Analysis
The Greek words used in 2 Corinthians in which we will be studying are as follows:
ἅγιος: 1. as adjective pertaining to being dedicated or consecrated to the service of God
- in the cultic sense dedicated to God, holy, sacred, i.e. reserved for God and God’s service:
ἁγιασμός: personal dedication to the interests of the deity, holiness, consecration, sanctification. Kittle: sanctifying, i.e. a process.
ἁγιωσύνη: Holiness. Kittle: “This rare word, formed from the adjective ἅγιος by extension of the o to ω after a short syllable as an abstract term of quality, in the same way as δικαιοσύνη is formed from δίκαιος, is not found in pre-biblical Greek. It means ‘sanctification’ or ‘holiness’ rather than ‘sanctifying’, but as a quality rather than a state.”
ἁγιάζω: 1. set aside something or make it suitable for ritual purposes, consecrate, dedicate of things. 2. include a person in the inner circle of what is holy, in both cultic and moral associations of the word, consecrate, dedicate, sanctify. 3. to treat as holy, reverence. 4. to eliminate that which is incompatible with holiness, purify
Passages where Paul calls the Corinthians “holy ones”.
2Corinthians 1:1 Paul, an apostle of Christ Jesus by the will of God, and Timothy our brother, To the church of God in Corinth, together with all his holy people ἁγίοις throughout Achaia:
2Corinthians 8:4 they urgently pleaded with us for the privilege of sharing in this service to the Lord’s people ἁγίους.
2Corinthians 9:1 There is no need for me to write to you about this service to the Lord’s people ἁγίους.
2Corinthians 9:12 This service that you perform is not only supplying the needs of the Lord’s people ἁγίων but is also overflowing in many expressions of thanks to God.
Below contains “holy ones” and “holy kiss”.
2Corinthians 13:12 Greet one another with a holy ἁγίῳ kiss. 13 All God’s people ἅγιοι here send their greetings.
Passages on the Holy Spirit:
2Corinthians 6:6 in purity, understanding, patience and kindness; in the Holy ἁγίῳ Spirit and in sincere love;
2Corinthians 13:14 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy ἁγίου Spirit be with you all.
Holiness Passages:
2Corinthians 6:14 Do not be yoked together with unbelievers. For what do righteousness and wickedness have in common? Or what fellowship can light have with darkness? 15 What harmony is there between Christ and Belial? Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever? 16 What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols? For we are the temple of the living God. As God has said:
“I will live with them
and walk among them,
and I will be their God,
and they will be my people.”
17 Therefore,
“Come out from them
and be separate,
says the Lord.
Touch no unclean thing,
and I will receive you.”
18 And,
“I will be a Father to you,
and you will be my sons and daughters,
says the Lord Almighty.”
2Corinthians 7:1 Therefore, since we have these promises, dear friends, let us purify ourselves from everything that contaminates body and spirit, perfecting holiness ἁγιωσύνην out of reverence for God.
This is, by far, the most significant “holiness” passage found in 2 Corinthians. The first thing that must be look at is Paul’s phrase: Μὴ γίνεσθε ἑτεροζυγοῦντες ἀπίστοις (Don’t become unevenly yoked with unbelievers). First off, Paul’s imagery comes from the OT Law (Lev. 19:19 and Deut. 22:10). The OT imagery contains both the aspect of two different species connected together by a yoke in order to plow a field. Of course, proper work can’t be accomplished if the species are different. One may be stronger than the other, thus one pulls the other off track. On may not be as disciplined the other animal, thus resulting in no work being done. The imagery from Lev. 19:19 in the cross breeding of different animals would probably interfere with the cross-breed having the ability to work properly. Whatever the reason for Paul’s statement, it is clear that believers should not be yoked together with unbelievers. Of course, we must define “unbelievers” in this context which Paul does for us in verse 16. Paul is dealing with paganism as he had to deal with it in his 1 Corinthians’ letter.
