2 Corinthians 6

     6:1-2.  But there are limits even to God’s patience.  We dare not say, “Go away for the present, and when I find time, I will summon you” (Acts 24:25).  We know not what tomorrow may bring.  Now is the day of salvation (cf. Heb.3:12-13).

     6:3-10.  Unlike the false teachers who have slandered Paul and his fellow ministers, their lives commend them as true servants of God: In hard things (4-5); in good things (6-7); and in paradoxical things (8-10).

     6:11-13.  For some reason, everyone seems to miss the obvious clever analogy to the feeding of a two year old child.  What parent hasn’t opened his own mouth wide and said to a stubborn child, “open wide?”  (cf. Ps.81:10, “Open your mouth wide and I will fill it.”)

     6:14-18.  Cf. Dt.7:1-3; 22:10.  Israel was not to be bound in covenant with the people of the land, which the law against plowing with a donkey and an ox unequally yoked together (margin) symbolizes.  This does not mean no contact with the world (cf. 1 Cor. 5:9-11; 10:27 ff.), but that the world has no part in the fellowship of believers in Christ.  We cannot be yoked with Christ and Belial at the same time.  Belial means worthless, and is an epithet for Satan (cf. 1 Sam.10:27, margin). 

     Christ means for us to be in the world, but not of it (John 17:15-16).  It was a fine line to walk, both for Jew and Gentile converts.  They were to be witnesses before the world of a new life in Christ.  But the emphasis here, as Paul quotes from a number of OT passages conflated together, is that God calls us to be separate from the sins of the world, and that he will be with us and be a father to us (16-18).  V.7:1 is the conclusion of this paragraph, and the key to it.