2 Corinthians 6:9 Commentary and Bible Study

What does the apostle mean by unknown? Not what we may assume, not the surface sense of someone nobody has head of. The Greek implies unnoted, unacclaimed, by the world that is. Deliberately not noticed: no laurels from the world, no distinctions, no achievements seen or recognised. There will be a strange silence about you. If you are called to the ministry or if you are a witnessing Christian in your place of work or study, you will not be noted and acclaimed or wanted. Why, you serve the one who the world has rejected and is rejecting. As unknown, a servant of the rejected Lord, and yet well known to believers, and to God of course. Never struggle to be well known in this world. You cannot do it without massive compromise.‘As dying, and, behold, we live.’ Do you notice that little word, behold. The apostle wants you to notice this. As dying, but see, look at us, we are alive, we are still ministering, we are still preaching. Do you not think this was how he felt when he was stoned, and they all thought he had died, and he was taken up for dead? And he rose to his feet, and he went into the next town, and he preached. As dying and even counted as dead, and see, look at this, behold! We live by the preservation and the power of God. They were going to assassinate me, there were forty of them, and behold, we live. They bundled us out of town and behold, we returned later, and there was a church established there, and we are still preaching. We were committed to prison and we had to appeal to Caesar. And we were taken under escort to Rome and there we preached to dignitaries, and on the way we preached to Felix and Agrippa, Roman procurators. Then in Rome we preached the Jewish leaders, and we were set free for two years, and we witnessed. God marvellously meets every adversity with a counter-providence which turns the trial to the advantage of the gospel. See, it was not the end of the story, by the power of God, we live. There is so much in that simple and short phrase for us. As he writes in 1 Corinthians 4.11, ‘We both hunger, and thirst, and are naked, and are buffeted, and have no certain dwelling place; and labour working with our own hands: being reviled, we bless; being persecuted, we suffer it: being defamed, we entreat: we are made as the filth of the world, and are the offscouring of all things unto this day.’ And yet God gave them this astonishing ministry.