2 Corinthians 6:8

Verse 1 grows out of everything in 2 Corinthians 5:11–21. There the one who is in Christ is a new creature, God has given his servants the ministry of reconciliation, and they plead with the world as ambassadors for Christ. The chapter ends with the heart of the gospel: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him.” The small connecting word dé, rendered “then”, carries that teaching straight into an appeal, so the Corinthians hear what God has done and then how they are to answer it.

“Workers together” translates synergéō, to be a fellow-worker or to co-operate, and the one Paul works with is God. He speaks first of himself and those who serve with him, and what he says reaches every believer, because all who have been reconciled share in God’s work. Paul uses the same picture of himself and his fellow servants in 1 Corinthians 3:9. This partnership is itself a gift of grace. We are saved by grace through faith (Ephesians 2:8–9), and the same grace makes us God’s workmanship, created for good works (Ephesians 2:10). Our work always follows Christ’s. He builds his church (Matthew 16:18) and sends his disciples as the Father sent him (John 20:21), and the Spirit gives each believer gifts for the good of all (1 Corinthians 12:4–7).

“Beseech” is parakaléō, a word for earnest appeal that also means to exhort and to comfort. Paul is pleading with people he loves. “You also”, hymâs and kaí, brings the Corinthians into the appeal alongside the co-workers he has just named.

Verse 2 stands in brackets in the KJV, a pause in which Paul grounds his appeal in Scripture. He quotes Isaiah 49:8, where the LORD speaks to his Servant and promises to hear him in a time of favour and to help him in the day of salvation, for the restoring of his people. Then Paul announces that the time has come. The age that Christ opened by his death and resurrection is the day Isaiah foresaw, and its blessing now reaches Gentiles as well as Jews.

“Accepted” is euprósdektos, formed from “well” and a verb for receiving someone favourably, so it means well received, welcome or favourable. Paul joins it to kairós, a time or season, and the phrase speaks of a season when God is pleased to hear and to receive those who turn to him. “Succoured” is boēthéō, to help, so God both hears and comes to the aid of those he hears. Salvation, sōtēría, means rescue and safety, and here it is the whole deliverance God gives in Christ, from sin, death and judgment into eternal life with him.

Paul twice says “behold, now”. “Behold”, idoú, calls us to look, and “now”, nŷn, is the present moment. The time Isaiah promised is here because Christ has come. God so loved the world that he gave his only Son (John 3:16), the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world (John 1:29).

Because the day of salvation is now, it calls for an answer now. Hebrews presses the same point: “To day if ye will hear his voice, Harden not your hearts” (Hebrews 3:7–8). Jesus wept over Jerusalem because it “knewest not the time of thy visitation” (Luke 19:41–44), and he told the crowds, “Walk while ye have the light, lest darkness come upon you” (John 12:35–36). God’s grace is boundless, and the time to answer it is today. The word goes out to anyone still outside Christ, and it speaks to believers too, who live in this day of favour and are urged in the verse before to let grace do its work.

From verse 3 Paul describes how he and his fellow workers live, and the first thing he says is “Giving no offence in any thing”. Offence, proskopḗ, comes from a verb meaning to strike against or to stumble, so it is a stumbling block, something in the way that trips a person up or gives fair grounds for rejecting the message. “In any thing” takes in the whole of life, private character as well as public preaching, money and friendships as well as daily work.

The reason follows: “that the ministry be not blamed”. The ministry, diakonía, is service, and here it means the whole work of the gospel, which is God’s work done through people. To be blamed, mōmáomai, is to be found fault with or censured. Paul’s concern is the gospel’s good name, and his own reputation matters to him for the gospel’s sake. He wrote to a church where rival teachers questioned his authority, his sincerity and his character, and in a Greek and Roman city that prized honour and dreaded shame, any slip of his would have been used to discredit the message he carried.

The world will oppose the gospel anyway, as the rest of this passage shows. Paul’s aim is that when people stumble, they stumble over the truth of Christ and over none of our failings. He gives the same rule to the whole church in 1 Corinthians 10:32, and in Romans 14:13 he urges believers to put no stumbling block in a brother’s way. That can mean giving up a freedom for the sake of someone weaker, as he explains in 1 Corinthians 8. He was willing to bear anything to keep from hindering the gospel of Christ (1 Corinthians 9:12), he prayed that believers would be pure and blameless (Philippians 1:10) and live worthy of the gospel (Philippians 1:27), and he guarded the purity of the message itself just as closely (Galatians 1:6–9). Our lives are read alongside the gospel we speak.

Verse 4 states what the rest of the passage fills in: “in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God”. “Approving” is synistáō, literally to set together, and so to introduce someone favourably or to commend. Paul’s commendation is the evidence of a life. Ministers, diákonos, are servants or attendants, and Paul takes the humble word gladly. The rivals he answers later in the letter (2 Corinthians 11:5) put forward eloquence, status and an easy life, while Paul points to what he has endured.

“Much patience” comes first. Patience, hypomonḗ, is steadfast and hopeful endurance, an active bearing up under trials that keeps serving and trusting God when the pressure goes on and on. It heads the list because it is what carried Paul through every hardship after it. Nine hardships follow, three in verse 4 and six in verse 5.

“Afflictions” (thlîpsis) are pressures and tribulations from outside, such as persecution and opposition. “Necessities” (anánkē) are hardships that could not be escaped, real want such as poverty and hunger. “Distresses” (stenochōría) means literally narrowness of room, the anguish of being hemmed in with no way out.

