2 Corinthians 3

1. Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of com- 2 mendation to you, or letters of commendation from you? Ye are our epistle written in our 3 hearts, known and read of all men: forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epis- 4 tle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; 5 not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. And such trust have we through 6 Christ to God-ward: not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of our- 7 selves; but our sufficiency is of God; who also hath made us able ministers of the new 8 testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth 9 life. But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so 10 that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his 11 countenance; which glory was to be done away: how shall not the ministration of the 12 spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more 13 doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made 14 glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excellet. For if that 15 which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious. Seeing then 16 that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech: and not as Moses, which put a 17 vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that 18 which is abolished: but their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same 19 vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. 20 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart. Nevertheless 21 when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away. Now the Lord is that Spirit: 22 and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding 23 as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, 24 even as by the Spirit of the Lord.

THE Christian is the world’s Bible, and the only one it reads. If we take care that in this book be plainly shown the loving spirit, the grandeur, and the winning friendliness of Christ, then we shall see many hearts open to receive this actual testimony of Christian life. The strongest argument for the truth of Christianity is the man filled with the Spirit of Christ. The best means of bringing back the world to a belief in miracles is to exhibit the miracle of regeneration and its power in our own life. The best proof of Christ’s resurrection is a living Church, which itself is walking in new life, and drawing life from him who has overcome death. Christlieb.—The living epistle needs no translation to be understood in every country and clime; a humble, gentle, holy, Christlike life preaches to the common ear all the world over. Let a man reveal his soul in the inarticulate speech of an earnest, pure, and truthful life, and this will be a language which the profoundest must admire, while the simplest can appreciate. The most elaborate discourse on sanctification will prove tame and ineffective in comparison with the eloquence of a humble, holy walk with God. Instruct your children in the knowledge of God’s great love and mercy, but let them see that love cheering, animating, hallowing your daily life; describe to them the divinity and glory of the Saviour’s person and work, but let them note how daily you think of Him, hear with what profoundest reverence you name His name, see how the sense of a divine presence sheds a reflected moral beauty around your own—and this will be a living and breathing theology to them, without which formal teaching will avail but little. Caird.

1-6. The close of the second chapter looked like boasting—it seemed like a recommendation of himself. In these verses he is replying to the possible charge. He declares that he wanted no commendation to them, no praise, no recommendatory letters (v. 1). Hence he infers that there was no vanity in his assertion, though it looked like a boast. For (vs. 5, 6) the trust he had was not in himself—the writer—but in Christ, the Spirit, the Author of the work. “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 Testament.” Then it is that from these words, “able ministers,” he breaks off into a digression which occupies all the chapter, and is descriptive of the Christian ministry in contradistinction to the Jewish. F. W. R.

1. As some others.** Turn to Acts 18: 27, and you will find that, a short time before the writing of this Epistle, Apollos had gone to Corinth with letters of commendation from the Ephesian Christians; “and when Apollos was disposed to pass into Achaia, the brethren wrote exhorting the disciples to receive him.” Here the words of the Epistle bear the appearance of alluding to some specific instance, and the history supplies that instance. Paley.

3. Epistle of Christ.** In this dark world Christ’s countenance shines through the spirit and life of his people. Here he has need of such witnesses. He needs vessels to bear his name about among men; and for this purpose he chooses earthen vessels, that the power may be known to be his own. The life of his own disciples is the epistle in which he desires to be read. The evidence with which he will convince the world is the walk of the people whom he has bought with his blood and renewed by his Spirit. Arnot.—What is any description of Christianity upon paper as compared to the living epistle which all men can read? We want Christian men and women, not their books or their money only, but themselves. The poor and needy ones who, in this great turmoil of life, have found no helper among their fellows; the wicked and outcast, whose hand is against every man’s, because they have found, by dire experience of the world’s selfishness, how every man’s hand is against them; the prodigal and broken-hearted children of the human family, who have the bitterest thoughts of God and man, if they have any thoughts at all beyond their own busy contrivances how to live and how to indulge their craving passions—all these, by the mesmerism of the heart, and by means of that great witness, conscience, which God in mercy leaves as a light from heaven in the most abject dwelling on earth, can to some extent read the living epistle of a renewed soul, written in the divine characters of the Holy Spirit. They can see and feel, as they never did anything else in this world, the love which calmly shines in that eye, telling of inward light and peace possessed, and of a place of rest found and enjoyed by the weary heart! They can perceive the reality of the piety, which also reads to them in touching tones the glory of him who came to seek and save the lost; and their souls can not refuse some amen, however faint, echoed by their very misery, and from their yearnings for a good they have never known, to that earnest prayer of faith uttered, in the bonds of a common brotherhood, to one who is addressed as a common Father through a common Lord. N. M.

