Verse-by-Verse Bible Commentary
2 Corinthians 3:6

Clarke's Commentary

Verse 2 Corinthians 3:6. Who hath made us able ministers — This is a more formal answer to the question, Who is sufficient for these things? προς ταυτα τις ἱκανος; 2 Corinthians 2:16. God, says the apostle, has made us able ministers; ἱκανωσεν ἡμας διακονους, he has made us sufficient for these things; for the reader will observe that he uses the same word in both places. We apostles execute, under the Divine influence, what God himself has devised. We are ministers of the new covenant; of this new dispensation of truth, light, and life, by Christ Jesus; a system which not only proves itself to have come from God, but necessarily implies that God himself by his own Spirit is a continual agent in it, ever bringing its mighty purposes to pass. On the words καινη διαθηκη, new covenant, see the PREFACE to the gospel of St. Matthew.

Not of the letter, but of the Spirit — The apostle does not mean here, as some have imagined, that he states himself to be a minister of the New Testament, in opposition to the Old; and that it is the Old Testament that kills, and the New that gives life; but that the New Testament gives the proper meaning of the Old; for the old covenant had its letter and its spirit, its literal and its spiritual meaning. The law was founded on the very supposition of the Gospel; and all its sacrifices, types, and ceremonies refer to the Gospel. The Jews rested in the letter, which not only afforded no means of life, but killed, by condemning every transgressor to death. They did not look at the spirit; did not endeavour to find out the spiritual meaning; and therefore they rejected Christ, who was the end of the law for justification; and so for redemption from death to every one that believes. The new covenant set all these spiritual things at once before their eyes, and showed them the end, object, and design of the law; and thus the apostles who preached it were ministers of that Spirit which gives life.

Every institution has its letter as well as its spirit, as every word must refer to something of which it is the sign or significator. The Gospel has both its letter and its spirit; and multitudes of professing Christians, by resting in the LETTER, receive not the life which it is calculated to impart. Water, in baptism, is the letter that points out the purification of the soul; they who rest in this letter are without this purification; and dying in that state they die eternally. Bread and wine in the sacrament of the Lord's Supper, are the letter; the atoning efficacy of the death of Jesus, and the grace communicated by this to the soul of a believer, are the spirit. Multitudes rest in this letter, simply receiving these symbols, without reference to the atonement, or to their guilt; and thus lose the benefit of the atonement and the salvation of their souls. The whole Christian life is comprehended by our Lord under the letter, Follow me. Does not any one see that a man, taking up this letter only, and following Christ through Judea, Galilee, Samaria, c., to the city, temple, villages, seacoast, mountains, &c., fulfilled no part of the spirit and might, with all this following, lose his soul? Whereas the SPIRIT, viz. receive my doctrine, believe my sayings, look by faith for the fulfilment of my promises, imitate my example, would necessarily lead him to life eternal. It may be safely asserted that the Jews, in no period of their history, ever rested more in the letter of their law than the vast majority of Christians are doing in the letter of the Gospel. Unto multitudes of Christians Christ may truly say: Ye will not come unto me that ye may have life.

Bridgeway Bible Commentary

3:1-6:13 TRUE CHRISTIAN SERVICE

The servant and the message (3:1-18)

Some of the teachers who came to Corinth brought with them letters of recommendation from their home churches, and claimed that these letters gave them authority to teach. Paul carried no such letters, with the result that his opponents suggested he had no right to teach. Paul replies that pieces of paper do not guarantee the truth of people’s ministry. A better means of judging is by the fruit of their work. The Corinthian church, which is the fruit of Paul’s work in Corinth, is all the recommendation he needs. This is the work of the Spirit of God, and is far greater recommendation than a mere letter. The gospel produces fruit that no set of laws can produce (3:1-3).
Paul has confidence in his ministry, but it is a confidence that rests in God, not in himself. What changes people is the gospel, not any personal ability that Paul might have (4-5). He is a servant of the new covenant, by which the Spirit of God gives believers new life within. The old covenant (the law of Moses) set out written laws, but in the end it brought death, because the people were unable to keep it (6).

The contrast between the old covenant and the new is now illustrated by reference to the story in Exodus 34:29-35. When Moses, after receiving the law from God, came down from the mountain, his face shone with a brightness that reflected the glory of God. His face was so bright that he had to cover it with a cloth, as the people were afraid to approach him. Paul’s point is this: if the covenant that brought condemnation and death came with glory, how much more glory must the new covenant have which brings righteousness and life (7-9). If the covenant that was temporary came with glory, how much more glory must the new covenant have which is permanent (10-11).

After Moses had been away from the presence of God for a while, the brightness of his face faded, but the veil over his face prevented Israelites from seeing this fading brightness. To Paul, this fading brightness symbolized the fading away and eventual end of the old covenant. The permanence of the new covenant, by contrast, gives Paul confidence in all that he says and does (12-13).
In a sense there is still a veil that belongs to the old covenant. It is the veil that covers the minds of the Jews, for they read the Old Testament but refuse to see Christ as its fulfilment. Consequently, they cannot properly understand it (14-15). When Moses went in before the Lord he removed the veil. Similarly, when Jews turn to Jesus Christ, the veil is removed. Through the work of the Spirit, Christ sets them free from the bondage of sin and the law (16-17). Christians also must make sure that there is no veil between them and their Lord. The better they know Christ personally, the more they will be changed so that they become increasingly like him (18).

Coffman's Commentaries on the Bible

Who also made us as sufficient ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

Having acknowledged God as the all-sufficient, Paul at once reemphasizes his own apostolic sufficiency for the preaching of God's new covenant.

LETTER AND SPIRIT

Not of the letter, but of the spirit … Both in this and in the final clause of this verse, the RSV has perpetrated a gross error in capitalizing "Spirit" in order to make it mean "Holy Spirit" in both clauses, an error slavishly followed in Good News for Modern Man, Phillips New Testament, The New English Bible (1961), and others. While it is true, of course, that the blessings of the new covenant may be enjoyed only by those who have received the blessed Holy Spirit, there is no reference to that here. As Hughes said, "It is unlikely that a direct reference to the Spirit is intended." Philip E. Hughes, op. cit., p. 101. "The contrast in 2 Corinthians 3:6 is not between the outward and inward sense of scripture, but between the outward and inward power of the Jewish and Christian dispensations." J. W. McGarvey, Second Epistle of Paul to the Corinthians (Cincinnati, Ohio: The Standard Publishing Company, 1916), p. 184. As Tasker put it, "Paul is distinguishing the new covenant from the old by using the contrasted categories of spirit and letter, life and death." R. V. G. Tasker, op. cit., p. 62. Farrar gave the meaning as "Not of the law, but of the gospel." F. W. Farrar, op. cit., p. 58. Paul's usage of this same expression in Romans 2:28 f speaks of a true Jew as one who is a Jew in heart, IN THE SPIRIT, NOT IN THE LETTER. There is no need to multiply evidence that Paul used the same expression here exactly as he used it there.

It is equally evident, as Hughes noted, that "This verse is not concerned with any supposed distinction between two different senses of scripture, the literal and the spiritual." Philip E. Hughes, op. cit, p. 99. It is precisely in such a supposed distinction that much error flourishes, and has flourished for centuries. William Tyndale mentioned it in his day:

Some preach Christ, and prove whatsoever point of faith thou wilt, as well out of a fable of Ovid or any other poet, as out of St. John's gospel or Paul's epistles. Yea, they are come to such blindness, that they not only say that the literal sense profiteth not, but also that it is hurtful and noisome, and killeth the soul. Ibid.

Hughes added that such erroneous ideas were always supported by people quoting this very passage. Ibid.

Any persons denying a Christian duty or rejecting an ordinance of God, such as baptism, on the premise that "spiritual" baptism is meant, etc., etc., are finding in Paul's remark here something that was never in it.

Barnes' Notes on the Whole Bible

Who also hath made us able ministers ... - This translation does not quite meet the force of the original. It would seem to imply that Paul regarded himself and his fellowlaborers as people of talents, and of signal ability; and that he was inclined to boast of it. But this is not the meaning. It refers properly to his sense of the responsibility and difficulty of the work of the ministry; and to the fact that he did not esteem himself to be sufficient for this work in his own strength 2 Corinthians 2:16; 2 Corinthians 3:5; and he here says that God had made him sufficient: not able, talented, learned, but sufficient ἱκάνωσεν ἡμᾶς hikanōsen hēmas; he has supplied our deficiency; he has rendered us competent, or fit; if a word may be coined after the manner of the Greek here, “he has sufficienced us for this work.” There is no assertion, therefore, here, that they were people of talents, or special ability, but only that God had qualified them for their work, and made them by his grace sufficient to meet the toils and responsibilites of this arduous office.

Of the New Testament - Of the new covenant (note, Matthew 26:28), in contradistinction from the old covenant, which was established through Moses. They were appointed to go forth and make the provisions of that new covenant known to a dying world.

Not of the letter - Not of the literal, or verbal meaning, in contradistinction from the Spirit; see the notes on Romans 2:27, Romans 2:29; Romans 7:6. This is said, doubtless, in opposition to the Jews, and Jewish teachers. They insisted much on the letter of the Law, but entered little into its real meaning. They did not seek out the true spiritual sense of the Old Testament; and hence, they rested on the mere literal observance of the rites and ceremonies of religion without understanding their true nature and design. Their service, though in many respects conformed to the letter of the Law, yet became cold, formal, and hypocritical; abounding in mere ceremonies, and where the heart had little to do. Hence, there was little pure spiritual worship offered to God; and hence also they rejected the Messiah whom the old covenant prefigured, and was designed to set forth.

For the letter killeth - compare notes on Romans 4:15; Romans 7:9-10. The mere letter of the Law of Moses. The effect of it was merely to produce condemnation; to produce a sense of guilt, and danger, and not to produce pardon, relief, and joy. The Law denounced death; condemned sin in all forms; and the effect of it was to produce a sense of guilt and condemnation.

But the spirit giveth life - The spirit, in contradistinction from the mere literal interpretation of the Scriptures. The Spirit, that is, Christ, says Locke, compare 2 Corinthians 3:17. The spirit here means, says Bloomfield, that new spiritual system, the gospel. The Spirit of God speaking in us, says Doddridge. The spirit here seems to refer to the New Testament, or the new dispensation in contradistinction from the old. That was characterized mainly by its strictness of Law, and by its burdensome rites, and by the severe tone of its denunciation for sin. It did not in itself provide a way of pardon and peace. Law condemns; it does not speak of forgiveness. On the contrary, the gospel, a spiritual system, is designed to impart life and comfort to the soul. It speaks peace. It comes not to condemn, but to save. It discloses a way of mercy, and it invites all to partake and live. It is called “spirit,” probably because its consolations are imparted and secured by the Spirit of God - the source of all true life to the soul. It is the dispensation of the Spirit; and it demands a spiritual service - a service that is free, and elevated, and tending eminently to purify the heart, and to save the soul; see the note on 2 Corinthians 3:17.

Calvin's Commentary on the Bible

6.Who hath made us competent. ⁽³⁷⁶⁾ He had acknowledged himself to be altogether useless. Now he declares, that, by the grace of God, he has been qualified ⁽³⁷⁷⁾ for an office, for which he was previously unqualified. From this we infer its magnitude and difficulty, as it can be undertaken by no one, that has not been previously prepared and fashioned for it by God. It is the Apostle’s intention, also, to extol the dignity of the gospel. There is, at the same time, no doubt, that he indirectly exposes the poverty of those, who boasted in lofty terms of their endowments, while they were not furnished with so much as a single drop of heavenly grace.

Not of the letter but of the spirit He now follows out the comparison between the law and the gospel, which he had previously touched upon. It is uncertain, however, whether he was led into this discussion, from seeing that there were at Corinth certain perverse ⁽³⁷⁸⁾ devotees of the law, or whether he took occasion from something else to enter upon it. For my part, as I see no evidence that the false apostles had there confounded the law and the gospel, I am rather of opinion, that, as he had to do with lifeless declaimers, who endeavored to obtain applause through mere prating, ⁽³⁷⁹⁾ and as he saw, that the ears of the Corinthians were captivated with such glitter, he was desirous to show them what was the chief excellence of the gospel, and what was the chief praise of its ministers. Now this he makes to consist in the efficacy of the Spirit. A comparison between the law and the gospel was fitted in no ordinary degree to show this. This appears to me to be the reason why he came to enter upon it.

There is, however, no doubt, that by the term letter, he means the Old Testament, as by the term spirit he means the gospel; for, after having called himself a minister of the New Testament, he immediately adds, by way of exposition, that he is a minister of the spirit, and contrasts the letter with the spirit. We must now enquire into the reason of this designation. The exposition contrived by Origen has got into general circulation — that by the letter we ought to understand the grammatical and genuine meaning of Scripture, or the literal sense, (as they call it,) and that by the spirit is meant the allegorical meaning, which is commonly reckoned to be the spiritual meaning. Accordingly, during several centuries, nothing was more commonly said, or more generally received, than this — that Paul here furnishes us with a key for expounding Scripture by allegories, while nothing is farther from his intention. For by the term letter he means outward preaching, of such a kind as does not reach the heart; and, on the other hand, by spirit he means living doctrine, of such a nature as worketh effectually (1 Thessalonians 2:13) on the minds of men, ⁽³⁸⁰⁾ through the grace of the Spirit. By the term letter, therefore, is meant literal preaching — that is, dead and ineffectual, perceived only by the ear. By the term spirit, on the other hand, is meant spiritual doctrine, that is, what is not merely uttered with the mouth, but effectually makes its way to the souls of men with a lively feeling. For Paul had an eye to the passage in Jeremiah, that I quoted a little ago, (Jeremiah 31:31,) where the Lord says, that his law had been proclaimed merely with the mouth, and that it had, therefore, been of short duration, because the people did not embrace it in their heart, and he promises the Spirit of regeneration under the reign of Christ, to write his gospel, that is, the new covenant, upon their hearts. Paul now makes it his boast, that the accomplishment of that prophecy is to be seen in his preaching, that the Corinthians may perceive, how worthless is the loquacity of those vain boasters, who make incessant noise ⁽³⁸¹⁾ while devoid of the efficacy of the Spirit.

