2 Corinthians 3:7-14 sits inside this longer paragraph.
1Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? Or do we need, as do some, letters of commendation to you or from you? 2You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men, 3being 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. 4Such confidence we have through Christ toward God, 5not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God, 6who 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. 7But 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, 8won’t service of the Spirit be with much more glory? 9For if the service of condemnation has glory, the service of righteousness exceeds much more in glory. 10For most certainly that which has been made glorious has not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasses. 11For if that which passes away was with glory, much more that which remains is in glory.
12Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness of speech, 13and 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. 14But 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. 15But to this day, when Moses is read, a veil lies on their heart. 16But whenever someone turns to the Lord, the veil is taken away. 17Now the Lord is the Spirit and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty. 18But we all, with unveiled face seeing the glory of the Lord as in a mirror, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord, the Spirit.
John Calvin 1540 · Public Domain On vv7, 10, 12, 13, 14 7 But if the ministry of death. He now…
7 But if the ministry of death. He now sets forth the dignity of the gospel by this argument — that God conferred distinguished honor upon the law, which, nevertheless, is nothing in comparison with the gospel. The law was rendered illustrious by many miracles. Paul, however, touches here upon one of them merely — that the face of Moses shone with such splendor as dazzled the eyes of all. That splendour was a token of the glory of the law. He now draws an argument from the less to the greater — that it is befitting, that the glory of the gospel should shine forth with greater lustre, inasmuch as it is greatly superior to the law.
In the first place, he calls the law the ministry of death. Secondly, he says, that the doctrine of it was written in letters, and with ink. Thirdly, that it was engraven on stones. Fourthly, that it was not of perpetual duration; but, instead of this, its condition was temporary and fading. And, fifthly, he calls it the ministry of condemnation. To render the antitheses complete, it would have been necessary for him to employ as many corresponding clauses in reference to the gospel; but, he has merely spoken of it as being the ministry of the Spirit, and of righteousness, and as enduring for ever. If you examine the words, the correspondence is not complete, but so far as the matter itself is concerned, what is expressed is sufficient. For he had said that the Spirit giveth life, and farther, that men’s hearts served instead of stones, and disposition, in the place of ink
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Let us now briefly examine those attributes of the law and the gospel. Let us, however, bear in mind, that he is not speaking of the whole of the doctrine that is contained in the law and the Prophets; and farther, that he is not treating of what happened to the fathers under the Old Testament, but merely notices what belongs peculiarly to the ministry of Moses. The law was engraven on stones, and hence it was a literal doctrine. This defect of the law required to be corrected by the gospel, because it could not but be brittle, so long as it was merely engraven on tables of stone. The gospel, therefore, is a holy and inviolable covenant, because it was contracted by the Spirit of God, acting as security. From this, too, it follows, that the law was the ministry of condemnation and of death; for when men are instructed as to their duty, and hear it declared, that all who do not render satisfaction to the justice of God are cursed, (Deuteronomy 27:26,) they are convicted, as under sentence of sin and death. From the law, therefore, they derive nothing but a condemnation of this nature, because God there demands what is due to him, and at the same time confers no power to perform it. The gospel, on the other hand, by which men are regenerated, and are reconciled to God, through the free remission of their sins, is the ministry of righteousness, and, consequently, of life also.
Here, however, a question arises: As the gospel is the odor of death unto death to some, (2 Corinthians 2:16,) and as Christ is a rock of offense, and a stone of stumbling set for the ruin of many, (Luke 2:34; 1 Peter 2:8,) why does he represent, as belonging exclusively to the law, what is common to both? Should you reply, that it happens accidentally that the gospel is the source of death, and, accordingly, it the occasion of it rather than the cause, inasmuch as it is in its own nature salutary to all, the difficulty will still remain unsolved; for the same answer might be returned with truth in reference to the law. For we hear what Moses called the people to bear witness to — that he had set before them life and death. (Deuteronomy 30:15.) We hear what Paul himself says in Romans 7:10 — that the law has turned out to our ruin, not through any fault attaching to it, but in consequence of our wickedness. Hence, as the entailing of condemnation upon men is a thing that happens alike to the law and the gospel, the difficulty still remains.
My answer is this — that there is, notwithstanding of this, a great difference between them; for although the gospel is an occasion of condemnation to many, it is nevertheless, on good grounds, reckoned the doctrine of life, because it is the instrument of regeneration, and offers to us a free reconciliation with God. The law, on the other hand, as it simply prescribes the rule of a good life, does not renew men’s hearts to the obedience of righteousness, and denounces everlasting death upon transgressors, can do nothing but condemn. Or if you prefer it in another way, the office of the law is to show us the disease, in such a way as to show us, at the same time, no hope of cure: the office of the gospel is, to bring a remedy to those that were past hope. For as the law leaves man to himself, it condemns him, of necessity, to death; while the gospel, bringing him to Christ, opens the gate of life. Thus, in one word, we find that it is an accidental property of the law, that is perpetual and inseparable, that it killeth; for as the Apostle says elsewhere, (Galatians 3:10,)
All that remain under the law are subject to the curse.
It does, not, on the other hand, invariably happen to the gospel, that it kills, for in it is
revealed the righteousness of God from faith to faith, and therefore it is the power of God unto salvation to every one that believeth. (Romans 1:17,18.)
It remains, that we consider the last of the properties that are ascribed. The Apostle says, that the law was but for a time, and required to be abolished, but that the gospel, on the other hand, remains for ever. There are various reasons why the ministry of Moses is pronounced transient, for it was necessary that the shadows should vanish at the coming of Christ, and that statement —
The law and the Prophets were until John — (Matthew 11:13)
— applies to more than the mere shadows. For it intimates, that Christ has put an end to the ministry of Moses, which was peculiar to him, and is distinguished from the gospel. Finally, the Lord declares by Jeremiah, that the weakness of the Old Testament arose from this — that it was not engraven on men’s hearts. (Jeremiah 31:32,33.) For my part, I understand that abolition of the law, of which mention is here made, as referring to the whole of the Old Testament, in so far as it is opposed to the gospel, so that it corresponds with the statement — The law and the Prophets were until John. For the context requires this. For Paul is not reasoning here as to mere ceremonies, but shows how much more powerfully the Spirit of God exercises his power in the gospel, than of old under the law.
So that they could not look. He seems to have had it in view to reprove, indirectly, the arrogance of those, who despised the gospel as a thing that was excessively mean, so that they could scarcely deign to give it a direct look. “So great,” says he, “was the splendor of the law, that the Jews could not endure it. What, then, must we think of the gospel, the dignity of which is as much superior to that of the law, as Christ is more excellent than Moses?”
John Calvin's Commentaries (1540-1563) — public domain. Text from the Calvin Translation Society English edition (1840s-50s) via the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (ccel.org). Calvin's coverage is partial (roughly two-thirds of the Bible); uncommented books and verses are honest gaps, never fabricated. The 19th-century editor's footnotes and remarks are omitted so the notes are faithfully Calvin's own voice.
Geneva Bible translators 1599 · Public Domain On vv7, 8, 9, 11, 12, 13 This word Glory, betokeneth a brightness, and a majesty,…
This word Glory, betokeneth a brightness, and a majesty, which was bodily in Moses, but spiritually in Christ.
Imprinted and engraven: so that by this place we may plainly perceive, that the Apostle speaketh not of the ceremonies of the Law, but even of the ten commandments.
Geneva Bible (1599) marginal notes — public domain.
John Trapp 1656 · Public Domain On vv7–14 7 But if the ministration of death, written and…
7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
Ver. 7. The ministration of death] That is, the law. David was the voice of the law awarding death to sin, "He shall surely die." Nathan was the voice of the gospel awarding life to repentance for sin, "Thou shalt not die."
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For the glory of his countenance] Which yet reflected not upon his own eyes. He shone bright and knew not of it: he saw God’s face glorious, he did not think others had so seen his. How many have excellent graces and perceive them not!
John Trapp, A Commentary or Exposition upon All the Books of the Old and New Testament (1647–1656) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Poole 1685 · Public Domain On vv7–14 The apostle is manifestly comparing the ministry of the…
The apostle is manifestly comparing the ministry of the gospel with the ministry of the law, and showing the excellency of the former above the latter. In the former verse he had called the law, the letter; and the gospel, in opposition to it, he had called, the spirit: here he calleth the ministration of the law,
the ministration of death; because it only showed man his duty, or things to be done, but gave no strength or help by which he should do them; only cursing man, but showing him no way by which he might escape that curse: so it did kill men, and led them to eternal death and condemnation, without showing them any means of life and salvation. He also undervalueth the law, in comparison with the gospel, as being only
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written and engraven in stones; whereas (as he had said before) the gospel is written in the fleshy tables of men’s hearts. Yet (saith he) the ministration of the law (which was indeed but the ministration of death) was glorious: there was a great deal of the glory and majesty of God attended the giving of the law, of which we read, Exo 19:1-25.
So that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance: of this we read, Exo 34:29,30; When Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him. So as it was glorious to be but a minister of the law, that is, of the revelation of the will of God, as to man’s duty,
which glory (saith the apostle) was to be done away: Moses’s face did not always so shine, neither was the glory of his ministration to abide always, but to cease by the coming in of the new covenant.
Matthew Poole's English Annotations on the Holy Bible (1683–1685) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
William Burkitt 1703 · Public Domain On vv7, 9, 12 Our apostle in this and the following verses, goes…
Our apostle in this and the following verses, goes on with his comparison betwixt the law and the gospel, and shows the transcendency of the latter above the former.
Where note, 1. He calls the law again a killing law, or a ministration of death; because it condemns men for the breach of it to temporal and eternal death, without opening to them any door of hope.
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Note, 2. This law (he speaks of it by way of diminution) was only written upon and engraven in stone; whereas the gospel is written in the fleshly tables of men’s heart’s.
Note, 3. How the apostle declares that this ministration of the law was glorious; glorious in the minister of it, Moses, who had such a lustre upon his face, that the children of Israel could not bear the sight of it: and glorious in the manner of giving it; there was a great deal of the glory and majesty of God attended the giving of the law to Moses; the ministration of the law was glorious.
Note, 4. The comparison which the apostle makes between the law and the gospel, and the preference which he gives to the one above the other.
1. As the glory of Moses’s face ceased after a while, so the glory of the law ceased at the coming of the gospel.
2. The law was delivered by angels to Moses, but the gospel was delivered to the apostles by the Son of God, who is the brightness of his Father’s glory, and the express image of his person.
3. Whereas the glory of Moses did more and more decrease; the glory put upon the apostles, and derived from Christ, was still more and more increasing upon them.
But, 4. The chief glory of the gospel which the apostle here insists upon, is the ministration of the Spirit, in the large effusions of it under the gospel dispensation, giving spiritual and eternal life to believers, instead of death spiritual and eternal coming by the law. Well therefore might our apostle here say, the ministration of the Spirit, or the gospel, is much more glorious; and consequently a greater reverence and honour is due to it, and to the ministers of it.
William Burkitt's Expository Notes on the New Testament (1700–1703) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Matthew Henry 1710 · Public Domain On v12 In these verses the apostle draws two inferences from…
In these verses the apostle draws two inferences from what he had said about the Old and New Testament: -
I. Concerning the duty of the ministers of the gospel to use great plainness or clearness of speech. They ought not, like Moses, to put a veil upon their faces, or obscure and darken those things which they should make plain. The gospel is a more clear dispensation than the law; the things of God are revealed in the New Testament, not in types and shadows, and ministers are much to blame if they do not set spiritual things, and gospel-truth and grace, in the clearest light that is possible. Though the Israelites could not look stedfastly to the end of what was commanded, but is now abolished, yet we may. We may see the meaning of those types and shadows by the accomplishment, seeing the veil is done away in, Christ and he is come, who was the end of the law for righteousness to all those who believe, and whom Moses and all the prophets pointed to, and wrote of.
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II. Concerning the privilege and advantage of those who enjoy the gospel, above those who lived under the law. For, 1. Those who lived under the legal dispensation had their minds blinded (Co2 3:14), and there was a veil upon their hearts, Co2 3:15. Thus it was formerly, and so it was especially as to those who remained in Judaism after the coming of the Messiah and the publication of his gospel. Nevertheless, the apostle tells us, there is a time coming when this veil also shall be taken away, and when it (the body of that people) shall turn to the Lord, Co2 3:16. Or, when any particular person is converted to God, then the veil of ignorance is taken away; the blindness of the mind, and the hardness of the heart, are cured. 2. The condition of those who enjoy and believe the gospel is much more happy. For, (1.) They have liberty: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, and where he worketh, as he does under the gospel-dispensation, there is liberty (Co2 3:17), freedom from the yoke of the ceremonial law, and from the servitude of corruption; liberty of access to God, and freedom of speech in prayer. The heart is set at liberty, and enlarged, to run the ways of God's commandments. (2.) They have light; for with open face we behold the glory of the Lord, Co2 3:18. The Israelites saw the glory of God in a cloud, which was dark and dreadful; but Christians see the glory of the Lord as in a glass, more clearly and comfortably. It was the peculiar privilege of Moses for God to converse with him face to face, in a friendly manner; but now all true Christians see him more clearly with open face. He showeth them his glory. (3.) This light and liberty are transforming; we are changed into the same image, from glory to glory (Co2 3:18), from one degree of glorious grace unto another, till grace here be consummated in glory for ever. How much therefore should Christians prize and improve these privileges! We should not rest contented without an experimental knowledge of the transforming power of the gospel, by the operation of the Spirit, bringing us into a conformity to the temper and tendency of the glorious gospel of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ.
Matthew Henry's Commentary on the Whole Bible (1708–1710) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Gill 1763 · Public Domain On vv7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14 But if the ministration of death,.... The apostle having…
But if the ministration of death,.... The apostle having observed the difference between the law and the Gospel, the one being a killing letter, the other a quickening spirit, enlarges upon it, and more, fully explains it; and proceeds to take notice of other things in which they differ; and to show the superior glory and excellency of the one to the other; for that by "the ministration of death", he means the law, as delivered to Moses on Mount Sinai, is clear from its being said to be
written and engraven in stones; as that was by the finger of God himself: rightly does the apostle say, that it was both "written" and "engraven"; for the two tables of the law are expressly said to be written with the finger of God, Exo 31:18 meaning either the Spirit of God, who is sometimes so called, Luk 11:20 compared with Mat 12:28 or the power of God, which at once caused this writing to exist; and it is in so many words affirmed, that "the writing" was "the writing of God"; and not of man, nor of any creature, no not of an angel, Exo 32:16 yea, even the two tables which were hewn out by Moses, after the first were broken, were written upon by the Lord himself, and not Moses, Exo 34:1. So that as the work of the tables was the work of God, and wonderfully made, the form of the letters, as Abarbinel (x) observes, were miraculously made by him; for this law was, , "in letters", as the apostle here says; and as it was written in the Hebrew language, very likely it was in the same form of letters now in use with the Jews; though some have thought that the Samaritan letters are the original ones: moreover, the law was not only written, but "engraved"; for so it is said, that the writing was graven upon the tables, Exo 32:16 and though the word so rendered is no where else used but there, it is rightly rendered graven, as appears by the apostle in this place; and which may lie confirmed by the Targumist on that, who renders it by "engraven"; and by the Septuagint which signifies the same; and so in the book of Zohar (y), the letters are said to be "engraven" on the tables: and that the tables were tables of stone, it is certain; they are often so called, Exo 24:12 wherefore the apostle very properly says, that the law was engraven "in stones"; but what stones these tables were made of cannot be said; the Jews, who affect to know everything, will have them to be precious stones, but what they were they are not agreed in; for though they generally say (z) they were made of the sapphire stone, and sometimes say (a) they were hewed out of the sapphire of the glorious throne of God; yet at other times they call them marble tables (b); and Aben Ezra (c) was of opinion, that the tables which Moses hewed were not of any precious stone, for he asks where should a precious stone of such size be found? though others pretend to say (d), that Moses in a miraculous manner was shown a sapphire quarry in the midst of his tent, out of which he cut and hewed the stones; but very likely they were common ones; however, certain it is, that the tables of stone, as written and engraven by the Lord himself, were made, as the apostle here says, "in glory", ; and so Jarchi on Exo 32:16 "and the tables were the work of God", says, this is to be understood literally "and in" or "for his glory"; or by his glorious power he made them: now this law, though thus written and engraven, and glorious, it was "the ministration of death"; and is so called, because it threatened and punished the transgressors of it with a corporeal death; they that sinned against it died without mercy upon proper evidence and witnesses; every precept of it had this penalty annexed to it, in ease of disobedience; as the having any other goals but one, making of graven images, taking the name of God in vain, the violation of the sabbath, dishonouring of parents, murder, adultery, theft, and covetousness; instances there are of each of these being punishable by this law with a bodily death: and besides, it is the ministration of eternal death, the wages of sin the transgression of the law; which is that wrath of God, a sense of which it is said to work; the curse it threatens with and the second death or lake of fire it casts into: and may be said to be the "ministration" of it; as it shows persons they are deserving of it, pronounces the sentence of it on them, and will execute it upon them, if grace prevent not; now though it was the ministration of death, yet it
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was glorious. There were many things which made it so; but what the apostle here particularly takes notice of is the glory that was upon the face of Moses, when he received it and brought it from the Lord, which was very great;
so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses, for the glory of his countenance, which glory was to be done away. The history of this may be read in Exo 34:29 it was a real visible glory that was upon the skin of his face, so that it shone again; it is said, "the skin of his face shone"; and this shining of his face the apostle very properly calls "the glory of his countenance": agreeably to the Septuagint version, which renders it, "the appearance of the skin, or colour of his face, was glorified"; and still nearer to the paraphrase of Onkelos, which is, "the splendour of the glory of his countenance was great"; and to the Targum of Jonathan, which also assigns the reason of it, and which seems to be the true one, "the splendour of the form of his countenance was glorious, because of the splendour of the glory of the majesty of God, at the time he talked with him". The Vulgate Latin version has led many wrong, to paint Moses with two horns, rendering it, "his face was horned", the Hebrew word having the signification of an horn in its derivative; because glory darted from him like horns, as rays of light do from the sun; see Hab 3:4 and this brightness and glory were so very great, and so dazzling, that Aaron and the people of Israel were afraid to come nigh; which Jarchi, a Jewish writer, imputed to their sin, and shame, and fear, having worshipped the calf; but our apostle ascribes it to the lustre of his countenance, which was such that they could not steadfastly look upon it; they saw it indeed, as it is said in Exo 34:35 yet they could not look wistly at it, nor bear the splendour of it; though this was only a glory, which was to continue but a while; according to the opinion of Ambrose (e), this glory continued on Moses's countenance as long as he lived; but be it so, it at last was done away: now this glory was put there to bear a testimony to the divine authority of the law, that it came from God, and was to be received at the hands of Moses, with awful reverence as from God, and to make them afraid of violating a law which came with such majesty and glory; and also to command awe and respect from the Israelites to Moses, whom they were inclined at every turn to treat with contempt, and to let them see that he had communion with God, which this was the effect of: now this was a circumstance which rendered the law glorious, and was expressive of a real glory in it; which, though as this on Moses's face, "was to be done away"; wherefore the apostle argues;
(x) In loc. (y) In Exod. fol. 35. 1. (z) Zohar ib. Targum Jon. in Dent. xxxiv. 12. (a) Targum in Cant. 1. 11. Targum Jon. in Exod. xxxi. 18. (b) Targum Jon. in Deut. ix. 9, 10. (c) In Exod. xxxii. 15. (d) Jarchi in Exod. xxxiv. 1. Pirke Eliezer, c. 46. (e) Comment. in Psal. cxix. 135.
