2 Corinthians chapter 6

vs 1

Paul is referring to the grace of God in sending Christ to become sin for us in the last chapter. Receiving it in vain, I am guessing, would be to do nothing with it.

vs 2

Paul wants them to know that God's help and his favour are here now for the Corinthians. God will hear and help them so as not to make his grace in vain. This might even be a plea to the Corinthians to get their affairs in order so as not to stumble people who are seeking the truth.

vs 3

And Paul seeks to make the path as clear as possible, to take away anything that is going to make people stumble or give them a reason to turn away. He wants his ministry to be pure.

vs 4

Paul has, in the service of God, already been through a whole heap of bad things. The top thing on the list is that he has endured them, though, which is a very powerful ministry in itself. People always watch to see how you cope with disaster.

vs 5

People have treated him badly - physical violence is about as badly as they can without killing you. Paul could have probably dodged all these things. I imagine the life of a Pharisee wasn't quite as stressful and starving.

vs 6

Positive qualities of Paul's ministry also stand out, because when you do such things they really do make a difference, and people do see them, even if they don't say anything at the time.

And the work of the Holy Spirit can be more or less evident to people. Sometimes it's not even noticed by Christians, other times it's obvious to everyone. Love is usually evident though.

vs 7

These first two are very good things. Truthful speech will help to remove stumbling blocks to people. The power of God is another evidence that God is with Paul in his service. Righteousness is offensive, and Paul wields it as such. But you cannot usually be held to blame if you are wielding righteousness.

vs 8

And now Paul starts using mirroring aspects, rather than good upon good. So even though he is doing good, that doesn't mean good always happens. In fact, most of these to begin with at least are regarding people's position towards his ministry. But that's a commendation to Paul, even when people think he's dishonourable or give bad reports.

vs 9

Go on Paul, escalate it a bit more. We as Aussies can tend to think that Paul's yanking his crank a little here. But read what he's saying - and this stuff actually happened to him. And yet this is all to him a commendation of his work. So he's obviously pretty confident God is with him.