It is asked, however, whether God, under the Old Testament, merely sounded forth in the way of an external voice, and did not also speak inwardly to the hearts of the pious by his Spirit. I answer in the first place, that Paul here takes into view what belonged peculiarly to the law; for although God then wrought by his Spirit, yet that did not take its rise from the ministry of Moses, but from the grace of Christ, as it is said in John 1:17 —

The law was given by Moses;
but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

True, indeed, the grace of God did not, during all that time, lie dormant, but it is enough that it was not a benefit that belonged to the law. ⁽³⁸²⁾ For Moses had discharged his office, when he had delivered to the people the doctrine of life, adding threatenings and promises. For this reason he gives to the law the name of the letter, because it is in itself a dead preaching; but the gospel he calls spirit, because the ministry of the gospel is living, nay, lifegiving.

I answer secondly, that these things are not affirmed absolutely in reference either to the law or to the gospel, but in respect of the contrast between the one and the other; for even the gospel is not always spirit. When, however, we come to compare the two, it is truly and properly affirmed, that the nature of the law is to teach men literally, in such a way that it does not reach farther than the ear; and that, on the other hand, the nature of the gospel is to teach spiritually, because it is the instrument of Christ’s grace. This depends on the appointment of God, who has seen it meet to manifest the efficacy of his Spirit more clearly in the gospel than in the law, for it is his work exclusively to teach effectually the minds of men.

When Paul, however, calls himself a Minister of the Spirit, he does not mean by this, that the grace of the Holy Spirit and his influence, were tied to his preaching, so that he could, whenever he pleased, breathe forth the Spirit along with the utterance of the voice. He simply means, that Christ blessed his ministry, and thus accomplished what was predicted respecting the gospel. It is one thing for Christ to connect his influence with a man’s doctrine. ⁽³⁸³⁾ and quite another for the man’s doctrine ⁽³⁸⁴⁾ to have such efficacy of itself. We are, then, Ministers of the Spirit, not as if we held him inclosed within us, or as it were captive — not as if we could at our pleasure confer his grace upon all, or upon whom we pleased — but because Christ, through our instrumentality, illuminates the minds of men, renews their hearts, and, in short, regenerates them wholly. ⁽³⁸⁵⁾ It is in consequence of there being such a connection and bond of union between Christ’s grace and man’s effort, that in many cases that is ascribed to the minister which belongs exclusively to the Lord. For in that case it is not the mere individual that is looked to, but the entire dispensation of the gospel, which consists, on the one hand, in the secret influence of Christ, and, on the other, in man’s outward efforts.

For the letter killeth. This passage was mistakingly perverted, first by Origen, and afterwards by others, to a spurious signification. From this arose a very pernicious error — that of imagining that the perusal of Scripture would be not merely useless, but even injurious, ⁽³⁸⁶⁾ unless it were drawn out into allegories. This error was the source of many evils. For there was not merely a liberty allowed of adulterating the genuine meaning of Scripture, ⁽³⁸⁷⁾ but the more of audacity any one had in this manner of acting, so much the more eminent an interpreter of Scripture was he accounted. Thus many of the ancients recklessly played with the sacred word of God, ⁽³⁸⁸⁾ as if it had been a ball to be tossed to and fro. In consequence of this, too, heretics had it more in their power to trouble the Church; for as it had become general practice to make any passage whatever ⁽³⁸⁹⁾ mean anything that one might choose, there was no frenzy so absurd or monstrous, as not to admit of being brought forward under some pretext of allegory. Even good men themselves were carried headlong, so as to contrive very many mistaken opinions, led astray through a fondness for allegory.

The meaning of this passage, however, is as follows — that, if the word of God is simply uttered with the mouth, it is an occasion of death, and that it is lifegiving, only when it is received with the heart. The terms letter and spirit, therefore, do not refer to the exposition of the word, but to its influence and fruit. Why it is that the doctrine merely strikes upon the ear, without reaching the heart, we shall see presently.

(376) “Lequel aussi nous a rendus suffisans ministres;” — “Who also hath made us sufficient ministers.”

(377) It is justly observed by Barnes, that the rendering in our authorized version — “Who hath made us able ministers” — “does not quite meet the force of the original,” as it “would seem to imply that Paul regarded himself and his fellow — laborers as men of talents, and of signal ability; and that he was inclined to boast of it,” while instead of this “he did not esteem himself sufficient for this work in his own strength, (2 Corinthians 2:16; 2 Corinthians 3:5); and he here says, that God had made him sufficient: not able, talented, learned, but sufficient, (ἱκάνωσεν ἡμᾶς); he has supplied our deficiency; he has rendered us competent or fit; — if a word may be coined after the manner of the Greek here, ‘he has sufficienced us for this work.’” The unhappy rendering referred to had originated (as is shown by Granville Penn) in the circumstance, that the Vulgate having rendered the expression — qui idoneos nos fecit ministros , Wiclif translated it as follows: which made us also able mynystris, and that, while Erasmus suggested that it should be rendered — qui idoneos nos fecit ut essemus ministri, quasi dicas, idoneavit — who fitted or qualified us to be ministers — and while, besides, in the first translation from the original Greek, in 1526, Tyndale rendered — made us able to minister, Wiclif’s original version from the Latin was recalled, and is now the reading of our authorized version. — Ed.

(378) “Mauuais et inconsiderez;” — “Wicked and reckless.”

(379) “Il auoit affaire auec des gens qui sans zele preschoyent l’Euangile, comme qui prononceroit vne harangue pour son plaisir, et n’ayans que le babil, pourchassoyent par cela la faueur des hommes;” — “He had to do with persons, who without zeal preached the gospel, like one that makes a harangue according to his own liking, and while they had nothing but mere talk, endeavored by this means to procure the applause of men.”

(380) “Es cœurs des auditeurs;” — “In the hearts of the hearers.”

(381) “Crient et gazouillent;” — “Cry and chirp.”

(382) “Il suffit, que ce n’estoit point par le moyen de la loy: car elle n’auoit point cela de propre;” — “It is enough that it was not by means of the law; for it did not belong peculiarly to it.”

(383) “Au ministere de l’homme qui enseigne;” — “To the ministry of the man that teaches.”

(384) “La doctrine de l’homme, c’est à dire, son ministere;” — “The doctrine of the man, that is to say, his ministry.”

(385) The reader will find the same subject largely treated of by Calvin, when commenting on 1 Corinthians 3:6. See Calvin on the Corinthians, vol. 1, pp. 128-9. — Ed.

(386) “Dangereuse;” — “Dangerous.”

(387) “De corrompre et desguiser le vray et naturel sens de l’Escriture :” — “Of corrupting and disguising the true and natural meaning of Scripture.”

(388) “Can you seriously think the Scriptures,” says Revelation Andrew Fuller, in his Thoughts on Preaching, “to be a book of riddles and conundrums, and that a Christian minister is properly employed in giving scope to his fancy in order to discover their solution? [...] All Scripture is profitable in some way, some for doctrine, some for reproof, some for correction, and some for instruction in righteousness, but all is not to be turned into allegory. If we must play, let it be with things of less consequence than the word of the eternal God.” — Fuller’s Works, volume 4, p. 694. The attentive reader cannot fail to observe, how very frequently our author exposes, in the strongest terms, the exercise of mere fancy in the interpretation of the Holy Scriptures. See Calvin on the Corinthians, vol. 1, p. 294. — Ed.

(389) “Vn propos et vn mot;” — “A passage and a word.”

Smith's Bible Commentary

Shall we turn tonight to the third chapter of II Corinthians.

Paul the apostle, it seemed, had the detractors to his ministry, men that followed him around seeking to discredit him. There are always those, it seems, who are ready to come in upon another man's work, and to reap the benefits of another man's labor, but aren't really willing to go out and to break fresh ground themselves. Those that endeavor to live off the body of Christ, rather than really developing the body of Christ.

The body of Christ is not expanded by transferring people from one fellowship to another. The body of Christ is expanded when we become a witness to the world and we bring others to Jesus Christ who do not know Him.

There were those who were willing to go around and follow Paul. To come into the areas that Paul had plowed, where Paul had planted, and seek to uproot Paul's ministry, drawing people to themselves. Seeking to discredit Paul in the eyes of the people. Such was the case in Corinth. Those who followed Paul, putting down Paul and his message of the gospel of grace, seeking to bring the people under the law. Challenging Paul's authority as an apostle. Lifting up themselves as the authorities and the authorized ones.

And so it seems rather tragic that oh, blessed brother Paul was always, it seems, defending himself against those detractors, as though he needed to. And so, in chapter three we find this again the case.

Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles [letters] of commendation from you? ( 2 Corinthians 3:1 )

These people coming in and presenting their letters of authority, which were many times falsified. Spurious. Paul said, "Look, do I need to have letters of commendation when I come to you, or do I need to seek letters of commendation from you when I go elsewhere?"

Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men ( 2 Corinthians 3:2 ):

"Your faith in Jesus Christ, your existence as a church is all of the recommendation that I need. You are proof of my apostleship. You are proof of the validity of my ministry. The very fact of your existence is all that is necessary to prove the authenticity of my calling."

Now, the person who doesn't have that kind of proof needs all kinds of phonied up documents to tell how great they are. I get a kick out of some of the letters that I receive. Enclosed with them, all of these letters of commendation. Your ministry itself bears witness to your calling.

And so Paul said, "You are my letters of commendation. The fact that you exist, that's all that's necessary. That's all the proof I need of my calling of God."

Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshly tables of the heart. And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward ( 2 Corinthians 3:3-4 ):

So, Paul just sort of lets it rest there.

Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God ( 2 Corinthians 3:5 );

Now, Paul in the last of the last chapter, you remember, cried out, "And who is sufficient for these things?" ( 2 Corinthians 2:16 ) There have been so many times when I have faced the issues of the ministry and I said, "Oh, Lord, who is sufficient for these things? Who's able to do this?" And Paul asked the question, "Who is sufficient for these things?" And now he answers his own question: "Not that we think that we have any sufficiency within ourselves, or not that we are sufficient within ourselves, but our sufficiency is of God."

I believe that God deliberately allows us to come to the end of our own capacities and abilities in order that we might learn to trust in Him. In order that we might draw from that all-sufficiency from Him.

God revealed Himself to Abraham as El Shaddai, which means the all-sufficient One. And it's always good to know the all-sufficient One and to be able to rely upon the all-sufficient One to fill up that which I am lacking when I come to the end of my own resources. How many times we are driven to draw from that sufficiency that God has provided for us through Jesus Christ. And Paul said He is the One,

Who also hath made us able ministers of the [new covenant or] new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life ( 2 Corinthians 3:6 ).

Now, this is one passage of scripture that, unfortunately, is often quoted out of context, especially by those who are looking for a more experiential relationship with God. Who are looking for more exciting experiences in the things of God. So often you'll hear them say, "Oh, but the scripture says, 'The letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.'" As though the word of God or the teaching of the word of God will kill you, but the Spirit or the moving of the Spirit and the experiences of the Spirit brings life. That is a gross misquotation, because it is taking the scripture totally out of its context.

The Bible tells us concerning the word of God that it is alive and powerful, and it is sharper than a two-edged sword, and it's able to divide between the soul and the spirit, the bone and the marrow ( Hebrews 4:12 ). The word of God, the letter does not kill. It's alive. It's powerful, and it brings life.

The letter that kills is the letter of the law. And Paul here declares, "I am the able minister of the New Testament, the new covenant." The old covenant was by the law, and the old covenant in the letter of the law does condemn us to death. If you want to be righteous before God by the keeping of the law, then it's too late. It's already condemned you to death. You've been destroyed. The letter of the law kills. For the law said, "He that does these things shall live by them" ( Romans 10:5 ). But also it says, "If you keep the whole law, and yet you violate in one point, you're guilty of all" ( James 2:10 ). And thus, the law condemns every one of us to death. And it is the letter of the old covenant of the law that condemns us to death. But it is the Spirit in the new covenant that brings us life, spiritual life.

And now he goes on to talk about,

But if the ministration of death [under the law], [which was] written and engraven in stones, [it] was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away [passing away] ( 2 Corinthians 3:7 ):

Now, there is a misunderstanding, many times, as the purpose of the veil. When Moses came down with the tables of stone, having met with God there on the mount, having been privileged to see the afterglow of God, God said to Moses, "What do you desire?" And he said, "Lord, show me Thyself." And God said, "You can't look at Me and live, but you stay there in the rock, I'll pass by, and then you can see the afterglow." And it was so glorious that Moses' face shone for days after he came down from the mount with the tables of law for the people.

But he put a veil over his face, not because they couldn't look at the glory on the face, but because the glow was beginning to fade, and they didn't want them to see the fading glow. But that was only a witness of the law that had been given, that it was going to be phased out that God might establish the new covenant through Jesus Christ. And so, the purpose of the veil was that they would not see the receding glory that was upon his face. We'll get that when we get a few verses down.

But this ministration of the law was glorious so that they could not steadfastly look at the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance which was fading away.

How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? ( 2 Corinthians 3:8 )

Or even more glorious. If the old covenant which condemn man to death was so glorious and given in such a glorious way, how much more this new covenant of life through Jesus Christ is glorious to those who have received it?

For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth ( 2 Corinthians 3:9-10 ).

In other words, there is really no way to compare the glory of the old covenant with the exceeding glory of the new covenant. That new relationship that we have to God through Jesus Christ excels in glory. Brings us into such glory.

You see, the old covenant was predicated upon man's faithfulness and man's obedience. The purpose of the covenant is always to bring man into a relationship with God. That's the primary purpose. The old covenant failed. Not because it wasn't good, but because man was weak and man failed. It was predicated upon man's obedience, man's faithfulness.

Now, this new covenant cannot fail, because it's predicated upon God's faithfulness to His word. A covenant predicated upon my faithfulness to the word of God failed; I couldn't be faithful. But we know that God is faithful to His word, and thus, this new covenant whereby we stand tonight is certain, is sure. That's why we can say with such assurance, "I know in Whom I have believed, and I'm persuaded that He is able to keep that which I committed" ( 2 Timothy 1:12 ). And I've committed my life and my future to Him, and I'm confident that He shall bring me into the fullness of His glory, because He is faithful to His word. His word cannot fail. He will not fail.

So, the new covenant excels in glory, because it's based upon God and His faithfulness.

For if that which is done away [that is, the old covenant under the law] was glorious [was made glorious] ( 2 Corinthians 3:11 ),

For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excels. Nothing to compare with.

