Seen One Way, Known Another (2 Corinthians 6:6-10)
Today’s Word
[The Road a Servant of God Walks] (NIV)
6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy Spirit and in sincere love;
7 in truthful speech and in the power of God; with weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left;
8 through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report; genuine, yet regarded as impostors;
9 known, yet regarded as unknown; dying, and yet we live on; beaten, and yet not killed;
10 sorrowful, yet always rejoicing; poor, yet making many rich; having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Background
Today’s passage is the second half of a long sentence. In the Greek, verses 3 through 10 are essentially one breathless run. At the end of chapter 5 Paul begged the Corinthians, “Be reconciled to God,” and in 6:1-2 he announced, “Now is the time of God’s favor, now is the day of salvation.” Then, without pausing, he begins to describe the kind of life he has lived. In the words of verse 4, “as servants of God we commend ourselves in every way.”
That word commend matters. Traveling teachers had arrived in Corinth carrying impressive letters of recommendation. Back in 3:1 Paul had already asked, “Do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation?” Those teachers proved themselves with polished speech, presence, and credentials, and some in the church had begun to measure Paul by the same yardstick and found him wanting. So Paul offers his own letter of recommendation. But it is a strange one. Instead of degrees and accomplishments, it lists beatings, prison cells, and hunger.
The list is carefully built. Verses 4-5 name the hardships he endured in three sets of three. Then the first half of today’s passage, verses 6-7a, names what he held on to inside those hardships: purity, understanding, patience, kindness, the Holy Spirit, sincere love, truthful speech, the power of God. First what came at him from outside, then what was holding him together within. Notice that the Holy Spirit sits right in the middle of that list. The qualities around him look less like character Paul built by effort and more like fruit the Spirit produced (Galatians 5:22).
In the second half of verse 7 the tone shifts. “Weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left” calls up the picture of a soldier. A Roman legionary typically carried a sword or spear in his right hand and a shield in his left. Whether attacking or defending, what Paul held was righteousness, what is right before God. He did not reach for deception or flattery to win. As he said in 4:2, he had “renounced secret and shameful ways” and fought only by setting forth the truth plainly.
Verse 8 sets opposites side by side: glory and dishonor, bad report and good report. Paul did not live through only one of these. In one city people tried to worship him as a god (Acts 14:11), and on the same journey he was stoned and dragged outside the town (Acts 14:19). Public opinion about him could flip several times in a single day.
Then from the second half of verse 8 through verse 10 the passage reaches its peak. Seven times Paul pairs a “regarded as” with a “yet.” The first half of each pair is how people saw him. The second half is how things actually stood before God. He was regarded as an impostor, yet he was genuine. He was regarded as unknown, yet he was known to God. He looked like a dying man, yet he lived on.
“Beaten, and yet not killed” in verse 9 echoes Psalm 118:18: “The Lord has chastened me severely, but he has not given me over to death.” The verse just before it says, “I will not die but live, and will proclaim what the Lord has done.” Paul reads his own suffering from the psalmist’s place. God disciplined and shaped him, but did not abandon him.
The Stoic philosophers of the Greek world wrote lists that sound similar. The wise man, they said, is unshaken in poverty, calm under the whip, and though he has nothing, he possesses all things. On the surface it resembles Paul. But there is a decisive difference. The Stoic sage endured by the strength of his own reason. Paul did not look for strength within himself. As he said in 4:7, the treasure in his clay jar had an “all-surpassing power” that came “from God and not from us.” That is why today’s passage includes the phrase “in the power of God.”
The final pair in verse 10, “having nothing, and yet possessing everything,” matches Paul’s real circumstances. He earned his living making tents with his own hands (Acts 18:3) and refused to take financial support from the Corinthian church. To the world he looked like a wandering preacher with almost nothing to his name. Yet he had already written in 1 Corinthians 3:21-23, “All things are yours … and you are of Christ, and Christ is of God.” Whoever has Christ already has everything.
Key Words Made Simple
- Purity: Greek hagnotes. A clean heart and clean motives. Not merely looking blameless, but having no hidden agenda mixed in.
- Patience: Greek makrothymia, literally “long breath.” Not letting anger burst out quickly, and enduring people for a long time.
