I invite you to turn with me in your Bibles to one of my favorite chapters of Scripture, II Corinthians 3. It tells us of the covenant we have with God through Jesus Christ. It tells us of the amazing work of the Spirit of the Lord in the hearts and lives of those who turn to Jesus. It tells of our hope. And it tells us what genuine Christianity is all about.
I want to first tell you a bit of…
The context of this chapter.
I want to begin by saying something rather profound. This may be the most profound thing I’ll say all day. So get ready? Hold on to your pew, because this will be profound. Here it is. Chapter 3 comes right after the last verse in chapter 2 and right before first verse of chapter 4… Mind blown, I know.
Notice the last verse of chapter 2. 2:17, “For we are not, like so many, peddlers of God’s word, but as men of sincerity, as commissioned by God, in the sight of God we speak in Christ.” A peddler is a salesman. Paul is saying a lot of preachers in his day were just salesmen with God’s word. They’re in ministry just for the money. And often when that’s somebody’s motive they will adjust the message to be more what people want to hear so they can make the sale. But Paul says that he and his companions are no peddlers of the word. They are men of sincerity, their motives are pure. They are commissioned by God Himself. They know they speak in the sight of God. They would never alter the message He gave them to proclaim. They speak only what Christ has given them to speak. So you notice as he moves into chapter 3 he’s talking about his ministry in contrast to the ministry of certain others.
Then notice 4:1 right after chapter 3. It says, “Therefore, having this ministry by the mercy of God, we do not lose heart.” So both before and right after chapter 3 he speaks of his ministry. Chapter 3 is about Paul’s ministry that he was given by the mercy of God.
So why does He talk about His ministry? Well, there are many indications throughout the letter of II Corinthians that certain peddlers of God’s word had come to Corinth, with a bit of a different message than what the church had learned from Paul. And to get the Corinthian believers to listen to, esteem them and support them, these new teachers tried to discredit Paul’s ministry. We can find all through the letter, Paul dealing with all sorts of accusations that were made against him. So here in chapter 3 he is defending his ministry.
So let’s read the chapter…
II Corinthians 3
“Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all. 3 And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts. 4 Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. 5 Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 6 who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. 7 Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, 8 will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? 9 For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. 10 Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. 11 For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.
12 Since we have such a hope, we are very bold, 13 not like Moses, who would put a veil over his face so that the Israelites might not gaze at the outcome of what was being brought to an end. 14 But their minds were hardened. For to this day, when they read the old covenant, that same veil remains unlifted, because only through Christ is it taken away. 15 Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts. 16 But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed. 17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. 18 And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.”
As he begins this chapter, he deals with this…
Letter of Recommendation Issue
It appears these new teachers had brought with them letters that commended them, letters that said, “These are reliable men of God to whom you will do well to pay attention.” Where these teachers got these letters, I don’t know. I suspect they found respected leaders somewhere who agreed with their preaching and wrote out these letters for them. And I suspect they said to the Corinthians something like, “We have these official documents from respected leaders of God’s people commending us. Did Paul have a letter of commendation when he came and preached to you?… O he didn’t. Should you listen to a man like that?” So Paul asks the Corinthians, “Do my fellow workers and I really need letters like that for you to trust us?”
And he says we have a much better letter of recommendation. It’s you believers in Corinth. He’s talking about the transformation of their hearts and lives by Jesus Christ through the Spirit of God and through Paul’s ministry to them. It was a radical transformation. In I Corinthians 6 we find out some of these Corinthians were idolators and alcoholics and thieves and enslaved in sexual sins and other sins. But Paul came and preached to them about Christ, and the Spirit of God worked with Paul, and the result was that these people were transformed into people who worship the one true God, who live clean lives and deal honestly and lovingly with their neighbors. So Paul says you Corinthians are my letter of commendation. You should look at yourselves and realize that God is working through me. My ministry is of Him.
Then he begins to explain why his ministry is so powerfully effective. It’s because of…
The nature of the new covenant he preaches and brings people into.
A covenant is simply a binding deal, a solemn agreement, a pact between two or more parties. He makes several contrasts between the new covenant that he’s a minister of and the old covenant that Moses was a minister of. Moses served as a mediator between God and the people of Israel and he facilitated God and Israel entering into a covenant with each other. The covenant involved a law that the people were to keep. The Law actually contained hundreds of commands, but the top 10 commandments were spoken audibly by God Himself to the people and they were engraved on stone tablets by the finger of God.