For if that which was done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious. Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great [boldness or] plainness of speech: And not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not steadfastly look to the end [or to the phasing out or the fading] of that which is abolished ( 2 Corinthians 3:11-13 ):

You see, here it declares that it was because it beginning to fade away and they didn't want them to see this thing fading out.

But their minds were blinded: for until this day [there] remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which veil is done away in Christ ( 2 Corinthians 3:14 ).

So "blindness has happened to Israel in part, until the fullness of the Gentiles is come in" ( Romans 11:25 ). Even when they read the law, there is a veil over their faces, that they don't really understand the law. A very sad thing has taken place among the Jewish people. For though they still verbally hold to the law, they do not practice or follow the law in establishing a righteous standing before God.

Under the law, under the old covenant, it was necessary that there be a death of a substitutionary animal to atone for their sins. You would bring the animal to the priest. You would lay your hands upon its head. You would confess your sins over the animal, and then the priest would slay the animal and offer it as a sacrifice, a sin offering for you. And thus, your sins would be covered, and you would then be able to approach the holy God.

Now today, the veil is over their faces, for they are endeavoring to approach God through their own good works, ignoring the fact that God required the sacrifice of an animal. "For the wages of sin is death" ( Romans 6:23 ). "And without the shedding of blood there is no remission of sins" ( Hebrews 9:22 ). They have substituted, now, the sacrifice of the animal, and are trying to instead place their good efforts and their good works as the basis for their coming to God and their righteous standing before God. Nowhere in the law are substitutes ever suggested for the sacrifices. And thus, a veil is over their face even when they read the law today, as they think that by their good efforts and good works they can atone for their sin. But their minds were blinded. For until this day, there remains the same veil that's not taken away. Their minds blinded to the truth. Israel is blind in part.

Now, this veil is really done away in Christ. When you see Jesus Christ as our perfect substitute for our sins, our sacrifice, we come to an understanding of the righteousness of God being satisfied through the death of Jesus Christ.

But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart ( 2 Corinthians 3:15 ).

They are just blinded to the truth.

Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty ( 2 Corinthians 3:17 ).

Though there are couple of passages here that the Pentecostal people really grab onto, this is the second one. The first one is, "The letter killeth, the spirit gives life" ( 2 Corinthians 3:6 ). This is another one that they latch on to, "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." And they interpret that in a very broad way. There is liberty to do all kinds of things. Liberty to scream out and to shout out and to run up and down the aisles, and you know, whatever happens to suit their fancy. Again, it is taking it out of context. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty from the law and from the bondage of the law. Free from the law, there is no condemnation, for Jesus provides a perfect salvation. And so, this is freedom from the requirements of the law. "Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."

But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass [or as in a mirror] the glory of the Lord, are changing into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord ( 2 Corinthians 3:18 ).

The work of God's Spirit within our heart is to conform us into the image of Jesus Christ. When God first made man, He made man in His image. God said, "Let us make man after our image, and after our likeness" ( Genesis 1:26 ). And so was man created in the image of God.

But through sin, man fell and no longer was in the image of God. The image of God being a spiritual image. God is a spirit. Man was created a spirit being, dwelling in the body, possessing a consciousness. But God said, "In the day that you eat, you will surely die" ( Genesis 2:17 ). When man sinned, his spirit died.

And so, Paul writing to the Ephesians said, "And you hath He made alive, who were dead in trespasses and sins" ( Ephesians 2:1 ). God's chief emotional attribute is love. God made man with a capacity to love, a need for love. God is light, and so God created man with a light and mind and a consciousness of God. But through sin, man came into darkness. His foolish heart was darkened. And so man made in the image of God, fallen from that image. But now, the purpose of God is to restore man into His image again. That man might receive a restoration of that which God intended him to be before he fell. And that is what the Spirit is doing in our lives tonight as we yield ourselves to the work of God's Spirit within us. He is conforming us into the image of Christ.

Now we all with open face or unveiled faces. The children of Israel have a veil. Every time they read Moses, a veil is over their heart and their eyes are blinded. "But we, with open faces as we behold as in a mirror the glory of the Lord." As I am looking in the mirror, seeing my reflection, I can see the work of God that is taking place in my life as the Spirit of God is changing me and bringing me into the image of Jesus Christ. How beautiful it is to look at God's work in our own life, and just to marvel at what God has done.

There have been areas in my life, the old nature, that were extremely ugly. I used to have an ugly temper. Easily ignited at the slightest provocation. And it was ugly. And I didn't like what I saw in me. I hated that nasty demonstration of that temper. And I tried to control it, but I just couldn't. Things would happen, and before I knew it, poof, it was gone and I'd blown up. And here I was ashamed, embarrassed at the things I did and the things I said. Guilty, defeated. With all of my efforts, I couldn't control it. And one day I said, "God, I'm sorry. I just can't do it. I've tried, Lord. I just can't do it." And I gave up in despair ever hoping to have control over that temper.

And then the Spirit took over. And He did for me what I couldn't do for myself. And He took away the inward boiling, the inward steam. It wasn't a thing of my keeping the cap on the pressure, seething inside, ready to just explode, but just holding tight and keeping the lid on, you know. But somehow, the Spirit from within took away the pressure, the steam. And I could look at a situation or I could experience a situation where at one time I would have exploded violently into that ugliness. And there were no more explosions. And as I look from the mirror, I saw the Spirit's work in my life changing me into the image of Jesus.

How glorious it is when God works in us by His Spirit, bringing to pass those changes, removing the ugliness of the self-life and of the old life and conforming us more and more into the image of Jesus Christ. And as David, "And I shall be satisfied, when I awake, in His likeness" ( Psalms 17:15 ).

Someday when I look in the mirror and I see the Lord, I'll be in glory at that point, but what a day that's going to be when the Spirit's job is finished in my life and I am completely conformed into the image of Jesus Christ.

"Beloved, now are we the sons of God, it does not yet appear what we're going to be: but we know that, when He shall appear, we will be like Him; for we shall see Him as He is" ( 1 John 3:2 ). But thank God each day there are changes that are taking place, as the Spirit of God continues His work in my life, conforming me into the image of God's dear Son.

How does it happen? By just continuing to look to Jesus. When I look to myself, I can't do it. When I look to others to aid me, they can't do it. The only place that I can find really effective help is by looking to Jesus Christ. It seems that we want to look to man so quickly. "Oh, let's run down and counsel with a pastor on this. Let's see if he has some magic words that will change us."

We're always getting calls. The story goes basically like this: "I've talked to seven other pastors and they haven't been able to help me. Now I want to talk to Chuck." Hey, I'm sorry, friend, but I don't have any help either. I don't have any magic formulas. I don't have any magic words. Your changes that are so necessary are not going to come to pass through counseling sessions. Looking to man. Those changes that are necessary can only come to pass when you look to Jesus Christ.

I don't know where the church ever got messed up in these counseling programs. Getting people to depend upon the counselor to solve their problems. There is an interesting study that has just been released by, I think it's the Sells Eisnick report. Oh, it's really stirring things up something fierce. For they have made a pretty comprehensive study of people with mental problems who have turned to psychoanalysts to solve their problems. And they have found that when a person turns to a psychoanalyst to help them with their problem, in 45 percent of the cases, by the end of a year's therapy with a psychoanalysis, only 43 percent could quit counseling, were helped enough that they needed no more counsel. Only 43 percent.

Those who went to psychotherapists, it was a little better: 52 percent did not have to continue after a year. Those who could afford a psychiatrist came off a little better. For 61 percent who went to psychiatrists did not have to continue counseling after the year. However, those who didn't go to anybody, 73 percent didn't need any counseling at the end of the year.

As I said, this study is turning the whole field of psychology on its ear right now. It's really the big buzz through all the universities, the release of this report. But it's just pointing out what I am telling you. Your help is going to come from the Lord. It's looking unto Jesus that you're going to find your answers. And as long as you're looking unto man and trying to make a crutch out of some counselor, you're not going to make it. You've got to turn to Jesus and find the help that He offers. So, "we with open face beholding the glory of the Lord are then changed from glory to glory into the same image," as His Spirit is working within our hearts.

The best thing any counselor can do is make you dependent upon Jesus Christ. The greatest service any counselor can do for you is to bring you to Jesus Christ and to a dependency on Him, because He's the only One who's going to bring you any help.

Several years ago when I was counseling a psychiatrist, he made me a very lucrative offer to go into business with him. He wanted me to begin counseling in his offices. He had a clinic and he said, "I can give you the technical problem with that person. I can tell you what's gone wrong." But he said, "Having done that, I can't do much more." He said, "You have the answers. I want you to work for me."

But the answer is just pointing people to Jesus Christ. Get people to trust in Him. Get people to look to Him. "We with unveiled faces, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord are being changed from glory to glory." The changes do take place as God's Spirit works in my life.

"

Contending for the Faith

Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament: The pronoun "Who" refers to God as mentioned in the previous verse. The word "able" (hikanoo) means "sufficient" (Thayer 300- 2-2427). Paul acknowledges that he is a sufficient minister but not sufficient of his own abilities and knowledge. He credits God for all successes because God made him a sufficient "minister" (diakonos), meaning "one who executes the commands of another" (Thayer 138-1-1249). The commands of God executed by Paul are the "New Testament" (kainosdiatheke), that is, "God’s decree or covenant directed toward the Christians" (Arndt and Gingrich 182). God gives the commands, and Paul faithfully obeys. His obedience to God qualifies him to be a sufficient minister of the New Testament.

not of the letter, but of the spirit: The word "letter" (gramma) means "sacred writings" (Thayer 120-2-1121). Paul makes an obvious reference to the ten commandments and makes a distinction between the Mosaic law and the New Testament ("the spirit."). Paul is not a minister of the Old Testament law but of the "spirit." The "spirit" (pneuma) is used in contrast to gramma ("the letter"), which is "the characteristic quality of God’s older declaration of His will in the law" (Arndt and Gingrich 683). Paul does not teach the Mosaic law written on tables of stone; instead, he teaches the "spirit," the New Testament, the gospel of Jesus Christ. Paul presents the same message to Christians in Rome:

But now we are delivered from the law, that being dead wherein we were held; that we should serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter (Romans 7:6).

for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life: The word "killeth" (apokteino) means "to deprive of spiritual life and procure eternal misery" (Thayer 64-1-615). The old law deprives a person of spiritual life because it warns and reminds one of sin, but it does not provide forgiveness of sins; the new law ("the spirit"), however, "giveth life" (zoopoieo), meaning "to make alive" (Thayer 274-2-2227). Forgiveness of sins comes through Jesus Christ, rather than through the old law. Jesus says, "It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life" (John 6:63).

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

1. The superiority of Christian ministry to Mosaic ministry 3:1-11

Paul contrasted the ministry of Christians with the ministry of Moses. He did so to enable his readers to understand and appreciate the glory of their ministry and its superiority over that of the Mosaic economy.

"The countermissionaries in Corinth are, in some significant way, exponents of the Mosaic ministry. They are, to use the term imprecisely, ’Judaizers.’" [Note: Ibid., pp. 160-61.]

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

The old and new covenants 3:4-11

Dr. Constable's Expository Notes

Paul proceeded to identify seven contrasts between the New Covenant (agreement, Gr. diatheke) under which Christians serve God and the Old Covenant under which believing Israelites served God. He did so to heighten understanding of and appreciation for the ministry of Christians. The Old Covenant in view is the Mosaic Covenant, and the New Covenant is the covenant that Jesus Christ ratified by His death (Luke 22:20; 1 Corinthians 9:21; 1 Corinthians 11:25; Galatians 6:2; Hebrews 13:20). [Note: See Rodney J. Decker, "The Church’s Relationship to the New Covenant," Bibliotheca Sacra 152:607 (July-September 1995):290-305; 608 (October-December 1995):431-56.]

The New Testament uses diatheke exclusively for "covenant." It always refers to an arrangement that one person makes, as in a last will and testament, which another party may accept or reject but cannot alter. The Greek word that describes a mutual agreement reached between two parties is syntheke.

The Old Covenant was very specific concerning human responsibilities. It was essentially an objective, external standard that God revealed for His people Israel without any special enabling grace. However the New Covenant rests on promises that include the indwelling and empowering presence of God’s Holy Spirit who enables the believer to obey (John 14:17; John 16:13; Acts 1:4-5; Acts 1:8; Romans 8:4). It is also more general in its demands.

The outcomes or results of each covenant differ too. The Old Covenant slew people in the sense that it showed how impossible it was to measure up to God’s requirements. Moreover it announced a death sentence on all who fell short (cf. Romans 7:9-11; Galatians 3:10). The New Covenant, on the other hand, leads to fullness of life because God’s Spirit helps the believer do God’s will (cf. Romans 7:6; Romans 8:3).

Paul used "Spirit" in this passage in a double sense. On the one hand, he contrasted the letter (exact wording) of the Old Covenant with the spirit (true intention) of the New Covenant. On the other hand, he contrasted the non-enabling, external words of the Old Covenant with the enabling, internal Holy Spirit of the New Covenant (cf. Romans 2:28-29; Romans 7:6). [Note: See Paul R. Thorsell, "The Spirit in the Present Age: Preliminary Fulfillment of the Predicted New Covenant According to Paul," Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society 41:3 (September 1998):397-413.] The second of these senses is more primary.

"’The letter’ is a Paulinism for the law, as ’spirit’ in these passages is his word for the relationships and powers of new life in Christ Jesus. Here in ch. 3 is presented a series of contrasts between law and spirit, between the old covenant and the new. The contrast is not between two methods of interpretation, literal and spiritual, but between two methods of divine dealing: one, through the law; the other, through the Holy Spirit." [Note: The New Scofield Reference Bible, p. 1254.]

Barclay's Daily Study Bible

Chapter 3

EACH MAN A LETTER OF CHRIST ( 2 Corinthians 3:1-3 )

3:1-3 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Surely you do not think that we need--as some people need--letters of commendation neither to you or from you? You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all men. It is plain to see that you are a letter written by Christ, produced under our ministry, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets which are living, beating, human hearts.

Behind this passage lies the thought of a custom which was common in the ancient world, that of sending letters of commendation with a person. If someone was going to a strange community, a friend of his who knew someone in that community would give him a letter of commendation to introduce him and to testify to his character.

