2 Corinthians 6:2 Commentary and Bible Study

This is made quite clear because the apostle Paul immediately quotes from Isaiah 49.8 – ‘For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee.’ And then the apostle’s application of this – ‘Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.’ What is happening in this passage in Isaiah is that the Father is speaking to the Son, the coming Messiah, and he is saying that in a day of favour – that is, in the age of grace, the age of the gospel – I will be with you, I will hear you. In Isaiah, it is in the past tense – ‘I have heard thee’, ‘have I succoured thee’ – because as a prophet to show the certainty of these things he writes as if the day has already come. So Paul quotes this prophecy where God is predicting the coming of the gospel age which will take us all the way to the end of the world. The apostle adds here by way of gloss: ‘Behold, now is the accepted time [the day of grace, the day of the gospel]; behold, now is the day of salvation.’ The gospel age will be a time of release of people from captivity to spiritual darkness. So what Paul means is, God who has heard you in this gospel age, this time accepted, and he has ‘succoured thee’, say the words. Do you not therefore understand that this is the accepted time, the time when souls are gathered into the kingdom of Christ in large numbers. So the whole drift is this – you have been saved in the gospel age, now participate in the gospel age. You are in a most privileged time. You are among the first churches (I am expanding freely, adding to the sense). How can you, of all people, allow it all to be brought to nothing because you are tolerant towards people who preach the opposite? You allow them among you, you allow them to speak. People will be misguided by them, misled: you can’t do that. So it is an appeal to the Corinthians to be very careful. ‘You can’t let in works, when you are the lighthouse of grace, the very opposite.’