What Does 2 Corinthians 6:3 Mean in the King James?
Giving no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed:
The analysis reads the King James wording.
King James Version The King James Version, first published in 1611. Selah Verse shows the standard text.
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.
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.
Thou shalt not curse the deaf, nor put a stumblingblock before the blind, but shalt fear thy God: I am the LORD.Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall in his brother’s way.Having your conversation honest among the Gentiles: that, whereas they speak against you as evildoers, they may by your good works, which they shall behold, glorify God in the day of visitation.THE THREAD
Let us not therefore judge one another any more: but judge this rather, that no man put a stumblingblock or an occasion to fall 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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