Here is such a letter, found among the papyri, written by a certain Aurelius Archelaus, who was a beneficiarius, that is a soldier privileged to have special exemption from all menial duties, to his commanding officer, a military tribune called Julius Domitius. It is to introduce and commend a certain Theon. "To Julius Domitius, military tribune of the legion, from Aurelius Archelaus, his beneficiarius, greeting. I have already before this recommended to you Theon, my friend, and now also, I ask you, sir, to have him before your eyes as you would myself. For he is a man such as to deserve to be loved by you, for he left his own people, his goods and his business and followed me, and through all things he has kept me safe. I therefore pray you that he may have the right to come and see you. He can tell you everything about our business...I have loved the man...I wish you, sir, great happiness and long life with your family and good health. Have this letter before your eyes and let it make you think that I am speaking to you. Farewell."

That was the kind of commendatory letter, or reference, of which Paul was thinking. There is one such in the New Testament. Romans 16:1-27 is a letter of commendation written to introduce Phoebe, a member of the Church at Cenchrea, to the Church at Rome.

In the ancient world, as nowadays, sometimes written testimonials did not mean very much. A man once asked Diogenes, the Cynic philosopher, for such a letter. Diogenes answered, "That you are a man he will know at a glance; but whether you are a good or a bad man he will discover if he has the skill to distinguish between good and bad, and if he is without that skill he will not discover the facts even though I write to him thousands of times." Yet in the Christian Church such letters were necessary, for even Lucian, the pagan satirist, noted that any charlatan could make a fortune out of the simple-minded Christians, because they were so easily imposed upon.

The previous sentences of Paul's letter seemed to read as if he was giving himself a testimonial. He declares that he has no need of such commendation. Then he takes a side-glance at those who have been causing trouble in Corinth. "There may be some," he says, "who brought you letters of commendation or who got them from you." In all probability these were emissaries of the Jews who had come to undo Paul's work and who had brought introductory letters from the Sanhedrin to accredit them. Once Paul had had such letters himself, when he set out to Damascus to obliterate the Church. ( Acts 9:2). He says that his only testimonial is the Corinthians themselves. The change in their character and life is the only commendation that he needs.

He goes on to make a great claim. Every one of them is a letter of Christ. Long ago Plato had said that the good teacher does not write his message in ink that will fade; he writes it upon men. That is what Jesus had done. He had written his message on the Corinthians, through his servant, Paul, not with fading ink but with the Spirit, not on tablets of stone as the law was first written, but on the hearts of men.

There is a great truth here, which is at once an inspiration and an awful warning--every man is an open letter for Jesus Christ. Every Christian, whether he likes it or not, is an advertisement for Christianity. The honour of Christ is in the hands of his followers. We judge a shopkeeper by the kind of goods he sells; we judge a craftsman by the kind of articles he produces; we judge a Church by the kind of men it creates; and therefore men judge Christ by his followers. Dick Sheppard, after years of talking in the open air to people who were outside the Church, declared that he had discovered that "the greatest handicap the Church has is the unsatisfactory lives of professing Christians." When we go out into the world, we have the awe-inspiring responsibility of being open letters, advertisements, for Christ and his Church.

THE SURPASSING GLORY ( 2 Corinthians 3:4-11 )

3:4-11 We can believe this with such confidence because we believe it through Christ and in the sight of God. It is not that in our own resources we are adequate to reckon up the effect of anything that we have done, as it were personally, but our adequacy comes from God, who has made us adequate to be ministers of the new relationship which has come into existence between him and men. This new relationship does not depend on a written document, but on the Spirit. The written document is a deadly thing; the Spirit is a life-giving power. If the ministry which could only produce death, the ministry which depends on written documents, the ministry which was engraved on stone, came into being with such glory that the children of Israel could not bear to look for any time at the face of Moses, because of the glory which shone upon his face--and it was a glory that was doomed to fade surely even more will the ministry of the Spirit be clad in glory. For if the ministry which could not produce anything else but condemnation was a glory, the ministry which produces the right relationship between God and man excels still more in glory. For, indeed, that which was clad with glory no longer enjoys glory because of this--because of the glory that surpasses it. If that which was doomed to pass away emerged in glory, much more that which is destined to remain exists in glory.

This passage really falls into two parts. At the beginning of it Paul is feeling that perhaps his claim that the Corinthians are a living epistle of Christ, produced under his ministry, may sound a little like self-praise. So he hastens to insist that whatever he has done is not his own work but the work of God. It is God who has made him adequate for the task which was his. It may be that he is thinking of a fanciful meaning that the Jews sometimes gave to one of the great titles of God. God was called El ( H410) Shaddai ( H7706) , which is The Almighty, but sometimes the Jews explained El Shaddai to mean The Sufficient One. It is he who is all-sufficient who has made Paul sufficient for his task.

When Harriet Beecher Stowe produced Uncle Tom's Cabin, 300,000 copies were sold in America in one year. It was translated into a score of languages. Lord Palmerston, who had not read a novel for thirty years, praised it "not only for the story, but for the statesmanship." Lord Cockburn, a Privy Counsellor, declared that it had done more for humanity than any other book of fiction. Tolstoi ranked it among the great achievements of the human mind. It certainly did more than any other single thing to advance the freedom of the slaves. Harriet Beecher Stowe refused to take any credit for what she had written. She said, "l, the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin? No, indeed, I could not control the story; it wrote itself. The Lord wrote it, and I was but the humblest instrument in his hand. It all came to me in visions, one after another, and I put them down in words. To him alone be the praise!"

Her adequacy was of God. It was so with Paul. He never said, "See what I have done!" He always said, "To God be the glory!" He never conceived of himself as adequate for any task; he thought of God as making him adequate. And that is precisely why, conscious as he was of his own weakness, he feared to set his hand to no task. He never had to do it alone; he did it with God.

The second part of the passage deals with the contrast between the old and the new covenant. A covenant means an arrangement made between two people through which they enter into a certain relationship. It is not, in the biblical usage, an ordinary agreement, because the contracting parties enter into an ordinary agreement on equal terms. But in the biblical sense of covenant, it is God who is the prime mover and approaches man to offer him a relationship upon conditions which man could neither initiate nor alter but only accept or reject.

The word Paul uses for new when he speaks of the new covenant is the same as Jesus used and it is very significant. In Greek there are two words for new. First, there is neos ( G3501) , which means new in point of time and that alone. A young person is neos ( G3501) because he is a newcomer into the world. Second, there is kainos ( G2537) , which means not only new in point of time, but also new in quality. If something is kainos ( G2537) it has brought a fresh clement into the situation. It is the word kainos ( G2537) that both Jesus and Paul use of the new covenant, and the significance is that the new covenant is not only new in point of time; it is quite different in kind from the old covenant. It produces between man and God a relationship of a totally different kind.

Wherein does this difference lie?

(i) The old covenant was based on a written document. We can see the story of its initiation in Exodus 24:1-8. Moses took the book of the covenant and read it to the people and they agreed to it. On the other hand the new covenant is based on the power of the life-giving Spirit. A written document is always something that is external; whereas the work of the Spirit changes a man's very heart. A man may obey the written code while all the time he wishes to disobey it; but when the Spirit comes into his heart and controls it, not only does he not break the code, he does not even wish to break it, because he is a changed man. A written code can change the law; only the Spirit can change human nature.

(ii) The old covenant was a deadly thing, because it produced a legal relationship between God and man. In effect it said, "If you wish to maintain your relationship with God, you must keep these laws." It thereby set up a situation in which God was essentially judge and man was essentially a criminal, forever in default before the bar of God's judgment.

The old covenant was deadly because it killed certain things. (a) It killed hope. There was never any hope that any man could keep it, human nature being what it is. It therefore could issue in nothing but frustration. (b) It killed life. Under it a man could earn nothing but condemnation; and condemnation meant death. (c) It killed strength. It was perfectly able to tell a man what to do, but it could not help him to do it.

The new covenant was quite different. (a) It was a relationship of love. It came into being because God so loved the world. (b) It was a relationship between a father and his sons. Man was no longer the criminal in default, he was the son of God, even if a disobedient son. (c) It changed a man's life, not by imposing a new code of laws on him, but by changing his heart. (d) It therefore not only told a man what to do but gave him the strength to do it. With its commandments it brought power.

Paul goes on to contrast the two covenants. The old covenant was born in glory. When Moses came down from the mountain with the Ten Commandments, which are the code of the old covenant, his face shone with such a splendour that no one could took at it ( Exodus 34:30). Obviously that was a transient splendour. It did not and it could not last. The new covenant, the new relationship which Jesus Christ makes possible between man and God, has a greater splendour which will never fade because it produces pardon and not condemnation, life and not death.

Here is the warning. The Jews preferred the old covenant, the law; they rejected the new covenant, the new relationship in Christ. Now the old covenant was not a bad thing; but it was only a second-best, a stage upon the way. As a great commentator has put it, "When the sun has risen the lamps cease to be of use." And as has been so truly said, "The second-best is the worst enemy of the best." Men have always tended to cling to the old even when something far better is offered. For long people, on so-called religious grounds, refused to use chloroform. When Wordsworth and the romantic poets emerged, criticism said, "This will never do." When Wagner began to write his music, people would not have it. Churches all over the world cling to the old and refuse the new. Because a thing was always done, it is right, and because a thing was never done, it is wrong. We must be careful not to worship the stages instead of the goal, not to cling to the second-best while the best is waiting, not, as the Jews did, to insist that the old ways are right and refuse the new glories which God is opening to us.

THE VEIL WHICH HIDES THE TRUTH ( 2 Corinthians 3:12-18 )

3:12-18 It is because we possess such a hope that we speak with such freedom. We do not draw a veil over things, as Moses did over his face so that the children of Israel should not gaze at the end of the glory which was doomed to fade away. But their minds were dulled. To this very day the same veil remains, still not drawn aside, when they read the record of the old relationship between God and man, because only in Christ is that veil abolished. Yes, to this day, whenever the books that Moses wrote are read, the veil rests upon their heart. But, whenever a man turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. The Lord is the Spirit. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. And we all, with no veil upon our faces, see as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, and we go on changing this image from glory to glory, even as it comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.

All the pictures in this passage emerge directly from the passage which goes before. Paul begins from the thought that when Moses came down from the mount the glory upon his face was so bright that no one could gaze steadily upon it.

(i) He thinks back to Exodus 34:33. The King James Version has it that Moses put a veil upon his face until he had finished speaking; but the correct translation of the Hebrew, is that Moses, as in the R.S.V., did this when he had finished speaking. Paul takes this to mean that Moses veiled his face so that the people should not have to see the slow fading of the glory that once was there. His first thought is that the glory of the old covenant, the old relationship between God and men, was essentially a fading one. It was destined to be overpassed, not as the wrong is overpassed by the right, but as the incomplete is overpassed by the complete. The revelation that came by Moses was true and great, but it was only partial; the revelation that came in Jesus Christ is full and final. As Augustine so wisely put it long ago, "We do wrong to the Old Testament if we deny that it comes from the same just and good God as the New. On the other hand we do wrong to the New Testament, if we put the Old on a level with it." The one is a step to glory; the other is the summit of glory.

(ii) The idea of the veil now takes hold of Paul's mind and he uses it in different ways. He says that, when the Jews listen to the reading of the Old Testament, as they do every Sabbath day in the synagogue, a veil upon their eyes keeps them from seeing the real meaning of it. It ought to point them to Jesus Christ, but the veil keeps them from seeing that. We, too, may fail to see the real meaning of scripture because our eyes are veiled.

(a) They may be veiled by prejudice. We, too, often go to scripture to find support for our own views rather than to find the truth of God.

(b) They may be veiled by wishful-thinking. Too often we find what we want to find, and neglect what we do not want to see. To take an example, we may delight in all the references to the love and the mercy of God, but pass over all the references to his wrath and judgment.

(c) They may be veiled by fragmentary thinking. We should always regard the Bible as a whole. It is easy to take individual texts and criticize them. It is easy to prove that parts of the Old Testament are sub-Christian. It is easy to find support for private theories by choosing certain texts and passages and putting others aside. But it is the whole message that we must seek; and that is just another way of saying that we must read all scripture in the light of Jesus Christ.

(iii) Not only is there a veil which keeps the Jews from seeing the real meaning of scripture; there is also a veil which comes between them and God.

(a) Sometimes it is the veil of disobedience. Very often it is moral and not intellectual blindness which keeps us from seeing God. If we persist in disobeying him we become less and less capable of seeing him. The vision of God is to the pure in heart.

(b) Sometimes it is the veil of the unteachable spirit. As the Scots saying has it, "There's none so blind as those who winna see." The best teacher on earth cannot teach the man who knows it all already and does not wish to learn. God gave us free will, and, if we insist upon our own way, we cannot learn his.

(iv) Paul goes on to say that we see the glory of the Lord with no veil upon our faces, and because of that we, too, are changed from glory into glory. Possibly what Paul means is that, if we gaze at Christ, we in the end reflect him. His image appears in our lives. It is a law of life that we become like the people we gaze at. People hero-worship someone and begin to reflect his ways. If we contemplate Jesus Christ, in the end we come to reflect him.

Paul sets for many a theological problem when he says, "The Lord is the Spirit." He seems to identify the Risen Lord and the Holy Spirit. We must remember that he was not writing theology; he was setting down experience. And it is the experience of the Christian life that the work of the Spirit and the work of the Risen Lord are one and the same. The strength and guidance we receive come alike from the Spirit and from the Risen Lord.

Where the Spirit is, says Paul, there is liberty. He means that so long as man's obedience to God is conditioned by obedience to a code of laws he is in the position of an unwilling slave. But when it comes from the operation of the Spirit in his heart, the very centre of his being has no other desire than to serve God, for then it is not law but love which binds him. Many things which we would resent doing under compulsion for some stranger are a privilege to do for someone we love. Love clothes the humblest and the most menial tasks with glory. "In God's service we find our perfect freedom."

