2 Corinthians 3

The Christian ministry is a position of servant leadership. The church needs to remember the pathway of her King. He was the ultimate Servant and Leader, and His way of leading was the way of the cross. He instructed us that this way was also the way for us. Nonetheless, for Paul to be an apostle was to be in a situation of representing the Lord of glory. To speak of it rightly was to attract the resentment of those who were not apostles. He anticipates this kind of jealousy when he writes, “Are we beginning to commend ourselves again?”

This rhetorical question is not asked because Paul is curious about the answer. He knows that He is not writing as one who should have to sell his customers on the product of Paul. He is not writing a letter of recommendation for himself. He turns the tables on them and says, “You yourselves are our letter of recommendation.” The church in Corinth should be a display of Paul’s ministerial labors, the fruit of His gospel efforts as those have been blessed by God.

Christ is the one who has written the true letter in their hearts, a letter written with the ink of the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of the living God, upon the tablets of their souls and lived out in their lives. This is Paul’s confidence, that the true God of creation and providence has redeemed His people through Christ and is perfectly capable of not only claiming them for eternal life, but even of changing them now in such a way that others should be able to read the letter of God to the world in the changed lives of those who worship the Lord in the city of Corinth.

If Paul has been a part of this, and he surely has, he knows that his sufficiency is only from God. What has happened in the church is a heavenly work; it is not a work of the Law as if we now know the right way to go according to a variety of verses, so that all we needed was the information on what God liked, and we are out there now obeying him. This is not at all the case. We need an internal work of the Spirit of God in order to follow the Lord. This is something that we should ask for, knowing that if we truly seek, we will find. For the elect of the Lord to come to faith and to grow in obedience by the Spirit is the will of God.

This is part of what is so exciting about the New Covenant and about New Covenant ministry. No longer is God doing His saving work of preparation for the Messiah within the more restricted covenant community of the Old Testament Jews. The gospel Word has gone forth to the nations. The ascended Christ has poured out His Spirit upon the church throughout the world. This is a great moment in the history of redemption. All power and authority in heaven and on earth has been given to Jesus, and He is the One who has called us to make disciples of the Gentiles. This is spiritual work, and He is giving us the resources that are most necessary for the completion of the task.

The Law is beautiful and holy, but it brings us death because of our disobedience; a death which is neither beautiful nor holy. But where the letter kills, now the Spirit brings life. And to think, we are ministers of this New Covenant when we are sent by the church to proclaim the mystery of Jesus for the nations, a mystery that has now been plainly revealed. This mystery was surely there in the Old Testament, yet it was veiled, waiting for the arrival of the Bridegroom. The glory of God was so dangerous for the Israelites that even the fading glory on the face of Moses needed to be covered lest the people of God be killed. But now we have the Spirit of God within us bringing us life, and the end result will be shining glory in a world of perfect safety and blessing. This is a ministry of righteousness provided by a substitute, the Lord Jesus, and this is what makes it safe for us to be in the presence of God again: the righteousness of Christ. This is an era of such surpassing glory, that the old era of fading glory appears to have no glory at all.

Now is the day for people from every tribe, tongue, and nation, including the Jewish community throughout the world, to take off the veil of ignorance concerning the answer to our deepest longings. Now is the time for hearts and minds to be open to the fact of Jesus the Messiah, our new heart’s desire. Someone may have been reading Moses all of his life and passages like Genesis 3:14-15, Genesis 15, Genesis 22, the entire Joseph story, the reality of the entire sacrificial system, the entire metaphor of going from bondage to the promised land, all this and so much more has been under the thick tarp of a dead unbelief. Even where rituals were accurately followed, there was no sense of Messiah for so many. But when a person comes to the Lord, that veil of ignorance and superstition is removed through Christ. Then the Lord is revealed by the One who is called here the Spirit of the Lord. Then freedom from sin, death, hopelessness, and eternal misery is granted through faith in Christ, His cross and resurrection.

“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.” All of this good work is done through this simple New Covenant ministry, as the truth of Christ in the Scriptures is opened up to the hearts and minds of a people who have been made to thirst for the One who loves them. This is the power of God. To be touched by that hand from on high that brings life to the dead is an incomparable blessing. The one who is truly touched and changed by the Lord will never be the same. It is with this great realization that our years here of humble service are rightly seen as our great gospel privilege.