John Gill's Exposition of the Whole Bible (1746–1763) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
John Wesley 1765 · Public Domain On vv7–14 And if the ministration of death - That is,…
And if the ministration of death - That is, the Mosaic dispensation, which proves such to those who prefer it to the gospel, the most considerable part of which was engraven on those two stones, was attended with so great glory.
John Wesley, Explanatory Notes Upon the Whole Bible (1754–1765) — public domain. Text via the GEBible commentary corpus.
Adam Clarke 1810 · Public Domain On vv7–14 Verse 7. The ministration of death] Here the apostle…
Verse 7. The ministration of death] Here the apostle evidently intends the law. It was a ministration, διακονια or service of death. It was the province of the law to ascertain the duty of man; to assign his duties; to fix penalties for transgressions, c. and by it is the knowledge of sin. As man is prone to sin, and is continually committing it, this law was to him a continual ministration of death. Its letter killed; and it was only the Gospel to which it referred that could give life, because that Gospel held out the only available atonement.
Yet this ministration of death (the ten commandments, written on stones; a part of the Mosaic institutions being put for the whole) was glorious-was full of splendour; for the apostle refers to the thunderings, and lightnings, and luminous appearances, which took place in the giving of the law; so that the very body of Moses partook of the effulgence in such a manner that the children of Israel could not look upon his face; and he, to hide it, was obliged to use a veil. All this was intended to show the excellency of that law, as an institution coming immediately from God: and the apostle gives it all its heightenings, that he may compare it to the Gospel, and thereby prove that, glorious as it was, it had no glory that could be compared with that of the Gospel; and that even the glory it had was a glory that was to be done away-to be absorbed, as the light of the stars, planets, and moon, is absorbed in the splendour of the sun. See the notes on the 7th chapter of Romans; and see those on Ex 19, 20, and Ex 34:29, &c., where this subject is treated in all its details.
Adam Clarke's Commentary on the Bible (1810–1826) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Joseph Benson 1811 · Public Domain On vv7, 9, 10, 12 2Co 3:7-8. But — The apostle having signified that…
2Co 3:7-8. But — The apostle having signified that he and the other true servants of Christ were intrusted with the ministry of the new covenant, in opposition to the old, proceeds now to show the great superiority of their dispensation to that which had preceded it. This he does in three important particulars. If the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones — That is, the Mosaic dispensation, the most important part of which was engraven on two tables of stone, and which proved a ministration of death to those who preferred it to the gospel, and which still subjects such to death, pronouncing an awful curse upon all that in any respect violate it; was glorious — Was attended with a signal and undeniable glory, a glory even reflected on the face of its minister, in such a degree that the Israelites could not bear steadfastly to behold the splendour of his countenance; how shall not the ministration of the Spirit — The Christian dispensation, under which the Holy Spirit, in his gifts and graces, is much more largely communicated than it was under the law; be rather glorious — Since the operations and graces of the Spirit of God in the heart of a rational being are so much more important than any dead characters which could be engraven on insensible stones. To be a little more particular: — The law, even the best part of it, that engraven on stones, is here properly termed the ministration of death — Because, 1st, It condemned wilful transgressors in certain cases, (as sabbath-breakers, adulteresses, and those disobedient to parents,) to temporal death; so that they died without mercy under two or three witnesses attesting their guilt, Heb 10:28. nding all dead, or doomed to die, temporally, it had no resurrection to announce or promise. 3d, Spiritual, as well as temporal death, having entered into the world by the first great transgression, and all being involved therein, namely, destitute of the favour of God, (which is life, Psa 30:5,) of union with him, and a spiritual mind, (Rom 8:6,) it could not quicken them, or make them alive to God. Its sacrifices could not procure men God’s forfeited favour, much less assure them of it. Its precepts, through men’s inability to keep them, could not introduce them to union with him, and its carnal ordinances and worldly promises could not render them spiritually minded. Thus the letter, that external, emblematical, and shadowy dispensation, killed such as adhered to it, and rejected the gospel; but the Spirit giveth life. As the Spirit of God is the grand promise of the new covenant, (see Isa 44:3; Isa 59:21; Joe 2:28; Joh 7:37-38,) so by this the gospel doctrines, precepts, and promises, are made spirit and life to us; repentance unto life and living faith are begotten in us, the favour of God is manifested, and union with God imparted, productive of a spiritual mind, which is life and peace.
Joseph Benson's Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1811–1818) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Albert Barnes 1834 · Public Domain On vv7–14 But if the ministration of death - In the…
But if the ministration of death - In the previous verses, Paul had referred incidentally to the institutions of Moses, and to the superiority of the gospel. He had said that the former were engraved on stones, but the latter on the heart 2Co 3:3; that the letter of the former tended to death, but the latter to life 2Co 3:6. This sentiment he proceeds further to illustrate, by showing in what the superior glory of the gospel consisted. The design of the whole is, to illustrate the nature, and to show the importance of the ministerial office; and the manner in which the duties of that office were to be performed. That the phrase “ministration of death” refers to the Mosaic institutions, the connection sufficiently indicates, 2Co 3:13-15. The word “ministration” (διακονία diakonia) means, properly, ministry; the office of ministering in divine things. It is usually applied to the officers of the church in the New Testament, Act 1:17, Act 1:25; Rom 11:13; 1Co 12:5.
The word here, however, seems to refer to the whole arrangement under the Mosaic economy, by which his laws were promulgated, and perpetuated. The expression “a ministration - written and engraved on stone,” is somewhat harsh; but the sense evidently is, the ministration of a covenant, or of laws written on stones. The word “ministration “there refers to the arrangement, office, etc. by which the knowledge of these laws was maintained; the ministering under a system like that of the Jewish; or, more strictly, the act and occasion on which Moses himself ministered, or promulgated that system to the Jews, and when the glory of the work was irradiated even from His countenance. And the purpose of the apostle is to show that the ministry of the gospel is more glorious than even the ministry of Moses, when he was admitted near to God on the holy mountain; and when such a glory attended his receiving and promulgating the Law. It is called the “ministration of death,” because it tended to condemnation; it did not speak of pardon; it was suited only to deepen the sense of sin, and to produce alarm and dread; see the note on 2Co 3:6.
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Written and engraven in stones - The Ten Commandments - the substance of all the Mosaic institutes, and the principal laws of his economy - were written or engraved on tables of stone.
Was glorious - Was attended with magnificence and splendor. The glory here referred to, consisted in the circumstance of sublimity and grandeur in which the Law of Moses was given, It was:
The glory of God as he was manifested on Mount Sinai, as the Lawgiver and Ruler of the people.
(2)The glory of the attending circumstances, of thunder, fire, etc. in which God appeared. The Law was given in these circumstances. Its giving - called here the “ministration” - was amidst such displays of the glory of God. It was,
A high honor and glory for Moses to be permitted to approach so near to God; to commune with him; and to receive at his hand the Law for his people, and for the world. These were circumstances of imposing majesty and grandeur, which, however, Paul says were eclipsed and surpassed by the ministry of the gospel.
So that the children of Israel ... - In Exo 34:29-30, it is said, that “When Moses came down from Mount Sinai with the two tables of testimony in Moses’ hand, when he came down from the mount, that Moses did not know that the skin of his face shone, while He talked with him. And when Aaron and all the children of Israel saw Moses, behold, the skin of his face shone; and they were afraid to come nigh him.” The word rendered “steadfastly behold” (ἀτενίσαι atenisai), means to gaze intently upon; to look steadily, or constantly, or fixedly; see the note on Act 1:10. There was a dazzling splendor, an irradiation; a diffusion of light, such that they could not look intently and steadily upon it - as we cannot look steadily at the sun. How this was produced, is not known. It cannot be accounted for from natural causes, and was doubtless designed to be to the Israelites an attestation that Moses had been with God, and was commissioned by him. They would see:
That it was unnatural, such as no known cause could produce; and, Not improbably they would recognize a resemblance to the manner in which God usually appeared - the glory of the Shechinah in which he so frequently manifested himself to them. It would be to them, therefore, a demonstration that Moses had been with God.
Which glory was to be done away - The splendor of that scene was transitory. It did not last. It was soon destroyed (τὴν καταργουμένην tēn katargoumenēn. It was not adapted or designed long to continue. This does not mean, as Doddridge supposes, “soon to be abolished in death;” or, as others, “ceasing with youth;” but it means, that the shining or the splendor was transitory; it was soon to cease; it was not designed to be permanent. Neither the wonderful scenes accompanying the giving of the Law on Sinai, nor the shining on the countenance of Moses, was designed to abide. The thunders of Sinai would cease to roll; the lightenings to play; the visible manifestations of the presence of God would all be gone; and the supernatural illumination of the face of Moses also would soon cease - perhaps as Macknight, Bloomfield, and others suppose, as a prefiguration of the abrogation of the glory of the whole system of the Levitical law. Paul certainly means to say, that the glory of Moses, and of his dispensation, was a fading glory; but that the glory of the gospel would be permanent, and increasing forever.
Albert Barnes' Notes on the Bible (1834–1885) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
Haydock's Catholic Bible Commentary 1859 · Public Domain On vv7, 12, 13, 14 Now if the ministration of death: he meaneth the…
Now if the ministration of death: he meaneth the former[1] law, which by giving them a greater knowledge, and not giving graces of itself to fulfil those precepts, occasioned death, was notwithstanding glorious, accompanied with miracles on Mount Sinai, and so that the Israelites, when Moses came down from the mountain, could not bear the glory of his countenance, which he was forced to cover with a veil, when he spoke to them. Shall not the ministration of the Spirit in the new law, which worketh our sanctification and salvation, abound with much greater glory? especially since the old law was to be made void, and pass away. --- Neither was that glorified, or to be esteemed glorious, in comparison of the new law, the blessings of the new so far surpassing those of the old law. (Witham) --- If the law of Moses, written on tables of stone, which was only able to cause death, inasmuch as it gave us light sufficient to know what was right, though it did not give us strength or graces to comply with the obligations imposed by it; if this law, nevertheless, was accompanied with so much glory, that Moses was obliged to put a veil over his face, what must we think of the ministry of the Spirit, and of the glorious duties of the apostleship? How ought our glory to be manifest, and who is fit for such an undertaking. If I thus extol the excellency of my ministry, do not imagine that I attribute any thing to myself. I am unworthy of this office, which so far surpasseth that of Moses, that his glory (ver. 10.) could not be truly called glory, when compared with this of ours, which so far excelleth his. (Calmet) --- The letter of the New Testament also, not truly taken or expounded by the Spirit of God, which is in his Church, must in the same manner be said to kill. See St. Augustine, serm. 70. & 100. de tempore. & l. de spirt. & lit. chap. 5. 6. & dein.
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[BIBLIOGRAPHY]
Ministratio mortis, Greek: diakonia thanatou. Thus, says St. John Chrysostom, he calls the law, Greek: ton nomon legei. p. 584.
George Leo Haydock (1774–1849), Haydock's Catholic Family Bible and Commentary, 1859 edition — public domain. Excludes Psalms (Douay-Rheims chapter numbering differs from Protestant) and Deuterocanonical books (Catholic canon only).
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures 1864 · Public Domain On v12 12Seeing then that we have such hope, we use…
VII.—DIFFERENT RESULTS OF THE TWO KINDS OF MINISTRY. HARDENING OF THE JEWS
2Co_3:12-18
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12Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness [unreservedness] of speech: 13And not as Moses, [om. which] put a veil over his16 face, that the children of Israel could [might] not steadfastly look to [upon] the end of that which is abolished: 14But their minds were blinded [hardened]: for until this day17 remaineth the same veil untaken away in the reading of the Old Testament; which veil is done away in Christ [upon the reading of the Old Testament remains the same veil untaken away, because it is taken away (only) in Christ]. 15But even unto this day, when Moses Isaiah 16 read18, the veil is [lies, κεῖται] upon their heart. Nevertheless, when it shall turn 17[turns] to the Lord, the veil shall be [is] taken away. Now the Lord is that [the] Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is [om. there]19 is liberty. 18But we all, with open [unveiled] face beholding as in a glass [mirror] the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, [om. even] as by the Spirit of the Lord [the Lord, the Spirit].
EXEGETICAL AND CRITICAL
2Co_3:12-13. Having, therefore, such hope.—The ἐλπις (hope) has reference to the future glory of the New Testament ministry as it had been alluded to in 2Co_3:8. This glory had been called permanent in 2Co_3:11, and was to be for the glorification of Christ when he should come to judgment. Some interpreters regard 2Co_3:6 ff. as a digression, and think that we have here a resumption of the subject (σὖν) there broken off, and that ἐλπίς is here equivalent to πεποίθησις there. This is, however, directly opposed to the peculiar and essential signification of ἐλπίς, and to the connection. [That trust, even if we regard it as “filled out into hope by the intervening vision of the glory of his work” (Stanley), had reference rather to the results of his work, while this hope looked forward to something future and undeveloped]. The therefore (οὖν) introduces us to the practical results which were to follow the glorious ministration of the Gospel, and τοιαὐτην (such) indicates the greatness or superiority of the hope.—We use great boldness of speech.—The whole tenor of the discourse shows us that παῤῥησία cannot mean the internal confidence or joyfulness which the Apostle felt, but the frank, open and unreserved manner which characterized his outward deportment, and the plainness or perspicuity (evidentia) which distinguished his addresses. [Chrysostom: “We speak out everywhere with all freedom, abating, concealing, mistrusting nothing; with confidence, as if we had no idea that we should injure your sight as Moses did that of the Israelites.” The Greek word παῤῥησία embraces the three ideas of openness, candor, and boldness. Moses’ address was interrupted by intervals of concealment, and was constantly reserved on account of his want of full confidence in his people. We have no reason for fears, distrust or concealment]. The connection is: The glory which is connected with the New Testament ministry, makes us unreserved in our communications with the people, and induces us to present divine truth unveiled before them. The very spirit of our religion also demands this, for God’s people could never reach the glorious privileges he has promised them without an opportunity of looking freely and without reserve upon all that our system of religion contains. (Emmerling).—The phrase χρῆσθαι παῤῥησία occurs more than once in Plato. The idea contained in παῤῥησία χρώμεθα (Indicative, not Subjunctive) is carried out into more detail in 2Co_3:13, though negatively by referring to an opposite kind of proceeding by Moses.—And not as Moses put a veil over his face.—This principal sentence is elliptical, because its predicate is to be found in the incidental remark made in connection with it. Such an ellipsis may be found in other Greek writings, but must here be supplied from the words used and the connection following. We may supply after καὶ οὐ, simply ποιοῦμεν (we do), or more freely, τίθεμεν κάλυμμα ἐτὶ τὸ πρόσωπον ἡπμῶν (we put a veil over our faces). The allusion is to a veiling process, quite different from the great boldness which had just been professed. It is said that Moses put over his face a covering (veil); that the children of Israel might not gaze at (clearly see) the end of that which is passing away. By τέλος τοῦ καταργουμένου is meant either the end, the literal fading away of the splendor which was on Moses’ face (though such a view would not correspond with the subsequent part of the representation); the end of that splendor regarded as the symbol of the whole Old Testament ministration (office) and possibly of the Old Testament dispensation (Religion) itself; or (throwing aside the whole idea of a symbol) of the ministration or institution itself; or the end of Moses himself as the representative of that institution (in which case the masculine would not agree with the neuter τὸ καταργ. of 2Co_3:11); or the design, the purpose which that ministration or even the law itself was established to accomplish, the result to which that institution led, and for which it was prepared, viz., the divine glory to be unveiled in Christ, and of which the veiled radiance on Moses’ face was a symbol and reflection. (Comp. 2Co_3:14; 2Co_3:18, 2Co_4:4; 2Co_4:6). Well established usage will not permit us to take πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι ecbatically [implying a mere consequence of a course of action, without reference to the views of the actors] in the sense of: so that, but we are obliged to understand by them the aim or purpose which the agents had in view. In every instance in which the phrase occurs in the New Testament it probably has reference to a subjective Divine purpose (comp. Meyer), and not to a merely objective result of divine arrangements. And yet we may suppose that so great a prophet as Moses, profoundly acquainted with the general scheme of the Divine administration, may have known that he was fulfilling a divine purpose, or at least that he was promoting such a result. That he was practising an intentional deception (Fritzsche), or was guilty of an improper dissimulation, the Apostle was far from implying. Even if we make the end of that which is passing away, refer to the end of Moses’ ministry (comp. 2Co_3:11), and suppose that Moses saw that end (τέλος) typified by the disappearance of the radiance from his face, such a covert proceeding (tecte agere) must be regarded simply as a pedagogic or disciplinary course of conduct. The same may be said of an interpretation proposed by Meyer (but which need not include a reference to a Rabbinic allegory), according to which Paul recognizes in τέλος, what he afterwards brings out more fully, viz., a judicial or retributive proceeding, at least on God’s part. This implies that a sight of the Divine radiance on Moses’ face was withheld from the children of Israel, because their previous conduct had made them unworthy of such a favor. Such a concealment was a symbolical representation of the fact that in consequence of their sins, Moses, i. e., the law represented by him, or the Scriptures of the Old Testament read by them, would remain so veiled before them, that they could never perceive the Divine glory which rested especially upon those Scriptures and those rites which testified of Christ; and accordingly they would continue in unbelief and have no part in the salvation by Christ. Neander: “The mind of the Apostle was entirely taken up with the symbolical meaning of this incident. Moses is in his eye simply a symbol of the whole legal economy, and from this point of view everything in the history is regarded. The covering which Moses used to conceal his face, represents the entire veil of symbols under which divine things were represented. As long as these divine things could be seen only in the light of the Old Testament, there was no way of distinguishing eternal truth from the temporary form in which it was represented to men (essence and symbol). The contrast here implied may therefore be carried out thus: we who make known the Gospel to men need never fear that its glory may some day come to an end. We may allow our hearers the clearest and freest inspection of its mysteries, and its radiance will only shine forth the more brightly.”20
[“The whole subsequent section (14–18) is parenthetical. Before and after it, the ministry is the subject; in it, they to whom the ministry is directed. But it serves to show the whole spirit and condition of the two classes, and thus further to substantiate the character of openness and freedom asserted of the Christian ministry” (Alford)].
