What Does 2 Corinthians 6:3 Mean?
Giving no place for stumbling in anything, so that the service is not blamed.
Key words are shown with the Hebrew or Greek and what each word meant.
Selah Decoded Version The Selah Decoded Version renders what the Hebrew and Greek words meant to the people who first heard them.
King James wording
King James Version
Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed:THE KEY
The “offence” is an obstacle someone can strike against, so conduct can become the very thing that makes the ministry seem blameworthy.
THE MEANING
Your conduct stands in the path of the ministry: what people encounter in it can leave the way clear or become the obstacle by which the ministry is judged. The verse holds the ministry’s credibility together with the actions through which others meet it.
WHAT THIS UNDOES
The verse undoes the belief that the ministry can be judged apart from the way it is carried: an obstacle in your conduct can become a charge against the ministry.
THE ROOT
προσκοπήν
proskopēn
GROWS FROM
προσκόπτω (pros + koptō)
To strike against; by extension, to stumble when meeting an obstacle.
“a place for stumbling” in this verse is proskopēn. The image beneath “offence” is physical as well as relational: someone encounters a point of collision and stumbles. What is given in the path can become the reason the ministry itself is blamed.
ALSO GROWS
proskoptō: To strike against; to stumble.
προσκόπτω
The verb behind the noun pictures a person meeting an obstruction, keeping the verse’s image concrete.
proskomma: A stumbling block or obstacle.
πρόσκομμα
This related noun appears in Romans 14:13, where the obstacle is placed in another person’s way.
THE PATTERN
What is placed in another’s path can obstruct their way and shape how the ministry is judged.
You shall not curse the deaf, nor set a stumbling block before the blind; but you shall stand in awe of your God. I am the LORD.So let us no longer judge one another, but judge this instead, that no one sets a stone to strike against, or a trap, in his brother's way.Keep your walk beautiful among the nations, so that, though they speak against you as doers of badness, they may watch your beautiful works and give weight to God in the day of watching over.THE THREAD
So let us no longer judge one another, but judge this instead, that no one sets a stone to strike against, or a trap, in his brother's way.Romans places the same Greek word family directly in someone’s path: a stumbling block is something another person can strike against. It opens this verse by showing how an action can become the obstacle through which the ministry is encountered and judged.
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