-Barclay's Daily Study Bible (NT)

Gann's Commentary on the Bible

2 Corinthians 3:6

made us able [enabled, sufficient, competent, adequate] ministers [servants] -- Paul was called by Christ Himself to be a ministers of the new covenant. 2 Corinthians 1:1.

the new covenant -- The covenant that provides forgiveness of sins through the death of Christ ( Jeremiah 31:31-34; Ezekiel 11:19; Matthew 26:28; Hebrews 8:7-12).

the letter kills -- This is a reference to the law of Moses (compare Romans 2:27; Romans 7:6). The law does not justify people; it only identifies sin and condemns (see Romans 3:20; Romans 8:2). Instead, people are justified by faith (see Romans 3:28 and note).

the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. -- The letter kills because it results in spiritual death. Man’s inability to truly keep the Mosaical Law sentenced him to an eternal death (without a sacrifice of atonement, see notes on Romans 7:9-11; cf. Romans 5:12; Galatians 3:10). Here "spirit" stands for the New Covenant under Christ, and only through Jesus Christ can one have eternal life, and it is through grace. Romans 1:16; 1 Corinthians 1:18.

“not of the letter but of the Spirit” There is a series of comparisons.

1. stone versus the heart, vv. 2 Corinthians 3:3

2. letter versus spirit, v. 2 Corinthians 3:6

3. old service versus spiritual service, v. 2 Corinthians 3:7

4. ministry of death versus life, 2 Corinthians 3:7, 2 Corinthians 3:6

5. the service connected with condemnation versus the service connected with right-standing, v. 2 Corinthians 3:9

6. what has passed away versus what is permanent, v. 2 Corinthians 3:11

7. the veil remains unlifted versus the veil is removed, v. 2 Corinthians 3:14

Paul is contrasting the old and new covenants, the contrast of the Law of Moses versus the Gospel of Christ, the "letter" versus the "heart" (cf. Romans 2:29; Romans 7:6), one depending on "legalism" versus "grace".

Not of the letter, but of the spirit -- Both in this and in the final clause of this verse, the RSV has perpetrated a gross error in capitalizing "Spirit" in order to make it mean "Holy Spirit" in both clauses, an error slavishly followed in Good News for Modern Man, Phillips New Testament, The New English Bible (1961), and others. While it is true, of course, that the blessings of the new covenant may be enjoyed only by those who have received the blessed Holy Spirit, there is no reference to that here. As Hughes said, "It is unlikely that a direct reference to the Spirit is intended." "The contrast in 2 Corinthians 3:6 is not between the outward and inward sense of scripture, but between the outward and inward power of the Jewish and Christian dispensations." As Tasker put it, "Paul is distinguishing the new covenant from the old by using the contrasted categories of spirit and letter, life and death." Farrar gave the meaning as "Not of the law, but of the gospel." Paul’s usage of this same expression in Romans 2:28 f speaks of a true Jew as one who is a Jew in heart, IN THE SPIRIT, NOT IN THE LETTER. There is no need to multiply evidence that Paul used the same expression here exactly as he used it there. - Coffman

Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible

Who also hath made us able ministers,.... This is an answer to the question in 2 Corinthians 2:16 who is sufficient for these things? no man is of himself; we are indeed sufficient for them, but not of ourselves; our sufficiency is of God, he hath made us able, or sufficient ministers: such ministers as are not of men's, but God's making, are sufficient ones; and none are sufficient but whom God makes so; and those he makes able and sufficient, by giving them spiritual gifts, fitting them for the ministry: and these are ministers

of the New Testament, or "covenant"; the covenant of grace, of which Christ is the Mediator and surety; called "new", not because newly made, for it was made with Christ from everlasting; nor newly revealed, for it was made known to Adam after his fall, and to all the Old Testament patriarchs, and was exhibited under the legal dispensation, though but darkly, in types, shadows, sacrifices, c. which therefore waxing old is vanished away and the covenant of grace is now more clearly revealed under the Gospel dispensation, free from all the obscurity it before laboured under; and therefore is called "new", as well as because it will always continue so, and never give way to another covenant: now the Gospel, and the ministry of it, is nothing else but an exhibition of the covenant of grace, its blessings and promises; and the work and business of those who are ministers of it is not to insist upon the covenant of works, the terms, conditions, obligations, promises, and threatenings of that covenant; but to open and explain the nature, promises, and blessings of the covenant of grace: for such who are fit and proper ministers, are ministers

not of the letter, but of the spirit; which is to be understood, not of any difference between the books of the Old and the New Testament, for a faithful minister of the word may and will bring forth things new and old, out of the one as well as the other; nor of the literal and allegorical, or mystical sense of the Scriptures, as if the latter and not the former was only to be attended to; nor of the difference of communicating the Gospel by letters, and preaching it by word of mouth; since both methods may be used for the spread of it, as were by the apostles themselves; but of the difference there is between the law and the Gospel. The law is "the letter", not merely because written in letters, for so likewise is the Gospel; but because it is a mere letter, hereby showing what is to be done or avoided, without any efficacy in it, or communicating any to enable persons to obey its commands, to give life to its observers, or either to sanctify or justify any who are under it, or of the works of it; it is a mere letter, as observed by an unregenerate man, who only regards the externals of it, being unacquainted with its spirituality. The Gospel is "the spirit"; see John 6:63 it contains spiritual things, and not things merely natural, moral, and civil, as does the law, but spiritual blessings and promises; it penetrates into the spirit and soul of man, and comes from, and is attended with the Spirit of God. The law is

the letter that

killeth, by irritating and provoking to sin, the cause of death, which though not the design and natural tendency of the law, and therefore not to be blamed, yet so it is, through the corruption of human nature; and by convincing of sin when the sinner is killed, and it dead in his own apprehension; and by not only threatening with death, but by cursing, condemning, and punishing with it:

but the Gospel is

the spirit, which

giveth life; it is a means in the hand of the Spirit of God, of quickening dead sinners, of healing the deadly wounds of sin, of showing the way of life by Christ, and of working faith in the soul, to look to him, and live upon him; it affords food for the support of the spiritual life, and revives souls under the most drooping circumstances. The apostle may allude to a distinction among the Jews, between the body and sou] of the law; the words, they say, are

גופא תורה, "the body of the law"; and the book of the law is the clothing; and besides these, there is נשמתא דאוריתא, "the soul of the law"; which wise men look into w.

w Zohar in Numb. fol. 63. 2.

Henry's Complete Commentary on the Bible

      6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.   7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:   8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?   9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.   10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.   11 For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.

      Here the apostle makes a comparison between the Old Testament and the New, the law of Moses and the gospel of Jesus Christ, and values himself and his fellow-labourers by this, that they were able ministers of the New Testament, that God had made them so, 2 Corinthians 3:6; 2 Corinthians 3:6. This he does in answer to the accusations of false teachers, who magnify greatly the law of Moses.

      I. He distinguishes between the letter and the spirit even of the New Testament, 2 Corinthians 3:6; 2 Corinthians 3:6. As able ministers of the New Testament, they were ministers not merely of the letter, to read the written word, or to preach the letter of the gospel only, but they were ministers of the Spirit also; the Spirit of God did accompany their ministrations. The letter killeth; this the letter of the law does, for that is the ministration of death; and if we rest only in the letter of the gospel we shall be never the better for so doing, for even that will be a savour of death unto death; but the Spirit of the gospel, going along with the ministry of the gospel, giveth life spiritual and life eternal.

      II. He shows the difference between the Old Testament and the New, and the excellency of the gospel above the law. For, 1. The Old-Testament dispensation was the ministration of death (2 Corinthians 3:7; 2 Corinthians 3:7), whereas that of the New Testament is the ministration of life. The law discovered sin, and the wrath and curse of God. This showed us a God above us and a God against us; but the gospel discovers grace, and Emmanuel, God with us. Upon this account the gospel is more glorious than the law; and yet that had a glory in it, witness the shining of Moses's face (an indication thereof) when he came down from the mount with the tables in his hand, that reflected rays of brightness upon his countenance. 2. The law was the ministration of condemnation, for that condemned and cursed every one who continued not in all things written therein to do them; but the gospel is the ministration of righteousness: therein the righteousness of God by faith is revealed. This shows us that the just shall live by his faith. This reveals the grace and mercy of God through Jesus Christ, for obtaining the remission of sins and eternal life. The gospel therefore so much exceeds in glory that in a manner it eclipses the glory of the legal dispensation, 2 Corinthians 3:10; 2 Corinthians 3:10. As the shining of a burning lamp is lost, or not regarded, when the sun arises and goes forth in his strength; so there was no glory in the Old Testament, in comparison with that of the New. 3. The law is done away, but the gospel does and shall remain,2 Corinthians 3:11; 2 Corinthians 3:11. Not only did the glory of Moses's face go away, but the glory of Moses's law is done away also; yea, the law of Moses itself is now abolished. That dispensation was only to continue for a time, and then to vanish away; whereas the gospel shall remain to the end of the world, and is always fresh and flourishing and remains glorious.

Kelly Commentary on Books of the Bible

2 Corinthians 1:1-24. It is impossible to read the two epistles to the Corinthians with the smallest care without perceiving the strong contrast between the wounded tone of the first epistle (the heart aggrieved so much the more because it loved the saints), and now, in the second, that same heart filled with consolation about them from God. This is exceedingly assuring, and it is as evidently divine, the effectual working of God's own grace.

In human things nothing really shuts out decay. The utmost wise men essay is to put a drag on the progress of corruption, and to stave off as long as may be the too rapid inroads of death. Thanks be to God, it h not so in divine things. There is nothing which so brings out the resources of God as His supremacy over evil in grace, nothing that so manifests His tender mercy and His goodness wherever there is real faith. And spite of the painful disorders of the Corinthians, reality was there. So the apostle, though heart-broken because of their state, would confidently look up to God about them, even in his first so strongly reproving epistle; for it was the Lord Himself who had told him He had much people in that city. There was small appearance of it when he wrote the earlier letter to them; but the Lord was right, as He always is, and the apostle confided in the Lord spite of appearances. He now tastes the joyful fruit of his faith in the recovering grace of the Lord. Hence in this epistle we have not so much as in the former the evidence of their outward disorders. The apostle is not occupied as there with the regulation of the state of the church as such, but we see souls restored. There is indeed the result of that salutary dealing in the very different state of individuals, and also of the assembly; but very emphatically, whatever might be the effect on the many, to a large extent there is a blessed unfolding of life in Christ in its power and effects.

Thus our epistle reminds us to a certain extent of the epistle to the Philippians, resembling it, though not of course the same, nor by any means of so lofty a character; but nevertheless a state appears wholly different from the downward path which the first epistle had reproved. For this change God had prepared His servant; for He takes in everything in His matchless wisdom and ways. He considers not only those written to, but the one He was employing to write. Assuredly He had dealt with them, but He had also dealt with His servant Paul. It was another sort of dealing, not without humbling to them, in him withering to nature, without the shame that necessarily befell the saints at Corinth, but so much the more fitting him to go out in love toward them. As he knew what God's grace had wrought in their hearts, he could the more freely express the sympathy he felt, and, encouraged by all that had been wrought, take up what remained to be accomplished in them. But the unfailing grace of God, that works in the midst of weakness and in the face of death, and had so wrought mightily in him, made the Corinthians very dear to him, and enabled him to bring to bear on their circumstances and their state the most suited comfort that it was ever the mission of that blessed man to minister to the hearts of those that were broken down.

This he now pours forth abundantly, "Blessed be God;" for his heart, surcharged with grief when the first epistle was written, could open, "Blessed be God, even the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort; who comforteth us in all our tribulation, that we may be able to comfort them which are in any trouble," no matter what, were it through grave faults, were it to their own deep shame and to his grief as once. But now the comfort far overcomes the sorrow, and we are enabled to "comfort them that are in any trouble, by the comfort wherewith we ourselves are comforted of God." Here with a true heart he at once brings in the sufferings of Christ: "For as the sufferings of Christ abound in us, so our consolation also aboundeth by Christ. And whether we be afflicted, it is for your consolation and salvation."

The difference in this from Philippians, to which I have referred, is remarkable. The point in hand there is, that they were working out their own salvation, the apostle being, in a certain sense, completely shut out from them. Unable from circumstances, he there lets them know that he does not mingle himself with them in the same way. Their state did not need it. Undoubtedly this is a difference; but it is only that which is owing to their manhood in grace. Here they wanted more. It was the unfolding of grace in both; but the difference was largely to the credit of His name in the Philippians. It was the proof of their excellent condition that the apostle had such perfect confidence in them, even while he was absolutely precluded from being near them. He was at a distance from them, and had but small prospect of meeting with them shortly.

To the Corinthians he could speak otherwise. He was comparatively near, and was hoping the third time, as he tells us in the latter part of the epistle, to come to them. Nevertheless he interweaves his own experience with theirs in a way which is wonderfully gracious to those who had a heart. "And whether we be afflicted," he says, "it is for your consolation and salvation, which is effectual in the enduring of the same sufferings which we also suffer: or whether we be comforted, it is for your consolation and salvation." Was it not the reckoning of grace? Whatever came on them, it was for their comfort. If affliction, the Lord would turn it to their blessing; if joy and consolation, no less to their blessing. At the same time he lets them know what trouble had come upon himself, and in the most delightful manner turns it to account. Whatever was the might of God that had sustained him when there was nothing on their part to give him comfort, but rather to add to the anguish of his spirit, now that grace was operating in their hearts, he shows how dependant he felt on their prayers. Truly beautiful is grace, and far different from the manner of man.

How blessed to have the working of God not only in Him that is absolute perfection, but in one who feels like ourselves, who had the same nature in the same state that has wrought such continual mischief towards God! At the same time, it is proved by such a one as this servant of God to be only the means of furnishing additional proof in another form that the might of God's Spirit is without limit, and can work the greatest moral wonders even in a poor human heart. Undoubtedly we should lose much if we had it not in its full perfection in Christ; but how much we should lose if we had not also the working of grace, not where human nature was itself lovely, not a spot without nor a taint of sin within, but where everything natural was evil, and nothing else; where nevertheless the power of the Holy Ghost wrought in the new man, lifting the believer completely above the flesh. This was the case with the apostle.

At the same time there was the answer of grace in their hearts, though it might be developed comparatively but little. Evidently there was a great deal that required to be set right in them; but they were on the right road. This was a joy to his heart, and so at once he encourages them, and gives them to know how little his heart had turned away from them, how he loved to link himself with them instead of standing aloof from them. "Ye also helping together by prayer for us, that for the gift bestowed upon us by the means of many persons thanks may be given by many on our behalf. For our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience, that in simplicity and godly sincerity," etc. He had been charged with the contrary. Being a man of remarkable wisdom and power of discernment, he paid the penalty that this must always entail in this world. That is, they imputed it to his ability and natural penetration; and the real power of the Spirit of God was thus merely accredited to flesh.

