favorable" (dektos) becomes "very favorable" (euprosdektos, "well-accepted, most welcome"). The day Isaiah looked forward to has arrived. The "now" presses on believers and unbelievers alike: God's offer is open today, so respond today (Heb 3:7–8, 15).
• "We put no obstacle in anyone's way" (v3). Paul is careful that nothing in his conduct gives people an excuse to dismiss the message. That is why he refused payment from the Corinthians (1 Cor 9:12, 18) and adapted himself to Jews and Gentiles (1 Cor 9:19–23). He could not stop people finding fault. He could make sure the fault-finding was unfair.
• "As servants of God we commend ourselves in every way" (v4). In 3:1 Paul refused to commend himself with letters of recommendation. Here is the commendation he will accept: not paperwork or impressive speeches, but a life spent in God's service, mostly in suffering. The word "servants" (diakonoi) is the same family of words as "ministry" in v3.
• "By great endurance" (v4). Endurance (hypomonē) means patient endurance, holding up under a load without giving way. It stands at the head of the list, and everything that follows is something endured.
• Nine hardships in three groups of three (vv4–5). First, general pressures: afflictions, hardships, calamities. Second, things others did to him: beatings, imprisonments, riots. Third, burdens he accepted in the work: labors, sleepless nights, hunger. Acts fills in some of these. He was beaten with rods and jailed at Philippi (Acts 16:22–24), faced mobs at Thessalonica and Ephesus (Acts 17:5; 19:29), and worked night and day with his hands (Acts 20:34; 1 Thess 2:9). He gives a fuller list in 11:23–27.
• "By purity, knowledge, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, genuine love" (v6). The list turns from what Paul suffered to the character in which he suffered. "The Holy Spirit" sits in the middle of the virtues, because these are the Spirit's fruit (Gal 5:22–23), not Paul's own achievement. "Genuine love" is literally "love without hypocrisy" (Rom 12:9).
• "With the weapons of righteousness for the right hand and for the left" (v7). A soldier carried his sword in his right hand and his shield in his left. Paul is armed to strike and to defend, with righteousness as his only weapon, not deceit or manipulation (4:2; 10:3–4). Ephesians 6 later fills out the same picture.
• "Through honor and dishonor, through slander and praise" (v8). Some honored Paul and some despised him, and he kept the same course through both. That leads into a run of seven contrasts between how the world saw Paul and what was really true.
• "As impostors, and yet are true" (v8). His opponents called him a deceiver (12:16). "As unknown, and yet well known" (v9): a nobody to the world, with no proper credentials, yet known to God and to the churches he planted (5:11). "As dying, and behold, we live": the language of 4:10–11, carrying in the body the death of Jesus so that Jesus' life shows. "As punished, and yet not killed": an echo of Psalm 118:18, "The LORD has disciplined me severely, but he has not given me over to death."
• "As sorrowful, yet always rejoicing" (v10). Not a mood swing. The grief and the joy were true at the same time (compare Phil 2:17–18). "As poor, yet making many rich": Paul was penniless by choice, yet the gospel he carried made people spiritually wealthy, following Christ, who "though he was rich, yet for your sake he became poor" (8:9). "As having nothing, yet possessing everything": compare 1 Cor 3:21–23, "all things are yours… and you are Christ's."
• "Our heart is wide open" (v11). "We have spoken freely" is literally "our mouth is open to you." Paul has held nothing back. "Wide open" translates platynō, "to widen, enlarge." Psalm 119:32 in the Greek Old Testament uses the same verb: "you enlarge my heart." Naming them, "Corinthians!", is rare for Paul and marks strong feeling (compare Gal 3:1; Phil 4:15).
• "You are not restricted by us, but… in your own affections" (v12). "Restricted" (stenochōreō) means hemmed in, crowded for space. It is the same word as "crushed" in 4:8. "Affections" is splanchna, literally the inner organs, which ancient people treated as the seat of feeling, much as English uses "heart." The problem is not a lack of room in Paul's heart for them but a lack of room in theirs for him.
• "In return (I speak as to children) widen your hearts also" (v13). Paul is their spiritual father (1 Cor 4:14–15), and he asks for what any parent wants: love returned. The appeal picks up again at 7:2, "Make room in your hearts for us."
• Commentators: Henry reads v1 as ministers being honored as "co-workers with" God, and on v2 he warns that "present seasons of grace are short and uncertain, and cannot be recalled when they are past." JFB also takes v1 as "with God." On the hardships it sees endurance put first, then "three triplets of trials" exercising it, and it reads "right hand and left" as "guarding on every side." Guzik follows the old commentator Adam Clarke on the sword and shield. He stresses that endurance here is not passive waiting but holding firm and winning through. On v12 he argues the Corinthians were casting themselves as Paul's victims when the real narrowness was in their own divided affections. On the paradoxes Henry sums it up: "Such a paradox is a Christian's life." JFB adds that believers hold earthly goods "as tenants removable at will, not owners."

