2 Corinthians 6
McGeeCHAPTER 6THEME: God’s comfort in all circumstances of the ministry of ChristWe find set before us here the requirements of a good minister of Jesus Christ. None of us can read this without saying again, “Who is sufficient for these things?” None of us could meet these high standards. But I want you to notice that we are still in the section of God’s comfort. Here we see God’s comfort in all circumstances of the ministry of Christ.
2 Corinthians 6:1
TRYING EXPERIENCES OF THE MINISTRYYou will notice in your Bible that “with him” is in italics, which means that these two words have been supplied by the translators. It should be “We then, as workers together.” There is a line that needs to be rubbed out, and that is the line between the clergy and laity. There are certain ones who have been given the gift of teaching. If I have any gift, it would have to be that one, because if I can’t claim that one, I don’t have any at all. There are those who are gifted to teach, those who are gifted to be missionaries. We would term them the clergy. But God gives a gift to each member of the body of Christ.
There ought not to be the distinction between the pulpit and the pew that we make today. We are all workers together. If you are one who sits in the pew, may I say that you are as responsible to give out the word of God as I am. I have been given the gift of teaching. You may be a bank president or the president of a large corporation, a truck driver, a housewife, but you are responsible today to get out the Word of God. God has given to the church certain men who will teach, certain men who will act as pastors, certain men who have gifts that are used for the work of the ministry, which is the equipping of the believers to serve. Again let me read the comment of Dr. Earl Radmacher, who is currently president of the Western Conservative Baptist Seminary: “Shepherds do not produce sheep. Sheep produce sheep.” You see, a great many people think it is the business of the evangelist and the preacher to win people for Christ. May I say to you that it is your business. God has given teachers and preachers and evangelists and missionaries to fill out and prepare the body of believers so that those who are sitting in the pews might be equipped for their ministry of going out to witness for Christ. The shepherd doesn’t produce the sheep. He feeds the sheep and he watches over the sheep. He shepherds the sheep, but he doesn’t produce sheep. He can’t. The sheep produce sheep. Today the whole work of the church is bogged down because the sheep are not out witnessing. I want to raise the question again, and I know I am being very personal about it, what are you doing today to get the Word of God out to others? You can do something that I cannot do and that no preacher in the country can do. There are some people who have confidence in you. They will listen to you but they won’t listen to a preacherunless you encourage them to listen. I know a very fine businessman who has a speech impediment and doesn’t feel he can speak very well to people.
He takes tapes from our program and circulates them everywhere. He knocks on the door of one of his workers or associates, takes along a tape and a tape recorder, and invites them to listen to the tape with him. There is an example of witnessing. We are workers together. Then Paul says, “We …beseech you also that ye receive not the grace of God in vain.” How can one receive the grace of God in vain? God has been showering His goodness and mercy on us. To receive His great goodness and to rejoice in the salvation of the grace of God and yet to live carnal, worldly lives is what it means to receive the grace of God in vain. Let me ask you this question: What response are we making today to the love of God’s heart?
2 Corinthians 6:2
“Have I succoured thee” means I have helped you. A great many people say, “Well, I won’t accept Christ now. I will do it some other time.” They postpone it. Some people want to wait until a certain evangelist comes to town or until they can attend a great meeting. Now I don’t know who you are or where you are right now, but if you are not saved, “now is the accepted time.” Look at your clock. Whatever time it is right now is the time for you. Somebody will ask, “Can’t I accept Him tomorrow?” Probably, but you have no promise of a tomorrow. The important thing is that God says the time is right now.
2 Corinthians 6:3
We need to be very careful about personal behavior. We are to give no offense in anything. An offense here doesn’t mean hurting people’s feelings. I don’t think anyone can serve in the church today without hurting the feelings of someone. Some folk are there for no other purpose than to get their feelings hurt. You have heard the old saying about carrying your feelings on your sleeve.
Well, a lot of the saints do just that. Dr. Harry Ironside put it something like this: If you don’t shake hands with them, they feel you intended to slight them. If you do shake hands with them, you hurt their arthritis. If you stop to speak with them, you are interrupting them. But if you do not, you are a little snooty.
If you write them a letter, they know you are after their money. If you do not write, then you are neglecting them. If you stop to visit them you hinder them from their work and bother them, but if you do not visit them, it shows you have no interest in them. My wife and I got up early one morning and drove two hundred miles before breakfast. We were really hungry and we stopped in a dumpy little place where they served a good Texas breakfast with grits and hot biscuits. When I went to pay the bill, I noticed a sign up by the cash register. “We can’t please everybody but we try.” That may be a familiar sign to you, but it was new to me that morning and it made my day. “Giving no offence” means that you are so to live that no one can point to you and say, “Because of that man’s life I have no confidence in the salvation he professes.” Now Paul lists things that should characterize the ministry. They are quite interesting.