2Co_3:14-16. But their minds (mental perceptions) were hardened (made callous).—The words distinctly announce that this was a divine judgment. Νοὴματα signifies not the already formed thoughts (2Co_2:11), but as in 2Co_4:4; 2Co_11:3, the spiritual sense, the power used in thinking and willing (Beck, Seelenl. p. 59), or the various activities of the νοῦς (Meyer). We may furthermore conceive (retaining the signification usually given: thoughts, intellectual perceptions), that these powers become petrified or hardened, i. e., are put so completely into stocks, and made immovable, that they no longer yield to pressure, and can make no progress toward that clear knowledge on which everything depends. Πωροῦν, (from Πῶρος, callus, an induration of the skin which destroys all sensibility), obdurare, to harden, to blunt (Isa_6:10; Mar_6:52; Mar_8:17), is sometimes used with respect to the heart (καρδία. Rom_11:25), and sometimes of the Jews (οἰ λοιποί). We are left in doubt when this hardening took place, for this depends upon the relation given to ἀλλά. If this has reference to παῤῥησια χρώμεθα, and particularly to καὶ οὑ (2Co_3:13), meaning: “We act in an open manner, with no such concealment as Moses practised, and yet their νοήματα have become hardened,” we must suppose that the hardening had but recently taken place when the Apostle wrote. But if we refer it to πρὸς τὸ μὴ ἀτενίσαι, (i. e., to their gazing, etc.), the hardening must have taken place in Moses’ time, though the subsequent remarks show that it had continued to the Apostle’s own time. It is in favor of the latter reference, that the veil is immediately afterwards the subject of discourse. In this case it is said directly that the minds of the people were hardened, that, they might not look upon the end (scope, object) of that which is abolished. He proves and illustrates his position, that the hardening was not abolished, by an appeal to the actual facts before their eyes, in the condition of the nation at the time he was speaking:—for until this day, the same veil remains on the reading of the Old Covenant.—That these facts resulted from the same causes which were in action in Moses’ day, he asserts by saying that the same veil (τὸ αὐτὸ κάλυμμα) remains: for as a veil was interposed between the divine radiance on Moses’ face and the eyes of the Israelites, so has the divine radiance of the Old Covenant been concealed from that people, down to the period in which he was writing. [It is not directly implied that this veil was over the heart, under the preaching of the Gospel. The reference is solely to the Israelitish nation under the hearing and reading of the Old Covenant. But the change of the medium of communication makes necessary a change of figure. After Moses oral communications ceased—it was a book which spoke to them. The reason any do not see the glory when they read, is not in the book which addresses them, but in the heart of the reader. The active influence which obstructed the proper understanding of the truth was in the other direction, and the veil had to be on the heart. Comp. Alford.] It is as if a veil had been thrown over the reading, for the great truths of the Old Covenant were not recognized even when they were plainly read, and the glory of God actually contained in that dispensation remained a mystery to them. [In opposition to Theodoret, who maintains that the power which hardens, was entirely from within the heart itself, Meyer endeavors to show that the passive επωρώθη clearly implies that the hardening was the act of another (comp. Rom_11:7). The word signifies blindness (as in our authorized English version) only by a double metaphor, i. e., by supposing that the intellect and heart lose their perceptive power. Chrysostom says the nation became “τὸπαχὺ καὶ χαμαίζηλον, stupid and grovelling,” because they prided themselves on the superior glory of Moses.] ’Επι may refer either to place, i. e., over the reading, which would here correspond to the face of Moses when he spoke to the people; or (better) to time, i. e., during the reading. Comp. 2Co_3:15, ἡνίκα ἀναγὶνωσκεται, etc. We meet with the phrase παλαιὰ διαθήκη (Old Covenant) nowhere else in the New Testament; and it must here designate, not the original Scriptures, the collection of books which now bear the name, but the Covenant itself; the substance of what was read in the synagogues (the writings of Moses and the Prophets), whose types and promises contained the divine glory afterwards revealed in Christ. [Such an expression shows how deep was Paul’s conviction, that that ancient covenant was now becoming antiquated, and was about to be superseded.]
In the remaining part of 2Co_3:14, μὴ ἀνακαλυπτόμενον may be construed as if the participle were to be taken absolutely—it not being unveiled (or discovered to them) that it (the Old Covenant) is done away in Christ.—Or, inasmuch as it remained concealed from the Jews that the Old Covenant was to be abrogated in consequence of the appearance and work of Christ (Rom_10:4; Col_2:14). Such an expression would be a particular determination of what had been meant by saying that the same veil remains, etc. These words may, however, be joined with the previous words so as to say: “the same veil in the reading of the Old Covenant remains not taken away,” and then ὅτι ἐν χριςτῷ καταργεῖται gives us the reason: “because it is taken away in Christ.” That this would actually take place only in Christ was a self-evident thing to the Apostle and his readers; and that this “only” is sufficiently indicated by the emphasis which must be laid upon ἐν χρισρῷ, cannot be doubted. It is very natural, however, from the example of 2Co_3:13, to refer καταργεῖται to the Old Covenant, and an entirely different word (περιαιρεῖται) is used with respect to the removal of the veil. On the other hand the structure of the sentence makes it natural to connect ἀνακαλυπτόμενον with κάλυμμα; and even if we have a right to use the participle in this case absolutely (since it is not common for any verbs to be used in this way except ἐξόν, εἰρημένον, and such like), it is hard to justify the use of ἀνακαλυπτε͂ιν in this absolute manner, inasmuch as everywhere else it has with it an accusative of the object. The attempt which Rückert has made to combine the two constructions together, and to make the Apostle say: “and will not be taken away, that they (the people) might see that it (the Old Covenant) has its end in Christ,” has no claim to our acceptance. The reading ὅ τι, which Luther [and our Eng. translators] followed, and which makes the nature of the covering itself the reason for its not being removed (=quippe quod, Meyer) has opposed to it all the old versions, whose testimony on such a point should have especial importance. The positive contrast to the negative μὴ ἀνακαλυπτ. is given in 2Co_3:15—But even until this day when Moses is read, a veil lies upon their heart.—This means, according to the previous construction, either, “it will not be disclosed that, etc., but until this day the veil is upon their hearts;” or “and will not be discovered, because it will be taken away in Christ, but until this day a covering lies,” etc. The latter interpretation would not seem to have required the repetition of κάλυμμα. The want of the article may be accounted for on both interpretations on the ground that the veil is transposed from the object looked upon to the persons looking. This change may have been in the Apostle’s mind when he wrote 2Co_3:14, if ἐπὶ (τῃ ἀναγν.) be taken with respect to time, and then the present clause is only a more complete definition of that idea. In no case (even if ἐπὶ has the sense of on or over) could the Apostle have spoken of two coverings in order to imply a high degree of incapacity. This would have required an additional καί before ἐπὶ τήν καρδ. αὐτῶν. This is the only time ἡνίκα is found in the New Testament, but in the Sept. it occurs frequently, and in this very passage in Exo_34:34 it is used in the sense of a space of time =when. The name Μωῦσῆς signifies here the writings of Moses. The covering said to be extended [“ κεῖται ἐπῖ with the accusative21 pregnans: involving the being laid on and remaining there”—Alford] over the hearts of the people, signifies not an obstruction to their moral powers i. e., of the will, but a defect in the intellectual faculties of understanding.—But when it turns unto the Lord the veil is taken away (2Co_3:16).—Here the veil in fact is said to be removed in consequence of an act of the will. The heart (καρδία), which is the subject of ἐπιστρέψη (for as τις or ’Ισραηλ have not yet been mentioned, they cannot be made such a subject), seems to be regarded here in two aspects: first as the seat of intelligence, and then as the seat of the will or of self-determination. The ἐπιστρέφειν ἐπὶ τὸν κύριον, is the turning of one’s self to Christ, and this is a conversion just as far as it had been preceded by a turning away. In the rejection of the Lord the heart of the children of Israel was regarded as completely apostate, and hence its conversion to Christ would be looked upon as a return to the Lord. This conversion is supposed to have taken place before the veil is taken away, inasmuch as the latter is said to be the consequence of the former (ἡνίκα ἅν). Luther’s translation: “Wenn es sich bekehrte, so würde,” etc., (if it shall turn, the veil will, etc.), is incorrect, and would not perhaps have been made had the author of it not been influenced, probably unconsciously, by the idea that such a conversion before the removal of the veil was impossible. But the same assertion is found manifestly in Rom_11:25 ff. The Apostle is not speaking of those individual conversions which take place in every age. But when this general conversion shall be brought about, when that aversion to Christ which springs from a carnal mind and proud self-righteousness shall be overcome, and when, consequently, they shall confidingly and with sincere acknowledgements of their guilty error and unbelief, turn to Him, they will clearly discover as they read the Old Testament that it everywhere bears testimony for Christ. The Divine glory really contained in its types and prophecies, and now more fully revealed in Christ himself, will shine so clearly that they will be able to look upon it with a steadfast gaze. The expression reminds us of Exo_34:34. In the mind of the Apostle the removal of the covering from Moses’ face when he went again into the Divine presence seemed a type of the future removal of Israel’s blindness. Περιαιρε͂ιν contains an intimation that the veil was completely around the heart. [As this is the verb used in the Sept. of Exo_34:34, and as περιῃρε͂ιτο there and almost uniformly throughout that version can be taken only in an active sense, Stanley contends that the word here (περιαιρε͂ιται) should have an active and not a passive sense (strips off—not, is stript off). He also thinks that the only nominative which both ἐπιστρέψῃ and περιαρε͂ιται can have is Μωῦσῆς (and in this Calvin and Estius agree with him), since ’Ισραὴλ is too remote, and ἡ καρδια is not sufficiently prominent. He thinks that then each clause beginning with ἡνίκα will correspond, and that the parallel with Exo_34:34 will be preserved. He takes Moses as the representative of not only the Old Covenant but of the nation, and makes the sense to be: “when Moses, in the person of his people, turns again to Him who is our Lord now as he went of old time to Him who was their Lord in Sinai, then he strips off the veil from his face and from their hearts, and then the perishable nature of the law will be made manifest in the full blaze of the Divine glory.” But ἡ̔ καρδία is quite as natural a subject for ἐπιστρέψῃ, and as likely to be prominent in the Apostle’s mind as Μωῦσῆς, and the idea of ἐπιστρέψη is certainly that of a thorough conversion, and not a mere change of opinion about the law. The careful adoption by the Apostle of the words of the Sept., some of which were strange to him, shows that he was closely copying the imagery of the history; and he here intends to say, that as Moses had on a veil when his face was turned away from God, and took it off when he went in to God, so the heart of the people when turned from the Lord was veiled, and when it turned to him had the veil removed. Both ἐπιστρέψη and περιαιρ. should be rendered as an indefinite present and not in the future as in the authorized version. The turning and removing of the veil was in process of completion. The process was continually going on by the turning of individuals in every age, though the general conversion was in the distant future.]