This third verse is one of those many passages of Scripture in which each of the persons of the blessed Trinity is represented as concurring and sharing in the work of grace upon the heart. The act of one is the act of all who are united in nature and purpose. But this work of sanctification is commonly ascribed in a peculiar manner to God the Spirit. It is his special office, to which he has voluntarily condescended in the economy of redemption, to create this abiding, soul-transforming principle of holiness in the soul. Goode.

5. Not sufficient of ourselves.** When we fall back from the earnest longing for a consecrated life to the littlenesses and distractions and failures of each passing day, when we contrast the power of our creed, as an ideal, with the actual effect which it produces upon our habitual manner of acting and judging, it is impossible that we should not be filled with a profound distrust of ourselves. And indeed so it must be, so long as we look at ourselves. In that contemplation of self lies weakness without the prospect of support; failure without the promise of redemption. But, if it be well that we should learn by sad experience what we can not do by our own power, still to rest in this knowledge of despair is to renounce our birthright. Discomfiture and defeat are means by which God draws us closer to himself. Each fresh discovery of our helplessness, if we use the opportunity, reveals to us at the same time a present source of succor. We are alone, as it may seem, in the midst of the world, which moves on its way with irresistible force; we are beset and baffled by circumstances which lie wholly without our control; we dishonor and discredit by our faintheartedness the name which it is our privilege to bear; yet, even so, in isolation, in failure, in dejection, only let the thought of self perish, and we shall know that we are not desolate: our sufficiency is of God. B. F. W.—The belief of our dependence on God as the source of all spiritual strength grows with our Christian growth. The believer does not receive at his ingrafting into Christ a supply of vital energy sufficient to influence him in a holy manner all his life long. The branch must abide in the vine. New streams of grace must flow hour by hour; and, if this communication is interrupted, he begins to languish. This is the lesson we are constantly learning. J. W. A.

6. “Who hath made us able ministers” gives a wrong idea; it should be, “who hath enabled us as ministers,” “given us power to become ministers,” or “made us sufficient as ministers,” keeping the same expression as has been used before. A.—In these words the great apostle affirms two most important truths. Vindicating his own position, but including, doubtless, with himself, all who share his ministry, he asserts at once its authority and its object; the commission by which it is empowered to act, and the essential quality of the religion it is constituted to diffuse. “God hath made us ministers”—such is the source of our qualification; “ministers not of the letter, but of the spirit”—such is the nature of the doctrine we have to declare. W. A. B.

“The letter” here, according to all the necessities of the context, is the law, called “the letter” because written on tables of stone; the whole dispensation, commanding and threatening yet not quickening, of the Old Testament. This, as the apostle, in harmony with all his other teaching, declares, “killeth”; not merely negatively, in which it does not make alive, but positively; for, as Augustine admirably brings out, the true parallel and interpretation of the words are to be found in those other words of Paul, “I was alive without the law once,” etc.; while “the Spirit” here is that dispensation of the Spirit of which he speaks (Rom. 8:1-11) as that in which, and in which only, resides the power of making men alive unto God. T.

