2 Corinthians 6
6
Staying at Our Post
1-10Companions as we are in this work with you, we beg you, please don’t squander one bit of this marvelous life God has given us. God reminds us,
I heard your call in the nick of time;
The day you needed me, I was there to help.
Well, now is the right time to listen, the day to be helped. Don’t put it off; don’t frustrate God’s work by showing up late, throwing a question mark over everything we’re doing. Our work as God’s servants gets validated—or not—in the details. People are watching us as we stay at our post, alertly, unswervingly . . . in hard times, tough times, bad times; when we’re beaten up, jailed, and mobbed; working hard, working late, working without eating; with pure heart, clear head, steady hand; in gentleness, holiness, and honest love; when we’re telling the truth, and when God’s showing his power; when we’re doing our best setting things right; when we’re praised, and when we’re blamed; slandered, and honored; true to our word, though distrusted; ignored by the world, but recognized by God; terrifically alive, though rumored to be dead; beaten within an inch of our lives, but refusing to die; immersed in tears, yet always filled with deep joy; living on handouts, yet enriching many; having nothing, having it all.
11-13Dear, dear Corinthians, I can’t tell you how much I long for you to enter this wide-open, spacious life. We didn’t fence you in. The smallness you feel comes from within you. Your lives aren’t small, but you’re living them in a small way. I’m speaking as plainly as I can and with great affection. Open up your lives. Live openly and expansively!
* * *
14-18Don’t become partners with those who reject God. How can you make a partnership out of right and wrong? That’s not partnership; that’s war. Is light best friends with dark? Does Christ go strolling with the Devil? Do trust and mistrust hold hands? Who would think of setting up pagan idols in God’s holy Temple? But that is exactly what we are, each of us a temple in whom God lives. God himself put it this way:
“I’ll live in them, move into them;
I’ll be their God and they’ll be my people.
So leave the corruption and compromise;
leave it for good,” says God.
“Don’t link up with those who will pollute you.
I want you all for myself.
I’ll be a Father to you;
you’ll be sons and daughters to me.”
The Word of the Master, God.
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2 Corinthians 6: MSG
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THE MESSAGE: The Bible in Contemporary Language copyright © 1993, 2002, 2018 by Eugene H. Peterson. All rights reserved. Used by permission of NavPress. Represented by Tyndale House Publishers.
2 Corinthians 6
6
1Since we are co-laboring, we also urge you not to receive God’s grace in vain.
2For He says, “At a favorable time I listened to you, in a day of salvation I helped you.” Behold, now is the favorable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation.
3We give no cause for offense in anything, so that our ministry may not be blamed.
4But as God’s servants, we are commending ourselves in every way—in great endurance, in afflictions, in hardships, in distresses,
5in beatings, in imprisonments, in riots, in troubles, in sleeplessness, in hunger;
6in purity, in knowledge, in patience, in kindness, in the Ruach ha-Kodesh, in genuine love,
7in truthful speech, in the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left;
8through honor and dishonor, through evil report and good report. We are regarded as deceivers and yet true;
9as unknown and yet well-known; as dying, yet behold, we live; as disciplined yet not put to death;
10as grieving yet always rejoicing; as poor yet enriching many; as having nothing yet possessing everything.
11We have spoken openly to you, O Corinthians; our heart is open wide!
12You are not restricted by us, yet you are restricted in your own feelings.
13Now in return—I speak as to my children—open wide to us also.
Preserving Sanctity in God’s Living Temple
14Do not be unequally yoked with unbelievers. For what partnership is there between righteousness and lawlessness? Or what fellowship does light have with darkness?
15What harmony does Messiah have with Belial? Or what part does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
16What agreement does God’s Temple have with idols? For we are the temple of the living God—just as God said, “I will dwell in them and walk among them; and I will be their God, and they shall be My people.
17Therefore, come out from among them, and be separate, says Adonai. Touch no unclean thing. Then I will take you in.
18I will be a father to you, and you shall be My sons and daughters, says Adonai-Tzva’ot.”
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