2 Corinthians 6:17

Come ye out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, And touch no unclean thing; And I will receive you. And will be to you a Father, And ye shall be to me sons and daughters, saith the Almighty.

Many have spoken of the fact that Paul here combined the thought of several Old Testament passages, even adding some words of his own (i.e. daughters); but it seems best to view this passage not as a blundering effort of the apostle to quote the Old Testament, but as his own inspired words, which quite naturally, of course, used some of the terminology of previous holy writings.

Come ye out ... touch no unclean thing ...; Isaiah 52:11 has this:

Depart ye, depart ye, go ye out from thence, touch no unclean thing; go ye out of the midst of her; be ye clean, that bear the vessels of the Lord.

However, as cited above, Paul was not "quoting Scripture" here; he was WRITING SCRIPTURE. The difference is apparent in the formula by which he introduced this paragraph. He did not say, "Thus it is written," but "Thus saith the Lord" the magnificent formula used a thousand times by the holy prophets of the Old Testament, and here used by the blessed Paul, and for exactly the same purpose! It is from this evident truth that we feel compelled to reject as irreverent and inaccurate such a comment as the following:

Paul quoted from memory, and so long as he got the substance right he did not worry about the actual wording. It was not the letter of the Scripture but the message of the scripture which mattered to Paul[19]

The denial of any validity to such a view is implicit in the fact that nobody ever got the message of the scripture without getting it from the words of scripture. As further proof that Paul was writing, and not merely quoting God's word, the mention of "daughters" must be considered conclusive. That did not come out of any of the passages suggested by Paul's words here, but it was a brand new revelation by the Spirit of God through the apostle Paul. Concerning this inclusion of the word "daughters," David Lipscomb said:

It is characteristic of Christianity that it was the first system that ever recognized the dignity of women and raised them generally to the same moral and spiritual level with men. This was very suitable at Corinth, where above all other places in the world, women were lured to their ruin by organized immoralities under the cloak of religion.[20]

Regarding the application of this paragraph, which is actually concluded in 2 Corinthians 7:1, it must be said that the same principles are binding today. It is true that paganism has lost its old forms; but no person in his right mind can be unaware of the neo-paganism which today threatens to engulf the world. All of the old essentials of paganism are still operative. The deification of humanity, the gross emphasis upon the secular, the material, the sensual and devilish are still struggling to dominate the minds of mankind. The so-called sex liberation, the abandonment of ancient moral values, and the encroaching dishonesty, selfishness and libertinism even in the highest echelons of government - all of these and many other things proclaim in tones of thunder that paganism is still around.

[19] William Barclay, op. cit., p. 249.

[20] David Lipscomb, Second Corinthians (Nashville: The Gospel Advocate Company), p. 97.