8. The gospel is the word of the Spirit; his great instrument in the conversion of sinners to God. Hence this gospel, in opposition to the old dispensation (which only made known the terms of the law, and was therefore one of condemnation), is called “the ministration of the Spirit.” This is its peculiar glory. The Spirit of Christ accompanies it to the hearts of his people, effectually renewing them thereby in the spirit of their minds, and working in them what it requires of them. And as this is the chief instrument employed by the Spirit in first regenerating believers, so also in carrying on the work of their sanctification throughout their earthly pilgrimage. Goode.

9. Ministration of condemnation. As a rule of life, without the atoning blood to pardon sin and without the grace of the Spirit to make obedience possible, the law had been but a ministration of condemnation. As a typical system, it had been destined to pass away on the appearance of the antitype which fulfilled it. In either respect it contrasted disadvantageously with the Gospel, which was at once endowed with perpetuity and a ministration of spiritual righteousness. H. P. L.

10. The law condemns and can not justify a sinner; the Gospel justifies and can not condemn the sinner that believes in Jesus. In the law God appears in terrible threatenings of eternal death; in the Gospel he manifests himself in gracious promises of life eternal. That presents to the view of the sinner a throne of judgment; this presents “a throne of grace.” Every sentence of condemnation in Scripture belongs to the law; every sentence of justification forms a part of the Gospel. The law condemns a sinner for his first offense, but the Gospel offers him the forgiveness of all his offenses. Thus, in every point of difference, “that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excel-leth.” Colquhoun.

11. That which remaineth. The present reign of the Spirit is to close the period of our world’s annals. Nothing of more palpable, imposing form is to come after it; nothing is to take its place; nothing is to intervene between it and the final judgment. We need not be told at this late day, and after all we have seen of the quiet, noiseless progress of truth and righteousness, that Christ’s kingdom is not of this world. The only throne which the Redeemer is ever to set up on earth is a throne in the heart; and this is to be done so completely and universally under the present ministration of the Spirit that all shall know the Lord, from the least to the greatest. Magee.

12. Plainness of speech. Ours should be a ministry whose words are not compacted of baldness but boldness; whose very life is outspokenness and free fearlessness; a ministry which has no concealment, no reserve; which shrinks from the weakness of a mere cautiousness, but which exults even in failure, if the truth has been spoken, with a joyful confidence. For a man who sees into the heart of things speaks out not timidly, nor superstitiously, but with a brow unveiled, and with a speech as free as his spirit: “The truth has made him free.” F. W. R.

13-16. Paul’s immediate purpose seems to be to illustrate the frank openness which ought to mark the ministry of Christianity. He does this by reference to the veil which Moses wore when he came forth from talking with God. There, he says in effect, we have a picture of the old dispensation—a partial revelation, gleaming through a veil, flashing through symbols, expressed here in a rite, there in a type, there again in an obscure prophecy. Christianity is, and Christian teachers ought to be, the opposite of all this. It has, and they are to have, no reserve, no use of symbols and ceremonies to overlay truth, but an intelligible revelation in words and deeds, to men’s understandings. But he gets far beyond this point in his uses of his illustration. It opens out into a series of contrasts between the two revelations. The veiled Moses represents the clouded revelation of old. The vanishing gleam on his face recalls the fading glories of that which was abolished; and then, by a quick turn of association, he thinks of the veiled readers in the synagogues, copies, as it were, of the law-giver with the shrouded countenance; only too significant images of the souls obscured by prejudice and obstinate unbelief, with which Israel trifles over the uncomprehended letter of the old law. A. M.

14. Vail untaken away.** More than fifteen centuries had passed since the revelation of Sinai, but in the days of Paul the face of Moses was still veiled from the eyes of Israel. The tallith, used during prayer and the reading of the law, still perpetuated the symbol in every synagogue. And that which met the eye too truly pictured the spiritual fact which the eye could not reach. H. P. L. —“He came unto his own, and his own received him not!” They, who through a long course of centuries had been educated into expectation of the ever-blessed Visitant, perverted the expectation, reading it by the corrupted glare of their own ambition; and, though miracles more wondrous than those of their greatest leaders were performed before their eyes—miracles that identified the Saviour with the Angel and Guide of their whole past history—yet the infidelity of the heart prevailed to poison the reason, and they rejected him! W. A. B.