- Kindness: Greek chrestotes. A warm, generous disposition that wants what is good for the other person.
- Sincere love: Greek agape anypokritos. Anypokritos means “without a mask.” The word hypocrite came from the stage actor. This is love that is not a performance.
- Weapons of righteousness: Greek hopla dikaiosynes. Using only what is right before God as your weapon. Not a fight where anything goes, but a fight fought only in the right way.
- Impostor: Greek planos. Someone who leads people astray, a fraud. Jesus’ enemies used the same word for him (Matthew 27:63).
- Unknown: Greek agnooumenoi. Someone unrecognized, overlooked, not taken seriously.
- Beaten: Greek paideuo. Originally the word for training and disciplining a child. Treatment meant to set someone right, not to destroy them.
- Poor: Greek ptochos. Not just a little short, but so poor you can barely survive without help.
- Making rich: Greek ploutizo. To enrich someone. In 8:9 Paul uses the same family of words to say that Christ became poor so that we might become rich.
- Possessing: Greek katecho. Not just having, but holding firmly. The man who looks empty-handed is actually gripping everything tightly.
Expressions Worth Noting
- “In the Holy Spirit and in sincere love” (v. 6)
- Right after the list of hardships come the Spirit and love. What kept Paul going was not an iron will but the love the Spirit had poured into him.
- Love here is called sincere. When suffering drags on, love easily turns into a performance. Even there, Paul refused to put on a mask.
- “Weapons of righteousness in the right hand and in the left” (v. 7)
- Whether he was attacking or defending, Paul held the same thing. He did not change weapons to suit the situation.
- When we are unfairly criticized, we are tempted to pick up the same weapons our critics use. Paul did not let go of righteousness even then.
- “Through glory and dishonor, bad report and good report” (v. 8)
- Praise did not inflate Paul, and insult did not flatten him. He went through both and kept walking the same road.
- The strength of this verse is that neither praise nor blame got to define who he was.
- “Dying, and yet we live on” (v. 9)
- In Greek Paul inserts a little “look!” here, the only one in the seven pairs. It is as if a man everyone thought was dead raises his hand.
- This is the life he described in 4:10-11, carrying around in his body the death of Jesus. Death kept pressing in, and right there the life of Jesus showed through.
- “Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing” (v. 10)
- Paul does not claim he had no sorrow. Being regarded as sorrowful means he really did carry a great deal of grief.
- Joy does not live where sorrow is absent. It lives right alongside sorrow. And it is joy marked by the word always.
- “Having nothing, and yet possessing everything” (v. 10)
- This is the last of the seven pairs and the confession that closes the whole passage.
- Paul did not become rich by accumulating more. He became rich by seeing again what he already had.
What the Passage Says
- A servant of God is revealed by what they keep in the middle of hardship (vv. 6-7a). Paul’s letter of recommendation has no impressive résumé. Instead it lists purity, patience, kindness, and love kept intact while he was beaten and hungry. And at the center of that list is the Holy Spirit.
- The right road is walked in the right way (v. 7b). Holding weapons of righteousness in both hands means using only honest means, whether attacking or defending. If the means get murky, even a good goal can cost a servant their integrity.
- People’s verdicts flip, but God’s calling does not (v. 8a). Paul knew both glory and dishonor, both praise and blame. Neither one decided who he was. The God who sent him did.
- How we look and how we stand before God can be very different (vv. 8b-10). Regarded as impostors, yet genuine. Regarded as unknown, yet known. Dying, yet living. The first word belongs to the world’s eyes. The second belongs to God’s. Paul lived by the second.
- Whoever has Christ has everything, even with nothing (v. 10). A poor man makes many rich, because what Paul possessed was not money or reputation but Christ. And whoever has Christ makes more people rich the more they give away.
Standing Before This Word Today
Reading this passage slowly, you keep stopping at the phrase that repeats seven times: regarded as. Regarded as impostors. Regarded as unknown. Dying. Beaten. Sorrowful. Poor. Having nothing.
Every one of those first words is a verdict other people passed on Paul, and every one of them stings. Paul does not deny them. He calmly admits that this is how he looked. He really did go hungry, really was beaten, and was doubted even inside the Corinthian church. Instead of raising his voice to insist, “I am not that kind of man,” he simply adds another word after each verdict. Regarded as impostors, yet genuine. Dying, and yet we live on.