2Co_3:17-18.—Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, is liberty—(2Co_3:17). This sentence is connected with 2Co_3:16, and explains or gives the reason for what is said there. We have in fact a syllogism, though its several members are not given in their regular order. The major premise is: Where the Spirit of the Lord is, is freedom; the minor is: as the Lord is the Spirit, whoever turns to the Lord has that Spirit; and the conclusion is: therefore such a one must be free, and will no more be enveloped by the covering which veils and checks the action of the soul (Meyer). It is evident from 2Co_3:18 that the liberty connected with the removal of the covering which obstructed the people’s open insight into the divine glory, is not a new subject of discourse foreign to what had been discussed, as e. g., a freedom from the yoke of the law (though this must be virtually communicated during such an insight). ̔Ο δὲ κύριος is intimately connected with 2Co_3:16 : ‘But the Lord, to whom their heart thus turns, is the Spirit.’ Many artificial explanations have been given of this verse. Without noticing those attempts which have been in direct contradiction to the meaning of the words and the scope of the context, (one of which went so far as to conjecture that the reading must have been οὐ δέ κύριος) we find here such an identification of Christ and the Holy Spirit, that the Lord, to whom the heart turns, is in no practical respect different from the Holy Spirit received in conversion. The fellowship of Christ into which it entered, when it turned to the Lord, was in truth the fellowship of the Holy Spirit. Christ is virtually the Spirit, inasmuch as He communicates Himself in conversion, and at other times by means of the Spirit; the Holy Spirit is His spirit: the animating principle of the Lord’s indwelling and influence in the hearts of believers is this Holy Spirit (comp. Rom_8:9 ff.; Gal_2:20; Gal_4:6; Php_1:19; Act_10:28 comp. with Eph_4:11; Joh_14:18 et. al.). In favor of this explanation is the immediately following phrase: οὐ δέ τὸ πνεῦμα κυρίου (where the Spirit of the Lord is), in which we may notice also, that the article before πνεῦμα indicates that every thing which is certainly the work of the Spirit, must be exclusively from Christ (Neander). But such a virtual identification of Christ and the Spirit, can have reference only to Christ in His state of exaltation (comp. 1Co_15:45); for it is only in that state that He is the independent source of all divine light and power to the bodies and souls of believers. He is then no longer dependent upon any source beyond Himself, for the divine light and power which he possesses or dispenses: and the Son of man is no longer the Son of God in a state of self-renunciation, dependent upon the influences of the Spirit, but a perfect centre of divine fulness. Hence, we may say of Him: he is the Spirit, (not merely quasi) because he is glorified in the spiritual world. From this it moreover follows (for the idea is essential to that of the Spirit of God), that the new birth, (in which what is here called liberty, i. e., the free action of the mind, a free intuition of the divine glory, and a release from the impediments of a fleshly nature, is included) must have its source in Him. He it is who makes like Himself those who turn to Him, and from Him proceeds the pure free light of life (the truth which makes us free). Hence no sooner is it said that the Lord is the Spirit than He is called the Spirit of the Lord. [Paul had been speaking of a spirituality in the ancient dispensation, which had been entirely missed by the ancient Jews. This abstract spirituality he wished to connect with a concrete reality, and hence he here says that the Lord (to whom the heart of the people must turn) is that Spirit. Even this Lord, he also wishes to identify (not in his essential nature, but in his activity in this special department) with the Holy Spirit (who, the next verse shows, is here meant). Comp. Alford. The ancient fathers (especially Chrysostom and Augustine, see Wordsworth) were led by their extreme dogmatic zeal to press this verse into a proof of the Holy Spirit’s divinity. They almost universally construed τὸ πνεῦμα as the subject, and ὁ κύριος as the predicate of the sentence. Grammatically this is allowed to be perhaps possible, (Alford, Meyer). but it is evidently forced, and the sentiment so expressed would be entirely foreign to the course of the Apostle’s argument. It is only inferentially from the identity of our Lord’s and the Spirit’s operations, that such a doctrine here enters]. In 2Co_3:18 he refers still further to the way in which this freedom, which has its source in the Lord and his Spirit, is produced among those who believe in Christ. In illustrating this he now recurs to the figure of the glory and the free looking upon it.—But we all with open face.—The object of δὲ is, not to put what was now to be said in contrast with what had been said of the Israelites or of Moses, (as if his idea was: “this is true not only of one, but of all,”) but simply to indicate a continuance of the discourse. ̓Ημεῖς (we) includes not merely the Apostle and his fellow-laborers, or the Apostle and all who preach the Gospel (Catholics appeal to 2Co_4:1, and contrast πάντες (all) with the single individual Moses), but all believers, who, the connection shows, must be included in the πάντες. (Chap 2Co_4:3; 2Co_4:6). In correspondence with the removal of the veil and the liberty of which he had been speaking, he now speaks of an open or unveiled face (ἀνακεκαλυμμένῳ προσώπῳ). This implies that the covering which had been extended over the heart of the people might be taken off, and that the spiritual face might thus be freed from the veil which prevented its vision of the glory. In consistency with this, must be our explanation of the next clause:—beholding in a glass—κατοπτριζόμενοι). This word, which is not found at all in the Septuagint, and occurs in the New Testament only in this place, has the sense in the active voice of: to show in a mirror, or, as in a mirror, to reflect; and in the middle: to reflect one’s self, to see one’s self in a glass [Winer, § 39, 3; Jeff., § 362 ff.]. With reference to the example of Moses, we may interpret the words thus: we show to ourselves in a mirror the glory of the Lord; and in doing so we are not veiled as Moses, but we have uncovered faces. We are compelled, however, by both the preceding and the succeeding context, to think of a looking of believers, 1, in contrast with the Israelites, who were kept from looking upon the Divine glory by a covering upon their hearts; and 2, with reference to the being changed (μεταμορφῦμεθα) connected with this looking (comp. 1Jn_3:2). Κατοπτριζεσθαι has therefore the meaning in this place of: to perceive as in a mirror (we meet with the word in this sense in Philo.; see Meyer). There is no imperfection, of vision necessarily implied here, as in 1Co_13:12. The glass is not the internal spirit, i. e., the heart of the believer (for the eye which looks is supposed to be there), but the Gospel.—The glory of the Lord (i. e., of Christ, not of God) is the representation which is given of Christ‘s life, greatness, power, loveliness, etc. (Beck, Christl. Lehrwiss. I., p. 67), or of His grace and truth (Joh_1:14), His holiness and Divine fulness (Col_2:9), as these were manifested among men. These are exhibited to us in the Gospel as in a mirror. And as we look into this by faith, freely and unobstructed by any covering of a fleshly mind (such as impeded the vision of the Jews)—we are changed into the same image.—The image here is the image of the Lord, and that with which it is said to be identical (αὐτὴν), is not the πάντες (as if he would thus say that all were made alike), but that which they had been said to look upon, viz., the very same image which we all behold, for we all behold the glory of the Lord as in a mirror. While thus looking we shall be changed: we shall be like Him, for we shall see Him as He is (1Jn_3:2; comp. Rom_8:29). Neander: “We have here a beautiful contrast: the Jews who looked with covered faces upon the glory in Moses’ face, did not really look into it, and so remained as they were before, unchanged. But when Christians look with unveiled faces upon the image of God in Christ, this very looking implies that they are already in communion with Christ, and necessarily reacts upon their internal and spiritual life. The more they penetrate by such a believing contemplation the Divine glory, the more will their hearts be pervaded by what they behold.” There is no direct reference therefore to the final transformation which believers will experience when Christ shall come in the Parousia, but only to the gradual assimilation to Christ which takes place in them during the present life: the becoming partakers of the Divine nature (2Pe_1:4) and the putting on, of Christ, and of the new man (Rom_13:14; Eph_4:24). The accusative does not require that any word like κατά or είς should be understood; nor need the whole phrase be taken in an adverbial sense analogous to τοῦτον τὸν τρόπον (in this wise); for in the very idea it is implied that the development or change is according to a particular form (Meyer). In the phrase: from glory to glory the words from glory (άπὸ δόξης) may designate the causal source from which the influence proceeds, i. e.. “the glory of the Lord;” and to glory (εἰς δόξαν) the glory which is produced in us, that to which it brings us (comp. 2Co_2:16); or the whole phrase may signify the continuous development as it advances step by step. The former explanation receives support from the sentence which immediately follows:—as by the Lord the Spirit (καθάπερ ἀπὸ κυρίουπνεύματος). And yet the other explanation harmonizes very well with μεταμορφούμεθα, and on etymological grounds may readily be conceded, inasmuch as ἀπὸ δόξης εἰς δόξαν would be quite as allowable a form of speech as ἐκ δυνόνμεως εἰς δύναμιν (Psa_84:8). The καθάπερ ἀπὸ κυρ. πν. may also be made to harmonize very well with this explanation: we shall be changed from one degree of glory to another just as might be expected from the Lord (or according to the nature of what comes from the Lord). The καθάπερ has a more forcible signification than ὡς, and denotes the agreement of the effect with the cause (like ὡς in 2Co_2:17). We may inquire whether πνεύματος in the phrase ἀπὸ κυρὶου πνεύματος is dependent upon ἀπὸ and κυρίου upon πνεύματος [by the Spirit of the Lord], comp. 2Co_3:17, πνεῦμα κυρίου; or whether πνεύματος is governed by κυπίου [by the Lord of the Spirit], in which case we may also inquire whether the words πνεύμ. and κυρ. are in the relation of dependence (by the Spirit which is from the Lord), or in that of apposition (by the Spirit who is the Lord). To govern πνεύματος directly by ἀπὸ is not allowable evidently on account of the position of the words. We must certainly concede also that the relation of apposition is not as natural as that which is commonly given to the genitive. The relation of dependence which has commonly been acquiesced in for our passage gives us likewise a very good sense: “very much as we might expect from one who is the Lord of the Spirit” (comp. κύριος τῆς δόξης in 1Co_2:8). Κυριος (Lord) furthermore implies that the Lord not only has or possesses the Spirit, but that He has complete power in this matter to direct in the dispensation and communication of the Spirit according to His pleasure in ever growing fulness. If we so construe it as to make this Spirit the same as the Holy Spirit, even that Divine agent is His Spirit (Rom_8:9 f.; Gal_4:6), for the Spirit is shed forth or sent, by and through Him (Tit_3:6; Act_2:33; Joh_15:26); so that the Spirit’s agency among men is dependent upon Him. If, however, the words are taken in a qualitative sense: “by one who is the Lord of the Spirit,” i. e., of the Divine light of life, this Divine light of life is no other than the πνεῦμαἅγιον which He communicates from the infinite fulness of His own Divine life. The want of the article before. both κυρίου and πνεύματος makes this qualitative signification most probable. [As Meyer well remarks, however, this qualitative meaning is entirely inadmissible here, since throughout our passage the word τνεῦμα must mean the Holy Spirit (the Divine Spirit) in His personal subsistence]. Both interpretations, however, terminate in the same general sense. Neander: “Paul has before his mind in this passage the whole course of the Christian’s progress, commencing here on earth and attaining its perfection in the heavenly world.”
[Each prominent word in this passage has been made the object of special attention and difficulty. 1. The object beheld, was the glory of the Lord. Paul had shown this to be Christ (2Co_3:17), but He is here contemplated as an image (εἰκόνα) in a mirror (not “a glass,” but κατόπτρον). An image is usually an imperfect likeness (1Co_13:12), and the Gospel must imperfectly represent Him. It is not the objective and glorified Christ Himself that we see. 2. The act of beholding, is here (not ἀτενιζω, as with Moses, but) κατοπτρίζω. The rays are reflected and not directly received (see Chrysostom’s beautiful comparisons in the Hom. notes). The ancient expositors usually interpreted this word in the sense of: reflecting as in a mirror, meaning that believers reflect the glory of the Lord, and they are followed by Luther, Olshausen, Billroth and Stanley. But most modern commentators have felt compelled to disregard their authority, high as it is on such a question, and to take the word in the sense of beholding as in a mirror. Though they have been able to appeal to but one well established quotation (Philo) to sustain them in such a usage, one instance especially in Alexandrian Greek is sufficient, with the obvious necessities of the context, to warrant us in adopting such a meaning. Certainly no instance has been found in which the word has the meaning: to reflect, and we can see no connection between reflecting the Divine image and being changed into the same. 3. The persons beholding, are many, “all (πάντες in contrast with one Moses), with open face.” Both Christ and the heart are ἀνακεκαλυμμένοι. 4. The effect of the beholding is, “we are metamorphosed into the same image” (accusative without a preposition to show the immediateness of the transition, and the present indic, to show the beginning but not the completion of the change, Webster, Syn., pp. 81 ff.). All become like their Lord, and of course like one another. 5. The reason for the change, “as by the Lord the Spirit.” Suitably, as might be expected from the Lord (καθάπερ), and efficiently (ἀπὸ) from Him as the source of influence. We cannot but sympathize with Alford when he says of the rendering: the Lord of the Spirit, that it “seems to convey very little meaning, besides being altogether unprecedented.” We add that Paul had been preparing us for the expression: the Lord the Spirit (apposition, the Lord who is the Spirit) by expressly showing that Christ was both the Lord and the Spirit of the Old Covenant (2Co_3:16-18). Such an expression seems as grammatical and suitable as “from God the Father” (ἀπὸ θεοῦ πατρὸς) in Rom_1:7; Eph_1:2; Php_1:2, et alic. comp. 2Co_1:2].
DOCTRINAL AND ETHICAL
1. Even in the understanding of revealed truth, there is a clear distinction between legal bondage and evangelical freedom. Until the mind gets extricated from that bondage it is concerned only with a multiplicity of special details; the living unity formed by the general truths, in which all these concentrate, is covered by a veil—and no proper conception of the divine system as a whole, is possible. The glory of Christ which constitutes the true aim of every part of God’s word can never be appreciated or discovered by a heart thus confined and lowered, for such occupations will be like a veil over the internal eye. But no sooner does one attain the position of evangelical freedom than his eye is opened upon the general system and principles of truth. And such a position is gained when the heart is turned toward Christ, in whom the fulness of the Godhead substantially dwells, all particular rays of truth concentrate, and each truth acquires a self-evidencing power. The moment we thus recognize and surrender our hearts to Christ, we renounce all idea of satisfaction in ourselves or our doings, and we lay hold on Christ as the only source of peace or life. The veil immediately drops from our spiritual face, the divine glory in the Scriptures acquires a wonderful lustre, our souls become thoroughly enamored of God in Christ, and we begin to grow into the image of holy love as it beams from the Gospel. A living likeness of Christ is formed within, old things pass away, and all things are created anew. A quickening light brightens up within us, from glory to glory unto the perfect day of the celestial life.
2. This legal position may be illustrated in all those who turn from the more perfect revelation God has given us in the Gospel, but especially in the Jewish people still clinging to a dispensation which was intended to be only provisional and shadowy. In religious matters, their intellectual faculties have always been torpid and inflexible; and they seem unable to leave the schoolmaster, whose only business was to direct them to Christ himself (Gal_3:24). They know only the law as given by Moses, and nothing of grace and truth by Jesus Christ (Joh_1:17). By minute acts of obedience to many particular precepts they hope to merit the divine favor, and they fail of recognizing that righteousness of faith which renounces all merit and trusts to mere grace, though it was often illustrated in the lives of their own saints, and in all the dealings of God under the ancient covenant. In like manner when they contemplated their prophetic Scriptures, their minds were occupied only with such particular expressions as best accorded with their carnal notions, and they failed to comprehend that general kingdom in which all such specifications find their right position and unity. But a time is coming when not only a few individuals, as in past and present times, but the whole nation shall become tired of such things, and with humble hearts and broken spirits shall turn to Him who was promised and offered first, and who still offers Himself, to them as their Messiah. In His own time He will so present Himself to them, that they will confess with shame, that He, and He alone, is their Messiah; with a free and clear insight they will read that Word which has so long been a sealed book (Isa_29:10 ff); the covering shall be taken away from their hearts; and they will look with unveiled faces upon that Christ who is not only their true Lord, but the Spirit, and communicates the Spirit and spiritual liberty to all who turn to Him.
[3. The Old Testament should be studied under the New Testament light. Not only should we throw ourselves back among the persons and scenes there portrayed, so as to understand what was real and necessary for them, but as much as possible look on them in their relation to the whole future of God’s kingdom. As a part of a preparatory system, directed by a Ruler who sees the end from the beginning, all persons and events have quite as much significance with reference to something in the future, as with reference to the age and circumstances in which they were. A Grotius therefore, who found a Christ nowhere in the Old Testament, fails of reaching its true significance, quite as much as a Cocceius, who found Him in everything.
4. The Lord Jesus was as fundamental a reality under the Old Covenant as under the New. He “was that Spirit” which was truly under the letter, and “the Lord” from whom the people then turned. The Incarnation was not the first and abrupt entrance of a divine Person into our humanity. Christ was not only “the body” to every “shadow” (Col_2:17) but the agent in every event and institution of the ancient covenant. Every redeemed sinner of every age must owe not only his redemption to “the blood of the cross,” but his recovery and conduct unto actual salvation, to him as the “Captain of the Lord’s host.” He is the only Mediator between God and man; and whatever falsehood we discover under the Rabbinic fables of the “Angel Jehovah,” we must recognize “the Lord the Spirit” under the “Jehovah” of the ancient covenant.
5. And yet there is an essential distinction between the Old and the New Dispensation. If we refuse to go with many who would totally divorce Christianity from Judaism, we equally shrink from those who look upon it simply as a developed Judaism. Though every dispensation of the true religion must be built upon the same fundamental principles, their outward forms may be radically different. The patriarchal and Mosaic ministrations were predominantly and characteristically legal. The latter especially, was a system of minute rules, and but few principles. Little was left to discretion or free affection. Pardon was shadowed forth as well as human guilt under the sacrifices, but these were a veil which concealed a mystery not to be trusted to men’s weakness. An esoteric reserve was in every rite and symbol. The New Covenant abolishes all this. God’s people are entrusted with the highest mysteries. The disciplina of Hellenism, of Rabbinism, and of Sacerdotalism generally, is entirely abjured. All idea of a pedagogic system, preparatory to something hereafter, is renounced. God’s people are no longer in pupilage, but in their full majority. Christianity is an everlasting Gospel, and the last of all conceivable dispensations of the true religion among men. See a Sermon of Dr. Emmons, on “The Mosaic Dispensation abolished by the Christian Dispensation.” Works, Vol. VI. Ser. 13.
6. Congeniality of mind is indispensable to a perception of the truth. No one is prepared to study theological truth until he has “turned to the Lord.” When he yearns after the Lord and salvation, then the veil which confined the view to what is selfish and individual, drops off from the heart, and a full system of truth and an everlasting kingdom beams upon an “open face.” Joh_7:17.
7. The Jewish people are yet to be converted to Christ. It is a wonderful prophecy which the ancient Prophets and Apostles have given us, that amid the wreck of all ancient nations, the Jewish, the most unlikely to do so of them all, should survive; and that the heart (the collective national heart) would turn to Christ. This is a separate matter from the assertion, that as the “Covenant people,” they are to have special privileges and honors among other nations in the kingdom of Christ.]
HOMILETICAL AND PRACTICAL
Chrysostom:
2Co_3:18. “As soon as we are baptized, our souls being cleansed by the Spirit are illuminated so as to shine brighter than the sun; we not only look into the divine glory, but we receive a degree of lustre from it, as a piece of pure silver receives the rays of the sun when it is placed within its beams and reflects them—not merely because of its own nature, but because of the sun’s luminousness. In like manner the soul which has been purified and made brighter than silver, receives a beam of the Spirit’s glory, and reflects it.” [Theodoret:—As clear water presents an image of those who look upon it, of the sun itself and of the vaulted sky, so the pure heart is converted into a kind of copy and mirror of the divine glory.]
Starke:
2Co_3:12. Whoever would cheerfully speak of divine truth, must first receive Christ freely and joyfully to his own heart, and believe that salvation is freely offered to all men (1Ti_2:4). Hedinger:
2Co_3:13. Israel’s blindness was more than common; they had much preaching and but slight impression; Moses’ face shone brightly upon them, and why could they not behold him? A brutish habit, a dull intellect, inveterate wickedness, and an irreconcilable antipathy to God and His Word, had formed a thick covering around their hearts (2Co_4:3). 2Co_3:14 :—Hedinger. Israel’s blindness was not a mere natural effect, but a judgment of God that they might henceforth be ever reading but learning nothing. What multitudes seem in haste to harden their hearts by their abuse of hearing and reading! Why do they read at all, if they have no desire to be healed (Mar_4:25)? If we would derive any profit from reading the Old Testament, or get rid of Moses’ covering, we must become acquainted with Jesus Christ and seek for Him there. Then shall we perceive that the law was never given us to justify us, and that the only justification which will avail before God, is not in ourselves, but in Christ by faith.
2Co_3:15. It is a terrible thing to be blind, but to be blind with no desire to see in the midst of clear light, is far worse (Joh_9:39; Rev_3:17).
2Co_3:16. We can never have a true practical knowledge of God except by turning to the Lord. 2Co_3:17. To have Jesus alone, is to have the Gospel comfort and the sweetest pleasure. The surest refreshment is found in the way of godly sorrow. Glorious triumph of faith! The curse is abolished, Satan is vanquished, and sin is taken away; every cord is cut, and we are free!
2Co_3:18 : A knowledge of God’s love, holiness and goodness as they are presented in the Gospel, is like a clear reflection of the sun, it produces a copy of those divine perfections in the soul, which receives the impression as naturally as the eye does an image from the mirror. The more we receive of such knowledge, the more perfectly are those attributes reproduced in our faith and life.—Hedinger: Imprint, O Jesus, thine image on our souls, and make us more entirely like thyself!
Berlenb. Bible, 2Co_3:12 :—A spiritual mind knows in whom it has believed, and the Spirit of the Son will lead it directly to the Father, that it may know and make known to others, both the Father and the Son. This is the perpetual well-spring of an ingenuous spirit.
2Co_3:13. Why should any now be kept back by a slavish, timid and hesitating spirit, when they have a right to claim all the blessings of divine grace?
2Co_3:14. “They have eyes, and yet they see not.” It is all the same as if they could not read. This is a righteous judgment upon them for shutting themselves from the light, and refusing to be drawn by the Father. “Ye search the Scriptures, and ye do well; but ye will not come to me”—(Joh_5:39-40). Thus it is among many at the present day; indeed a double covering is now in their way, for it rests not only upon the Old, but upon the New Testament. They have never been anointed with the Spirit; they will not humbly bow before the Lord, and their own righteousness always stands before them as an idolatrous pillar. 2Co_3:15. Let us by all means get out of that old Judaism which receives nothing but what pleases us—for it is under the influence of such a spirit that the hearts of many are hardened, and hypocritically indulge in a thousand prejudices against the truth and its proper spirit. “Are we not Lutherans,” they exclaim, “have we not been baptized, etc.” Those who resist the truth, tell us much of certain intellectual powers with which man is endowed (reason). We would not despise these, but we dare not appeal to them as the final arbitrators and sources of religious truth. And yet this is what has bewitched multitudes of our learned men.