2 Corinthians 6:4
“In much patience.” That is number one on the list. Believe me, I am bowled over by this very first one. I’ll be very frank to admit to you that patience is something I have always lacked. My wife and my best friends say this to me: “Vernon McGee, if you ever preach a sermon on patience and I am there, I’m going to walk out because I don’t think you are the fellow to speak on patience.” So do you know what? I’m not going to speak about patience now. I just want you to notice it is number one on the list. “In afflictions.” This is something that a great many men in the ministry today must still bear. “In necessities.” Folk who came through the depression or who were born in a poor home understand this. When I was a boy, I saw the time that there was not a one dollar bill in my home. We would have gone hungry had it not been for the fact that the grocer would sell us groceries on credit. There was many a time I had nothing in the world for supper, the evening meal, but just a glass of sweet milk with crumbled, cold biscuits in it. And do you want to know something? I still think that is delicious. It is better than a lot of French pastry I have eaten. Dr. Harry Ironside tells about the time he as a young preacher preached in a place for three days and didn’t have a thing to eat during those three days. He was preaching to a group of people who thought he was living by faith, and they surely did let him do it. No money was given him for food. On the fourth morning he was debating whether to stay in bed for breakfast or to get up and tighten up his belt another notch when he noticed a letter being slipped under the door. He got up and opened it and all it said was, “Enclosed is an expression of Christian fellowship,” and there was a ten dollar bill in it. That morning he went out and had the best breakfast he had ever had in his life. “In afflictions, in necessities, in distresses.” There are a great many folk living today who know what these are. The younger generation doesn’t know. That is what has made the generation gap. I try to tell my daughter about the Depression. She answers me, “Dad, I don’t even know what you are talking about.” And she doesn’t know.
2 Corinthians 6:5
“In stripes.” I have a notion that very few of us know what physical stripes are such as Paul experienced. “Stripes” consisted of forty blows with a rod. However, we have been cut across the face many times by some insulting remark made by some pious saint in a very pious voice. There used to be a dear lady in my congregation who had a very sharp tongue. She would go out of the evening service and would say to me, “Pastor, you had a wonderful sermon this morning"implying that I could preach a good sermon in the morning but that the evening sermon was not good. That is a way some folk hit a minister across the face. Paul lists other things that he experienced in his ministry (which few men in my day have had to pass through): Imprisonments, tumults, labors, watchings, fastingsall were familiar to Paul. Now he goes on to give another set of identifications of the ministry.
2 Corinthians 6:6
“By pureness.” Believe me, it is important that a minister be pure in his life. Lack of pureness is one thing that hits and hurts the ministry today. It is always tragic when a minister turns up as a bad egg and is found guilty of immorality and impurity. Pureness is importantand it is important to God. “By knowledge.” I do not think that knowledge refers only to a knowledge of the Word of God. A minister of the Word should know a great many things, and he should keep himself abreast of the times in which he lives. “By longsuffering.” Here that comes up again. Longsuffering is patience in a different suit of clothes. “By kindness.” Oh, how folk long to have a pastor who has tender, kindly interest in them! “By the Holy Ghost.” God have mercy on any preacher who tries to preach without the Spirit of God leading and guiding.
I am more concerned about that than any other thing. I was pastor in downtown Los Angeles for twenty-one years, and I had followed many great men. I often thought about Dr. R. A. Torrey, the great evangelist of the past, who had been the first pastor of the church.
When I would go out to preach, the last thing I would say was, “O Lord, help me to preach in the power of the Holy Spirit!” Vernon McGee in himself is not very much in comparison to those men who went before him. An effective ministry can only be by the Holy Ghost. “By love unfeigned.” Genuine love is so desperately needed today. We do not need pious pretenders quoting pious platitudes. We do not need phony professors of faith who tell you how much they love you and then put a knife in your back. We need real, genuine love. We need the love that the Spirit of God puts into hearts. “By the word of truth.” The “word of truth” means that a preacher should know his Bible.
He should preach “by the power of God,” which is possible only as a pastor spends time alone with God before he steps into the pulpit. “By the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left” is right living in all areas. Next Paul gives us a set of nine paradoxes which should characterize a man of God.