That raises a question for us. Which of those two words am I living by right now?
All of us carry around the image of ourselves we see reflected in other people’s eyes. Someone sees us as a failure. Someone else sees us as unremarkable. Those verdicts go deeper than we expect. They start as someone else’s words, and before long they become the way we see ourselves. We read as far as “regarded as” and never get to the “yet.” Hear often enough that you are unknown, and you conclude that you truly are someone nobody knows.
Paul could carry this long sentence all the way to the end because he had heard the second word from God. “Known” in verse 9 does not mean famous among people. It means known to God. People may not recognize you, but God does. That was Paul’s final ground to stand on.
The passage also asks the question from the other direction. In verse 8 Paul says he went through glory and good report as well as dishonor and bad report. Many of us are as used to leaning on praise as we are to collapsing under criticism. When people notice us, we come alive. When they do not, we deflate. Then the source of our strength was really the applause all along. Paul walked the same road on the day he was praised and on the day he was insulted. Because praise could not lift him, blame could not knock him down. Neither one reached his center.
The weapons of righteousness in verse 7 also stay with you. When we are wronged, we want to pick up the same weapons. Someone tore us down, so we want to expose their weaknesses. Someone misunderstood us, so we want to twist their words in return. Paul surely felt that pull. His opponents in Corinth called him a fraud. Yet he did not borrow their weapons. He held only righteousness, in his right hand and in his left, because standing upright mattered more to him than winning.
Verse 10 is where you linger longest. Sorrowful, yet always rejoicing.
This brings comfort because Paul does not deny sorrow. Some voices say that if your faith is strong you should never be sad, that a Christian should always be upbeat. But Paul grieved enough to look like a sorrowful man. In 2:4 he confessed that he wrote to the Corinthians with many tears. And right in the middle of that sorrow was joy. Not joy that arrives after the sorrow has passed, but joy that walks beside it. Our joy can come that way too. Not because the problem has been solved, but because the Lord is with us inside it.
Then we come to the final pair. Having nothing, and yet possessing everything.
Most of us live by counting what we have: savings, career, relationships, health, the titles after our names. When those shrink, we feel as if we are shrinking too. Paul turns that arithmetic upside down. He could say he possessed everything not because his hands were full but because he had Christ. Whoever has Christ has something that cannot be lost. And that person, while still poor, makes others rich. What Paul left the Corinthians was not money but the gospel, and the gospel made them rich.
In the end, this passage asks us one thing. What am I using to count myself? Am I counting myself by the “regarded as” I see in other people’s eyes, or by the word God places after it? Between the self the world sees and the self God knows, Paul always held on to the self God knows. Today is an invitation to stand where he stood.
Living It Out
- Write down one “regarded as” that follows you around. If there is a verdict, from others or from yourself, that has hurt you for a long time, write it down. Next to it, write one line of what God says about you. The clay jar image from last week’s passage, Hard Pressed but Not Crushed (2 Corinthians 4:7-12), can help you find that line.
- Notice where you lean on praise. Think of a moment today when someone’s approval or reaction shook you. Ask yourself honestly whether you would have done the same thing if no one had noticed.
- Hold only weapons of righteousness when you are wronged. If you are being misunderstood, choose one right action you can take instead of exposing the other person’s weaknesses or twisting their words. It is practice in choosing to stand upright over choosing to win.
- Find one joy that sits beside your sorrow. If something is weighing on you, do not deny it. Instead, find one thing you can still be thankful for right next to it, and lift it up in prayer.
- Make someone rich with what you have. Even if you do not have much, there is something you can give today: time, a word of comfort, a line of prayer. As we saw in A New Creation, Sent to Reconcile (2 Corinthians 5:16-21), those who have received Christ become people who pass on what they have received.
Questions to Sit With
- Which verdict that others passed on me has quietly become the way I see myself?
- Am I more likely to collapse under criticism or to lean on praise? Could those two come from the same root?
- When I am wronged, what weapon do I reach for first? Is it a weapon of righteousness?
- How does the idea that sorrow and joy can live together sound in my situation right now?
- If whoever has Christ has everything, what am I most afraid of losing right now?
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