There was also an imputation of vacillation if not dishonesty. His purpose of visiting Corinth had been set aside. First of all the apostle takes this up in a spirit of self-renunciation, bent on Christ's glory. Supposing their imputation to be true, supposing Paul had been as fickle-minded a man as his enemies insinuated, if he had said he would come and did not come after all, what then? At any rate his preaching was not thus. The word that Paul preached was not "yea and nay." In Christ it was "Yea," where there is no "nay." There is no refusal nor failure. There is everything to win, and comfort, and establish the soul in Christ. There is no negation of grace, still less of uncertainty in Christ Jesus the Lord. There is everything that can comfort the sad, attract the hard, and embolden the distrustful. Let it be the very vilest, what is there lacking that can lead on and into the highest place of blessing and enjoyment of God, not only in hope, but even now by the Spirit of God in the face of all adversaries? This was the Christ that he loved to preach. By Him came grace and truth. He at least is absolutely what He speaks. Who or what was so worthy of trust? And this is put in a most forcible way. "For," says he, "all the promises of God in him are yea, and in him Amen." It is not a bare literal accomplishment of the promises. This is not the, statement any more than the state of things which is come in now; but as to all the promises of God, it matters not what they may be, in Him is the yea, and in Him the Amen, to the glory of God by us. They have found their every verification in Christ.

Was eternal life promised? In Him was eternal life in its highest form. For what will be eternal life in the millennial day compared with that which was and now is in Jesus? It will be a most real introduction and outshining of eternal life in that day; but still in Christ the believer has it now, and in its absolute perfection. Take, again, remission of sins. Will that display of divine mercy, so needed by and precious to the guilty sinner, be known in the millennium at all comparably with what God has brought in and sends out now in Christ? Take what you please, say heavenly glory; and is not Christ in it in all perfection? It does not matter, therefore, what may be looked at, "whatever be the promises of God, in him is the yea, and in him the Amen." It is not said in us. Evidently there are many promises not yet accomplished as regards us. Satan has not lost but acquired, in the dominion of the world, a higher place by the crucifixion of the Lord Jesus Christ; but faith can see in that very act by which he acquired it his eternal downfall. Now is the judgment of the world. The prince of the world is judged, but the sentence is not executed yet. Instead of being dethroned by the cross, he has thereby gained in the world that remarkable place and title. But for all that, whatever the apparent success of the devil, and whatever the delay as to "the promises of God, in Him is the yea, and in Him the Amen, unto the glory of God by us."

But further, the apostle is not content with this alone. He would have them know, having thus described the word which he preached, that which was infinitely dearer to him than his own character. Now he tells them that it was to spare them he had not come to Corinth. This ought to have been a reproof; and it is given in the most delicate manner. It was the sweet result of divine love in his heart. He preferred to tarry or turn aside, rather than to visit the Corinthians in their then condition. Had he come at all, he must have come with a rod, and this he could not endure. He wished to come with nothing but kindness, to blame nobody, to speak of nothing painful and humiliating to them (albeit, in truth, more humiliating to him, for he loved them). And as a parent would be ashamed in his child's shame far more than the child is capable of feeling, so precisely the apostle had this feeling about those he had begotten in the gospel. He loved the Corinthians dearly, spite of all their faults, and he would rather bear their unworthy suggestions of a fickle mind because he did not visit them at once, than come to censure them in their evil and proud state. He wished to give them time, that he might come with joy.

In 2 Corinthians 2:1-17 this is entered into a little more, and the deep anxiety of his heart is shown about them. We may easily gather what an open door for evangelizing is to one who was a great preacher of the gospel, as well as an apostle and a teacher of the Gentiles. Although such an opportunity now offered itself, and was, no doubt, a strong impelling cause to work there, still he had no rest for his spirit. His heart was disturbed about the state of Corinth, and the case that tried him most in their midst. It seemed as if he felt nothing else, as if there was no sufficient call to occupy him in other quarters. He could turn from that most animating and immediate reward to any labourer in this world. Whatever might be the preciousness of presenting Christ to those who knew Him not, to see the manifestation of the glory of Christ in those that did know Him, to see it restored where it was obscured was something even nearer to his heart. The one would be, no doubt, great joy to wretched souls, and the spread of the glory of the Lord in the regions beyond; but here the glory of the Lord had been tarnished in those that bore His name before men; and how could Paul feel this lightly? What pressed so urgently on him? Hence it was that no attraction of gospel service, no promise of work, however fair, that called him elsewhere, could detain him. He felt the deepest affliction about the saints, as he says here, and had no rest in his spirit, because he found not Titus his brother, who had been to see them.

Then, again, among the particular instances which most pressed on him was, his exceeding trouble about the man he had ordered them to put away. For this he had authority from God, and the responsibility of heeding it abides, I need not say, in its entirety for us. We are just as much under that authority as they were. But now that God had wrought in the man who was the chief and grossest evidence of the power of Satan in the assembly, what a comfort to his heart! This sin, unknown even among the Gentiles, and the more shameful as being where the name of the Lord Jesus had been confessed and the Spirit dwelt, became the occasion of the most salutary instruction for all their souls, for they had learnt what becomes God's assembly under such humiliating circumstances. And they had responded to the solemn call pressed on them in the name of the Lord, and had purged out the evil leaven from the midst of their paschal feast. Only now they were in danger on the judicial side. They were disposed to be as over-severe as they had been previously unexercised and lax. Paul would infuse the same spirit of grace towards the penitent offender that filled himself. They had realised at length the shame that had been done to the Lord's glory, and were indignant with themselves as parties to identifying His name, not to speak of themselves, with such scandals. Thus they were slow to forgive the man that had wrought such a wrong, and Satan sought in an opposite way to separate them in heart from the blessed apostle, who had roused them to just feelings after their too long slumber. Just as Paul was horrified at their indifference to sin at first, so now it was impossible but that he must be concerned, lest there should be a failure in grace as a little before in righteousness. But there is nothing like a manifestation of grace to call out grace; and he lets them know what was his own feeling, not merely about the wrong-doer, but about themselves. "To whom ye forgive anything, I forgive also; for if I forgave anything, to whom I forgave it, for your sakes forgave I it in the person of Christ; lest Satan should gain an advantage over us: for we are not ignorant of his devices." This is his spirit. It is no longer a command, but a trust reposed in the saints; and when we think of that which is afterwards to appear in this epistle, what was still at work among them as well as what had been, it is certainly a most blessed and beautiful proof of the reality of grace, and of the effects which can be, as they have been, produced by it in the heart of a saint here below. What do we not owe to Jesus?

After having disposed of this matter for the present (for he recurs to it afterwards), he turns to speak of the way in which he was led of God through trial, no matter of what character. let the question be of the man who had wandered so far astray, but was now restored really to the Lord, and to whom he desired that his brethren should publicly confirm their love; or let it be that he is turned aside from gospel work because of his anxiety on their account, he now tells them of the triumph which the Lord gave him to prove everywhere.

This leads in2 Corinthians 3:1-18; 2 Corinthians 3:1-18 to an unfolding of righteousness in Christ, but in a style considerably different from what we found in the Epistle to the Romans. There the broad and deep, foundations were exposed to view, as well as the Spirit's power and liberty consequent on the soul's submission to Christ's work. The proposition was God just and the justifier, not by blood only, but in that resurrection power in which Christ rose from among the dead. According to no less a work of such a Saviour we are justified.

But in this chapter the Spirit goes higher still. He connects righteousness with heavenly glory, while at the same time this righteousness and glory are shown to be perfectly in grace as regards us. It is not in the slightest degree glory without love (as sometimes people might think of glory as a cold thing); and if it withers up man from before it, the fleshly nature no doubt, it is only with a view to the enjoyment of greater vigour, through the power of Christ resting on us in our detected and felt weakness.

The chapter opens with an allusion to the habit so familiar to God's church of sending and requiring a letter of commendation. "Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?" Not at all. And what then is his letter of commendation? Themselves. What confidence he must have had in the gracious power of God, that his letter of commendation could be the Corinthian saints! He does not look around to choose the most striking instances of those converted by him. He takes what was perhaps the most humiliating scene that he had ever experienced, and he points even to these saints as a letter of commendation. And why so? Because he knew the power of life in Christ. He was reassured. In the darkest day he had looked up to God with confidence about it, when any other heart had failed utterly; but now that light was beginning to dawn upon them, yet still but dawned so to speak afresh, he could boldly say that they were not merely his, but Christ's, letter. Bolder and bolder evidently he becomes as he thinks of the name of the Lord and of that enjoyment which he had found, and found afresh, in the midst of all his troubles. Hence he says, "Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart." There were not wanting there those that endeavoured to impose legal principles on the Corinthians. Not that here it was the strongest or subtlest effort of the enemy. There was more of Sadduceeism at work among them than of Pharisaism; but still not infrequently Satan finds room for both, or a link between both. His ministry was emphatically not that which could find its type in any form of the law, or in what was written upon stone, but on the fleshy table of the heart by the Spirit of the living God. Accordingly this gives rise to a most striking contrast of the letter that kills and of the spirit that gives life. As is said here, "Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think anything as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the new covenant." Then lest any should conceive that this was the accomplishment of the Old Testament, he lets us know it is no more than the spirit of that covenant, not the letter. The covenant itself in its express terms awaits both houses of Israel in a day not yet arrived; but meanwhile Christ in glory anticipates for us that day, and this is, of course, "not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life."

Next, we find a long parenthesis; for the true connection of the end of verse 6 is with verse 17, and all between properly forms a digression. I shall read the words outside the parenthesis, in order to make this manifest. He had said that "the spirit giveth life." Now the Lord (he adds) "is that spirit;" which last word ought to be printed with a small "s," not a capital. Some Bibles have this, I dare say, correctly; but others, like the one in my hand, incorrectly. "That spirit" does not mean the Holy Ghost, though it is He alone that could enable a soul to seize the spirit under the letter. But the apostle, I believe, means that the Lord Jesus is the spirit of the different forms that are found in the law. Thus he turns aside in a remarkable but characteristic manner; and as he intimates in what sense he was the minister of the new covenant (i.e. not in a mere literal fashion but in the spirit of it), so he connects this spirit with the forms of the law all through. There is a distinct divine purpose or idea couched under the legal forms, as their inner spirit, and this, he lets us know, is really Christ the Lord "Now the Lord is that spirit." This it is that ran through the whole legal system in its different types and shadows.

Then he brings in the Holy Ghost, "and where" (not simply "that spirit," but) "the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." There is a notable difference between the two expressions. "The Spirit of the Lord" is the Holy Spirit that characterizes Christianity; but underneath the letter of the Jewish system, faith seized "the spirit" that referred to Christ. There was the outward ritual and commandment with which flesh made itself content; but faith always looked to the Lord, and saw Him, however dimly, beyond the letter in which God marked indelibly, and now makes known by ever accumulating proofs, that He from the first pointed to the One that was coming. A greater than anything then manifested was there; underneath the Moseses and the Aarons, the Davids and the Solomons, underneath what was said and done, signs and tokens converged on One that was promised, even Christ.

And now "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." This was unknown under the Levitical order of things. There was a veiled form of truth, and now it is manifest. The Holy Ghost brings us into the power and enjoyment of this as a present thing. Where He is, there is liberty.

But looking back for a moment at the parenthesis, we see that the direct effect of the law (no matter what may be the mercy of God that sustained, spite of its curse) is in itself a ministration of death. Law can only condemn; it can but enforce death as on God's part. It never was in any sense the intention of God by the law to introduce either righteousness or life. Nor these only, but the Spirit He now brings in through Christ. "If the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away," it was not at all an abiding thing, but merely temporary in its own nature, "how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be, rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation" (another point after the ministration of death; if it then) "be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory." It is not simply the mercy of God, you observe, but the ministration of righteousness. When the Lord was here below, what was the character of His ministration? It was grace; not yet a ministration of righteousness. Of course, He was emphatically righteous, and everything He did was perfectly consistent with the character of the Righteous. Never was there the smallest deflection from righteousness in aught He ever did or said. Grace and truth came by Jesus Christ. But when He went up to heaven on the footing of redemption through His blood, He had put away sin by the sacrifice of Himself: the ministration was not of grace merely, but of righteousness. In short, righteousness without redemption must destroy, not save; grace before redemption could not deliver, but at most forbear to judge; but righteousness founded on redemption provides the stablest possible basis for the believer.

Whatever the mercy displayed to us now, it is perfectly righteous in God to show it. He is vindicated in everything. Salvation is no stretch of His prerogative. Its language is not, "The person is guilty; but I will let him off; I will not execute the sentence against him." The Christian is now admitted to a place before God according to the acceptance of Christ Himself. Being altogether by Christ, it brings nothing but glory to God, because Christ who died was God's own Son, given of His own love for this very purpose, and there in the midst of all wrongs, of everything out of course here below, while the evil still remains unremoved, and death ravages still, and Satan has acquired all possible power of place as god and prince of this world, this deepest manifestation of God's own glory is given, bringing souls which were once the guiltiest and the vilest out of it, not only before God, but in their own souls, and in the knowledge and enjoyment of it, and all righteously through Christ's redemption. This is what the apostle triumphs in here. So he calls it not the ministration of life indeed; for there was always the new birth or nature through the mercy of God; but now he brings in a far fuller name of blessing, that of the Spirit, because the ministration of the Spirit is over and above life. It supposes life, but moreover also the gift and presence of the Holy Ghost. The great mistake now is when saints cling to the old things, lingering among, the ruins of death when God has given them a title flowing from grace, but abundant in righteousness, and a ministration not merely of life, but of the Spirit.

So he goes on farther, and says that "that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious." This again is another quality that he speaks of. We come to what abides to what never can be shaken, as he puts it to the Hebrews later. To this permanence of blessing we are come in Christ, no matter what else may come. Death may come for us; judgment certainly will for the world for man at least. The complete passing away of this creation is at hand. But we are already arrived at that which remains, and no destruction of earth can possibly affect its security; no removal to heaven will have any other effect than to bring out its lustre and abidingness. So he says, "Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech: and not as Moses, which put a veil over his face."