And God also provided a way for them to obtain forgiveness when they messed up. There were sacrifices prescribed for various sorts of sins and instructions on how to make it right with people when you wrong them that you might receive forgiveness. And the deal went like this, using the language of Deuteronomy 28, “if you faithfully obey the voice of the LORD your God, being careful to do all his commandments that I command you today, the LORD your God will set you high above all the nations of the earth. 2 And all these blessings shall come upon you and overtake you, if you obey the voice of the LORD your God.” And then it describes how they will be blessed in every way if they keep the Law in its entirety. “But,” Deuteronomy 28:15, “if you will not obey the voice of the LORD your God or be careful to do all his commandments and his statutes that I command you today, then all these curses shall come upon you and overtake you.” Then it describes all the bad stuff that will happen to them if they are disobedient to God, and how the bad stuff will get increasingly worse and worse as long as they persist to be disobedient to God.
Well, if you know the history of Israel, you know that the people by in large constantly failed to live according to the Law God gave them, they constantly broke the covenant, and all the curses God warned them about came upon them.
God promised through the ancient prophets that one day he would make a new covenant with His people. Like Jeremiah 31:31ff, “Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, 32 not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord.” Paul says, “The time of the new covenant is now. And God has made me a minister of it. I tell people about this new wonderful deal God offers and I prove to them it’s true and I lead people into this marvelous covenant relationship with God.
The new covenant is the deal you and I have with God if we’ve repented of our sins and put our faith in Jesus Christ and have been baptized in His name. This is our deal with God.
So you can notice…
Paul makes several contrasts between the new covenant and the old covenant.
This first contrast is the letter and the Spirit.
I believe he’s talking about what you have to guide you and help you under each covenant. Under the Old Covenant you were given a bunch of letters that formed words and sentences and paragraphs and made up God’s law. And by just your own ability you had to try to understand and apply it and live according to those words.
Unfortunately, there are many Christians today, I used to be one of them, who basically see it as being no different today. That we just have a bunch of letters in a book, and we’re responsible in our own ability to understand these words and live according to them. But Paul says that in the New Covenant we are not just given words. We do have words from the Lord, but we are also given a powerful invisible helper to live inside us. In 3:17-18, Paul identifies the Spirit he’s talking about as the risen Lord. He says, “Now the Lord is the Spirit…” Jesus is no longer limited to a physical body and one location at a time like he was on earth. Now His Spirit can be in all of us.
This doesn’t mean that no one in Old Testament times was helped by God’s Spirit. The Spirit of God greatly helped many (Joseph and David and Solomon and Daniel and many others). But it’s saying that the help of the Spirit was not promised in the old covenant deal. The deal only provided letters of a Law. Paul says the New Covenant is not just letters (though it includes the Word), but we have the Spirit who can help us now.
Then the next contrast is…
Death and Life.
He says at the end of verse 6, “The letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” When all we have to guide us and help us is letters of a law, we cannot be fit to live with God. Our future is just death. But the Spirit of the Lord is able and willing to do what words cannot, to make us fit for eternal life with God.
Another contrast here is…
Condemnation and Righteousness.
This is in verse 9. We have the ministry of condemnation on the one hand and the ministry of righteousness on the other.
The Law of the old covenant just made it clear that we are sinners who do not deserve to live. It would produce an agonizing torture of conscience in which you know what is right, but you’re not able to live it. And the more you know the more you see how large the gap is between what you are and what you ought to be.
But the new covenant is one of righteousness, because we receive the benefits of Christ’s sacrifice, His sacrifice to pay the penalty for our sins. So our guilt is removed. God counts us as a perfect 10 though we are not. And we’re not just counted as righteous, but we are also greatly helped by the Spirit of the Lord to become righteous in our character. We are graciously declared righteous and gradually made righteous.
Another contrast is that…
The old covenant was temporary.
He says in verse 11 it was being brought to an end. As Paul says in Galatians 3, the old covenant and its Law served as a tutor. It taught us a lot of things, and especially of our need for a Savior and lots of grace and help. But now the old covenant has served its purposes and God offers a new deal, a deal that’s permanent.
For two other contrasts Paul refers to a little known incident that we read of at the end of Exodus 34. Moses came down from Mt. Sinai after talking with God and receiving instructions for the people. And he didn’t know it at first until people told him, but his face was shining; it glowed. His face reflected the glory of God in a physical way. Paul says in verse 7, the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory. I don’t think that’s because his face was too bright and they didn’t have any sunglasses during that period of history. In Exodus 34 it says they were afraid to look at his face. They were afraid because they knew they were sinners unworthy to behold the glory of the Lord. And they didn’t want to bring God’s wrath on themselves by looking at God’s glory reflected on Moses’ face. So Moses put a veil over his face so the people would be more comfortable around him. But something they didn’t see was that the glory shinning off his face would gradually fade away. But it sounds to me when I read the Exodus account of this that when Moses would return to talk with God it would sort of recharge his face. So whenever he came from a visit with God His face would be shinning, and he would put the veil on, but then behind the veil the glory would gradually fade.
Well, Paul uses that story as an analogy to bring out some contrasts. One is that
With the old covenant the glory of the Lord is veiled.