2Co_3:16. Let men cease to prescribe barren rules and institutions for the Lord, and let them turn to Him prayerfully and with all their hearts, and they will soon find that their light will brighten, a host of prejudices will vanish, and darkness and error will be cleared away—(Isa_25:7). Though the covering may have wrapped itself completely around our spirits, if wo will but turn to the light and seek wisdom from God in sincere faith, it will be torn away. (Eph_5:14; Act_9:11; Act_9:18).—Oftentimes when an intelligent man imagines that he has attained a permanent and lively conception of sacred mysteries, he receives the Divine anointing, and finds that a number of coverings had been formed upon his heart; he is surprised to gain entirely new views of God’s word, and as the salve of God’s Spirit gradually extends over his mental eye, one film of legal and figurative forms after another falls off.
2Co_3:17. The Lord the Spirit who gives us spiritual life, and delivers us from all constraint of external authority, all unwillingness, indolence and feebleness, etc., in the performance of our duties. (Joh_8:36). The glory of the Lord then sheds its beams upon an open face.—Whoever truly looks into the ministry and law of liberty, can never be out of harmony with the Divine will, for the Spirit directs him and supplies him with all he needs. He can have no fellowship with any thing which is impure, for the Spirit is always directing his mind to those higher and better things which satisfy him. Such is the spiritual freedom which withdraws us from the slavery of sense, and not only subjects the body to the spirit but the spirit itself to God’s Spirit.—The way by which we reach it is very likely by a painful experience of what a legal bondage is. Under such sorrows faith in Christ puts forth its power and finds deliverance in Him. Then the humbled heart knows how to appreciate the freedom of a pure service, and yields a cheerful obedience. Without making a sinful conscience of any thing, it will indulge in no sin, and will rather renounce its own freedom on account of another’s weakness.—What before seemed a severe discipline and torment, is now a light which drives away all darkness. The soul is in the light and walks in the light.—Where the Lord is, He has a sanctuary in which He and His Spirit dwells; a glorious ministration of the Spirit is carried on; God is worshipped in the beauty of holiness; and a new life, and a new freedom, and a blessedness never known before, is enjoyed.
2Co_3:18. As sunbeams produce an image of the sun, so the beams of Divine glory produce a Divine likeness.—If we will but stand before the mirror of our crucified Lord, His lovely image will so impress itself upon our hearts that we shall partake of His peculiar Spirit. Loving Him with all our hearts we must become like Him. We shall thus in our measure see God as we walk, and possess a more than ordinary enjoyment of God and of His glory.—And yet such a transformation must not be expected at once, but gradually, from one degree of glory and Divine blessedness to another (comp. 2Co_4:16); and always in a way which makes us feel our dependence upon grace (as by the Spirit of the Lord). The moment we take our eyes from Him we shall fall back into stiff and legal forms.—All true Christians, in proportion to their susceptibility, must even in this life have a part in Christ’s glory. Obstinate sinners, on the other hand, will be overshadowed by the image of Satan, from one degree of darkness to another as by the Spirit of the pit.
Rieger, 2Co_3:12 :—We must often think of the permanent results of our preaching in another world. (1Th_2:19). “If we make it our constant and all absorbing aim to please the Lord Jesus and to stand approved at His coming, we cannot but be more earnest in our work and more untiring in our diligence and patience. If I would not lose my own soul and be rejected as an unprofitable servant, I must be sure of finding some souls who have been benefited by my ministrations. The Lord grant it for Christ’s sake. ”(Seitz)!—A sincere and honest preacher will not hesitate to speak boldly from the fulness of his heart whatever he thinks may be useful to his fellow men.
2Co_3:13-16. It is not uncommon for those to become hardened in heart (and this is nothing but one kind of blindness, or at least of unsusceptibilty) who are ignorantly familiar with God’s Word, but are obstinately set upon their own way and make use of that word only for a pretext.
2Co_3:17-18. Turning to the Lord is turning to Him who gives the Spirit. He secures to us the righteousness which the law demands, and enables us to serve God under a free dispensation of the Spirit. This is spiritual freedom, seeing every thing without a covering, and coming boldly to a throne of grace. We look with an uncovered face upon the glory of the Lord in the Gospel as in a mirror, and we convey the image which thus falls upon our hearts to our fellow men, that their eyes also may be opened, and their hearts may be won for Him.—The lustre of Moses’ face was liable to fade away and cease forever, but our glory advances from one degree to another, until that shall appear which we shall be, when we see our Lord as He is.
Heubner, 2Co_3:15 : A perusal of the Scriptures without intellectual energy or susceptible hearts can do no one any good. And yet even many nominal Christians may unhappily fancy that they are models of virtue; and from that moment the true Christ, who is our only available righteousness, is under a veil. The very law which should teach them their poverty and drive them to Christ and His righteousness, serves only to make them fancy themselves rich and able to get along without Christ.
2Co_3:16 : Believe in Christ, and then the soul and the whole Bible will be full of light.
2Co_3:17 : The same Christ, in whom the Spirit dwells, must bestow that Spirit, upon men. There can be no Spirit without Him. He alone can free us from the fetters of error and delusion, and then we shall know what a free faith, a free will and a free enjoyment and love are. True freedom is wherever a man is not hampered by selfishness, i. e., by his own opinions and purposes, and when Christ has the supreme control of his whole being.
2Co_3:18 : Has thy soul the features of Christ: truth, love, meekness, fidelity (Mat_11:29)? The looking upon Christ has this power, because the image which the Gospel presents of Him is spiritual and quickening. The Spirit comes from Christ.
W. F. Besser, 2Co_3:12 : The evangelical minister’s joy is the dawn of an eternal day begun in time. It is the joy of our Lord, the faithful Witness from the bosom of the Father, showing us plainly of the Father (Joh_16:25).
2Co_3:14 : God often gives up (Rom_9:18) those who are obstinate and disobedient to be hardened and blinded by the preaching of the same word whose softening and enlightening influence they had resisted. The law will be a school-master to bring those to Christ (Gal_3:24) who commit themselves to its discipline, and never think of blunting the point of its deadly letter by their self-righteous performances; but it will only harden those whose perverted and carnal minds fancy that they are righteous before God, because they externally keep His commandments and go through certain forms of worship. It depends not so much upon the kind of Scripture which we read, as upon the manner in which we read it, whether it shall be unmeaning and sealed to us.
2Co_3:15 : Even to the present hour God is punishing the sins of the wicked children of wicked ancestors with the veil which Moses put upon his face. The heart’s covering is woven out of those delusions into which the natural man so often falls with respect to the merit of free will and the goodness of merely outward works.
2Co_3:16 : It is only “in Thy light that we see light” (Psa_36:10); for the glory of Moses and the prophets has not been uncovered even by the appearance of the true Light Himself. It is not in the light of common sense nor the light of philosophical schools, says Hamann, that we see light, but only in the light of the Lord who is the Spirit.
2Co_3:17 : The Lord is wherever the Spirit converts, enlightens and quickens the hearts of men. This is in the Church of the New Testament, where He Himself dwells by His word and Spirit, and where He has declared that He is to be found, And yet where the Spirit of the Lord is, is freedom (Joh_8:36; Rom_8:15) from every legal letter which kills and condemns, or obliges and compels any one.
2Co_3:18 : We look upon the Lord’s glory with uncovered faces: the covering upon our hearts has been removed, for we see ourselves, sinful and condemned as we are in the flesh; and then the covering has been removed from before the Divine heart, for we now see Him, our gracious God and merciful Father, as He is in Christ. However many of us there may be who with uncovered faces behold the glory of the Lord, we shall all be changed into the single image of our common Lord, although its manifold glories are shed forth in separate features from the various members of His general Church; and its collected radiance, like the seven-fold colors of the rainbow, are given forth, not from any single Christian, but from the whole collected body of Christ.
[Whitby has given us six particulars in which the Apostle presents the superiority of the Gospel to the law (in substance) as follows: “1. Sinai’s glory only made the people afraid, the Gospel’s gives confidence and joy; 2. Moses gave only a letter which killed, the Gospel gives spirit and life; 3. Moses’ glory diminished and finally vanished forever, but the glory of the Gospel increases and has no end; 4. The law sought reserves under many shadows and ceremonies, the Gospel has but few fixed forms and seeks only a complete display of its truths and spirit; 5. The law could not remove the veil from men’s hearts, the Gospel gives us all open faces; 6. Israel looked only upon Moses’ radiance, Christians look directly upon a glorified God-Man, whose lustres transform them into His own likeness. Stanley’s beautiful summary of the Apostle’s imagery in this chapter, though slightly affected by his peculiar interpretation of 2Co_3:16, is yet worth transcribing (much abridged). We have: 1. The commendatory epistle, written on the Apostle’s heart; and, 2. the same written on the hearts of the Corinthians. 3. The contrast between this Epistle of the Spirit on the heart, and the lifeless engraving upon the Sinaitic stones. 4. The grand figure of Moses with his face irradiated by Divine glories. 5. The same, but veiled, to hide its fading splendors, and surrounded by a multitude of veiled figures with eyes turned upon him. 6. The same, but unveiled, and entering the Divine presence with more than rekindled radiance; and 7. The same figure multiplied in the Apostle and his brethren, with unveiled faces turned toward Christ, whose light transfigures them into glorious images of Himself.”]
Footnotes:
[16]2Co_3:13.—Rec. has ἐαυτοῦ; but the best authorities have αὐτοῦ. [Since our author wrote, the authority of Sin. has been added to that of D. K., and Chrysost., and Theodt., (Osiander, Bloomf.), in favor of ἑαυτοῦ. A. B. C. F. L., 4 cursives, one MS. of Chrys., Damasc., Theophyl. and Oecum., (Lachm., Tisch., Alf., Meyer, Words.), are for αὐτοῦ. D. (1st Cor.) and F. omit τὸ before μὴ.]
[17]2Co_3:14.—The best authorities insert ἡμέρας. [Omitted as superfluous, comp. 2Co_3:15. D. E. F. G. Chrys. (Ital. Vulg. etc. have in) instead of ετὶ have ἐν. Ὅτι in Stephens and Griesb. is written ὅ τι, and it is translated in the old Ital. and Vulg. quoniam; Wyclif.: “for it is avoided in Christ;” Rheims (in parenth.): “because in Christ it is made voide.”]
[18]2Co_3:15.—Lachm. [Alford] following excellent authorities [A. B. C. Sin. et al.] has ἅν ἀναγινώσκηται. But some [D. E.] have the subjunctive ἀναγινώσκηται without ἅν; and others have the Indicative—κεται with the ἅν. The first syllable of ἅναγιν. was probably written first by mistake twice; then the verb was made to agree with it in the subjunctive, and sometimes it remained so when the ἅν was erased, it being looked upon as governed still by the ἡνίκα (Meyer).
[19]2Co_3:17.—Rec. has ἐκεῖ before ἐλευθερία contrary to the oldest and best MSS. [A. B. C. D. (1st Cor.), Sinait, (1 Cor.), the Copt, version, and Cyril and Nyssa. Lachm., Tisch. and Alford reject it, but Griesb. inserted it on the authority of D. (2d and 3d Cor.) E. F. G. K. L. Sinait. (3d Cor.) Goth and Syr. versions and most of the Greek Fathers]. It was inserted according to the analogy of Mat_18:20; Mat_24:28; Jam_3:16, et al. But Paul does not commonly use it after οὗ, Comp. Rom_4:15; Rom_5:20.
[20][Without resorting to the explanation that Paul was here allegorizing to such an extent as to be inconsistent with the literal account in Exo_34:29-35, we have only to give a correct translation of the original Hebrew of that account to get clear of all difficulties. Such a correct translation was given by the Septuagint, which was evidently used by Paul, for he has in every corresponding place of our passage, used the very words of that version (comp. Wordsworth). According to the history in Exodus, Moses came down from the mountain with his face irradiated; and when the people shrunk from him, he put over his face a veil (either the Kcnaa, which covered the whole head and was in subsequent times worn by persons of eminence, as by Mahomet, Mokanna and others, or the Letham, which concealed only the face, comp. Rosenmueller), at first, to relieve their fears, but afterwards, in his ordinary intercourse with them (Exo_34:34-35) to conceal from them the termination (τέλος) of the radiance, or its cessation until he went again into the Divine presence. Our English version translates the three first Hebrew words of Exo_34:33 thus: “And till Moses had done speaking;” and other Protestant versions render the verb in the last part of the verse in a Pluperfect sense, and translate: “he had put on a veil.” This makes the historian say that Moses did not put on the veil until he had ceased speaking to the people, and that he resumed it when he reëntered the Divine presence, which is in direct contradiction to Paul’ view. The true rendering of the Hebrew and the Sept. is: “and when he had made an end (Piel) of speaking with them, he put a veil on his face.” The Vulgate is correct in its rendering of this verse (impletisque sermonibus, posuit velamen super facicm suam), but a confusion is thrown upon the whole by its strange mistake in translating קָרַן (a denominative verb, signifying to emit rays, from קֶרֶן a horn) as if it signified, to have horns (ignorabat quod cornuta esset facies sua). Paul’s use of this incident as an illustration (not an allegory) of the people’s, inability to endure the full glory of Divine truth and the consequent veiling of that truth under the types and shadows of the Old Dispensation, is perfectly natural. But as Clemens Alex. remarks, this veil was simply against the reading of the Old Testament while the heart remained rude and unsusceptible, and not κατὰ τὴν πρὸς τὸν Κύριον ἐπιστροφήν, i. e., not against those who were inclined to see Christ in the Gospel, and to return to that Lord who was concealed behind that veil. Stanley in Comm. and in his Lectt. on the Jewish Church 1st series, p.72, and in his article on Moses in Smith’s Dict. Also Hodge on Corr. and Rosenmueller on Exo_34:29-35].
[21][Of the three explanations given of μὴ ἀνακαλυπτ. that of Luther and our Eng. version is now universally given up by all critical scholars for want of authority for its reading. That of our author (“the veil remains untaken away because it (the veil) is removed (only) by Christ”) is adopted by most of the ancient expositors, de Wette, Neander, Wordsworth and Hodge, but is weakened by the awkwardness of saying that the κάλυμμα is μὴ ἀνακαλυπτόμενον, by this transitive participle having no object, by κατcργ. being used three times (2Co_3:7; 2Co_3:11; 2Co_3:13) with reference to the Old Covenant, and by the fact that it is not the veil but the dispensation which the Apostle is saying was abolished by Christ. On the other hand the third explanation (“the veil remains not taken away in the reading of the Old Covenant, it not being unveiled to them that it (the Old Covenant) is, done away in Christ”) is adopted by Chrysostom, Meyer, Bloomfield, Osiander, Conybeare. Alford and Stanley, makes a natural use of ἀνακαλ. since the end of the O. T. was the very thing which was under a veil; makes good sense; and has only the difficulty of the absolute participle, but is quite consistent with the symbolism of the entire section. Comp. especially Stanley and Hodge.
Lange's Commentary on the Holy Scriptures (Critical, Doctrinal, and Homiletical), ed. John Peter Lange, English translation edited by Philip Schaff (1864–1880) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Robert Jamieson, A. R. Fausset & David Brown 1871 · Public Domain On vv7–14 the ministration of death--the legal dispensation, summed up in…
the ministration of death--the legal dispensation, summed up in the Decalogue, which denounces death against man for transgression.
written and engraven in stones--There is no "and" in the Greek. The literal translation is, "The ministration of death in letters," of which "engraven on stones" is an explanation. The preponderance of oldest manuscripts is for the English Version reading. But one (perhaps the oldest existing manuscript) has "in the letter," which refers to the preceding words (Co2 3:6), "the letter killeth," and this seems the probable reading. Even if we read as English Version, "The ministration of death (written) in letters," alludes to the literal precepts of the law as only bringing us the knowledge of sin and "death," in contrast to "the Spirit" in the Gospel bringing us "life" (Co2 3:6). The opposition between "the letters" and "the Spirit" (Co2 3:8) confirms this. This explains why the phrase in Greek should be "in letters," instead of the ordinary one which English Version has substituted, "written and."
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was glorious--literally, "was made (invested) in glory," glory was the atmosphere with which it was encompassed.
could not steadfastly behold--literally, "fix their eyes on." Exo 34:30, "The skin of his face shone; and they were AFRAID to come nigh him." "Could not," therefore means here, "for FEAR." The "glory of Moses' countenance" on Sinai passed away when the occasion was over: a type of the transitory character of the dispensation which he represented (Co2 3:11), as contrasted with the permanency of the Christian dispensation (Co2 3:11).
Jamieson, Fausset & Brown — Commentary Critical and Explanatory on the Whole Bible (1871) — public domain (CC PDM 1.0). Text via the HelloAO Bible API.
Daniel D. Whedon 1874 · Public Domain On vv7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14 7. Ministration of death—The law, so far as it…
7. Ministration of death—The law, so far as it designates the old testament, or the old testament system, revealed not only wrath, but mercy; yet it waited for the new testament to reveal clearly the true source of that mercy in the mediation of Christ. But law here signifies the decalogue, as is shown by the words engraven in stones. The decalogue revealed not mercy; and to all sinners its ministration was an administration of death. Yet though engraven on stones, and of death, it had its glory.
Was glorious—Literally, was in glory.
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So that—Proves the glory by the fact to be stated.
Face of Moses—When Moses came down from Mount Sinai, from communion with God, his face shone so resplendently with the divine glory that the people could not gaze upon it. Exo_34:29-35. Moses, therefore, vailed his face to the people and unvailed it before God. Using this beautiful image as a type of the glory of the dispensation of the law, Paul draws a comparison to show how much more truly glorious is the (apostolic) ministration of the gospel. And it is to be specially noted that it is from one of the most brilliant points of the Mosaic history that the genius of Paul infers the evanescence of the Mosaic dispensation.
The glory of the law dispensation was not only of death, but, as symbolized by the radiance upon Moses’s face, was transient—was visible to the eye, was varied, and has left a vail on Israel’s heart. The gospel ministration is of the spirit, of justification, permanent, open, freedom, unfolding in evolutions of glory. To the Gentile Corinthians, anxious for freedom from the Jewish ritual, as well as to the Jews who sympathized with the progressive spirit of Paul, this comparison must have been very welcome. To the Judaists it must have appeared very powerful and very unacceptable.
