At 2 Corinthians 6:2 the apostle Paul quotes from the prophecy of Isaiah 49:8, which says: “This is what Jehovah has said: ‘In a time of goodwill I have answered you, and in a day of salvation I have helped you; and I kept safeguarding you that I might give you as a covenant for the people, to rehabilitate the land, to bring about the repossessing of the desolated hereditary possessions.’” In its original setting this statement was evidently made to Isaiah as representing or personifying the nation of Israel. (Isa 49:3) It was clearly a restoration prophecy and, hence, had its first fulfillment at the time of the liberation of Israel from Babylon when the call went to the Israelite prisoners, “Come out!” They thereafter returned to their homeland and rehabilitated the desolated land.​—Isa 49:9.

Additionally, Paul’s quotation from this prophecy indicates a still further application to those Christians whom Paul urges “not to accept the undeserved kindness of God and miss its purpose,” and to whom he says (after quoting Isa 49:8): “Look! Now is the especially acceptable time. Look! Now is the day of salvation.” (2Co 6:1, 2) Such Christians had become the spiritual “Israel of God” from Pentecost of 33 C.E. forward (Ga 6:16), but there was a need for them to prove worthy of God’s undeserved kindness, so that the “acceptable time” might indeed prove to be “a day of salvation” for them.