2nd Corinthians Chapter 3

From The Open Bible Project

3:1 Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as do some, letters of commendation to you or from you?

3:2 You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men;

3:3 being revealed that you are a letter of Christ, served by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tablets of stone, but in tablets that are hearts of flesh.

• (a) The apostle says this wisely, that by little and little he may come from the commendation of the person to the matter itself.
• (b) Which I took pains to write as it were.
• (c) Along the way he sets the power of God against the ink with which epistles are commonly written, to show that it was accomplished by God.
• (1) He alludes along the way to the comparison of the outward ministry of the priesthood of Levi with the ministry of the Gospel, and the apostolical ministry, which he handles afterward more fully.

3:4 Such confidence we have through Christ toward God;

• (d) This boldness we show, and thus may we boast gloriously of the worthiness and fruit of our ministry.

3:5 not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God;

• (e) In that we are proper and able to make other men partakers of so great a grace.

3:6 who also made us sufficient as servants of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

• (2) He amplifies his ministry and his fellows: that is to say, the ministry of the Gospel comparing it with the ministry of the Law, which he considers in the person of Moses, by whom the Law was given: against whom he sets Christ the author of the Gospel. Now this comparison is taken from the very substance of the ministry. The Law is as it were a writing in itself, dead, and without efficacy: but the Gospel, and new Covenant, as it were the very power of God itself, in renewing, justifying, and saving men. The Law offers death, accusing all men of unrighteousness: the Gospel offers and gives righteousness and life. The administration of the Law served for a time to the promise: the Gospel remains to the end of the world. Therefore what is the glory of the Law in comparison of the majesty of the Gospel?
• (f) Not of the Law but of the Gospel.

3:7 But if the service of death, written engraved on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadfastly on the face of Moses for the glory of his face; which was passing away:

• (g) Imprinted and engraved: so that by this place we may plainly perceive that the apostle speaks not of the ceremonies of the Law, but of the ten commandments.
• (h) This word "glorious" indicates a brightness, and a majesty which was in Moses physically, but in Christ spiritually.

3:8 won't service of the Spirit be with much more glory?

• (i) By which God offers, indeed, and gives the Spirit, not as a dead thing, but a living Spirit, working life.

3:9 For if the service of condemnation has glory, the service of righteousness exceeds much more in glory.

• (k) That is, of Christ. And since he is imputed to us as our own, we are not condemned, and what is more we are also crowned as righteous.

3:10 For most certainly that which has been made glorious has not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasses.

3:11 For if that which passes away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.

• (l) The Law, indeed, and the ten commandments themselves, together with Moses, are all abolished, if we consider the ministry of Moses apart by itself.

3:12 Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness of speech,

• (3) He shows what this glory of the preaching of the Gospel consists in: that is, in that it sets forth plainly and evidently that which the Law showed darkly, for it sent those that heard it to be healed by Christ, who was to come, after it had wounded them.

3:13 and not as Moses, who put a veil on his face, that the children of Israel wouldn't look steadfastly on the end of that which was passing away.

• (4) He expounds along the way the allegory of Moses’ covering, which was a token of the darkness and weakness that is in men, who were rather dulled by the bright shining of the Law then given. And this covering was taken away by the coming of Christ, who enlightens the hearts, and turns them to the Lord, that we may be brought from the slavery of this blindness, and set in the liberty of the light by the power of Christ’s Spirit.
• (m) Into the very bottom of Moses’ ministry.

3:14 But their minds were hardened, for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remains, because in Christ it passes away.

3:15 But to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart.

3:16 But whenever one turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away.

3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.

• (n) Christ is that Spirit who takes away that covering, by working in our hearts, to which also the Law itself called us, though in vain, because it speaks to dead men, until the Spirit makes us alive.

3:18 But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.

• (5) Continuing in the allegory of the covering, he compares the Gospel to a glass, which although it is most bright and sparkling, yet it does not dazzle their eyes who look in it, as the Law does, but instead transforms them with its beams, so that they also are partakers of the glory and shining of it, to enlighten others: as Christ said unto his own, "You are the light of the world", whereas he himself alone is the light. We are also commanded in another place to shine as candles before the world, because we are partakers of God’s Spirit. But Paul speaks here properly of the ministers of the Gospel, as it appears both by that which goes before, and that which comes after, and in that he sets before them his own example and that of his fellows.