To be done away—As figured by its evanescence upon Moses’s face.
Daniel D. Whedon (gen. ed.), Commentary on the Old and New Testaments (1874–1909) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges 1878 · Public Domain On vv7–14 7–18. The Ministration of the Spirit superior to that…
7–18. The Ministration of the Spirit superior to that of the Law
7. But if the ministration of death] He does not say ‘which causeth,’ but ‘the ministration of death,’ for that which caused death was sin, while the Law made the sin manifest, but did not cause it. Chrysostom. See Rom_7:7; 1Co_15:56; Gal_3:10; Gal_3:21. As St Paul was the minister of Christ when he proclaimed the good tidings of salvation to mankind, so the law was the minister of death when it proclaimed the sentence of death to the soul that had sinned. See Eze_18:4.
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written and engraven in stones] Wiclif, nearer to the original, writun lettris in stones. The reference is to the two tables of the law, Exo_31:18. Some editors read ‘the ministration of death in the letter, engraved in stones.’
was glorious] Perhaps rather, was constituted, came into being, in glory, i.e. accompanied by glory. Exo_19:16-20; Exo_24:6-11; Exo_34:4-8.
so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold (literally, gaze at) the face of Moses] The brightness of God’s glory was reflected upon the face of Moses (Exo_34:29-30) to such an extent that the children of Israel dared not approach him. See note on 2Co_3:13. The Hebrew word used for the rays of light emitted by Moses’ face is derived from a word signifying a horn, according to a simile common among Eastern writers by which the first rays of the sun are called horns, and even the sun itself a gazelle by the Arabs. This the Vulgate renders by cornuta, a rendering which, as Dr Plumptre reminds us, has been the cause why the celebrated Moses of Michael Angelo, familiar to all who have visited Rome and to many who have not, is represented with beams of light in the shape of horns upon the head.
which glory was to be done away] Rather, was being brought to nought. The original meaning of the word rendered ‘done away,’—which (see note on 1Co_13:8) is rendered in various ways in the A. V.—is to make thoroughly useless or unprofitable, and hence to do away with, abolish, bring to nought. The Apostle does not mean to say here that the brightness on Moses’ face was destined to fade, but that it was fading.
The Cambridge Bible for Schools and Colleges (gen. ed. J. J. S. Perowne; Cambridge University Press, 1878–1918) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Ellicott's Commentary for English Readers 1878 · Public Domain On vv7–14 (7) But if the ministration of death, written and…
(7) But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious.—More accurately, engraved in a writing (i.e., in a written formula) upon stones. The word for “writing” is the same as the “letter” of the preceding verse, and the whole might, perhaps, be best translated, if the ministration of death in the letter, engraved upon stones, was glorious. The English version, by using the two participles, creates a false antithesis between “written” and “engraved,” and misses the sequence of thought indicated by the continued use of the word for “letter” or “writing.” For “was glorious,” more accurately, came into being with glory. The thoughts of the Apostle have travelled to the record of the circumstances connected with the giving of the Law as the foundation of the first covenant, and of them he proceeds to speak fully. We can almost picture him to ourselves as taking up his LXX. version of the Law, and reproducing its very words and thoughts.
So that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold . . .—The narrative in Exo_34:29-35 records that when Moses came down from the mount with the second tables of stone, “the skin of his face shone,” and the “people were afraid to draw nigh unto him.” The English version—that “till Moses had done speaking with them he put a vail on his face,” and that “when he went in before the Lord he took it off until he came out”—suggests the thought that he appeared to the people, after the first manifestation of the unconscious glory, as a veiled prophet. It is doubtful, however, whether this is the natural meaning of the Hebrew, and Exo_34:35 repeats the statement that the Israelites saw the glory. The LXX., Vulgate, and most modern versions give, “When he ceased speaking he put a veil on his face.” They saw the brightness, they shrank from it in awe, they were not allowed to watch it to the end and gaze on its disappearance. This was the sequence of facts that St. Paul had in his thoughts, and which he certainly found in the LXX.; and it is of this, accordingly, that he speaks. The children of Israel could not bear to look on the glory, even though it was perishing and evanescent. The English rendering, “which glory was to be done away,” reads into the participle a gerundial force that does not properly belong to it; and it may be noted that it is the first of the great English versions that does so, the others giving, “which is made void,” or “which is done away.” It would be better expressed, perhaps, by, which was in the act of passing away. The Greek word is the same as that on which our translators have rung so many changes in 1Co_13:8-11. It was a favourite word with St. Paul at this period of his life, occurring twenty-two times in 1 Corinthians, 2 Corinthians, Galatians, and Romans, and three times only in his other Epistles.
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It may be noted that the Vulgate rendering of Exo_34:29, “ignorabat quod cornuta esset facies ejus” (“he knew not that his face was horned”), has given rise to the representations of Moses with horns, or rays of light taking the place of horns, as in Michael Angelo’s statue in the church of San Pietro in Vincoli at Rome, and pictorial representations generally.
A Bible Commentary for English Readers, edited by Charles John Ellicott (1878–1897) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Pulpit Commentary 1880 · Public Domain On vv7–14 The ministration of death. The ministration, that is, of…
The ministration of death. The ministration, that is, of the Law, of "the letter which killeth." St. Paul here begins one of the arguments a minori ad majus which are the very basis of the Epistle to the Hebrews. Written and engraven in stones; literally, engraved in letters on stones. (Exo_31:18) The reference shows that, in speaking of "the letter," St. Paul was only thinking of the Mosaic Law, and indeed specifically of the Decalogue. Was glorious; literally, occurred in glory, or, proved itself glorious. In itself the Law was "holy, just, and good", (Rom_7:12) and given "at the disposition of angels"; (Act_7:53) and its transitory glory was illustrated by the lustre which the face of Moses caught by reflection from his intercourse with God. (Exo_24:16) Could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses. (Exo_34:29, Exo_34:30) St. Paul has been led quite incidentally into this digression in the course of defending himself by describing the nature of his ministry; but it bore very definitely on his general purpose, because his chief opponents were Judaists, whose one aim it was to bind upon the Church the yoke of Mosaism. That they could not "behold" the face of Moses is the hagadah, or traditional legend, derived from Exo_34:30, which says that "they were afraid to draw nigh to him. The reader may recall the beautiful lines of Cardinal Newman
Lord l grant me this abiding grace Thy words and saints to know; To pierce the veil on Moses" face, Although his words be slow.
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Because of the glory of his countenance. This circumstance is so often alluded to as to have become identified with the conception of Moses. The Hebrew words for "a ray of light" and "a horn" are identical; hence, instead of saying that his face was "irradiated," the Vulgate says, Cornnta erat ejus facies; and even in our version of Hab_3:4 we find "And he had horns (i.e. "rays of light coming out of his hand." To this is due the mediaeval symbol of Moses with horns, as in the matchless statue by Michael Angelo. Which glory was to be done away. The Greek might be expressed by "the glory the evanescing glory of his countenance." It was not "to be done away," but from the first moment they saw it it began to vanish. The verb "to do away," implying annulment, and the being abrogated as invalid, is a characteristic word in this group cf Epistles, in which it occurs twenty-two times. This illustrates the prominence in St. Paul"s thoughts of the fact that the Law was now "antiquated" and "near its obliteration". (comp. Heb_8:13) But in dwelling on the brief and transient character of this radiance, St. Paul seizes on a point which (naturally) is not dwelt upon in Ex 34.
Vers. 7-11.
Divine revelation more glorious in Christ than in Moses.
if the ministration," etc. At the outset three facts are noteworthy.
1. The infinite Father has made a special revelation of himself to his humanoffspring.
2. This special revelation of himself has mainly come through two greatgeneral sources Moses and Christ.
3. The special revelation of himself, as it came through Christ, fartranscends in glory the form it assumed as it came through Moses. The essence of the revelation is the same, but the forms differ, and the form it assumes in Christianity are the most glorious. There are two facts here.
I That the special revelation as it came through MOSES WAS GLORIOUS. It was so glorious that "the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses." Four things impress us with its glory as revealed in Moses.
1. The wonderful display of divinity attending its manifestation on Mount Sinai. The expression, "the face of Moses," refers to this. (Exo_34:1) What wonderful things Moses saw and heard during the forty days he was on the mount! "The Lord rose up and came from Seir with ten thousand of his saints," etc.
2. the magnificence of its religious scenes and celebrations. The temple, hew splendid! the priesthood, how imposing! the psalmody, how inspiring! "Glorious things are spoken of thee, O thou city of God.
3. The stupendous miracles that stand in connection with it. The wilderness was the theatre of magnificent manifestations the pillar, the manna, the flowing rock, the riven sea, etc.
4. The splendid intellects which were employed in connection with it. Solomon, Elijah, Daniel, David, Ezekiel. For these reasons Divine revelation as it came through Moses was truly glorious.
II That although this special revelation was glorious as it came in connection with Moses, it was MORE GLORIOUS as it came in connection with CHRIST. "How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?" etc. Confining our illustrations on this point to the passage before us, we observe:
1. The Christian form of revelation is more likely to give life than the Mosaic. In Moses it was the ministration of death." The Jews exalted the "letter" that "killeth" above the "spirit that giveth life," and they got buried in forms. In Christ the revelation is the gospel in life.
2. The Christian form of Divine revelation is more emphatically spiritual than the Mosaic. It is here called the "ministration of the spirit." In Moses it was associated with numerous forms and ceremonies; in Christ there are only two simple rites, and the spirit throbs in every sentence.
1. The Christian form of Divine revelation is more restorative than the Mosaic. The apostle speaks of the one as the "ministration of condemnation," of the other as the "ministration of righteousness." Maledictions thunder in the former, beatitudes in the latter.
2. The Christian form of Divine revelation is more enduring than the Mosaic. "For if that which is done away which passeth away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious." Judaism is gone; Christianity is the "Word of God, which abideth forever." It is the final revelation of Heaven to our world.
Such, then, is a brief illustration of the apostle"s position; and the subject, in conclusion, serves several important purposes.
1. It serves to expose the absurdity of making Moses the interpreter of Christ. It has been common with professing Christians to look at the New Testament through the spectacles of Moses, and thus to Judaize Christianity. Much in popery, much, alas! in old puritanism, much even in modern theology, is but Christianity Judaized, a going back to the "beggarly elements.
2. It serves to show the wrongness of going to Moses to support opinions which you cannot get from Christ. You can support war, slavery, capital punishment, by going to Moses; but you cannot find the shadow of a foundation for these in Christ.
3. It serves to reveal the glorious position of a true gospel minister. To show this was the object of the apostle in the text. The position of Moses, David, Isaiah, and all the great teachers under the old administration was glorious, but it is scarcely to be compared with the position of him who preaches that Christ of "whom Moses and the prophets did write.
Vers. 7-11.
Ministry of the Old Testament compared with that of the New, and the superiority of the latter shown.
He speaks now of the "ministration of death," not of it as the ministry of the letter; and yet it was "glorious." Compared with the revelation made to Enoch, Abraham, Jacob, it was "glorious." Whether witnessing to the unity of God or to his providence over an elect race, it was an illumination, or splendour, unequalled in the centuries before Christ. Tribes were organized as a nation, bondmen transformed into free men; and, despite their proclivity to heathenish idolatry, they came finally to hold and defend the doctrine of one God, their Jehovah, their Lord of hosts, their Benefactor and Friend, as the doctrine underlying all their hopes and aspirations. The sanctity of human life which the great lawgiver made the foundation of his system, the rights of persons and property, the obligations of brotherhood among themselves, duties to the poor and the stranger, duties to their nation, reverence for the sabbath and its worship, obedience to God in the minutest things, were taught them with a precision and a force that largely succeeded in producing the only phenomenon of its kind in history a nation educated in the sense of God, of his presence in their midst, and of his providence as an unceasing and omnipotent agency in their homes and business. What a "glory" there was in their literature we all know. No psalmody is given in the New Testament; none was wanted; inspired poetry reached its full measure of excellence in King David and his poetic successors; and the Christian heart, whether in prayer or praise, finds much of its deepest and most devout utterance in these ancient Judaean hymns. Reproduction is the test of enduring greatness. In this respect the genius and piety of David stand unrivalled. Whenever men worship God, he is the "chief singer" yet; nor have we any better standard by which to try the merit of our religious poetry and music than the similarity of their effect upon us to that produced by the Psalms of David. Last of all in the order of time, first in its importance, what a "glory" in him born of the Virgin Mary! On this system St. Paul made no war. What he antagonized was the misunderstanding and abuse of the system in the hands of Pharisees and Sadducees, and, especially in the shape it assumed among the Judaizers at Corinth and in Galatia. He calls the old covenant "glorious," a word he never uses but in his exalted moods of thought, True, it was "written and engraven in stones," but by whose hand? Even "the face of Moses" was more than the Israelites could bear, "for the glory of his countenance." The splendour irradiating Moses was transient glory was to be done away;" but it did what it was intended to do by demonstrating where he had been and on what mission. Yet the glory acknowledged it was "the ministration of death." All the sublimity was that of terror, none that of beauty, when Sinai became the shrouded pavilion of Jehovah. "Whosoever toucheth the mount shall be surely put to death." This external characterization was a symbol of its condemning power. "When the commandment came, sin revived, and I died." It was not in the language of the Law that David prayed, "Cast me not away from thy presence, and take not thy Holy Spirit from me;" nor in sympathy with the Law that Isaiah spoke of the Anointed One, "The Spirit of the Lord God is upon me;" bat in contemplation of grace beyond Law, and therefore extra to the ordinary workings of the Mosaic economy. A provision existed for these spiritual anticipations, and it was a part of its excellence, the highest part, that it had on a few minds this prevenient influence. Still, the distinctive feature stands, "a ministration of death;" and to the hour when Jerusalem and her temple fell, Sinai was the mount that could not be touched without death.
It had a glory, a derived and subordinate glory, and the glory itself was to die. Certain qualities of Hebrew mind under the system, methods of thought, poetic modes of looking at nature, cultivated instincts of providence, yearnings for spirituality, were to survive and attain their completeness; but the system was to end by the law of limitation organic in its structure. Now, on this basis, the glorious economy of which Moses was the minister, and the transientness of its duration, St. Paul builds an argument for the superior glory of the gospel. It is the "ministration" of the Holy Ghost. It is "the ministration of righteousness." Under the economy of grace the righteousness of God was first secured. That done, the justice of God appeared in the sinner"s justification. And in this justification the converted man realizes that sense of demerit and guilt which arises in his personal instinct of justice, is met and satisfied; while, at the same time, gratitude and love are awakened by the unmerited goodness of God in Christ. The two stand together. They are inseparable in the constitution of the universe. They are inseparable by the laws of the human mind. The joy of the one is vitally blended with the gladness of the other; so that if the renewed heart feels its indebtedness to the mercy of God in Christ, it feels also that its salvation rests on the vindicated righteousness of God in Christ. It is what Christ is to the Father that makes him precious as the Christ of his faith, hope, and love. Most fitly, then, St. Paul presents the antithetic emphasis on condemnation and righteousness. Condemnation and righteousness are legal terms. The element of similarity in their common relation to Law is clearly recognized. Without this common element the antithesis could have no meaning. The dissimilarity is thus made vivid. "Much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory." Each is a "ministration," each a "ministration" of "glory," but the "ministration of righteousness doth exceed in glory." The idea is explained and strengthened yet further. A favourite thought of the Jews, and particularly of the Pharisees, was the perpetuity of the Law. After the Exile, this was the stronghold of patriotism, sentiment, and religion. On no other ground could Pharisaism have acquired its popular ascendency. This was the battle it was ever fighting for the nation the dignity of the Law as seen in its permanent utility, since only thereby could Israel attain her true destiny and far surpass her ancient renown. Of course the anti-Pauline party at Corinth had much to say on St. Paul"s view of the Law. Here, then, is an opportunity for him to defend his ministry. The point now is that the Mosaic ministration had no glory "in this respect," that is, in respect to the succeeding dispensation, which had entirely obscured its lustre. The once stately figure was not erect, but prostrated; it was disrobed of its gorgeous vestments; it wore no longer the breast, plate with its precious stones; its glory had departed; and all this "by reason of the glory that excelleth." If so, then how transcendent the splendour of the Spirit"s dispensation? "If that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious." In the former Epistle he had written of various glories one of the sun, another of the moon, still another of the stars, the radiance distributed over immeasurable spaces and among orbs widely different, each preserving from age to age its own distinctive splendour, every ray of light imaging the world whence it issued. A firmament was before his eye in its circles of magnificence. But now the glory, on which in other days he had looked with so much pride as a Pharisee, had passed forever from his sight. Yet, so far from feeling that there was loss, he exulted in the infinite gain, because "of the glory that excelleth. L.
Vers. 7-11.
The old covenant and the new.
In some sense it may be said that teachings respecting the relations between the older revelation in Judaism and the newer revelation in Christianity were special to the Apostle Paul. On this point he had direct revelations from Christ, and the liberal form which his teachings took exposed him to the peril of being misunderstood and misrepresented, and brought persecutions around him. No man could be found more truly loyal to the older revelation than the apostle of the Gentiles, but while he honoured it he saw clearly that it had its day and its mission. That day had now passed; that mission had been fulfilled. The older covenant had made open and plain the way for the new, and it was loyalty to the old for Paul to accept fully the new, in which it found its fulfilment, its completion, its glory; for the ministration of Jesus and the Spirit is but Judaism glorified, the gospel of the letter passed into the gospel of the spirit. Three contrasts are here dwelt upon. The old covenant and the new are conceived as
I A MINISTRATION OF DEATH AND A MINISTRATION OF LIFE. St. Paul had said (ver. 6) that the "letter killeth." He meant that it crushed hope and effort, since no man could reach a perfect obedience. The old covenant condemned all who failed even in the least thing. It provided no life, no strength in which obedience could become possible. On the other band, the new covenant provided a new life for the will and a new grace unto obedience. The old crushed down heart and hope, and made a man cry out, "I cannot." The new cheered him, lifted him up, and made him say, "I can, through him who strengtheneth me.