In verses 14 and 15, Paul speaks of how the Jews of his day will read the old covenant Scriptures, which are full of prophecies and foreshadowings of the Messiah, but they can’t really understand it and see what it’s telling them about God and their Messiah; there is a veil over their heart that keeps them from seeing God’s glory. Paul says it’s the Spirit of the Lord that removes that veil and enables people to see His glory. Remember Jesus said (Luke 10:22), “no knows who the Son is except the Father, or who the Father is except the Son and anyone to whom the Son chooses to reveal him.” Seeing the glory of the Lord is a privilege the Lord grants to those He chooses. And He doesn’t make his choice arbitrarily or with partiality. He looks at people’s hearts. He looks for humble hearts who are willing to do His will. He draws them to Himself. As they turn to Him, he removes the veils, He helps them see who He is. And it’s not a one-time thing. In the new covenant as we seek to see more of Him through His word and prayer and humility and obedience, His Spirit works with us and reveals more and more of Himself to us.
I think we often don’t realize how much the Spirit of the Lord has helped us. It reminds me of ‘not’ one of my proudest moments years ago. It was during the first week of trying contacts instead of glasses. One morning I didn’t realize I had forgotten to take out my contacts before I went to bed. I can see close distance around the house fine without correct lenses. So that morning I assumed I didn’t have my contacts in. While I was standing on the front porch, after sending little Noah off to the bus stop, and as I was watching Noah and the other kids at the bus stop and looking around outside, I noticed everything seemed to look clearer than it normally does when I don’t have my glasses or contacts in. I thought, “Wow, I can make out the details on that kids shirt way over there! I can read the street signs! Whoa! Weird. Did my eye sight somehow improve? Did God improve my vision? Or is it because I’ve been drinking more water recently or did wearing contacts for a bit help improve my vision?” Then after the bus came and picked up the kids, I went inside to finish getting ready for the day. I went to the bathroom to put my contacts in, though I thought, “I don’t really need them, but I’ll put them in anyways to make my vision just that much better.” I took my contact case out, opened it up and saw it was empty, and realized I’m an idiot.
Well, I used to be too much like that when it comes to the Spirit of the Lord. I didn’t realize that the reason I could see the glory of the Lord to the extent that I did, was not something I discovered on my own through my own efforts. It’s because His Spirit had been at work in me to open my eyes and give me sight. I’ve found through experience that the more I realize how dependent I am on the Spirit of the Lord, the more help He gives me to see more and more of His glory.
The other contrast here, utilizing Moses’ shinning face story, is that…
The old covenant came with some fading glory.
But the new covenant comes with far surpassing and ever-increasing glory.
Where is the glory of God reflected in the new covenant? It’s not on the face of one leader. Paul says God’s glory is reflected in all of us. Verse 18, “And we all, with unveiled face [We don’t veil the glory like Moses did. We don’t put our light under a basket. We let our light shine in such a way that men may see our good works and glorify our Father who is in heaven.], beholding the glory of God [we behold the glory of the Lord, with the help of His Spirit; we get to see Him more and more], are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit.” So His Spirit helps to transform us into the same image from one degree of glory to another. The glory is not fading like with Moses. The glory is increasing. We are becoming ever more like Him in love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, meekness and self-control. That’s what Christianity is all about, that’s what God is really after. It’s not about being religious, it’s not about being baptized and attending church and rituals; it’s important to get baptized and meet with one another, but that’s not the end, those are things that are a means to the end. It’s about character formation, becoming like Jesus, people who love God with all their hearts and love their neighbor as themselves. People who are absolutely delightful and a blessing to God and people. He’s making awesome people; in the new covenant His Spirit is doing that in us, making us like Jesus, we’re reflecting His glory.
And we’re not just going to reflect His glory in our character, but one day we’re going to even reflect His glory in our bodies. Philippians 3:20-21, “we wait for our Savior from heaven, the Lord Jesus Christ, who will transform our lowly body to be like His glorious body.” Jesus told His disciples that when He comes with the angels, the angels “will gather out of his kingdom all causes of sin and all law-breakers, and throw them into the fiery furnace… Then the righteous will shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father.” “It has not appeared as yet what we will be,” says I John 3:2, “but we know that when He appears we shall be like Him, because we shall see Him as He is.”
The Spirit of the Lord is not just like contact lenses for the eyes of your heart. He’s also like power steering in your car. If you don’t know much about cars you might think that when you turn the steering wheel you’re pretty much steering your car by your own strength. But if your power steering system has gone out while you’re driving you suddenly realize how much help you were getting to steer your car. The Spirit of the Lord greatly enhances our ability to steer our life in the steps of Jesus; to steer out of our sinful patterns of thinking and behaving, and in to getting ourselves in line with Jesus.
What a deal we have in a relationship with Jesus! We turn from our way to go His way and we’re baptized into Him, He counts us as righteous though we fall short, His Spirit enables us to see more and more of His glory and enables us to take on His glory in ourselves.
-James Williams