Trinity 12
2 Cor 3:4-11
9/7/25
In order to apply for a visa to enter South Sudan, I had to first
obtain a letter from the Lutheran Church.
This letter described how I had been invited by the church to serve as a
guest professor at their seminary in Yambio. It indicated the time period when
I would be teaching. It stated that I would be accommodated at the Lutheran
Guest House and that all my expenses would be covered by the church.
This letter was necessary to receive a
visa from the South Sudan Embassy in Washington, D.C. But that was not the end of its importance. I
carried that letter in my passport the entire time was in South Sudan. I had been instructed to always have my
passport and that letter on my person – I never went anywhere without them. The passport identified me as a U.S. citizen,
and the visa in the passport indicated I had entered the country legally. The letter demonstrated and explained the
reason why I was there. Sure enough, the
security officer at the Juba airport examined the letter as he prepared to
allow me to enter the country.
In much the same way, letters of
recommendation – letters that introduced a person and commended them to others
- were very important in the Greco-Roman world and in the early Church. A person would receive a letter from a church
in one location. He would then present that letter to a church in another place,
and through the letter the first church vouched for the fact that this
individual was a Christian.
As Paul wrote the letter that we know
as 2 Corinthians, he was facing a problem that had been produced by letters of
recommendation. Individuals had come to Corinth from elsewhere. They had
brought letters of recommendation that indicated they were respected teachers
in the Church. And now they were causing problems in Corinth as they were
spreading false doctrine.
In the verses just before our text,
Paul had pointed out that unlike these false teachers, he and Timothy didn’t
need letters of recommendation. Instead, the Corinthians themselves were their letters
of recommendation. He said, “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do
we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you, or from you? You
yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be
known and read by all.”
The Corinthians believed in Jesus
Christ because Paul had proclaimed the Gospel, and the Holy Spirit had worked
faith. And so the apostle added, “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.”
The Spirit of God had created the
Corinthians as the church of God. And
this fact gave Paul confidence. Yet he also immediately called attention to the
truth that this had nothing to do with him and Timothy. Instead, it was God’s doing. Paul says in our
text, “Such is the confidence that we have through Christ
toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim
anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, 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.”
Paul
sets forth a series of contrasts this morning. There is the old covenant and
the new covenant. There is the letter and the Spirit. There is death and life.
The apostle never
actually uses the phrase “old covenant,” but it is inherent in what he says
about the “new covenant.” He refers to
the covenant that God made with Israel at Mt Sinai. When God established this
covenant, he gave Israel the Torah – God’s law.
It described how Israel was to live in this relationship that God had
established.
Paul leaves no
doubt that this covenant and the law were from God. It was glorious. He says in our text that it, “came with such
glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its
glory, which was being brought to an end.” We learn in Exodus that when Moses
came down from Mt Sinai with the two tables of testimony that the skin of his
face shone and Aaron and all the people of Israel were afraid to come near
him. Moses had been in the presence of
Yahweh, and so the glory of God was still radiating off of him.
This law that God
gave to Israel was an expression of his will and ordering of life. It was good.
Paul told the Romans, “So the law is holy, and the commandment is holy and
righteous and good.” But there was a problem – one which appeared from the
start and ran throughout the history of the nation. The people didn’t do the
law. Instead, they violated it and
brought God’s judgment upon themselves.
That is why Paul
calls it in our text a “ministry of death” and a “ministry of condemnation.” Or
as the apostle says, “the letter kills.” The problem here is not the law.
Instead, we are the problem. Paul told the Romans that “all,
both Jews and Greeks, are under sin.” The approach to God that is based in any way
on what we do will always fail. It will fail because we are fallen
sinners who sin in thought, word, and deed. We love the things God has created
more than we love God. We love ourselves more than we love our neighbor.
It is not as if
God was not aware of this problem. He is the God who is gracious,
compassionate, and forgiving. He
provided within the law that he gave to Israel the sacrifices by which he gave
forgiveness to his repentant people. As he worked through the history of
Israel, he pointed forward to something new that he would do. He said through
Jeremiah, “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.” How would this new covenant be different? He
said, “I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts.”
And how would God
do this? He would do it through his Spirit. The Old Testament declares that God
will pour out his Spirit as part of his end time salvation. He said through
Ezekiel, “And I will put my Spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my
statutes and be careful to obey my rules.”
