Bible Commentaries
2 Corinthians 6

Verses 1-18

VI 1. ’Helping’—sharing in. God’s action. This verse seems to be more particularly addressed to the rebellious Corinthians. 2. A kind of parenthesis. The quoted words are spoken by God in Isaiah 49:8. ’Accepted’ —opportune. 888a

3-10 Final Statement of the Apostolic Paradox —This is the most eloquent of the three passages, cf.1 Corinthians 4:9-13; 2 Corinthians 4:7-12. He describes first the apostles’ sufferings, then God’s gifts to them, then the incomprehensible figure which they presented to the world’s eye.

3. ’Offence’—anything that discourages the weaker Christians, see 1 Corinthians 8:7.4. ’Let us . . .’: ’Winning a good name for ourselves’.5. ’stripes’: he had been flogged eight times, as he tells us in 11:24. ’Seditions’: ’Riots’—when insulted or beaten by angry mobs. ’Watchings’: ’Sleeplessness’. ’Fastings’: probably means hunger owing to poverty, travel, or pressure of missonary work, for he seems to omit all deliberate mortifications here, cf. 11:27. 6. ’Chastity’: ’Innocence or purity of intention’ (including both chastity and uprightness). ’Knowledge’, i.e. theological insight, a grasp of the intellectual side of Christianity. ’Sweetness’, i.e. kindness, gentleness. ’The Holy Ghost’: the Spirit is of course the giver of all the gifts mentioned in 6 and 7, but here he seems to be named as the source of the extraordinary and miraculous powers such as prophecy, healing, strange languages, etc., powers which Paul certainly possessed but which nowhere else appear in this list, see 1 Cor 12. 7. ’The word of truth’—the plain and faithful preaching of the gospel. ’The power of God’ which made his preaching powerful to move and convince. ’Bearing the arms proper to goodness on the right, etc.’—the sword in the right hand and the shield on the left arm. So the whole means ’a fully armed soldier of goodness’, cf.Ephesians 6:13-17.

8. ’Amidst honour and dishonour (or disgrace) amidst good report’: there now come seven pairs of terms: the second always gives the perfect truth, the first term states a falsehood or half-truth. ’Known’: ’well-known’.

9. ’Dying refers perhaps to both bodily frailty and danger. ’Chastised’: perhaps ’flogged but not executed In. Roman practice the one often preceded the other.

10. ’needy’: ’poor’. The whole verse forms the pinnacle of the first half of this letter, just as 12:9 perhaps maybe called the pinnacle of the second half.

VI 11-VII 3 Urgent Appeal for Reconciliation and Reform —Those who wish to divide the letter (cf. § 884d) find this passage such an insuperable difficulty to their theory that many of them consider it an interpolation, for they hold that a complete reconciliation has already taken place. But there is no evidence against its genuineness. It is found in every manuscript, and its last sentences lead on naturally to the following passage, see 7:4. In all the first nine chapters this passage is the clearest proof that Paul still had much to set right at Corinth. It may be that he actually began here his direct attack on the False Apostles but changed his mind and postponed it in order first to demonstrate clearly his reconciliation with the majority. See Introd. B and D, 2(3). In these verses he complains of two things: a want of friendliness to himself and a grave laxity in their dealings with pagans and paganism. Such laxity, we may believe, had been allowed or encouraged by the False Apostles. (Introd. 1 Cor C.)

11. i.e. I have opened my heart to you, to show you all my thoughts and to welcome your confidence in return.

12. ’Straitened in us’: ’Faced with a barrier on my side: the barrier stands in your own hearts’.

13. ’Give me a just recompense (i.e. friendship for friendship) and throw open your own hearts’.

14. Here begin six verses of warning against contamination with paganism, see parallel in 1 Corinthians 10:14-21. Marriage between Christians and pagans is certainly included, but the warning has a far wider sweep than that. ’Yoke’: the metaphor is taken from the two plough-oxen, joined together by the wooden bar (yoke) which rested on their necks. ’Do not be harnessed to the plough with an unbeliever’. Then five sharp questions, all condemning such dangerous associations.

15. Belial in the New Testament seems to be practically another name for Satan.

16. The quotation, from here to the end of 18, is a patchwork (as St Paul’s long quotation’s often are) based chiefly on Leviticus 26:12 and Isaiah 52:11 with echoes and adaptations of other passages, all chosen to show that the union of the faithful to God involves a separation from false religion.