16,17. The darkness, however, was not to last. “When it [the heart of the people] shall turn to the Lord, the vali shall be taken away.” This was the promise. It is explained by the assertion that, “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” For the Spirit of the Lord dwells with all who are really converted to Christ, since “the Lord is that Spirit.” In other words, to possess the Lord Jesus Christ is to possess the Holy Ghost, who is the minister and guardian of Christ’s presence in the soul. The immediate and practical conclusion is, that to be converted to Jesus Christ is to have escaped from the veil which darkened the spiritual intelligence of Israel. The converting Spirit is the source of positive illumination; much more therefore does he give freedom from the veil of prejudice which denies to Jewish thought the exercise of any real insight into the deeper sense of Scripture. That sense is seized by the Christian student of the ancient law, because in the Church of Jesus Christ he possesses the Spirit, and “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Freedom is not an occasional largess of the divine Spirit. It is the invariable accompaniment of the Spirit’s true action. It is the very atmosphere of his presence. Wherever he really is, there is also freedom. This liberty comes with the gift of truth; it comes along with that gift of which in its fullness the Eternal Spirit is the only giver. He gives freedom from error for the reason; freedom from constraint for the affections; freedom for the will from the tyranny of sinful and human wills. Such freedom is, in fact, a creation of grace: the sons of God alone enjoy it. H. P. L.

18. The original word in this passage, in the opinion of Locke, Macknight, and others, should be rather translated “reflecting as a mirror,” instead of “beholding as in a mirror.” Both meanings may be united. The mirrors of the ancients were made of polished steel, and reflected therefore upon the countenances of those who looked upon them a luminous effulgence, or glory. The apostle beheld as in the mirror of the Scriptures the glory of Christ, and this glory shone upon the face of the apostle. Moses veiled the glory which had shone upon his face. The apostle, on the contrary, would not veil his face; but by contemplating more and more the glory of Christ, endeavored to diffuse the knowledge of that glory to the world. G. T.

The brightness on the face of Moses faded away and left no trace. It effaced none of the marks of sorrow and care, and changed none of the lines of that strong, stern face. But, says Paul, the glory which we behold sinks inward, and changes us, as we look, into its own image. The power to which is committed the perfecting of our characters lies in looking upon Jesus. It is not the mere beholding, but the gaze of love and trust that molds us by silent sympathy into the likeness of his wondrous beauty. Love makes us like. We learn that even in our earthly relationships, where habitual familiarity with parents and dear ones stamps some tone of voice or look, or little peculiarity of gesture, on a whole house. And, when the infinite reverence and aspiration which the Christian soul cherishes to its Lord are superadded, the transforming power of loving contemplation of Him becomes mighty beyond all analogies in human friendship. A. M.—There is a subtle law of assimilation whereby man, in his deepest life, receives an impress from the object on which his gaze is habitually fixed. Those who gaze heavenward are, as the apostle tells us, changed by the image of perfect beauty from one to another degree of glory. Those who look downward and earthward receive as certainly the stamp and likeness of the things beneath them; they lose their hold by a progressive declension on all that sublimates and ennobles human life. They sink downward and deeper, till at length they positively can see before them nothing but the animal, gifted doubtless with strange accomplishments, yet, after all and at bottom, only the self-seeking, perishing animal. H. P. L.

Judaism had the one lawgiver who beheld God, while the people tarried below. Christianity leads us all to the mount of vision, and lets the lowliest pass through the fences, and go up where the blazing glory is seen. Moses veiled the face that shone with the irradiation of Deity. We with unveiled face are to shine among men. He had a momentary gleam, a transient brightness; we have a perpetual light. Moses’s face shone, but the luster was but skin deep. But the light that we have is inward, and works transformation into its own likeness. So there is here set forth the very loftiest conception of the Christian life as direct vision, universal, manifest to men, permanent, transforming. A. M.

and therefore have I spoken," is the only decent pretext for any preaching or any prayer. F. D. H.