In verse 5, “stripes” (plēgḗ, a stroke or blow, and so a wound) are floggings. Paul lists the beatings he received from Jewish and Roman authorities in 2 Corinthians 11:23–28, and at Philippi he and Silas were flogged and thrown into prison (Acts 16:22–24). Acts also tells of his later arrest and chains in Jerusalem (Acts 21:33), his imprisonment at Caesarea (Acts 24:27) and his house arrest in Rome (Acts 28:30–31). “Tumults”, akatastasía, are disorder and instability, the riots and mob violence stirred up against him: the assault planned at Iconium (Acts 14:4–5), the stoning at Lystra (Acts 14:19) and the uproar at Ephesus (Acts 19:23–41), raised by people whose trade or religion the gospel threatened.

The last three belong to a life of hard work. “Labours” are exhausting toil, both the manual work Paul did to support himself (1 Corinthians 4:12) and the work of preaching, teaching and planting churches. “Watchings” are sleepless nights, whether spent in prayer, on guard against danger or on the road. “Fastings”, nēsteía, are times without food, which for Paul likely included both going hungry on hard journeys and fasting for prayer. He disciplined his body for the gospel’s sake (1 Corinthians 9:27), and all of this shows a life given over to God’s work.

In verse 6 the list turns from what Paul endured to what he served by. Each item begins with “by”, which renders the same Greek preposition, en, that stands behind “in” in verse 5.

“Pureness”, hagnótēs, is cleanness and blamelessness of conduct and motive, a life that matches the holy message it carries. “Knowledge” is understanding of God’s truth that guides how a servant teaches and acts. “Longsuffering”, makrothymía, is forbearance, the patience that bears wrongs and provocation without striking back, as God bears with us. Longsuffering and the patience of verse 4 are two Greek words: hypomonḗ bears up under trials, and makrothymía bears with people. “Kindness” is goodness and a gentle, generous spirit, shown even to opponents. “By the Holy Ghost” names the source of every quality around it, for these are the Spirit’s work in us. “Love unfeigned” is agápē, love or goodwill, with anypókritos, undissembled or sincere, so it is love without pretence. Paul’s own love for the Corinthians was of this kind (2 Corinthians 2:4).

The passage ends with pairs of opposites. Two in verse 8 describe how people received Paul, and from the middle of verse 8 to the end of verse 10, seven more set what the world saw beside what God knew to be true, each opening with “as”.

Every line of Paul’s picture of a servant of God was first true of Jesus. The grace Paul begs the Corinthians to receive was won at the cross, where the sinless one was made sin for us. God commended his love to us while we were still sinners, and we are reconciled to him by the death of his Son (Romans 5:8–10). Christ was the Lamb without blemish and without spot (1 Peter 1:19), and even Pilate said, “I find no fault in this man” (Luke 23:4). His blameless life was needed for his sacrifice, since only a sinless Saviour could take away the sin of the world.

He knew afflictions, necessities and distresses. He had nowhere to lay his head (Matthew 8:20), he was in agony in Gethsemane (Luke 22:44), and he endured the contradiction of sinners against himself (Hebrews 12:3). He was arrested (Matthew 26:47–56), scourged (Matthew 27:26) and shouted down by crowds demanding his crucifixion (Luke 23:18–23). His food was to do his Father’s will (John 4:34), he spent a whole night in prayer (Luke 6:12), and he fasted forty days in the wilderness (Matthew 4:2).

The character of verses 6 and 7 was his in full. He knew what was in man (John 2:25), he bore oppression in silence (Isaiah 53:7), and he was moved with compassion for the crowds (Matthew 9:36). He was conceived by the Holy Ghost (Matthew 1:18), anointed by the Spirit for his ministry (Luke 4:18), and offered himself to God through the eternal Spirit (Hebrews 9:14). He is the Word made flesh, full of grace and truth (John 1:14), and God’s mighty power was shown when he raised him from the dead (Ephesians 1:19–20).

The paradoxes were his first as well. His enemies called him a deceiver (Matthew 27:63), and he suffered outside the gate in shame (Hebrews 13:12–13). He had no outward beauty to draw people to him (Isaiah 53:2) and was unrecognised by his own people (John 1:10–11), yet the Father called him his beloved Son (Matthew 3:17). He bore the punishment for our sins (Isaiah 53:5) and humbled himself to death on a cross, and God highly exalted him (Philippians 2:8–11). He is the resurrection and the life (John 11:25–26), and all power is given to him in heaven and in earth (Matthew 28:18). Though he was rich, he became poor for our sakes, so that through his poverty we might be rich (2 Corinthians 8:9), and the Lamb that was slain is worthy of all honour (Revelation 5:12). Paul’s sufferings follow the pattern Christ set, and the Spirit who empowered Christ is conforming believers to his image (Romans 8:29).

This passage shows a God who works alongside his people and gives them a share in his own work of reconciliation. His favour is offered today, and it is strong enough to carry a servant through prison, riot, hunger and slander with his joy still alive. God chose a man who was beaten, misjudged, overlooked and poor, and through him he made many rich.

The same grace comes to us. When those who follow Christ are misunderstood, verse 9 says that they are well known to God. When they are worn down, the “much patience” of verse 4 and the power of God in verse 7 are his gifts to them. And when they have little, verse 10 holds out what Paul held: in Christ his people possess all things, and the God who gave his Son keeps them for himself.