Commentary on 2 Corinthians 5:20b—6:10
This short passage from Paul’s second letter to the Corinthians features Paul’s urgent plea for the Corinthians to make their salvation count. He entreats them to be reconciled to God (5:20) and to not accept God’s grace in vain (6:1). In other words, Paul is arguing that the Corinthians should allow themselves to be changed and transformed by God and their work together, and to do something, to take action, with that transformation.
Be reconciled to God (5:20b)
What is reconciliation? The word “reconciliation” comes from the Greek kata + allasso, related to the term allos, or “other.” The kata prefix is often used to intensify the root word it is paired with—in this instance allasso, or change, as in changing from one thing to another. Thus, we might translate katallasso as “radical change.” It also has the connotation of changing enmity to friendship, hostility to favor. When Paul is arguing for people to be reconciled to God, he is arguing that they remove any barriers to their radical change and restoration of a favorable relationship with God.
Throughout 2 Corinthians and multiple times in this passage, Paul uses the verb parakaleó, translated here as “urge” or “appeal.” It is helpful to think of this word’s connections to ideas of calling and to the figure of the Paraclete, who comforts and guides people. Accepting God’s grace in fullness (rather than in emptiness or in vain) involves responding to a call forward to change and be changed, to work together to become God’s justice-workers.
God’s compassion and Paul’s apocalyptic urgency
Paul quotes Isaiah 49:8 (2 Corinthians 6:2) to argue that God has listened to God’s people and helped them. These are radical acts of God’s love for the people. In this same chapter of Isaiah, God is said to free the captives, comfort the people, and show compassion, even when God’s servant is concerned about having worked in vain (49:4) or having been forgotten (49:14). The heavens, the earth, and the mountains are to break forth into singing at the goodness of God, for God’s acting compassionately for the suffering people (49:13).
Paul references this passage from Isaiah to argue that even in this moment, God still shows up, as surely as God has shown up before. Thus, the people can feel confident in accepting God’s transforming grace, knowing that God cares and provides for them. Paul’s sense of urgency is due to his apocalypticism, his belief that the parousia is coming, when Jesus will return and the time for God’s judgment and reign of justice will begin. Paul’s mission to the gentiles is inspired by this apocalyptic time, as it is only now that God will gather in the nations to join the Jews as God’s people.
Facing hardships
To better recommend his ministry, Paul catalogs the various hardships he has overcome, to show that his ministry has withstood these trials and is the more respectable for it. He repeats a similar catalog in 2 Corinthians 11:16–33, where he adds details about shipwrecks and other particular dangers he has faced. The virtue/hardship list was common in ancient Greco-Roman rhetorical form, from Alexander the Great to Caesar Augustus. The goal with this type of hardship list is to make oneself or one’s cause appear more noble and virtuous for having overcome so much.
Another example: Dio Chrysostom, writing not long after Paul, asserts in his discourse on virtue that the noble man may tolerate many hardships, such as hunger and exile, in the work of pursuing a higher goal.1 Paul’s catalog is meant to show the many ways his ministry is commendable (2 Corinthians 6:4).
Paul stresses that, from his perspective, his ministry is not offending anyone or putting obstacles in anyone’s way—they should be able to accept God’s grace and act upon it (6:3). Paul’s assertion should be understood within the context of his attempts to legitimize his authority in Corinth against other possible ministries. If Paul felt the need to clarify that his ministry was not offensive, it is possible to imagine some in the audience who had been offended by or had found fault with his ministry in some way; we can reconstruct some possibilities from his hardship and virtue catalog.
For example, when he writes of having truthful speech and the power of God (6:7), is this because some in Corinth have questioned his integrity, his authority, and his rhetorical skill (see 2 Corinthians 1:15–24; 10:10)? Do some feel he is so frequently absent, compared to other leaders, that he is relatively unknown to them (6:9)? When he writes of being punished and yet not killed (6:9), is this to respond to some who might have been wary about a ministry offered by someone in trouble with the law?
Giving up everything
It is notable that Paul’s catalog is prefaced with his identification as a servant or slave of God. These hardships (and thus, virtues) are all accrued in the course of his service to God. By identifying himself in this way, and reiterating economic divisions toward the end of his list (6:10), Paul notes a contrast between the poor and the rich, the servant or slave and the lord or master. Paul may be seeking to distinguish his ministry from ones that conferred status based on wealth or social standing, as would have been expected in much of the Greco-Roman context.
Paul’s hardships identify him and his ministry as part of the humiliores, a class of lower-status people in comparison to the higher-status honores. For Paul, the life of serving Christ included being in and out of prison, sleeping on the ground, being hungry, and being poor. This ties back to the beginning of this passage, when Paul describes how Christ, “the one who knew no sin,” became sin. In Paul’s theology, through Christ’s self-lowering act of dying on the cross to the world’s systems of injustice, Christ-followers now have the chance to be God’s justice-workers.
As we work together… (6:1)
Paul invites the Corinthians in as coworkers (6:1), and then details the challenges and opportunities of that work (6:4–10). The coupling of Paul’s catalog of hardships in the service of God with the appeal to the Corinthians to do something with their salvation presents a challenge, both to the first-century Corinthians and to Christians today: What sort of hardships are you willing to endure in the pursuit of God’s grace? To what lengths will you go in your work for Christ?
It is also important to note that Paul presents these hardships as having begun in his life since he started following Christ. He writes as someone who has given up everything, someone who had something to give up, someone for whom these struggles are notable. But for many in the ancient world and today, life is already a series of hardships at the time they accept God’s grace. They have nothing left to give up, no way to go lower. How is God present for these folks? How is Christ’s becoming sin, or giving up everything, helpful for others who have nothing to begin with (5:21)?
For those who start with nothing, the act of accepting God’s grace may be more about the radical transformation of reconciliation. It may be about being willing to have hope that life can be different, particularly when people work together for God’s justice.
Notes
- Dio Chrysostom, Eighth Discourse, On Virtue 15–16, in Discourses, vol. 1–11, ed. and trans. J. W. Cohoon, LCL (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1961), 385. As cited in Antoinette Clark Wire, 2 Corinthians. Wisdom Commentary, vol. 48 (Collegeville, MN: Liturgical Press, 2019), 149n38.
March 5, 2025