2 Corinthians 3:1-18

Teacher: Rusty Kennedy
​Series: 2 Corinthians (Acts)

Rusty's Notes

LIVING LETTERS
2 CORINTHIANS
1 Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 2 You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. 3 You show that you are Christ’s letter, delivered by us, not written with ink but with the Spirit of the living God—not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.

• Paul is saying that “Really, even though it sounds like I’m starting to commend myself to you again, we really don’t need that, and you don’t need letters of recommendation to me or from me.
• We don’t need you to validate my ministry.
• You know why? Because you are our letter. You are our letter of recommendation.”
• “Look. What has been written on your hearts in the gospel is all the validation I need for my ministry.”[1]

 
PAUL’S COMPETENCE
4 Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God. 5 It is not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything as coming from ourselves, but our adequacy is from God. 6 He has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

• The false teachers were actually coming, and they were standing up publicly and saying, “Look how competent we are; look how qualified we are. We are great speakers; we are powerful leaders.”
• And Paul says, “Look, we’re not competent in ourselves as if anything is coming from us.
• Our competence comes from God, who made us competent as ministers of the new covenant.
• And it’s not of the letter, but it is of the Spirit.”
• Paul says that “my ministry is validated by the powerful work of the Spirit in your lives.”
• Paul is saying [that] when you look at Christian ministers, you can tell authentic Christian ministers by the impact that they have had on the lives of people.[2]

 
NEW COVENANT MINISTRY

• The purpose of this passage is for Paul to contrast his form of new covenant ministry to another type of ministry, and we might call it the “ministry of the glowing face,” where you have the leader who has been in the presence of God, and he is the focus.
• But Paul is not contrasting new covenant over against old covenant here as the primary thing he’s doing.
• He’s contrasting new covenant ministry—his type of ministry—to another type of ministry, so that’s the purpose of what he’s doing.[3]

7 Now if the ministry that brought death, chiseled in letters on stones, came with glory, so that the Israelites were not able to gaze steadily at Moses’s face because of its glory, which was set aside, 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be more glorious? 9 For if the ministry that brought condemnation had glory, the ministry that brings righteousness overflows with even more glory. 10 In fact, what had been glorious is not glorious now by comparison because of the glory that surpasses it. 11 For if what was set aside was glorious, what endures will be even more glorious.

• In secular Greek, the idea of glory could communicate fame or esteem or honor [or] even talk about a person’s reputation.[4]
• Exodus 34:29-35 - As Moses descended from Mount Sinai—with the two tablets of the testimony in his hands as he descended the mountain—he did not realize that the skin of his face shone as a result of his speaking with the Lord., 30 When Aaron and all the Israelites saw Moses, the skin of his face shone! They were afraid to come near him. 31 But Moses called out to them, so Aaron and all the leaders of the community returned to him, and Moses spoke to them. 32 Afterward all the Israelites came near, and he commanded them to do everything the Lord had told him on Mount Sinai. 33 When Moses had finished speaking with them, he put a veil over his face. 34 But whenever Moses went before the Lord to speak with him, he would remove the veil until he came out. After he came out, he would tell the Israelites what he had been commanded, 35 and the Israelites would see that Moses’s face was radiant. Then Moses would put the veil over his face again until he went to speak with the Lord. [5]

 

• katargeō. (cot-ar-geh-o) - This word, in the ancient world, could be translated as “to use up,” “to exhaust,” “to make ineffective,” “to invalidate,” [or] “to call something to be abolished or set aside.”
• Paul uses this word pretty extensively to mean something like “to be canceled” or “to be made inoperative.”
• Now, it’s been popular in recent years to render this word in certain English translations as “fade”—that it was a fading glory.
• But recently, scholars have shown that there’s no case in the ancient world where this word means for something to fade.
• It means that it has been made inoperative—the switch has been turned off; it’s been nullified—and that’s the way that I’ve translated the passage here.
  - In this passage, he’s using an argument from lesser to greater.
• This was a common rabbinic technique in which the rabbi would say, “If something was true in a lesser situation, it certainly is true in a greater situation and has greater implications.”
• So that is the type of argument Paul is giving here.
• He is saying that in that OT context in Exodus 34, Moses’ face was glowing, but the people of Israel didn’t get to keep looking at his face because he kept covering it up.
• He is saying, if that was the situation where God’s presence was manifested through glory there, (verse 8) “how could the ministry of the Spirit not be attended by glory to a greater degree?”
• In other words, if you had that in the old covenant, how could the glory of God not be manifested to a much greater degree in the new covenant?
• “For if the ministry characterized by condemnation [had] glory, to a much greater degree the ministry characterized by righteousness overflows with glory.”
• Well, what’s he talking about?
• Well, you had glory under the old covenant; it was just the face of Moses that was glowing.
• But under the new covenant, think about the fact that all believers manifest the presence of God.
• He’s saying that every believer under the new covenant knows the presence of God and manifests the glory of God.
• Manifest - clear or obvious to the eye or mind.
• So, whereas you had one person manifesting the presence and the glory of God under the old covenant situation, now you have glory to a much greater degree because all of us manifest the glory of God in the new covenant.
• Paul is saying here that under the new covenant, the glory of God is so much greater because it’s manifested among all the people of God.[6]

12 Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness. 13 We are not like Moses, who used to put a veil over his face to prevent the Israelites from gazing steadily until the end of the glory of what was being set aside, 14 but their minds were hardened. For to this day, at the reading of the old covenant, the same veil remains; it is not lifted, because it is set aside only in Christ.

• He says, “but their minds were hardened. For, to this day, when the old covenant is read, that same veil remains unmoved, because it can only be made inoperative by Christ.”
• Christ makes the veil over people’s hearts inoperative.
• He snuffs the glory snuffer, if you will;
• He takes that veil and rips it from people’s hearts so that they can have this open-face relationship with God and know the glory of God.
• He says it can only be made inoperative by Christ.[7]

15 Yet still today, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts, 16 but whenever a person 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 We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at, the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory; this is from the Lord who is the Spirit.[8]

• What Paul is contrasting in the big picture here is that type of new covenant ministry to the false ministry of the false teachers in Corinth who are all about the leader of the glowing face.
• Real Christian ministry is about being transformed by the presence of Christ in a way that you then manifest the glory of Christ in the world.[9]

 

• It’s not “One day… when the glory comes”
• The Glory is here… here in this very room.

[1] Guthrie, G. H. (2018). NT337 Book Study: Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[2] Guthrie, G. H. (2018). NT337 Book Study: Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[3] Guthrie, G. H. (2018). NT337 Book Study: Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[4] Guthrie, G. H. (2018). NT337 Book Study: Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[5] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (Ex 34:29–35). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[6] Guthrie, G. H. (2018). NT337 Book Study: Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[7] Guthrie, G. H. (2018). NT337 Book Study: Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.
[8] Christian Standard Bible. (2020). (2 Co 3:1–18). Nashville, TN: Holman Bible Publishers.
[9] Guthrie, G. H. (2018). NT337 Book Study: Paul’s Second Letter to the Corinthians. Bellingham, WA: Lexham Press.