Charles Ellicott Commentary 2 Corinthians 6:2

"(for he saith, At an acceptable time I hearkened unto thee, And in a day of salvation did I succor thee: behold, now is the acceptable time; behold, now is the day of salvation):" — 2 Corinthians 6:2 (ASV)

I have heard you in a time accepted . . .—Better, perhaps, acceptable. The meaning of the pronoun “He,” as referring to God, is determined by the preceding verse. The tense of the Greek is better expressed by, I heard you . . . I helped you.

As with other citations, it is a natural inference that St. Paul had the context, as well as the words actually cited, in his mind, and it is interesting, accordingly, to remember that context. The words (Isaiah 49:8) are among those addressed at first to the servant of Jehovah, as “the light of the Gentiles;” then, apparently, in His name, as the Holy One, and in that of Jehovah, to Israel as a nation. In God’s dealings with His people through Christ, the Apostle saw the true fulfillment of Isaiah’s words. Never, in spite of all outward calamities, had there been a time so acceptable, a day so full of deliverance.

Behold, now is the accepted time . . .—The word for “accepted” is much stronger than in the previous clause. Entirely acceptable is, perhaps, its best equivalent. The solemnity of the words was, it may be, intensified in St. Paul’s thoughts by what seemed to him the nearness of the impending judgment. Opportunities, as we should say, were offered which might never again recur.

But the prolonged experience of the longsuffering of God has given to the words a yet more profound significance. There is, so to speak, a “now” running through the ages. For each church and nation, for each individual soul, there is a golden present which may never again recur, and in which lie boundless possibilities for the future. The words of the Apostle are, as it were, the transfigured expression of the generalization of a wide experience which tells us that—

“There is a tide in the affairs of men
Which, taken at the flood, leads on to fortune:
Omitted, all the voyage of their life
Is bound in shallows and in miseries.”

—Shakespeare, Julius Caesar, iv. 3.