The Temple of the Living God (vv14–18)

• Where does this section come from? The appeal of 6:13 flows so smoothly into 7:2 that many scholars think 6:14–7:1 was added from elsewhere. Some suggest it is part of the earlier letter Paul mentions in 1 Corinthians 5:9, which warned against associating with immoral people. Others think another writer composed it, pointing to unusual words (several appear nowhere else in the New Testament) and to themes like light against darkness and the name "Belial," which are common in the Dead Sea Scrolls. Many others, including the Tyndale notes, read it as Paul's own digression. No Greek manuscript lacks it or places it elsewhere, and it fits the argument. The Corinthians' cold hearts toward Paul are tied to their warm ties with the world, so before they can open up to him, they must make a clean break with what pulls them away. Whatever its history, it stands in the letter as Paul sent it.
• "Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers" (v14). The verb (heterozygeō, used only here in the New Testament) means "to be yoked with a different kind." It draws on the law's ban on mixing kinds: "You shall not plow with an ox and a donkey together" (Deut 22:10; compare Lev 19:19, where the Greek Old Testament uses a related word). An ox and a donkey differ in size, strength and stride, so a shared yoke chafes both and plows a crooked furrow.
• What kind of yoke? In context Paul probably has idolatry first in mind: Corinthian believers still eating at pagan temple feasts (1 Cor 8–10, especially 10:14–22, "you cannot partake of the table of the Lord and the table of demons"). Some think he also means the rival teachers, whom he later calls servants of Satan disguised as servants of righteousness (11:13–15). Christians have long applied the principle most directly to marriage, which agrees with Paul's instruction that a believer should marry "only in the Lord" (1 Cor 7:39). Many apply it also to close partnerships that bind a believer to unbelieving aims. Two limits come from Paul himself. He does not tell believers already married to unbelievers to leave (1 Cor 7:12–16), and he does not ask the church to withdraw from all contact with unbelievers, "since then you would need to go out of the world" (1 Cor 5:9–10). The issue is a yoke, a binding partnership that steers.
• Five questions (vv14–16). Each pairs two things that cannot share a yoke: righteousness and lawlessness, light and darkness, Christ and Belial, believer and unbeliever, God's temple and idols. Paul uses five different words for sharing: partnership, fellowship (koinōnia), accord, portion and agreement. Every question expects the answer "none."
• "What accord has Christ with Belial?" (v15). In the Hebrew Old Testament beliyyaʿal means "worthlessness." "Sons of Belial" (KJV) are worthless, wicked men, like Eli's sons (1 Sam 2:12). By Paul's day Jewish writings used Belial as a name for Satan. Paul's Greek actually spells it Beliar, a form found in those writings. It is the only place the name appears in the New Testament.
• "We are the temple of the living God" (v16). "We" is plural: the church together is God's temple, as in 1 Corinthians 3:16–17 (individual believers' bodies are temples in 1 Cor 6:19). In a city full of temples, the believers themselves are where the living God dwells. Idols in God's temple were the very thing that brought judgment on Israel (Ezek 8).
• A chain of Old Testament promises (vv16–18). "As God said" introduces a string of promises woven together, quoted loosely and by sense rather than word for word.
• "I will make my dwelling among them" (v16). "I will make my dwelling among them and walk among them, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people" combines Leviticus 26:11–12 and Ezekiel 37:27. This is the heart of the covenant, God living with his people, first in the tabernacle and finally in the new creation (Rev 21:3).
• "Go out from their midst" (v17). "Go out from their midst, and be separate from them… touch no unclean thing" comes from Isaiah 52:11. There it is the call to leave Babylon, with the priests carrying the temple vessels home, careful not to be defiled on the way.
• "Then I will welcome you" (v17). This line probably echoes Ezekiel 20:34 and 41 in the Greek, where God promises to gather his people from the nations and accept them.
• "I will be a father to you" (v18). "I will be a father to you, and you shall be sons and daughters to me" is from 2 Samuel 7:14, God's promise to David's royal son. Paul widens it to all believers and adds "daughters," probably drawing on Isaiah 43:6 ("bring my sons from afar and my daughters from the end of the earth"). The Tyndale notes point out the addition.
• "Says the Lord Almighty" (v18). Pantokratōr, "the all-powerful one." In the Greek Old Testament it often renders "LORD of hosts," as in 2 Samuel 7:8, just before the promise Paul quotes. It appears ten times in the New Testament, here and nine times in Revelation.
• Separation is for something. The commands are wrapped in promises: God dwelling among his people, welcoming them, being their Father. The point is not mainly what believers leave behind, but whose house they belong to. The thought finishes in 7:1: "Since we have these promises, beloved, let us cleanse ourselves… bringing holiness to completion in the fear of God."
• Commentators: All three hear Deuteronomy 22:10 behind the yoke. JFB calls believers and unbelievers "utterly heterogeneous." Henry applies the verse three ways: to marriage ("It is wrong for good people to join in affinity with the wicked and profane"), to friendship (believers cannot avoid unbelievers but "should never choose them for our bosom-friends"), and to worship ("we must not join with them in their idolatrous services"). Guzik also leads with marriage, then widens it to whatever shapes us by the world, including what we read and watch, and stresses that separation from evil is really separation to God. JFB says "Lord Almighty" is "nowhere else found but in Revelation," which the lexicon confirms for the New Testament. Henry on the Father's promise: "Do we thus requite the Lord, O foolish and unwise?"

