Charles Spurgeon Commentary 2 Corinthians 6

God's servants are called to take many different positions. They are ambassadors under one aspect; they are workers under another.

As ambassadors, they are ambassadors for Christ, as workers, they are workers together with God. Oh, how much it costs to win a soul!

I mean, not only how much it cost the Saviour, so that he broke his very heart over it, and poured out his life's blood—but also how much it must cost the messenger of peace! He must know how to beseech and implore; and when even this fails, he must still go on toiling, labouring, as a worker together with God.

(For he saith, I have heard thee in a time accepted, and in the day of salvation have I succoured thee: behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation.)

I trust that, if I am addressing any who say that it is too late for them to be saved, and that their sin is too great to be forgiven, this text will drive away that unholy and unwarranted fear: Behold, now is the accepted time; behold, now is the day of salvation. Then the apostle goes on to speak of himself, and the rest of the apostles and other preachers of the Word:—

Giving no offense in anything, that the ministry be not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God,

As those early servants of the Lord really did.

In much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments, in tumults, in labours, in watchings, in fastings; by pureness, by knowledge, by longsuffering, by kindness, by the Holy Ghost, by love unfeigned, by the word of truth, by the power of God, by the armour of righteousness on the right hand and on the left, by honour and dishonour, by evil report and good report: as deceivers, and yet true; as unknown, and yet well known; as dying, and behold, we live; as chastened, and not killed; as sorrowful, yet alway rejoicing; as poor, yet making many rich; as having nothing, and yet possessing all things.

All these things Paul and his brothers were to be and to do in order to win souls for Christ; just as hunters in the cold North seek after furs, and try all sorts of plans to catch the wild creatures on which they grow.

They will trap them, or snare them, or shoot them; but, somehow or other, they will get them. They will be on the alert all day, and all night, too. They will learn the habits of every creature they have to deal with, but they will get the furs somehow.

And so the true minister of Christ must be willing to be anything, to do anything, to suffer anything, to bear reproach and shame, to be nothing, or to be all things to all men, if by any means he may save some.

If they were not saved, it was not because Paul did not open his mouth to speak to them, and to warn and invite them, nor because he did not open his heart and feel, in his very innermost being, the stirrings of a sacred compassion for them. Now, having thus poured himself out in his effort to bring them to Christ, he writes to those whom he had brought: