2 Corinthians 6:1-2

Butler's Commentary

SECTION 1

In Attitudes (2 Corinthians 6:1-2)

6 Working together with him, then, we entreat you not to accept the grace of God in vain. 2For he says, At the acceptable time I have listened to you, and helped you on the day of salvation. Behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation.

2 Corinthians 6:1 Profitlessness: Paul is professing that he is laboring with God to keep the Corinthian Christians from coming up empty of the grace of God. The Greek word kenon, translated vain, stresses the absence of quality. It expresses the hollowness of anything, the absence of that which otherwise might be possessed. Chapter 6 ties into chapter 5. They are to be no longer like the pagan people around them, viewing everything from human perspective. If they do, it is certain they are void of the grace of God. The grace of God demands that those who have actuated it in their lives see everything from the divine perspective! If those who claim to be Christians still look at people and things differently than God's Word directs, the grace of God has been of no profit to them. Grace that is not responded to is an empty grace. It is no grace at all. It has never been received.

Paul had a problem with some Christians who were responding to the grace of God in practically the same way their pagan (heathen) neighbors responded. Though they knew God, they did not honor him as God or give thanks to him (Romans 1:8-21). Those who called themselves Christian at Corinth had probably not fallen to the same depravity as those described in Romans the first chapter, but they were going that direction. They were listening to the Judaizers, glorying in the flesh, and refusing to let the pure grace of God fill them so they might see all from the divine perspective. That is the way heathen respond to God's grace. Preachers still have this problem, either with receiving the grace of God themselves, or with church-members who are empty of God's grace.

2 Corinthians 6:2 Procrastination: The apostle quotes the prophet Isaiah (Isaiah 49:8). Isaiah's statement (Isaiah 49:8) is a messianic prophecy. The time of favor in Isaiah's prophecy calls upon the Year of Jubilee (Leviticus 25:8 ff) as a type of the messianic age. Jubilee was a type of the time of delight and grace that would come when the Messiah appeared (see Isaiah 61:2; Luke 4:16 ff). Isaiah was predicting the N.T. dispensation (see author's comments in Isaiah, Vol. III, pg. 184, pub. College Press).

The Judaizers among the Corinthian Christians were seducing some into legalism and a rejection of the dispensation of grace. Paul quotes Isaiah here to refute the Judaizers. Paul is using the O.T. to prove that the gospel he preached to the Corinthians was the true gospel in the Messiah. They need not listen to the Judaizers and wait for another Messiah. To procrastinate would be to miss the acceptable time.
God has only one acceptable time. That is the time in Christ. The word now is the eschatological now, the now of the Christian age in contrast to the then of the Old Testament age. There is no other age more acceptable. The first acceptable in 2 Corinthians 6:2 is the Greek word dekto. The second acceptable is euprosdektos (literally, eu, well, pros, toward, dektos, acceptable). meaning very favorable acceptance.

Essentially, Paul is saying, Do not be waiting for something better. If ever the Corinthians were going to be changed from their pagan attitudes and pagan ways, the time was now. Christ was (and is) the fulfillment of the Law and the Prophets. He is the fulfillment of all that God intended for man when man was created. Jesus filled up full God's purpose for man, and made that fulfillment available to all men who would receive it by grace through faith. The gospel age is the last age there will ever be (see 1 Corinthians 10:11).

To put off receiving the grace of God in Jesus, to procrastinate and wait for something better (in another Messiah) would be to miss the very favorably accepted time of God. And this searching and waiting for someone other than Jesus is not only what the majority of Jews are still doing, it is what the majority of heathen are still doing! Every preacher faces that problem with people today. He is surrounded by people who insist that God surely has a better way than grace through Jesus. Some of these people are even in the Church. They are sure that God still has some dispensation on earth yet to come which will be a more acceptable time than this present Christian age.
We must let God's grace fill us now, not tomorrow, not a thousand years from now. There is only one word on God's clock: is is now. The devil's time is always tomorrow. God's time is always today, NOW! Now is the day to quit looking at things like the heathen. Now is the day to start seeing everything through the revealed word of God, from the divine perspective. Paul taught this by precept and example.