Pointing to Christ

Paul quotes Isaiah's words to the Servant, and the Servant is Christ. God heard him and helped him in "the day of salvation," and everyone who is in him shares that favor now. Paul's list of paradoxes reads like a portrait of Jesus himself: unknown yet known, dying yet living, sorrowful yet rejoicing, poor yet making many rich (8:9). And the temple promises come true because of 5:21. The one who knew no sin was made sin, so that a people once unclean could become the dwelling place of the living God and be called his sons and daughters.

Commentary

• Enduring Word (David Guzik): enduringword.com Guzik examines the urgency of salvation, the marks of ministry, the paradoxes, and the unequal yoke command.
• Jamieson-Fausset-Brown (1871): blueletterbible.org A critical and explanatory commentary on the whole Bible, more concise than Matthew Henry and closer to the Hebrew and Greek, with attention to historical and geographical detail. Public domain.
• Matthew Henry's Exposition (1710): blueletterbible.org A devotional verse-by-verse commentary in the Puritan tradition, still among the most widely read three centuries on. Public domain.

Videos

Articles

• GotQuestions.org: gotquestions.org On the whole book: an overview of the book of 2 Corinthians -- who wrote it, when, why, and how it fits the rest of Scripture.

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Reflection

• Now Is the Day of Salvation (v.2) — Paul insists there's no better moment than today to respond to God's grace. What decision or response are you postponing that God is calling you to make now?
• Credentials of Suffering, Not Success (vv.4-10) — Paul validates his ministry through endurance, hardship, and character rather than results or comfort. How does this challenge a tendency to measure your own faithfulness by outward success?
• Possessing Everything With Nothing (v.10) — Paul describes himself as poor yet making many rich, having nothing yet possessing everything. Do you measure your wealth by what you own or by what you have in Christ?
• Refusing an Unequal Yoke (v.14) — Paul warns against binding partnerships between believers and unbelievers, since righteousness and lawlessness can't truly pull together. Is there a relationship or partnership in your life quietly pulling you away from Christ?
• Separation That Leads to Sonship (vv.17-18) — Paul says coming out and staying separate from what opposes God brings the reward of being received and called God's own child. Is there something you need to let go of to experience more of that closeness with God as Father?