This characterized the dealings of the law, that there never was the bringing God and man, so to speak, face to face. Such a meeting could not yet be. But now it is. Not only has God come down to man face to face, but man is brought to look in where God is in His own glory, and without a veil between. It is not the condescension of the Word made flesh coming down to where man is, but the triumph of accomplished righteousness and glory, because the Spirit comes down from Christ in heaven. It is the ministration of the Spirit, who comes down from the exalted man in glory, and has given us the assurance that this is our portion, now to look into it, soon to be with Him. Hence he says it is "not as Moses, which put a veil over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished: but their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament; which veil is done away in Christ." This is as in Christ when known to us. So "even unto this day, when Moses is read, the veil is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the veil shall be taken away." But then we do not wait here for their turning to the Lord, which will be their portion by-and-by. Meanwhile the Lord has turned to us, turning us to Himself, in His great grace, and brought us into righteousness, peace, as well as glory in hope yea, in present communion, through redemption. The consequence is, all evil is gone for us, and all blessedness secured, and known to be so, in Christ; and, as he says here, "where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." Then, he adds further, "We all, with open [unveiled] face, beholding ["as in a glass" is uncalled for] the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord." Thus the effect of the triumph of our Lord Jesus, and of the testimony of the Holy Ghost, is to put us into present association with the glory of the Lord as the object before our souls; and this is what transforms us according to its own heavenly character.

In 2 Corinthians 4:1-18 the apostle takes into account the vessel that contains the heavenly treasure. He shows that as "we have this ministry, and "have received mercy" therefore to the uttermost, "we faint not; but have renounced the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor handling the word of God deceitfully; but by manifestation of the truth commending ourselves to every man's conscience in the sight of God. But if our gospel be hid, it is bid to them that are lost." Such is the solemn conclusion: "In whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the glorious gospel of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine unto them. For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ."

This is the gospel of the glory of Christ. It is not merely that we have the heavenly title, as we are taught in 1 Corinthians 15:1-58. The utmost on this subject brought before us there was, that we are designated "heavenly," and are destined to bear the image of the heavenly One by-and-by. The second epistle comes between the two points of title and destiny, with the transforming effect of occupation with Christ in His glory on high. Thus space is left for practice and experience between our calling and our glorification. But then this course between is by no means sparing to nature; for, as he shows here, "we have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us." God makes us feel this, and helps on the practical transformation; and by what means? By bringing us into every kind of trouble and sorrow, so as to make nothing of flesh. For it is the allowed liveliness of nature that hinders the manifestation of the treasure; whereas its judgment leaves room for the light to shine out. This, then, is what God carries on. It explained much in the apostle's path which they had not been in a state to comprehend; and it contributed, where received and applied in the Spirit, to advance God's objects as regards them. "Death worketh in us, but life in you." What grace, and how blessed the truth! But see the way in which the process is carried on, "We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; persecuted, but not forsaken; cast down, but not destroyed; always bearing about in the body the dying of the Lord Jesus, that the life also of Jesus might be made manifest in our body. For we which live are alway delivered unto death." He speaks of the actualisation: all helps the great object, even such circumstances as seemed the most disastrous possible. God exposed His servant to death. This was only carrying out more effectually the breaking down that was always going on. "So then death worketh in us, but life in you. We having the same spirit of faith, according as it is written, I believed, and therefore have I spoken; we also believe, and therefore speak; knowing that he which raised up the Lord Jesus shall raise up us also by Jesus, and shall present us with you. For all things are for your sakes." And thus then, if there was the endurance of affliction, he would encourage their hearts, calling, as he felt it, "light affliction." He knew well what trial was. "Our light affliction, which is but for a moment, worketh for us a far more exceeding and eternal weight of glory; while we look not at the things which are seen, but at the things which are not seen: for the things which are seen are temporal; but the things which are not seen are eternal."

This introduces the Christian's estimate of both death and judgment as measured by Christ. He looks now steadily at all that can possibly appal the natural heart. Death the Christian may pass through. Judgment will never be for the Christian. Nevertheless his sense of judgment, as it really will come, although not for himself, is most influential and for others too. There may be a mighty effect on the soul, and a deep spring of worship, and a powerful lever in service, through that which does not concern us at all. The sense of what it is may be all the more felt because we are delivered from its weight; and we can thus more thoroughly, because more calmly, contemplate it in the light of God, seeing its inevitable approach and overwhelming power for those that have not Christ. Accordingly he says, "We know that if our earthly house of this tabernacle were dissolved, we have a building of God, an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens. For in this we groan, earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from heaven."

But let us not forget that he takes care (for his heart was not relieved as to every individual in Corinth) to add solemnly, "If so be that being clothed we shall not be found naked." He was not quite sure but that some there might be found exposed, because devoid of a Saviour. There are those who give this a very different turn, and make it to be a verse of consolation instead of warning; but such a view deprives us of the true scope of the clause. The common version and natural interpretation appears to me quite correct. It does not mean "since being clothed we shall not be found naked," which has no worthy lesson to convey to any soul. The readings differ, but that which answers to the common version I believe to be correct. The apostle would warn every soul that, although every one will be clothed in the day that is coming (namely, at the resurrection of the body, when souls are no longer found without the body but clothed), nevertheless some, even in spite of that clothing, shall be found naked. The wicked are then to be clothed no less than the saints, who will have been already raised or changed; their bodies shall be raised from the dead just as truly as those of the righteous; but when the unrighteous stand in resurrection before the great white throne, how, bare will they appear? What will it be in that day to have no Christ to clothe us?

After so salutary a caution to such as made too much of knowledge in the neglect of conscience, the apostle turns to that fulness of comfort which he was communicating to the saints. "We," he says, "that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened." He has no wish to deny the sorrow and weakness. He knew what it is to suffer and be sorrowful far better than any of them. "We that are in this tabernacle do groan, being burdened: not for that we would be unclothed." Thus there is no mere wish to get away from the present scene with its sadness and trial. It is never allowed one to be impatient. To desire to be with Christ is right; but to be restive under that which connects us with shame and pain is not of Christ. "Not for," then, "that we would be unclothed, but clothed upon." This was his ardent wish, to be "clothed upon, that mortality might be swallowed up of life." It is not that he might die, but the very reverse, that the mortality already working in him might be swallowed up by Him who is eternal life, and our life.

He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God." It is not here wrought something for us, but "wrought us." This is a remarkable expression of the grace of God in associating with His unfailing purpose in Christ. "He that hath wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also hath given unto us the earnest of the Spirit;" given us, therefore, even now a taste of the blessedness and glory that are in store for us. "Therefore we are always confident." Think of such language! Think of it as the apostle's words describing, our portion, and in full view of both death and judgment! "We are always confident." We can easily understand one whose eye was simply on Christ and His love, saying, "We are confident," though turning to look at that which might well tax the stoutest heart. Certainly it were madness not to be overwhelmed by it, unless there were such a ministration of the Spirit as the apostle was then enjoying in its fruits in his soul. But he did enjoy it profoundly; and, what is more, he puts it as the common enjoyment of all Christians. It is not alone a question of his own individual feelings, but of that which God gave him to share now with the saints of God as such. "Therefore," says he, "we are always confident, knowing that, whilst we are at home in the body, we are absent from the Lord: for we walk by faith, not by sight: we are confident, I say, and willing rather to be absent from the body, and to be present with the Lord. Wherefore we labour, that, whether present or absent, we may be accepted of him. For we must all appear before the judgment-seat of Christ."

This, again, is a very important truth indeed in its own place, and the effect is most striking; namely, deep anxiety about the lost, and the consciousness of our own manifestation to God now. Not that I mean by this that we shall not be manifested by-and-by; for we shall be perfectly. But if we are manifest in conscience before God now, it is evident that there is nothing that can cause the slightest uneasiness in our being manifested before Christ's tribunal. The truth is, so far is the manifestation before our Lord a source of alarm to the saint (though it should surely solemnise the heart), that I am persuaded the soul would lose a positive and substantial blessing, if it could by any possibility escape being manifested there. Nor does it matter what the degree of manifestation may now be in conscience. Still, it can never be perfect till then; and our God would give us perfection in this as in all else. It is now hindered by various causes, as far as we are concerned. There is the working of self-love in the hearts of the saints; there is that which has cast a film over the eye which dulls our souls. Alas! we know it too well.

The effect of our manifestation before the tribunal of Christ is, that we shall know as we are known. That is, it will be carrying out in absolute perfection what we now know in the measure of our spirituality. Now, what is the effect of one's arriving at a better knowledge of himself, and a deeper consciousness of the Christian's place in Christ? Always a real blessing, and a means of greater enjoyment of Christ. Is it not much to have a lowlier feeling about ourselves? to esteem others better than ourselves? and thus to deepen daily in the grace of the Lord Jesus? And are not these things the result? And will the perfect knowledge of ourselves be a loss, and not a gain?

At the same time, it is solemn assuredly for every secret to be spread out between the Lord and ourselves. It is solemn for all to be set in the light in which we may have been misled now, and which may have caused trouble and grief to others, casting reproach on the name of the Lord, in itself an affecting and afflicting thing. Never should we be deceived by Satan. He may accuse the saints, but they ought in no case to be deceived by him. He deceives the world, and accuses the brethren. Alas! we know, in point of fact, that we are liable through unwatchfulness to his wiles; but this does not make it less a humiliation for us, and a temporary advantage for Satan when we fall into his trap. We are not ignorant of his devices; but this will not always, nor in itself in any case, preserve us. There are defeats. The judgment-seat of Christ will disclose all; where each hidden thing will be clear; where nothing but the fruit of the Spirit shall stand for ever.

Nevertheless the sight of that judgment-seat brings at once before his eye, not the saints, but the perishing world; and so complete is the peace of his own spirit, so rich and sure the deliverance Christ has accomplished for all the saints, that the expressed effect is to kindle his heart about those that are braving everlasting destruction those on whom the judgment-seat can bring nothing but hopeless exclusion from God and His glory.

For we say here by the way, that we must be all manifested, whether saints or sinners. There is a peculiarity in the phrase which is, to my thinking, quite decisive as to its not meaning saints only. As to the objection to this founded on the word "we," there is no force in it at all. "We" is no doubt commonly used in the apostolic epistles for saints, but not for them exclusively. Context decides. Be assured that all such rules are quite fallacious. What intelligent Christian ever understood from scripture all the canons of criticism in the world? They are not to be trusted for a moment. Why have confidence in anything of the sort? Mere traditional formulas or human technicalities will not do for the ascertainment of God's word. The moment men rest on general laws by which to interpret scripture, I confess they seem to me on the brink of error, or doomed to wander in a desert of ignorance. We must be disciplined if we would learn indeed; and we need to read and hear things as God writes them; but we do well and wisely to eschew all human byways and short-cuts for deciding the sense of what God has revealed. It is not only the students of medieval divinity, or of modem speculation, who are in danger. None of us is beyond the need of jealousy over self, and of simple-hearted looking to the lord.

Here, indeed, the apostle's reasoning, and the nicety of language, furnish demonstrative evidence in the passage (that is, both in the spirit and in the letter), that we must all, whether saints or sinners, be manifested before Christ; not at the same time nor for the same end, but all before His judgment-seat at some time. Had the language been, "we must all be judged," the "we" must have been there limited to the unconverted. While they only come into judgment, believer and unbeliever must alike be manifested. The effect of manifestation for the believer will be the fulness of rest and delight in the ways of God. The effect of the manifestation for the unbeliever will be the total withering up of every excuse or pretence that had deceived him here below. No flesh shall glory in His presence, and man must stand self-convicted before the Judge of all. Thus the choice of language is, as usual in scripture, absolutely perfect, and to my mind quite decisive that the manifestation here is universal. This acts on the servant of Christ, who knows what the terror of the Lord is, and calls him out to "persuade men." What is meant by this? It is really to preach the gospel to men at large.

At the same time the apostle adds, "We commend not ourselves again unto you, but give you occasion to glory on our behalf." For he had expressed his trust of being made manifest to their consciences, as well as stated how absolutely we are manifested to God. "For whether we be beside ourselves, it is to God: or whether we be sober, it is for your cause." Then he brings in the constraining power of the love of Christ, and why? Because, as he looked round him, he saw nothing but death written on man, and all that pertains to him here below. The whole scene was one vast grave. Of course, he was not thinking of the saints of God, but, contrariwise, in the midst of this universal death, as far as man is concerned, he rejoices to see some alive. I understand, therefore, that when he says, "If one die for all, then were all dead," he means those who had really died by sin, and because of the contrast it seems to me plain "He died for all, that they which live" (these are the saints, the objects of God's favour) "should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again." What was the effect of this? That having thus before his soul, not the universal death of all only, but some who by grace were alive, through the death and resurrection of Christ, he now brings out, not the contrast of the new creation with all that went before yea, the contrast of the Messianic hopes as such with that higher glory which he was now asserting. Even a living Messiah could not satisfy what his soul had learnt to be in accordance with the glory of God. Not, of course, that he did not delight in the hope of his nation. It is one thing to value what God will do for the earth by-and-by, it is quite another to fail in appreciating that which God has now created and revealed in a risen Christ above, once rejected and dying for us. Accordingly it is one glory that will display the promises and ways of God triumphing over man and Satan; it is another and far surpassing glory which He who is the Messiah, but much more, and now the heavenly man, reveals. His death is the judgment of our sins in God's grace, and an end of the whole scene for us, and hence perfect deliverance from man and from present things yea, even from the best hopes for the earth.

What can be better than a Messiah come to bless man in this world? But the Christian is not occupied with this at all. According to the Old Testament he looked at it, but now that the Messiah is seen dead and risen, now that He is passed into heavenly glory through death, this is the glory for the Christian. "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh:" this puts the saints in a common position of knowledge. "Henceforth know we no man after the flesh: yea, though we have known Christ after the flesh." As for a living Messiah, and all the expectations that were bound up with Him and His coming here below, all this is passed away for the Christian. It is not that the Messiah will not return as such; but as for the sphere and character of our own relations, they are founded on death and resurrection, and seen on high. Such is the way the apostle treats it. He looks at Christ in His relationship with us as One that has passed out of this earth and the lower creation into heavenly places. It is there and thus we know Him. By knowing Him he means the special form of the truth with which we are concerned, the manner in which we are put into positive, living association with Him. That which we know as our centre of union, as the object of our souls, is Christ risen and glorified. In any other point of view, however bright and glorious, "now henceforth know we him no more. Therefore if any man be in Christ," etc.

