Biblion Bible Commentary
Read the introduction to 2 Corinthians · About this commentary
Now Is the Acceptable Time
2 Corinthians 6:1-2
1 Working together, we entreat also that you do not receive the grace of God in vain. · WEB
Grace is described as something that can be received and still wasted, and the remedy offered is a word about timing.
Working together, we entreat also that you do not receive the grace of God in vain.
Two things in that sentence are heavier than they look.
The first is working together. Paul does not say with whom, and the sentence before has just described him as an ambassador through whom God entreats 2 Corinthians 5:20, which makes the partnership hard to limit to his colleagues. He has already used the same register of the readers — fellow workers with you for your joy 2 Corinthians 1:24.
The second is in vain. The grace in question has been received; that is assumed, not doubted. What the warning contemplates is a gift accepted and then rendered empty — which means the danger is not that grace might fail to arrive but that it might arrive and produce nothing. The verb he pairs it with is entreat, the same begging tone as the ambassador's.
And the remedy is not effort. It is a quotation about timing: at an acceptable time I listened to you. In a day of salvation I helped you.
The words were spoken to a servant in Isaiah, promising that his appeal would be heard at a chosen moment. Paul lifts the promise out of that setting and hands the moment to his readers.
Then he doubles it, and the repetition is the emphasis: behold, now is the acceptable time. Behold, now is the day of salvation.
Twice behold, twice now. The prophetic promise pointed forward to a favorable moment; Paul's claim is that the pointing has stopped. And the argument against receiving grace in vain turns out to be an argument about the present tense — a gift that can be neutralized by delay is neutralized by treating its moment as still ahead.
Which is why the two verses sit where they do. Everything before them has described what has been accomplished and given away 2 Corinthians 5:18–21. These two say when it is available, and the answer leaves no room to wait for better conditions.
settled What this mark means