Paul starts contrasting between believers and pagans with with his rhetorical questions that goes down to verse 16. What should be obvious is that Paul means that there is no way for believers and pagans to have anything in common.
For what do righteousness and wickedness (ἀνομίᾳ:lawlessness) have in common?
Or what fellowship can light have with darkness?
What harmony (συμφώνησις:shared interests) is there between Christ and Belial?
Or what does a believer have in common with an unbeliever?
What agreement is there between the temple of God and idols?
We found out in 1 Corinthians that the Corinthians (and we) are the “temple of God/Holy Spirit” (1 Corinthians 3:16; 6:19). There are a couple of Greek words that are translated as “temple”. 1.ἱερόν and 2. ναός. Much of the time, the ναός was the actual room that a deity would set in the Greco-Roman world. Therefore the ναός was the sanctuary or shrine of the god. If we place ναός in the Jewish/Christian sense, then ἱερόν would represent the whole temple complex while the ναός would be the “holy of holies”, the actual place where God dwells. This is what’s inferred in Paul’s use of “the temple of God”.
Paul then quotes “promises” from Lev. 26:12; Jer. 32:38; Ezek. 37:27 (quote 1), Isaiah 52:11; Ezek. 20:34, 41 (quote 2), and Ex 4:22; 2Sa 7:14; 1Ch 17:13; Isa 43:6 (quote 3).
After the setup, Paul now moves into our verse 7:1. What should be obvious from the holiness study on 1 Corinthians, is that some of the Corinthians had flawed theology. They thought that since they “lived in the Spirit”, they could do whatever they wanted with their bodies. This “flaw” not only affected their “body” in becoming a defiled temple in which the Holy Spirit couldn’t stay in (implied in the text), it also shows just how much their “spiritual” life was affected. With that in mind, Paul is reminding the Corinthians that being involved with paganism in any way, shape, or form is wrong.
The Corinthian believers were to cleanse themselves of being influenced by pagans who worshiped idols. For if they didn’t, they would defile both their σαρκὸς καὶ πνεύματος (flesh/body and spirit), the outside and the inside. Looking back to 1 Corinthians, it was the Corinthians theology that was flawed. It was flawed by their flirting again with paganism and all of the evil associated with it. The Corinthians “wanted” to participate in some of the paganism, so they changed their mind as to what it meant to be “defiled”.
12 “I have the right to do anything,” you say—but not everything is beneficial. “I have the right to do anything”—but I will not be mastered by anything. 13 You say, “Food for the stomach and the stomach for food, and God will destroy them both.” 1 Corinthians 6: 12-13
By going back to paganism, they were not only defiling their bodies, which houses the Holy Spirit, they were defiling their inner being; their spiritual being. The Holy Spirit can’t stay in a defiled house. So, the more the Holy Spirit is away, the less He can refine one’s inner spirit.
That gets us to our final phrase in verse 1, ἐπιτελοῦντες ἁγιωσύνην ἐν φόβῳ θεοῦ (perfecting/completing holiness in the fear/reverence of God). As we learned in the holiness study in Romans (1:1-7), ἁγιωσύνη is the “quality” of holiness. Paul sets this in contrast to Jesus’ early life with his now being appointed “the son of God in power through the Spirit of Holiness ἁγιωσύνης” when he was raised from the dead. It was the pure quality of this holiness that raised Jesus from the dead. In the same way, we will be raised by the same Spirit.
It has been well established up unto this point that the Holy Spirit is the only one who can make a person holy. God calls, God chooses, and God fills. God also refines, renews, and encourages. It is a process, but in the end, God will obtain in us that “quality” of holiness that was instrumental in raising Jesus from the dead. He will do the same for us if we follow his commands to keep away from defiling ourselves both bodily and spiritually; both outside and inside. Only we can stand in the way. If we continue to sin, we try to find justification as to why we do it. We create our own “theology” around why it is ok to do so. But, all of the flawed theology in the world can’t deliver a person from God’s wrath. Only God can do that. If we continue in sin, we only end up being those people that God separated us from when we were called and chosen, thus losing our inheritance.