It is not merely if any man look to Christ: the Old Testament saints rejoiced to see His day; but this is a very different thing from being in Christ. There are many who take the scriptures in so crude and vague a manner that to their eyes it is all the same; but I hope such is not the case with any here. No doubt, to be in Christ as we are now is through looking, to Him. But it was not always so. Take the disciples in the days of Christ's pathway here below: were they in Christ then? Certainly not. There was the working of divine faith in them. They were unquestionably "born again;" but is this the same thing as being "in Christ"? Being in Christ means that, redemption having come in, the Holy Ghost can and does give us a conscious standing in Christ in His now risen character. To be "in Christ" describes the believer, not in Old Testament times, but now.

"Therefore if any man be in Christ, he is a new creature: old things are passed away; behold, all things are become new. And all things are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ, and hath given to us the ministry of reconciliation; to wit, that God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto himself." Thus there is a blessed and suited ministry. The law directed a people at a distance from God. It Supposed such a condition and dealt accordingly. Even if a poor brute touched the mountain, it was to be stoned. At length God came down to meet man in grace as he is; and man rejected God manifest in flesh. Redemption was thereby effected; man is brought without sin to God. Christ is the person who made both good. He brought God down to man, and He brought man in Himself up to God. Such is the position in which we stand. It is not any longer merely God coming down to man in Christ. This is neither the manner nor the measure in which He reveals Himself now. The Lord Jesus Christ is gone up to heaven; and this not as a sole individual, but as the head of a family. He would not take the place of headship until all the evil was completely gone. He would give us His own acceptance before God. He took His stand on retrieving God's moral glory by bearing our sins; yet as He came down, so He went up to God, holy and spotless. He had by His own blood blotted out the sins of others who believe in Him. It was not merely a born Messiah, the chief of Israel, but "God was in Christ."

Observe, not that God is in Christ, but that He was. It is a description of what was manifested when the Lord was here below. But if it be a mistake to read God is, it is a still greater error too common in books, old and new alike, that God has reconciled the world. This is not the meaning of the statement. The English version is perfectly right; the criticism that pretends to correct it is thoroughly wrong It is never said that the world is reconciled to God. Christ was a blessed and adequate image of God; and God was in Him manifesting Himself in the supremacy of His own grace here below. No doubt His law had its suited place; but God in grace is necessarily above the law. As man, at least as of Israel, Jesus was born under the law; but this was in not the slightest degree an abandonment of God's rights, and still less of His grace. God came near to men in love in the most attractive form, going in and out among them, taking up little children, entering into houses when asked, conversing by the way, going about doing good, and healing all that were oppressed of the devil; for God was with Him. It was not merely in quest of the lost sheep of Israel. How could such grace be restrained only to Jews? God had larger thoughts and feelings than this. Therefore let a Gentile centurion come, or a Samaritan woman, or any body else: who was not welcome? For "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them."

Full of grace and truth, He would not even raise the question of this trespass or that. There was no doubt of man's guilt; but this was not the divine way of Christ. Other and more efficacious aims were in the hand of the God of all grace. He would save, but at the same time exercise the conscience more than ever. For great would be the loss for a sinner awakened, if it were possible for him not to take God's part against himself. This is the real course and effect of repentance in the soul. But God was in Christ reconciling the world for all that, yea in order to it. It was not a question of dealing with them for their trespasses. And what now that He is gone away? "He hath committed unto us the word of reconciliation." He is gone, but not the errand of mercy for which He came. The Messiah as such disappears for the time; there remains the fruit of the blessed manifestation of God in Christ in an evil world. "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech by us: we pray in Christ's stead, be reconciled to God." But how can this be? On what basis can we essay such a task! Not because the Spirit of God is in us, however true it may be, but because of the atonement. Redemption by Christ's blood is the reason. "For God hath made him. to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

Then, following up this in the next chapter (2 Corinthians 6:1-18), the, true moral traits of the Christian ministry are shown, and what a price it had in his eyes. What should not be done and endured for the sake of worthily carrying out this ministration of Christ here below! What should be the practical witness to a righteousness not acquired by us, but freely given of God! Such is the character of it, according to the work of Christ before God and of His redemption; so we should "give no offence in any thing, that the ministry be not blamed: but in all things approving ourselves as the ministers of God, in much patience, in afflictions, in necessities, in distresses, in stripes, in imprisonments." In every thing crushing to nature did the apostle fulfil his mission. Is the reproach of Christ to be an apostolic perquisite? Are not His servants to share it still? Is it not true from first to last?

Again, in serving the Lord, there are two special ways in which we are apt to go astray. Some err by an undue narrowness, others by as injurious laxity. In fact, it is never right to be narrow, and always wrong to be lax. In Christ there is no license or excuse for either. But the Corinthians, like others, were in danger on both sides; for each provokes the other. Hence the appeal, "O ye Corinthians, our mouth is open unto you, our heart is enlarged. Ye are not straitened in us, but ye are straitened in your own bowels." There was the caution against a narrow heart; but now against a lax path he warns, "Be not unequally yoked together with unbelievers: for what fellowship hath righteousness with unrighteousness? and what communion hath light with darkness? and what concord hath Christ with Belial? or what part hath he that believeth with an infidel? and what agreement hath the temple of God with idols?" Thus is embraced individual responsibility as well as corporate. "For ye are the temple of the living God; as God hath said, I will dwell in them."

Thus, as in the exercise of ministry according to Christ, there was nothing that should not be endured; there was no scorn or trial, no pain or shame, but what he himself counted as nothing that Christ only should be served, and the witness of His name kept up in this world according to His grace; so now he presses on the saints what is incumbent on them as the epistle of Christ, to make good a true witness for Him in this world, steering clear of all that is hard and narrow, which is altogether alien from the grace of God, and of that laxity which is still more offensive to His nature. In the first verse of 2 Corinthians 7:1-16 the whole matter is wound up, "Having therefore these promises, dearly beloved, let us cleanse ourselves from all filthiness of the flesh and spirit, perfecting holiness in the fear of God." The second verse evidently belongs to the subject succeeding. In the rest of the seventh chapter he renews (and has, I think, connected both with these words about the ministry and the responsibility of the saints) what he had alluded to already among them. He touches, with that delicate tact so characteristic of him, on their repentance. He would encourage their hearts in every way, but now ventures to go somewhat farther in the grace of Christ.

Accordingly his own feelings are told out, how exceedingly cast down he had been, and oppressed on every side, so that he had no rest. "Without were fightings, within were fears." Indeed, the fear had gone so far, that he had actually been tried as to the inspired epistle he had written. The apostle had a question raised in his mind about his own inspired epistle! Yet what writing was more certainly of God? "For though I made you sorry with the letter, I do not regret, though I did regret." How clearly we learn, whatever the working of God in man, that after all the inspiration of a vessel is far above his own will, and the fruit of the action of the Holy Ghost! As we find an unholy man might be inspired of God to bring out a new communication for example, a Balaam or a Caiaphas, so holy men of God still more. But the remarkable thing to note is the way in which a question was raised even about an epistle which God has preserved in His own book, and, without a doubt, divinely inspired. But he also mentions how glad he was now that, having sent off that letter, he had made them sorry. "For I perceive that the same epistle hath made you sorry, though it were but for a season. Now I rejoice, not that ye were made sorry, but that ye sorrowed to repentance; for ye were made sorry according to God, that ye might receive damage by us in nothing." How great is the grace! "For sorrow according to God worketh repentance to salvation not to be regretted: but the sorrow of the world worketh death. For behold this selfsame thing, that ye sorrowed according to God, what carefulness it wrought in you, yea, what clearing of yourselves, yea, what indignation, yea, what fear, yea, what vehement desire, yea, what zeal, yea, what revenge! In all things ye have approved yourselves to be clear in this matter." What a comfort to the heart that had been so profoundly touched by their state!

In 2 Corinthians 8:1-24, and 2 Corinthians 9:1-15, the subject of contributing for saints is resumed, though a great deal more fully than in 1 Corinthians 16:1-24, and with a fresh spring of joy communicated to his spirit. What an evidence is given of the exercises of his heart in this thing too! It appears he had spoken confidently about the Corinthian saints. There had been afterwards much to wound and weaken that confidence; but he now returns to the matter, and reckons with certainty that the God who had wrought in the painful matter, not of the guilty man only, but in them all about it, that His grace would also give him cause for joy in rousing their hearts into largeness of love for those that were depressed elsewhere. He had boasted of the liberality of the Corinthians, which had kindled zeal in others. On the one hand, he would have his hope of them verified, on the other he desired none to be burdened, but certainly fruit Godward both in the givers and in the receivers. How rich and enriching in His grace! Blessed be God for His unspeakable gift!

In 2 Corinthians 10:1-18, and 2 Corinthians 11:1-33 he comes to another subject his own ministry on which a few words must suffice. Enough had been cleared away to open his heart on it: he could enlarge here. It was his confidence in them that made him write. When his spirit was bound, because of there being so much to cause shame and pain, he could not be free; but now he is. Hence we have here a most blessed opening of what this servant of God felt in what was necessarily a sore distress to his spirit. For what could be more humbling than that the Corinthian saints, the fruit of his own ministry, had admitted into their hearts insinuations against him, doubts of the reality of his apostolate, all that lowering which, in other forms but not substantially unlike, we may have too often observed, and just in proportion to the importance and spiritual value of the trust reposed of God in any on the earth? The apostle knew sorrow as no other ever knew it. Not even the twelve tasted its bitterness as he did, from spirituality and from circumstances; and the manner in which he deals with it, the dignity, and at the same time the lowliness, the faith that looked right to the Lord, but at the same time the warmth of affection, grief of heart mingling with joy, furnish such a tableau as is unique even in the word of God. No such analysis appears anywhere else of the heart of one serving the saints in the midst of the greatest outrages to his love, as we recognise in this epistle. He bows to the charge of rudeness in speech; but they had used the admitted power of his letters against himself. Yet he warns lest what he is absent they may learn in him present. Others might exalt themselves through his labours; he hoped when their faith was increased to preach the gospel in the regions beyond. (2 Corinthians 10:1-18) They had exalted the other apostles in disparagement of him. They had even imputed to him selfishness. It might be true, thought they, that he had reaped no material benefit himself from them; but what about others, his friends? How much there was calculated to wound that generous heart, and, what he felt yet more, to damage his ministry! But in the midst of such sorrow and the rather as flowing from such sources, God watched over all with observant eye. Wonderfully hedged in was His servant, though to speak of himself he calls his folly. (2 Corinthians 11:1-33) But no human power or wit can protect a man of God from malice; nothing can shut out the shafts of evil speaking. In vain to look to flesh and blood for protection: were it possible, how much we should have missed in this epistle! Had his detractors been brethren of the circumcision from Jerusalem, neither the trial nor the blessing would have been anything like what it is for depth; but the fact that it came to Paul from his own children in Achaia was enough to pain him to the quick, and did prove him thoroughly.

But God sometimes lifts us up to look into the glory, as He comes down into the midst of our sorrows in pitiful mercy. This, with his own heart about it, the apostle brings before us lovingly, though it is impossible, within my limits, so much as to touch on all. He spreads before us his sorrows, dangers, and persecutions. This was the ministry of which he had boasted. He had been often whipped and stoned, had been weary, thirsty, hungry, by sea and land: these were the prizes he had received, and these the honours which the world gave him. How it all ought to have gone to their hearts, if they had any feeling at all, as indeed they had! It was good for them to feel it, for they had been taking their ease. He closes the list by telling them at last how he had been let down from the wall of a city in a basket, not a very dignified position for an apostle. It was anything but heroism thus to escape one's enemies.

But the same man who was thus let down immediately after speaks of being caught up to heaven. Now, it is this combination of the truest and most proper dignity that ever a man had in this world, for how few of the sons of man, speaking of course of Christians, that approached Paul in this respect; so on the other hand, how few since have known the dignity of being content to suffer and be nothing, of having every thought and feeling of nature thoroughly crushed, like Paul, within as well as without! So much the more as he was one who felt all most keenly, for he had a heart and mind equally capacious. Such was he who had to be thus tried as Christ's bondman. But when he comes to special wonders, he does not speak about himself; when about the basket he is open. Thus here he talks ambiguously. "I know a man" is his method of introducing the new portion. It is not I, Paul, but "a man in Christ" is taken up, who had seen such things as could not be expressed in human words, nor suited to man's present state. It is therefore left completely vague. The apostle himself says he does not know whether it was in the body, or out of the body; so completely was all removed from the ordinary experience and ken of man. But he adds what is much to be observed, "And lest I should be exalted above measure through the abundance of the revelations, there was given to me a thorn in the flesh." Thus a deeper humiliation befell him than he had ever known, "a thorn in the flesh, the messenger of Satan," the allowed counterbalance to such extraordinary experiences. It was Paul. The secret could not be hid. But Christ is here, as ever, the theme of the apostle from first to last. This was the treasure in the earthen vessel; and in order to bring about corresponding profit, God works by external means as well as by inward grace, so as to carry forward His work of enhancing always and increasingly what is in Christ, and making less and less of man.

The close of the chapter sketches, with painful truth but a loving hand, the outbreakings of that nature, crushed in him, pampered in them. For he dreaded lest God should humble him among them because of their evil ways. What love such a word bespeaks!

The final chapter (2 Corinthians 13:1-14) answers a challenge which he kept for the last place, as indeed it ill became the Corinthians above all men. What a distress to him to speak of it at all! They had actually dared to ask a proof that Christ had spoken to them by him. Had they forgotten that they owed their life and salvation in Christ to his preaching? As he put in the foreground patience as a sign of apostleship, which in him assuredly was taxed beyond measure, so now he fixes on this as the great seal of his apostleship at least, to them. What can be more touching? It is not what Jesus had said by him in books, or in what power the Spirit had wrought by him. "Since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me, which to you-ward is not weak, but is mighty in you . . . . . examine yourselves, whether ye be in the faith; prove your own selves." They were the living proof to themselves that he was an apostle of Christ to them. There is no allowance of a doubt in this appeal: rather the very reverse was assumed on their part, which the apostle admirably turns to the confusion of their indecorous and baseless doubts about himself. "Therefore I write these things being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me to edification, and not to destruction." Brief and pregnant salutations follow, with the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the love of God, and the communion of the Holy Ghost.