2 Corinthians 6:8
“By honour and dishonour.” Some may approve and some may disapprove. This gives a well-balanced ministry. “By evil report and good report.” Although some folk will say ugly things about us, we continue to serve the Lord. Shakespeare has one of his characters say, “They praise me and make an ass of me; now my foes tell me plainly I am an ass: so that by my foes, sir, I profit in the knowledge of myself, and by my friends I am abused.” Flattery harms us more than criticism! “As deceivers, and yet true"we are called deceivers, yet we are giving out the true Word of God. “As unknown, and yet well known.” A minister of God may not be well known to the world, but he is known to God. “As dying, and, behold, we live"Paul had taken the place of death, yet he had had new life in Christ. “Chastened, and not killed.” He often experienced persecution, beatings, whippings, stonings, and yet he lived on. “Sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing.” Sorrow was for the sins of the people and their rejection of the gospel, yet he was rejoicing in Christ. “As poor, yet making many rich.” Whenever you find a minister who is rich, watch out. Folk are not supposed to get rich in the ministry. “Having nothing, and yet possessing all things.” You recall that Paul had said in his first letter to the Corinthians that all things were theirs. This includes things in the world, life, death, present or future. “…All are yours; and ye are Christ’s; and Christ is God’s” (1Co_3:22-23)oh, how rich we are! And yet we are poor. Paul has given us three sets of things which characterize the ministry. You will notice that the first set pertains to things which are physical, the second to things which are mental, and the third to things which are spiritual. All are important.
2 Corinthians 6:11
PERSONAL APPEAL OF PAULPaul just seems to cry out here. Oh, how ye yearned for those converts of his in Corinth. They are little baby Christians, babes in Christ, carnal Christians, but his heart went out to them. It seems his heart almost breaks in this chapter and the next one. Paul is opening up his great heart of love, and he stirs up the hearts of those who love him. The interesting thing is that he apparently also stirred up the hearts of those who hated God and His Word and who tried to work injury upon those who loved Him and loved the Scripture. We find that was true in the early history of the church, and it is true today. If you stand for God, you will find that it will really cost you something. We come now to an important passage of Scripture. It is a section which has been often abused and misinterpreted. Some folk try to make it hard as nails, unyielding and unloving. Yet what Paul is saying here is coming from the tender heart of a man whose heart was almost breaking because of his great concern for the Corinthian believers.
2 Corinthians 6:14
Paul here makes an appeal to the Corinthian believers to make a clean break with idolatry. They are to make a break from the sins of the flesh. They are to be separated from the worldliness that is in the world. Today we use the term “separated believers.” There are many folk who consider themselves to be “separated believers” who are actually as worldly as can be. Back in the Old Testament under the Mosaic Law God gave a law to His people who were largely engaged in agriculture. He said that they were not to yoke together an ox and an ass. That would be yoking together unequal animals. One was a clean animal and the other was an unclean animal. Here God is speaking to believers, and He says that the believer should not be yoked together with an unbeliever. How are people yoked together? Well, they are yoked together in any form of real union such as a business enterprise, a partnership, a marriage, a long-term enterprise. Certainly marriage is the yoking together of two people. An unbeliever and a believer should not marry. A clean animal and an unclean animal should not be yoked together to plow. A child of God and a child of the Devil cannot be yoked together and pull together in their life goals. Another example of such a relationship is identification with an institution. If a man is a professor in a seminary and he is conservative and holds the great truths of the Bible, but the seminary has gone liberal, such a man should get out of that seminary, because he is drawing a salary there and he is identified with their work and their organization. He is associated with it in a very tangible, real way. He is unequally yoked with unbelievers. Suppose, however, that an evangelist comes to town and holds services for one or two weeks. Although he uses certain methods that you would not condone, he is preaching Christ and God is blessing his ministry, are you to join with him? When I was a pastor in Nashville, Tennessee, an evangelist came to town and, without saying a word to any of us who were conservative men, put his tent right across from my church and the Baptist church in that end of the city. Then he came over to solicit our help. I was somewhat reluctant because of the ethics of the man. He was really a sort of screwball in many ways. He would conduct the most informal services. He would stop in the middle of his sermon because he had forgotten to make an announcement or had forgotten to take up an offering.
The Baptist pastor and I were good friends and both conservative, so we talked it over. We didn’t like all the methods of the evangelist, but we decided that we would support him. He was there for a couple of weeks and people were saved through his ministry. I would never have joined with him in any sort of permanent commitment because of his methods, but I gave him my support for the time he was there. We were by no means yoked together. Notice how Paul did it. Paul would first go to the synagogue when he entered into a new city. Can you imagine a place where there would be more opposition to Jesus Christ than in the synagogue? Yet that is where Paul began. I am not condemning him for it because God led him to do it that way. Now if Paul had joined himself to one of those synagogues and had become the rabbi in one of them and had stayed there, then that could have been considered a yoke. You see, Paul is talking about being yoked together in a permanent arrangement like marriage or a business partnership or a professorship in a school or membership in a church. This verse has no reference to my support of an evangelistic crusade. There are many men who do not carry on their ministries the way I do mineand some of them are so much more successful than I am, that maybe they are right and I am wrong. Of course, I feel that I am right and I intend to go along as I am now. But this won’t keep me from having fellowship with men who do things a little differently as long as they are preaching the same gospel that I preach and they believe the Bible is the Word of God. Paul is talking about yoking ourselves with unbelievers, as he makes clear in the next verse.