II A MINISTRATION OF CONDEMNATION AND A MINISTRATION OF RIGHTEOUSNESS. The old covenant said, "Thou shalt not," and it denounced its penalties on the offenders. The new covenant says, "Thou shalt," holds before us the model life of obedience lived by the Lord Jesus, and provides grace unto changing us into his image.
III A MINISTRATION THAT WAS PASSING AND A MINISTRATION THAT WAS PERMANENT. (Ver. 11.) The older covenant was of necessity transitory. It had but a temporary and preparatory mission. The new is abiding, for there can be nothing higher than or beyond that spiritual righteousness which is its sublime aim to accomplish. R.T.
The Pulpit Commentary (1880–1919), ed. H.D.M. Spence-Jones & Joseph S. Exell — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Biblical Illustrator 1887 · Public Domain On vv7, 9, 12 But if the ministration of death … was glorious
2Co_3:7-11
But if the ministration of death … was glorious
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The peculiar glory of the gospel
I.
That contrasted with the law as the ministration of condemnation the gospel is the ministration of righteousness. That the law was the ministration of condemnation will require little proof. The very glory which attended the publication of it struck terror into the beholders. Its unequivocal language was, the soul that sinneth it shall die (Exo_19:16; Heb_12:21; Eze_18:4; Eze_18:20; Gal_3:10). Against this awful alternative the Mosaic dispensation provided no effectual resource (Heb_10:4). But herein is the incomparable glory of the gospel displayed: it is, the ministration of righteousness. Not as some have most erroneously represented it, a remedial law; neither as others would call it, a less rigorous dispensation, relaxing our obligations to duty. And hence we are led to notice what may be regarded as the peculiar glory of the gospel, that it discovers to us a way in which sin may be pardoned, and yet sinners be saved. The gospel alone reveals a righteousness sufficient for this purpose. The gospel is also the ministration of righteousness, because it enjoins and secures the practice of righteousness among men.
II. That contrasted with the law as the ministration of death, the Gospel is the ministration of the Spirit. The Christian as contrasted with the Jewish dispensation may be called the ministration of the Spirit, not only on account of its more spiritual nature, and as containing the spirit and substance of ancient rites and figures, but chiefly because it is distinguished by the clearer revelation of the Divine Spirit, and the more abundant communications of His influence to the children of men. Let us, then, attend to the surpassing glory of the gospel in this view. We have already seen that the law, which is the ministration of death, made no effectual provision for the justification of transgressors; and as little did it provide for their sanctification. All precepts, and threatenings, and promises, were insufficient for this purpose, without the quickening and renewing influence of the Holy Ghost. How refulgent, then, the glory of the gospel, when we consider that the Spirit, of whom it testifies, is Himself the eternal Jehovah! Under the ministration of the Spirit, how marvellous the success which attended the preaching of the apostles, amidst the combined opposition of earth and hell! Still farther, under the ministration of the Spirit the Church has been preserved in succeeding ages, since the apostles days to the present time. Finally, under the ministration of the Spirit, and by His benign influence, the Church throughout succeeding generations shall become gradually more enlightened, and sanctified, and enlarged. Is such, then, the glory of the gospel?
1. What an unspeakable honour is conferred upon those who are allowed to be the ministers of it!
2. Again, is such the glory of the gospel; how inestimable is your privilege? The Lord has not dealt so with every people. Blessed are your eyes, for they see, and your ears, for they hear, what many prophets and righteous men desired to see and to hear but were not permitted.
3. Still farther, is such the glory of the gospel? Let its ministers learn to be more and more faithful and earnest in declaring and recommending it.
4. Let me beseech you who attend on our ministrations to consider, that in proportion to the glory of the gospel must be the condemnation of those who do not esteem and improve it.
5. Once more, is the gospel the ministration of the Spirit? Let us all be solicitous to experience His saving influence on our own souls; and let us be earnest also for the communications of His grace to others. (D. Dickson.)
The ministrations of law and gospel
I. The law was a ministration of death, but nevertheless it was glorious.
1. There must ever enter into our thought on matters of religion continued reference to the unchangeableness of God. If we were setting ourselves to scrutinize the arrangements of a finite, and therefore changeable agent; if we found that at one time he had given a law to his inferiors which worked out their death, and that afterwards he had sent forth another law which allowed of their life, we might conclude that he had, in the first instance, been making an experiment, and that, warned by its failure, he had turned himself to a new course of treatment. But we must not so reason in regard of God. He knew perfectly well when He issued the law that it would prove a ministration of death. And if the law and the gospel had been altogether detached, there would have existed great cause for marvel at Gods appointing a ministration of death. But when it is remembered that the law was introductory to the gospel, so that the covenant of works literally made way for the covenant of grace, all surprise ought to vanish. From the earliest moment of human apostasy, Gods dealing with the fallen had always reference to the work of atonement. Though by itself the law was a ministration of death, yet those who live under it were not necessarily left to die. Know we not that whilst this legal dispensation was in the fulness of its strength, there passed many an Israelite into the kingdom of heaven? We carry you to the scenes of temple-worship, and bid you learn from the emblematical announcement of redemption that no man died because living under the ministration of death; but that, even whilst the moral law was unrepealed, as a covenant it could weigh no one down to perdition who looked onward to the long-promised sacrifice.
2. But while the Divine goodness in the appointment of a ministration of death is thus vindicated, the law was actually a ministration of death. Could man, with all his industry, obey truly the moral law? If not, then the ministration of the law must have been a ministration of death, seeing, that if it cannot be fulfilled, it must unavoidably condemn. You shall take the Crucifixion as an answer to all questioning on the law being aught else than a ministration of death. Why, if man had a capacity for working out by his own strivings obedience to the law, and he could win to himself a crown of glory--why did Divinity throw itself into humanity, and achieve, through the wondrous coalition, the mastery over death, and Satan, and hell?
2. Though the law was thus a ministration of death, it was nevertheless glorious. It was mainly as a consequence of its own perfection that the law proved a minister of death. Had the law been a defective law, constructed so as to be adapted to the weakness of the parties on whom it was imposed, and not to the attributes of Him from whom it proceeded, it is altogether supposable that the result might not have been the condemnation of mankind. But if a law had been constructed which man could have obeyed, would it have been glorious? You tell me, in the fact of its being a practical and saving law, and allowing the wretched to work out deliverance from their wretchedness. Then it is glory that the law should make loop-holes for offenders, in case of being a rampart against offences; while the whole of the universe must have been shaken at Gods overlooking of sin. We say not, it was glory that man should perish; but we do say it was glorious that the moral law was the transcript of the Divine mind.
II. The gospel as the ministration of the Spirit; and as, therefore, far exceeding the law in its glory.
1. The ministration of the Spirit is set in antithesis to the ministration of death. The great work which Christ effected was the procurement of life to those who were dead in trespasses and sins. We are legally dead--because born under the sentence of eternal condemnation--and we are morally dead, because insensible to our condition; and, if insensible, totally unable to reanimate ourselves. The legal death the Mediator may be said to have annihilated, for He bore our sins in His own body on the tree; and the moral death-for the destruction of this He made the amplest provision, procuring for us, by the merits of His passion, the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life.
2. The gospel in its every department is a ministration of righteousness, and therefore of spiritual life. It is the mightiest display of Gods righteousness. Where has God equally shown His hatred of sin, His settled determination to wring its punishment from the impenitent? It is a system, moreover, whose grand feature is the application to man of the righteousness of Christ; Christ is made unto us of God, wisdom, and righteousness, and sanctification, and redemption, and therefore is He our life. And this gospel, moreover, while displaying a perfect righteousness which must be wrought for us, insists peremptorily on a righteousness which must be wrought in us by Gods Spirit--the ministration of the Spirit thus making our own holiness, though it can obtain nothing in the way of merit, indispensably necessary in the way of preparation. (H. Melvill, B. D.)
The dispensations of the law and gospel compared
I. The law was glorious.
1. The perfection of the moral law was a favourite subject with the saints of old (Neh_9:13; Psa_19:7). But this glory, as regards God, made it to man, if he rested in it, the ministration of condemnation. It set before men a perfect rule of conduct, and therefore required more than fallen man could fulfil. Yet it pronounced a curse upon all who did not perfectly answer to its demands (Gal_3:10; Rom_3:19-20; Rom_7:9-11).
2. But the ceremonial law is also glorious, not in itself, but as it borrowed light from the gospel and prefigured it. Whereas the moral law doomed all under it to death, the ceremonial taw gave them some faint indications of mercy. The ceremonial law, then, must be greatly inferior to the gospel, inasmuch as Christ is the substance of all its types and shadows. Since He is come it has lost its glory. It is chiefly useful to show the necessity of atonement.
II. Wherein consists the glory of the gospel?
1. It is a republication of the moral law; therefore, what glory the law has the gospel has likewise. But it possesses far higher glory, inasmuch as it is the ministration of righteousness. As the law denounces all who rest upon it as a covenant of works to death, so the gospel, by its gift of righteousness, conveys life to all who receive it in faith. The law shows the holiness of God, and is therefore glorious, but the gospel shows the holiness, justice, and mercy of God in an inconceivable degree by the very method in which it freely dispenses righteousness, and therefore it is transcendently glorious.
2. It is superior to the law, as it is the ministration of the Spirit, who is the life and soul of the whole system. We may descant about the righteousness of Christ, and the demands of the perfect law, but we never could have attained to that righteousness unless the Spirit of God had been likewise bestowed, to write these truths in our hearts, and to bring home these doctrines with power.
Conclusion:
1. As regards the law--
(1) Do not neglect it by taking up your own rule of life, such as the customs of men and worldly maxims afford. The law of God is the only rule of duty (Mat_19:17), and is still our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ.
(2) Do not abuse it by looking to be saved by your own obedience to its commands.
2. As regards the gospel--
(1) Do not neglect it. It is Gods method of saving sinners; His mercy now flows in this one channel; if you seek His mercy in any other way, you will find yourselves in an evil case (Thessalonians 1:8).
(2) Do not abuse it. Remember that while Christ came to provide forgiveness, He came also to purify to Himself a peculiar people zealous of good works. (H. J. Hastings, M. A.)
The two ministrations
Why should the law be described as the ministration of death or the ministration of condemnation? Are not the terms unnecessarily harsh? Do they not suggest a false idea of the dignity of law? My first object is to defend a negative answer to this inquiry. The very fact of penal law being established presupposes either power or disposition to do that which is wrong. The simplest of illustrations shall bring the meaning of the assertion, that law defines and limits liberty, within the comprehension of a child. For a length of time you have been in the habit of regarding certain fields as common property; again and again you have struck your course across them to shorten or vary a journey. The idea that you were trespassing never occurred to you. So far as you knew there was no law whatever in the case. In process of time, however, the proprietor determines to assert his right to his own land. With this end in view he gives public intimation that all persons found upon his property will be dealt with as trespassers. He proclaims a law. He sets up in his field a ministration of condemnation. From that hour the whole question of your liberty undergoes a fundamental change. Yet, why should the law be designated the ministration of condemnation and the ministration of death? When the law is based on rectitude, what possible relation can it sustain to death or condemnation? All punishment stands on the plane of death. Death, absolutely so called, is the ultimate penalty; but the very gentlest blow, nay, the very shadow of a frown, is death in incipiency; that is to say, it belongs to the kingdom of death, and not in any sense to the kingdom of life; death is in the penalty as truly as the plant is in the seed. That law is correctly designated the ministration of condemnation, and the ministration of death, may be shown by another simple illustration. Let me suppose that as heads of houses you had not for a long time felt the necessity of requiring all the members of your households to be at home by a fixed hour. In the working of your family life, however, you find it necessary to determine an hour at which every child shall be with you. To that effect you proclaim your law. In process of events, I further suppose, one of your children is a mile off when the well-known hour strikes. What is the consequence in his own experience? He hears stroke after stroke without alarm, until, alas! the legal hour is pealed off. How that stroke shakes him! how reproachful the shivering tone! A week before he could have heard the same hour strike, and nothing would have alarmed him. He now feels that the law is the ministration of condemnation. He says, I am late; I should have been at home; my fathers eye will reprove me; I had not known sin but by the law, for I had not known irregularity in time, except the law had said, Thou shalt be punctual. Take the worlds first case of law. There was law in the Edenic life. There was a Thou shalt not in the programme of the worlds first experience of manhood, and over it fell the shadow of threatened death. Liberty was made liberty by law. Up to the very moment of touching the forbidden fruit, Adam knew not what was meant by the ministration of condemnation but the moment after, how vast his knowledge! The law said nothing to Adam of condemnation until he had broken it. So long as he kept the law he knew nothing of death, except by Observation. Fools are they who cavil because Adam did not physically expire. Is death a question of frozen marrow? Every man knows the killing power of sin. In darkness you have done some deed of iniquity. Your heart condemns you. When you come forward to the light, you feel yourself dead, your moral vitality is gone. Another inquiry is now suggested. Under circumstances so appalling, how can the ministration of condemnation be said to be glory?--for that is the royal word of the text. I answer, the glory is not in the condemnation and the death, except in the immediate connection with the law. That there is glory in law is open to decisive demonstration. The establishment of law implies authority on the part of the lawgiver. Law is the declared will of the superior. How is it amongst ourselves? Does the servant give law to the master, or the master to the servant? By whose authority is the table of regulations put up in all your great hives of industry? I repeat, then, that law implies authority on the part of the lawgiver. Carry these illustrations forward to the case argued in the text, then the glory will at once kindle upon us, and, like the children of Israel, we shall need the protecting veil. Recall the dread days of Sinai. Almighty God alights, and the mountain shudders at His presence. Every utterance of the eternal mind must have its own peculiar glory; alike the utterance designed to produce physical results and the utterance intended to operate in the moral kingdom: each shines with a glory distinctively its own, and in proportion as the moral is superior to the physical, so does the glory of the one exceed the glory of the other. When, therefore, I contemplate the dread issue of an infraction of Gods law, I can understand the apostle when he calls that law the ministration of condemnation; and as I further contemplate the sublime purpose of that law, I can understand how, upon such a ministration, there shone a glory which must have beamed from heaven! The gospel is described as the ministration of righteousness, and is affirmed to exceed in glory. In giving the law, God did not accommodate Himself to human weakness by imposing easy or elastic conditions and regulations. He declared that which was absolute in rectitude. The law rendered supremely important service to man if it did nothing more than bring him to the consciousness that he was powerless to fulfil requirements so holy. The law showed him the height to which he must ascend, and he trembled, and owned his weakness. Do we make void the law through faith? God forbid. Yea, we establish the law. The law is holy, and the commandment holy, and just, and good. The law was not designed to give life. It had but a schoolmasters work to do. There was an epoch of law; there is now an epoch of faith. Faith is younger than law; hence, before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up into the faith which should afterwards be revealed. As the law was antecedent to faith, so also it stands in perfect contrast; the one being the ministration of condemnation, the other the ministration of righteousness. Yet what is meant by asserting that the law was antecedent to the gospel? I mean antecedent merely in the order of open manifestation. The promise that Christ should come into the world takes precedence of all other promises. The Lamb was slain before the foundation of the world. Love is from everlasting, law is but of yesterday; law is for a season, love is for ever;law is a transient flame, love an eternal orb. Sublime beyond full comprehension is the fact that the gospel is the ministration of righteousness. Those who exercise repentance towards God and faith in our Lord Jesus Christ are not merely pardoned; that would be much--infinitely more, indeed, than the law could ever do--but they are made righteous, they are cleansed, they are sanctified, they are transformed into the image of God. Law had no blood in its iron hand to apply to the depraved and guilty nature of man. It is impossible that law could forgive, law only can condemn. Here is the moral contrast in all its breadth. The law is weak, the gospel is mighty; the law touches the outer man, the gospel penetrates the heart. The ministration of righteousness exceeds the ministration of condemnation in glory. This is in strict harmony with Gods general method of government. He never goes from the greater to the less, but ever from the less to the greater. We thought nothing could exceed the splendour of Sinai, yet it was eclipsed by the transcendent magnificence of Calvary. The law was veiled under types and shadows, but the Son of God has been crucified before our eyes. The exceeding glory of the gospel, then, is seen in this, that while it comes to condemn sin, it also comes to destroy its power, and save those whom it has brought into bondage. The gospel has no word of pity for sin, or of extenuation for error, but it melts with infinite compassion as it yearns over the sinner. The law never had a loving word for the transgressor--it was stern, inflexible, rigorous. Some are endeavouring to reach heaven through obedience to the law. Are you wiser than God? Is the atonement a mistake? A man passes from one ministration to another, and so is brought nearer and nearer to God, we should remind ourselves that the advancing ages multiply our responsibilities. We cannot live under the exceeding glory without incurring proportionate obligations. (J. Parker, D. D.)
Divine revelation more glorious in Christ than in Moses
Note three facts in the context--
1. The infinite Father has made a special revelation to man. This is a fact answering to the a priori reasonings and intuitions of humanity.
2. That this special revelation has mainly come through two great general sources--Moses and Christ.
3. That while the essence of the revelation is the same, the forms differ, and the forms it assumes through Christ are most glorious.
I. This special revelation as it came through Moses was glorious. Note--
1. The wonderful display of Divinity attending the expression of it on Mount Sinai. The apostle seems to have had an eye to this in his reference to the supernatural brightness that rested on the face of Moses (Exo_34:29-30). What wonderful things did Moses hear and see during the forty days he was up on that mountain! What overwhelming display of glory there must have been when from His hand went a fiery law! (Exo_19:1-25; Exo_20:1-26; Heb_12:18-22).
2. The magnificence of its religious scenes and celebrations. The temple, how splendid in its architecture, materials, and furniture! The priesthood, how imposing in their costume and their services! The psalmody, how sublime! etc. Glorious things are spoken of the city of the living God.
