NOTES for Co2 6:1-10
Continuing the theme of the Kingdom and witness, Paul draws attention to one of the witness’s most important qualities, without which no witness is possible in principle. The Apostle speaks of the witness’s need to be completely transparent to every action of God, so that no influence exerted by our still untransformed world on the witness’s soul or body determines his spiritual state. He says that the day of salvation has arrived, and our sole task has become to remind everyone who is ready to hear about salvation (vv. 1–2). Our witness, the Apostle says, was such that nothing external could hinder it (v. 3). In listing everything that could have hindered it, Paul mentions not only direct persecution and harassment (vv. 4–7), but also the falsehood that both he and his companions evidently often encountered, falsehood that undoubtedly harmed the witnesses’ reputation in the eyes of public opinion (vv. 8–9).
It is evident that one can bear witness in this way only if the reality determining the witness’s life is not what happens to him in this world, but the Kingdom whose inhabitant he is as a Christian. The Apostle points to this very fact in his seemingly paradoxical statement about those who rejoice when there is nothing to rejoice about, who enrich everyone while themselves being poor, and who possess everything while having nothing (v. 10). But the point is not only that one can truly bear witness to the Kingdom only when it becomes what determines the witness’s entire life. The converse is also true: the very possibility of the transparency to God’s action that a witness needs, and his stability in the face of the influences of our still untransformed world, proves that he is rooted in the Kingdom. In other words, our ability to bear witness becomes for us the chief test of the quality of our spiritual life, enabling us to answer whether we are inhabitants of the Kingdom and may be called Christians in the word’s original sense, which implied not formal membership in one church or another as a religious community, but membership precisely in the Kingdom. This is the test by which Paul invites the Corinthian Christians to assess both his own life and the lives of those who shared his ministry.