2 Cô-rinh-tô 6

Servants of God in hardship

¹So, as people who work together with God, we also appeal to you: do not let the grace of God you have received be wasted on you. ²For he says, “At a time of favor I answered you; on a day of salvation I came to your aid.” Look: the time of favor is here now. Look: the day of salvation is here now.^{a 3}We give no one any reason to stumble in anything, so that no fault can be found with our ministry. ⁴Instead, in everything we recommend ourselves as God’s servants do: with great endurance, in hardships, in calamities, in tight corners, ⁵in beatings, in prisons, in riots, in toil, in sleepless nights, in going without food; ⁶by purity, by knowledge, by patience, by kindness, by the Holy Spirit, by love that is real, ⁷by speaking the truth, by the power of God; with the weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left; ⁸in honor and in disgrace, in slander and in praise. We are taken for deceivers, yet we are honest; ⁹for unknowns, yet we are well known; for dying, and yet here we are, alive; for people under discipline, yet we are not put to death; ¹⁰for grieving, yet we are always full of joy; for poor, yet we bring riches to many; for people with nothing, yet everything is ours.^bcd

Open your hearts

¹¹Corinthians, we have spoken to you without holding back, and our heart has opened wide to take you in. ¹²You have all the room you need in us; it is in your own affections that you are cramped. ¹³Give us the same in return. I am speaking as I would to my children: let your hearts open wide to us as well.

The temple of the living God

¹⁴Do not be unevenly yoked with unbelievers. Can righteousness and lawlessness be partners? Can light and darkness share anything? ¹⁵How can Christ be in agreement with Beliar? What share can a believer have together with an unbeliever? ¹⁶Can God’s temple come to terms with idols? We, after all, are the temple of the living God. As God has said, “I will make my dwelling in them and walk among them; I will be their God, and they will be my people.”^{e 17}So “come out from among them and keep yourselves apart,” says the Lord, “and do not touch what is unclean; then I will take you in.”^{f 18}“I will be your Father, and you will be my sons and daughters,” declares the Lord Almighty.^g