2 Corinthians 6:15
Well, I certainly don’t have any part with them. I am not joining with them permanently in anything, and I trust you are not. Let’s not confuse this with our relationship with other believers who do things in a different way from what we do them.
2 Corinthians 6:16
Now Paul specifically mentions idolatry. The temple of God has no agreement with idols. Where is the temple of God? Today the temple of God is the human body of each and every believer. We are the temples of the Holy Spirit. The one in whom God dwells cannot be in agreement with idols.
2 Corinthians 6:17
Paul is appealing to the Christian for separation and for cleansing. He is not to be in agreement with idolatry. He is to be separate from worldliness and from the spirit of worldliness which can creep even into the churches and into the lives of believers. The believer should not even touch the unclean thing. Back in the Book of Joshua we learned how Joshua and the Israelites took the fortified city of Jericho by faith. However, Achan took the “accursed thing.” Israel had touched what God had declared to be unclean. Then they went up to the little city of Ai with great confidence because they were sure of an easy victory, but Joshua and Israel were overcome and defeated at Ai. God asks for a separation from worldliness and from the unclean thing. There are a great many Christians who consider themselves separated. They wouldn’t think of doing this or of doing that. Yet they gossip and have the meanest tongues, never realizing that that very thing is worldly and unclean. Or they go in for the latest in dress or for gluttony and yet consider themselves to be separate from worldliness. I don’t mean to sit in judgmentand we ought not to sit in judgment on each otheryet I feel I must point out these things because we need to be very, very careful. It is very easy to talk about the things of God, to claim the Lord Jesus Christ as Savior, to say we love Him, to consider ourselves separated unto Him, and still not in reality be separate from the world and separated unto Him. When I made my decision to enter the ministry, the vice-president of the bank where I worked called me into his office. He was a godless manhe could swear as I’ve never heard anyone swear. I think it rather moved him when I announced that I was giving up my job to study for the ministry. He called me over to his desk and said, “Vernon, I want to tell you a story.” This is what he told me: During World War I he was working in another bank and with him worked a man as godless and worldly as could be. However, this man was the soloist in a church. One day the man who was now the vice-president went to church, and there he heard his co-worker sing a solo, “Jesus Satisfies.” A dear lady said to him afterwards, “Wasn’t that a marvelous solo?
It sounds like it came out of heaven!” Since he knew this man at work, he knew that Jesus did not satisfy him. One day this same woman came into the bank to do some business, and the teller who had been the soloist was attempting to get a balance sheet balanced, but it was off, and he began to rip out oaths and curses. The lady was really shocked at this and asked my friend, “Who is that man?” He answered, “That is the voice you heard the other Sunday and thought it came right out of heaven.” The vice-president of the bank was a skeptic and a rascal because he had seen a professing Christian singing, “Jesus Satisfies,” when he knew Jesus did not satisfy that man. He knew that man was immoral, a drinker, and a man of vile language. He knew a Christian should not be like that, and it made him a cynical individual. He reached over and touched me on the knee and said to me, “Vernon, don’t be a preacher unless you mean it.” I have never forgotten that. God says, “Come out from among them, and be ye separate, …and touch not the unclean thing.” Don’t be a Christian unless you mean it. Don’t say that Jesus satisfies you if He is not really satisfying you. This is what Paul is talking about. Then there is this glorious promise: “And I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty.” You will be the kind of son or daughter who brings honor to the Father. A man told me about his boy going away to college. The boy had become alienated from his dad. He was still the man’s son, but the father said to me, “I can’t deal with him as I would like to as a father. I simply can’t talk to him the way I’d like to as a father.” This is what God is saying here. If you are a believer in Jesus Christ, God is always your Father. Don’t forget that. What God is saying here is that He would like to act like a Father to you. He would like to treat you as a son. If you are going off into worldliness, if you don’t mean what you say, if you are hypocritical in your life, then you can be sure of one thing: God the Father will take you to His woodshed. My friend, God does not want to be everlastingly taking you to the woodshed. That is why He asks you to come out from among them, to be separate, not to touch the unclean thing. Then God can have an intimate relationship with you as a Father with a son.