Inferred Holiness Passages?
In Chapter 3, Paul reflects on Israel and they’re being “veiled” from the truth of Jesus Christ. Paul says that when people come to the Lord, the veil is removed. This leads to Paul’s most famous passage in verse 17.
17 ὁ δὲ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμά ἐστιν· οὗ δὲ τὸ πνεῦμα κυρίου, ἐλευθερία
17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. (my translation)
We learned from our Study in Romans that Paul places the Jewish law in the same place as he puts paganism. (From the Study in Romans) “Jews were “slaves to sin” because of their sinful nature and how they couldn’t keep the Jewish law. Gentiles were “slaves to sin” because of their past paganism in which Paul goes into detail about in Romans 1:18 - 2:16. Starting in 2:17 and continuing to 3:20, Paul shows how the Jews also are like pagans in their sin as they can’t keep the Jewish law. In the OT, “to be holy as God is holy” was to not be like Israel’s pagan neighbors. But, as seen in the OT, Israel couldn’t keep the Law.”
Freedom from the law which produces death was instrumental in Jewish Christians’ “life in the Spirit”. To go back to Judaism, was to return to the very sin that people caused by trying to perform the Jewish law.
In Chapters 8 and 9, Paul urges the Corinthians to give an offering for the Church in Jerusalem because they were in much need. We learned in Romans 12 that one becomes a “living sacrifice, holy and pleasing to God” by exercising their God-given grace-gifts (χαρίσματα). One of those grace-gifts was giving. ὁ μεταδιδοὺς ἐν ἁπλότητι (“if” one gives, then give generously [my translation]).
In Chapters 10, 11, and 12, Paul goes into satire to show the Corinthians that the “super-apostles” who had come and bragged that they were superior to Paul were nothing more than foolish people. In Chapter 12, Paul goes on to describe a man he knows that was carried up into paradise and heard such things that couldn’t be told. Paul says that he would brag about a person like that, but only thing that he would brag about himself was his weaknesses. Of course this leads to Jesus’ famous saying to Paul in verse 9: Ἀρκεῖ σοι ἡ χάρις μου, ἡ γὰρ δύναμις ἐν ἀσθενείᾳ τελεῖται (My grace is sufficient/enough for you, for power is made complete in weakness.[my translation]) It should be stated that although we have to translate "sufficient" as an adjective, in Greek, it is a verb, so therefore, it is action! The verb is also at the beginning of the sentence which makes it the most important part! And what is God’s grace? It is his favor on us. It is through his grace that we have received his Spirit. It is the gifts we have. It is the callings we have. This is enough! We should be thankful for this and this alone!
Final Thoughts:
Paul ends the letter in 13:13 with this:
13 Ἡ χάρις τοῦ κυρίου Ἰησοῦ Χριστοῦ καὶ ἡ ἀγάπη τοῦ θεοῦ καὶ ἡ κοινωνία τοῦ ἁγίου πνεύματος μετὰ πάντων ὑμῶν.
1Corinthians 13:13 May the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, and the love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit be with you all.
Paul wraps up the letter with a recap that the Corinthians would remember. The main point on “Grace” is from Chapter 12. “God’s love” may reach back to 1 Corinthians 12 as Paul does talk about that letter in this current letter. Finally, “the fellowship of the Holy Spirit” is the most important of the recaps as it looks back to 6:14 to 7:1. The “quality” of the holiness that the Spirit has is the “quality” that we will reach one day if we follow the Lord’s commands. If we refuse, then we defile ourselves and put that fellowship with the Holy Spirit in jeopardy. It is the Spirit that makes us holy. Without him, we can never obtain our inheritance.
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