Sin has been our
problem – it has been the source of every problem – since the fall of
Adam and Eve. But immediately after they
sinned – before he had even described what sin had done to man – God said to
Satan, “I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your
offspring and her offspring; he shall bruise your head, and you
shall bruise his heel.” God promised a descendant of Eve who would defeat the
devil.
And then the God
of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob began working through the history of his people to
bring forth this One. He created the nation of Israel and brought it into a
covenant with himself. He identified the tribe of Judah, and then said that
through King David’s offspring he would bring forth the Messiah.
Jesus was the
fulfillment of this promise. He was God’s answer to sin. He was the offspring
of Eve – he was truly man, born of Mary. He was the Son of David – the Messiah
from David’s royal line. Jesus was the One in whom the Last Days arrived. He
was the Son of God in this world. He was the presence of God’s end time action
worked by the Spirit. The Son of God was sent forth by the Father, as the
Spirit of God caused Jesus to be conceived and born of Mary. The triune God
carried out his end time action in Jesus Christ who is true God and true man.
God is the holy
and just God. Sinners who sin cannot
exist in his presence. Sin must be judged and condemned. So God acted in Christ
to do just that. A little later in this letter Paul says, “For our sake he made
him to be sin who knew no sin, so that in him we might become the
righteousness of God.” God did judge and
condemn our sin. He did it in Christ as he bore our sins on the cross. As Paul
told the Romans, “By sending his own Son in the likeness of sinful flesh
and for sin, he condemned sin in the flesh.”
Since its
entrance into the world through Adam, sin has brought death. But Jesus Christ
has here to overcome every consequence of sin. He received the judgment of God
against sin as he suffered and died to give us forgiveness. And then on Easter God raised him from the
dead as he defeated death forever. He
rose as the second Adam in whom resurrection life has begun – bodily life that
can never die.
The Father sent
forth the Son, as he was incarnate through the work of the Spirit. The Father
raised Jesus the Son of God through the work of the Spirit. And now the Father
and Jesus the Son have sent forth the Spirit to create faith and give new life.
In our text Paul says, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The
Spirit of Christ gives life because he works faith in Christ by which we are
justified before God – we are declared righteous and holy in his eyes. And so
in our text Paul calls it a “ministry of the Spirit.” He says that it is a “ministry
of righteousness.” As the fulfillment of
God’s saving action, Paul tells us that this new covenant and its ministry
exceeds the first one in glory.
The letter kills,
but the Spirit gives life. The Spirit has given you life. He did it in the
water of baptism as you received the washing of rebirth and renewal by the Spirit.
Through the work of the Spirit you are now in Christ and have life with God.
And the Spirit gives life as he leads and empowers you to live according to
God’s will – his law.
This is not using
God’s law as the means by which we do something – however small – to be
righteous before God and have salvation. We do not in any way cooperate in our
salvation. Instead, this is the work of the Spirit in our life because we
already are righteous before God in Christ. It is the Spirit leading and
enabling us to live according to God’s will. It is the Spirit using the law to
show us what God’s will is as we seek to walk in the way of the Lord.
This life is the
life of love which is a reflection of what Jesus has done for us. It is a life that serves others. So help your
husband or wife, your father or mother, your friend or co-worker in the things
that need to be done. Don’t turn a blind
eye when you know that you can provide assistance.
This life is a
holy life. It is a life which is a reflection of God’s will and ordering. So don’t have sexual intercourse outside of
marriage. Don’t look at pornography in order to engage in lustful thoughts and
actions. Instead, live according to God’s ordering in the one flesh union of
marriage. This means that husband and wife are to have intercourse. As Paul told the Corinthians, “The husband
should give to his wife her conjugal rights, and likewise the wife to her
husband. For the wife does not have authority over her own body, but the
husband does. Likewise the husband does not have authority over his own body,
but the wife does. Do not deprive one another.”
This life is a just
life. It is a reflection of our just
God. So don’t show favoritism, because God shows no partiality. Treat others in
a fair manner. Do unto others, as you
want them to do unto you.
The letter kills but
the Spirit gives life. If we try to deal
with God on the basis of what we do – on the basis of the law – it can never be
anything except a ministry of condemnation and death. But God has carried out his end time action
of salvation for us. Through the death of Jesus Christ he has condemned our sin
and begun the new life of the resurrection. The Spirit of God has called you to
faith in Christ and given you life. The
ministry of the Spirit is a ministry of righteousness as we live justified
before God. Through the work of the Spirit we live in Christ as we act in
loving, holy, and just ways.
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