2 Corinthians 6

2 Corinthians 6:1

Then - After the resurrection and the general judgment. Cometh the end - Of the world; the grand period of all those wonderful scenes that have appeared for so many succeeding generations. When he shall have delivered up the kingdom to the Father, and he (the Father) shall have abolished all adverse rule, authority, and power - Not that the Father will then begin to reign without the Son, nor will the Son then cease to reign. For the divine reign both of the Father and Son is from everlasting to everlasting. But this is spoken of the Son’s mediatorial kingdom, which will then be delivered up, and of the immediate kingdom or reign of the Father, which will then commence. Till then the Son transacts the business which the Father hath given him, for those who are his, and by them as well as by the angels, with the Father, and against their enemies.

So far as the Father gave the kingdom to the Son, the Son shall deliver it up to the Father, John 13:3. Nor does the Father cease to reign, when he gives it to the Son; neither the Son, when he delivers it to the Father: but the glory which he had before the world began, John 17:5; Hebrews 1:8, will remain even after this is delivered up. Nor will he cease to be a king even in his human nature, Luke 1:33. If the citizens of the new Jerusalem" shall reign for ever," Revelation 22:5, how much more shall he?

2 Corinthians 6:2

He must reign - Because so it is written. Till he - the Father hath put all his enemies under his feet. Psalms 110:1.

2 Corinthians 6:3

The last enemy that is destroyed is death - Namely, after Satan, Hebrews 2:14, and sin, 1 Corinthians 15:56, are destroyed. In the same order they prevailed. Satan brought in sin, and sin brought forth death. And Christ, when he of old engaged with these enemies, first conquered Satan, then sin, in his death; and, lastly, death, in his resurrection. In the same order he delivers all the faithful from them, yea, and destroys these enemies themselves. Death he so destroys that it shall be no more; sin and Satan, so that they shall no more hurt his people.

2 Corinthians 6:4

Under him - Under the Son. Psalms 8:6,7

2 Corinthians 6:5

The Son also shall be subject - Shall deliver up the mediatorial kingdom. That the three - one God may be all in all - All things, (consequently all persons,) without any interruption, without the intervention of any creature, without the opposition of any enemy, shall be subordinate to God. All shall say, “My God, and my all.” This is the end. Even an inspired apostle can see nothing beyond this.

2 Corinthians 6:6

Who are baptized for the dead - Perhaps baptized in hope of blessings to be received after they are numbered with the dead. Or, “baptized in the room of the dead” - Of them that are just fallen in the cause of Christ: like soldiers who advance in the room of their companions that fell just before their face.

2 Corinthians 6:7

Why are we - The apostles. Also in danger every hour - It is plain we can expect no amends in this life.

2 Corinthians 6:8

I protest by your rejoicing, which I have - Which love makes my own. I die daily - I am daily in the very jaws of death. Beside that I live, as it were, in a daily martyrdom.

2 Corinthians 6:9

If to speak after the manner of men - That is, to use a proverbial phrase, expressive of the most imminent danger I have fought with wild beasts at Ephesus - With the savage fury of a lawless multitude, Acts 19:29, &c. This seems to have been but just before. Let as eat, &c. - We might, on that supposition, as well say, with the Epicureans, Let us make the best of this short life, seeing we have no other portion.

2 Corinthians 6:10

Be not deceived - By such pernicious counsels as this. Evil communications corrupt good manners - He opposes to the Epicurean saying, a well - known verse of the poet Menander. Evil communications - Discourse contrary to faith, hope, or love, naturally tends to destroy all holiness.

2 Corinthians 6:11

Awake - An exclamation full of apostolical majesty. Shake off your lethargy! To righteousness - Which flows from the true knowledge of God, and implies that your whole soul be broad awake. And sin not - That is, and ye will not sin Sin supposes drowsiness of soul. There is need to press this. For some among you have not the knowledge of God - With all their boasted knowledge, they are totally ignorant of what it most concerns them to know. I speak this to your shame - For nothing is more shameful, than sleepy ignorance of God, and of the word and works of God; in these especially, considering the advantages they had enjoyed.

2 Corinthians 6:12

But some one possibly will say, How are the dead raised up, after their whole frame is dissolved? And with what kind of bodies do they come again, after these are mouldered into dust?

2 Corinthians 6:13

To the inquiry concerning the manner of rising, and the quality of the bodies that rise, the Apostle answers first by a similitude, 1 Corinthians 15:36 - 42, and then plainly and directly, 1 Corinthians 15:42,43. That which thou sowest, is not quickened into new life and verdure, except it die - Undergo a dissolution of its parts, a change analogous to death. Thus St. Paul inverts the objection; as if he had said, Death is so far from hindering life, that it necessarily goes before it.

2 Corinthians 6:14

Thou sowest not the body that shall be - Produced from the seed committed to the ground, but a bare, naked grain, widely different from that which will afterward rise out of the earth.

2 Corinthians 6:15

But God - Not thou, O man, not the grain itself, giveth it a body as it hath pleased him, from the time he distinguished the various Species of beings; and to each of the seeds, not only of the fruits, but animals also, (to which the Apostle rises in the following verse,) its own body; not only peculiar to that species, but proper to that individual, and arising out of the substance of that very grain.

2 Corinthians 6:16

All flesh - As if he had said, Even earthy bodies differ from earthy, and heavenly bodies from heavenly. What wonder then, if heavenly bodies differ from earthy? or the bodies which rise from those that lay in the grave?

2 Corinthians 6:17

There are also heavenly bodies - As the sun, moon, and stars; and there are earthy - as vegetables and animals. But the brightest lustre which the latter can have is widely different from that of the former.

2 Corinthians 6:18

Yea, and the heavenly bodies themselves differ from each other.