3. The stupendous miracles that stand in connection with it. The wilderness was the theatre of great wonders.
4. The splendid intellects which were employed in connection with it. The philosophy of Solomon, the poetry of David, the eloquence of Isaiah, the imagery of Ezekiel, the strains of Jeremiah, etc. Divine revelation, as it stands hi connection with Moses, is associated with the most brilliant of human geniuses.
II. This special revelation is more glorious as it appears in connection with Christ.
1. The Christian form of Divine revelation is more adapted to give life than the Mosaic. Compare the effect of the words of the revelation as it came from Christ, addressed by Peter on the day of Pentecost, to the moral effect of the preaching of any of the prophets under the law, and you will find that the one may justly be called a ministration of death as compared with the other.
2. The Christian form of Divine revelation is more emphatically spirit than the Mosaic. It is called here the ministration of the spirit. There was much spirit in the Mosaic; but Christianity throbs through every sentence with the eternal spirit of truth. Then, too, the smaller amount of the spirit in the Mosaic was so overlaid with ceremony that it was almost buried out of sight; whereas the greater amount of the spirit of truth in connection with Christianity is stripped almost entirely of ceremony. Baptism and the Lords Supper are all.
3. The Christian form of Divine revelation is more restorative than the Mosaic. The apostle speaks of one as the ministration of condemnation, and the other, that of righteousness. The Mosaic revelation had an aspect of terrible severity. Contrast the curses of Moses (Deu_27:15-26) with the beatitudes of Christ (Mat_5:3-12).
4. The Christian form of Divine revelation is more lasting than the Mosaic. Christianity is the final revelation of God to our world.
Conclusion: The subject serves--
1. To expose the absurdity of making Moses the interpreter of Christ.
2. To show the wrongness of going to Moses to support opinions you cannot get from Christ.
3. To reveal the immense responsibility of men living in gospel times.
4. To indicate the serious position of a true minister. (D. Thomas, D. D.)
The glory of the gospel
Note--
I. The description of the law.
1. The ministration of condemnation.
2. The ministration of death. Its sentence is a death sentence. The soul that sinneth, it shall die. Now from the execution of this sentence the law provides no resource. Sacrifices for sin, it is true, were provided raider the Mosaic dispensation; but they were merely typical of that great sacrifice for sin, which was to form a part of another and more glorious dispensation. It is not possible that the blood of bulls and of goats should take away sins.
II. The description of the gospel.
1. It is the ministration of righteousness, because it provides for the believing sinner a complete satisfaction for the offences he has committed against the law of God, and an obedience perfectly commensurate with its demands, and so saves him from condemnation and death.
2. It is the ministration of Spirit, because of the great outpouring of the Spirit with which it commenced, and the abundant communication of the same Spirit with which it has ever since been attended.
III. The superior glory of the gospel above that of the law. The Jewish dispensation was glorious. It bad a glorious Author. Its object was glorious, viz., to unfold the infinite justice, purity, and majesty of God. It was published in a glorious manner. But, notwithstanding all this, the glory of the law sinks into nothing when compared with the gospel. The names which are here applied to the law and the gospel show us at once the propriety of this language. But the superior glory of the gospel may be made clear by other considerations.
1. It offers greater blessings to man than were offered by the law. The Mosaic dispensation had a reference principally to the present life, and most of its promises were temporal promises. The gospel places within our reach a share of that very joy which satisfies the Redeemer for the travail of His soul.
2. It offers these blessings more extensively. The promises of the law were confined to one nation, and even of this nation it was but a little remnant that inherited the spiritual benefits of the dispensation under which they lived. The blessings of the gospel, on the contrary, are thrown open to all the world.
3. It has a greater influence on the hearts of men. The law had no power to touch the heart, and to cause men to love and obey it. The gospel, on the contrary, was no sooner published than it made glorious changes in the characters and lives of multitudes who embraced it.
4. It has a glory which will last for ever.
5. It is a brighter display of the Divine law.
Conclusion:
1. How honourable an office is that of a minister of Christ!
2. How great is the privilege which we enjoy in living under the dispensation of the gospel!
3. How great a debt of gratitude and praise does every Christian owe to his crucified Lord!
4. How unwise are they who hope for pardon and salvation on the ground of their partial obedience to the law of God!
5. How ignorant are they of the gospel of Christ who make the influence of the Spirit the object of their scorn!
6. How anxiously should every hearer of the gospel desire that it may be made the ministration of the Spirit to himself, that he may experience its softening and purifying influence in his own heart! (C. Bradley, M. A.)
The glory of the gospel
I. The character of the Mosaic dispensation.
1. Sensuous.
2. Stationary.
3. Artificial.
4. Transitory.
5. Shadowy.
6. Dangerous.
II. The excellent glory of the gospel.
1. Spiritual.
2. Progressive.
3. Intrinsic.
4. Immortal.
5. Luminous.
6. Inviting. (W. W. Wythe.)
The gospel is
I. A ministration of the spirit. It was foretold that it should be so. The days come when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, etc. Then, respecting Him who is the head of the new dispensation, His holy body was the immediate product of the Holy Ghost, at His baptism the Holy Spirit like a dove descended upon Him, His ministry was conducted by the power of the Spirit, He spake to the apostles of the Holy Ghost, and the last thing He said to them on earth was, that they should wait for the promise of the Spirit. On the day of Pentecost it was fulfilled. And whatever light and grace and purity there has been in the Church from that day to this has been by the same influence and power. What, then, was the ministry of Moses, compared with that economy at the head of which appeared Jesus Christ with this great title--He that baptized with the Holy Spirit and with fire?
II. A ministration of righteousness.
III. A ministration of life. The first Adam was made a living soul, the second a quickening spirit. We were dead in trespasses and sins, but we are said to be quickened. Christ hath abolished death, and hath brought life and immortality to light through the gospel.
IV. A ministry of plainness (verses 12, 13),that is, clearness of manifestation--not the obscurity of a type--not the difficulty of a prediction. All the gospel is as plain as language can make it. And having the light and plainness of the instruction of the N.T., the writers speak with confidence; they say, We know whom we have believed, etc.
V. A dispensation treat is to abide. Of the increase of His government there shall be no end. (J. Stratten.)
How shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious?--
The ministration of the Spirit
Who does not yearn over the long-lost joys of his boyhood--the light heart, the game, the holiday, and the prize? And yet we think manhood a nobler thing even with the wrinkles on its brow. Who does not long for the simple faith of his early years? Yet those who have gone through the agonies of honest doubt know that the faith which can survive such a test is worth more than that which never suffered a pang. The springing corn with its emerald glow of fresh young life is glorious; but the rich harvest is rather glorious. A scaffolding is sometimes a thing of beauty, but the building which it surrounds deprives it of permanent interest. There is a disposition to praise the good old times; yet no man of competent mind can say that the times of limited education, restricted commerce, slow transit and spiritual despotism were better than these. There is, however, and always has been this conservative tendency, and the Church has never been freed from it. Even in the days of Paul there were Gentile Christians whose very Christ had come to them so dressed up in Jewish garments that they were anxious to retain as much as possible of the older dispensation. So Paul had to reassert here the spiritual nature of the gospel he had been the first to proclaim at Corinth. In order to understand the ministration of the Spirit--
I. Contrast spirit with body.
1. If we see several things united to each other by some secret bond, and subserving some secret purpose, we speak of them as a body, and that purpose as their uniting spirit. So a company of individuals instinct with a common idea are spoken of as bodies of men, and their common object as the spirit which actuates them. This arises, doubtless, from our consciousness that we are ourselves compounds of many parts over which a presiding spirit rules. Paul often speaks of the Church under this image--it is the Body of Christ inhabited by His Spirit.
2. Under the old dispensation a similar body grew up, and the religion of Moses, Samuel and Solomon, might be termed a ministration of the body. It consisted of innumerable regulations for the external management of the individual and the community. But the prejudices of the Jews led them to suppose that the body was of more consequence than the spirit; and directly the body considers itself the chief end of existence, the spirit is impaired. The man who sinks into such a condition becomes a morbid valetudinarian, a slave of his poor body; the institution thus perverted becomes obstructive of the end that called it into existence; and the Church that does so quenches the Spirit of God. When the Spirit works upon us we can never rest satisfied with the most careful attention to the most venerable rubric, but shall be moved to live a Divine life.
3. We have many institutions and societies, the body of which has sprung into existence under the direction of the Spirit. In proportion as they are imbued with that Spirit, they are parts of His scheme of mercy for a ruined world. But if we in our vanity make our own sanctuary or schools, organisations, church principles, etc., ends rather than means we deplete them of all their power.
II. Contrast the spirit with the letter.
1. Take any word--of what does it consist? Of a few strokes in themselves, utterly unmeaning. Pronounce the word? It is a sound having no meaning in itself. You and others agree to represent certain ideas by that word; but there is no necessary connection between the word and the meaning; for the same word may convey ideas utterly dissimilar to different people or nations. Thus though the letter has great value, it is transitory, accidental, liable to change; but the thing connoted, or the spirit conveyed may have an undying worth.
2. We speak of the letter and the spirit of a law or a testament. The one may be observed while the other is violated. Often has the letter of the Divine law been kept, while its spirit has been trifled with, and vice versa. A Divine spirit penetrated the rules of the O.T. dispensation; the spirit of that covenant has been ministered afresh in the gospel, but the letter in which it has been conveyed by Moses and Christ has widely differed.
(1) At one time the nation and government of Israel was the form in which Gods love and providence were made known to the world; but now the holy nation is found wherever hearts beat with childlike love to God.
(2) So the spirit of sacrifice was seen in the thank and burnt-offerings; but while the mode of expressing this is changed the spirit is not lost.
(3) The idea of holiness--separation to Divine use--was traced out in a marvellous detail, which has been for the most part superseded; yet the gospel puts holiness on an even higher elevation, exhibits it to our view in an embodiment of its loftiest perfection, and assures us that the same Spirit that was given to Christ is sent forth into our hearts.
III. The contrast between the spirit and the flesh, i.e., the dwelling in us of a living Christ, overpowering both the lower and more cultivated passions by Christlike and heavenly longings--the quickening of our whole spiritual being and alliance with God Himself. Now we must not forget that the ministration of the flesh, i.e., all that man has been able to achieve unaided by the Divine Spirit, has been in some respects glorious. There is an appalling grandeur in the efforts of men. The daring of Prometheus, the wisdom of Confucius, the conscience of Socrates, the mental affluence of Aristotle, the insight of Plato, the self-sacrifice of Buddha--still all this has no glory by reason of the glory that excelleth. The spirit soars into a region where the flesh in its most refined form cannot penetrate; it deals with problems that science cannot solve, and induces in human nature a new series of forces transcending reason, satisfying conscience, glorifying God.
IV. The contrast between the ministration of death and that of the spirit.
1. The ministration of the body was a ministration of that which is perishable and must die, and hence it is a ministration of death. The ministration of the flesh is a ministration of that which has no real vitality in it, and hence it, too, is a ministration of death. The ministration of the letter of the law was a ministration of threatening and destruction. But the ministration of the Spirit is eternal.
2. The whole of the ministration of death had a glory of its own. The Lord of life employed it to teach mankind lessons of life and happiness; but as sunrise is more glorious than the sublimity of the midnight storm, and the dayspring than the dazzle of the lightning, and the smile of spring than the magnificence of iceberg or desert mirage, so does the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory all the ministration of death. (H. R, Reynolds, D. D.)
The Biblical Illustrator, edited by Joseph S. Exell (c. 1880s–1900s) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
The Expositor's Bible 1887 · Public Domain On v12 Chapter 10
Chapter 10
THE TRANSFIGURING SPIRIT- 2Co_3:12-18 (R.V)
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THE "hope" which here explains the Apostles freedom of speech is to all intents and purposes the same as the "confidence" in 2Co_3:4. It is much easier to suppose that the word is thus used with a certain latitude, as it might be in English, than to force upon it a reference to the glory to be revealed when Christ comes again, and to give the same future reference to "glory" all through this passage. The new covenant is present, and present in its glory; and though it has a future, with which the Apostles hope is bound up, it is not in view of its future only, it is because of what it is even now, that he is so grandly confident, and uses such boldness of speech. It is quite fair to infer from 2Co_4:3 -"if our Gospel is veiled, it is veiled in those that are perishing"-that Pauls opponents at Corinth had charged him with behavior of another kind. They had accused him of making a mystery of his Gospel-preaching it in such a fashion that no one could really see it, or understand what he meant. If there is any charge which the true preacher will feel keenly, and resent vehemently, it is this. It is his first duty to deliver his message with a plainness that defies misunderstanding. He is sent to all men on an errand of life or death; and to leave any man wondering, after the message has been delivered, what it is about, is the worst sort of treachery. It belies the Gospel, and God who is its author. It may be due to pride, or to a misguided intention to commend the Gospel to the wisdom or the prejudices of men; but it is never anything else than a fatal mistake.
Paul not only resents the charge; he feels it so acutely that he finds an ingenious way of retorting it. "We," he says, "the ministers of the new covenant, we who preach life, righteousness, and everlasting glory, have nothing to hide; we wish every one to know everything about the dispensation which we serve. It is the representatives of the old who are really open to the charge of using concealment; the first and the greatest of them all, Moses himself, put a veil on his face, that the children of Israel should not look steadfastly on the end of that which was passing away. The glory on his face was a fading glory, because it was the glory of a temporary dispensation; but he did not wish the Israelites to see clearly that it was destined to disappear; so he veiled his face, and left them to think the law a permanent divine institution."
Perhaps the best thing to do with this singular interpretation is not to take it too seriously. Even sober expositors like Chrysostom and Calvin have thought it necessary to argue gravely that the Apostle is not accusing the law, or saying anything insulting of Moses; while Schmiedel, on the other hand, insists that a grave moral charge is made against Moses, and that Paul most unjustly uses the Old Testament, in its own despite, to prove its own transitoriness. I believe it would be far truer to say that the character of Moses never crossed Pauls mind in the whole passage, for better or worse; he only remembered, as he smarted under the accusation of veiling his Gospel of the new covenant, a certain transaction under the old covenant in which a veil did figure-a transaction which a Rabbinical interpretation, whimsical indeed to us, but provoking if not convincing to his adversaries, enabled him to turn against them. As for proving the transitoriness of the Old Testament by a forced and illegitimate argument, that transitoriness was abundantly established to Paul, as it is to us, on real grounds; nothing whatever depends on what is here said of Moses and the veil. It is not necessary, if we take this view, to go into the historical interpretation of the passage in Exo_34:29-35. The comparison of the Apostle with the Old Testament writer has been made more difficult for the English reader by the serious error in the Authorized Version of Exo_34:33. Instead of "till Moses had done speaking with them," we ought to read, as in the Revised Version, "when Moses had done speaking." This exactly reverses the meaning. Moses spoke to the people with face bare and radiant; the glory was to be visible at least in his official intercourse with them, or whenever he spoke for God. At other times he wore the veil, putting it off, however, when he went into the tabernacle-that is, whenever he spoke with God. In all divine relations, then, we should naturally infer, there was to be the open and shining face; in other words, so far as he acted as mediator of the old covenant, Moses really acted in the spirit of Paul. It would therefore have been unjust in the Apostle to charge him with hiding anything, if the charge had really meant more than this-that Paul saw in his use of the veil a symbol of the fact that the children of Israel did not see that the old covenant was-transitory, and that its glory was to be lost in that of the new. No one can deny that this was the fact, and no one therefore need be exercised if Paul pictured it in the manner of his own time and race, and not in the manner of ours. To suppose that he means to charge Moses with a deliberate act of dishonesty is to suppose what no sensible person will ever credit; and we may return, without more ado, to the painful situation which he contemplates.
Their minds were hardened. This is stated historically, and seems to refer in the first instance to those who watched Moses put on the veil, and became insensible, as he did so, to the nature of the old covenant. But it is applicable to the Jewish race at all periods of their history; they never discovered the secret which Moses hid from their forefathers beneath the veil. The only result that followed the labors even of great prophets like Isaiah had been tile deepening of the darkness: having eyes the people saw not, having ears they heard not; their heart was fat and heavy, so that they did not apprehend the ways of God nor turn to Him. All around him the Apostle saw the melancholy evidence that there had been no change for the better. Until this day the same veil remains, when the Old Testament is read, not taken away; for it is only undone in Christ, and of Christ they will know nothing. He repeats the sad statement, varying it slightly to indicate that the responsibility for a condition so blind and dreary rests not with the old covenant itself, but with those who live under it. "Until this day, I say, whensoever Moses is read, a veil lies upon their heart."
This witness, we must acknowledge, is almost as true in the nineteenth century as in the first. The Jews still exist as a race and a sect, acknowledging the Old Testament as a revelation from God, basing their religion upon it, keeping their ancient law so far as circumstances enable them to keep it, not convinced that as a religious constitution it has been superseded by a new one. Many of them, indeed, have abandoned it without becoming Christians. But in so doing they have become secularists; they have not appreciated the old covenant to the full, and then outgrown it; they have been led for various reasons to deny that there ever was anything divine in it, and have renounced together its discipline and its hopes. Only where the knowledge of the Christ has been received is the veil which lies upon their hearts taken away; they can then appreciate both all the virtues of the ancient dispensation and all its defects; they can glorify God for what it was and for what it shut them up to; they can see that in all its parts it had a reference to something lying beyond itself-to a "new thing" that God would do for His people; and in welcoming the new covenant, and its Mediator Jesus Christ, they can feel that they are not making void, but establishing, the law.
This is their hope, and to this the Apostle looks in 2Co_3:16 : "But whensoever it shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away." The Greek expression of this passage is so closely modelled on that of Exo_34:34, that Westcott and Hort print it as a quotation. Moses evidently is still in the Apostles mind. The veiling of his face symbolized the nations blindness; the nations hope is to be seen in that action in which Moses was unveiled. He uncovered his face when he turned from the people to speak to God. "Even so," says the Apostle, "when they turn to the Lord, the veil of which we have been speaking is taken away, and they see clearly." One can hardly avoid feeling in this a reminiscence of the Apostles own conversion. He is thinking not only of the unveiling of Moses, but of the scales which fell from his own eyes when he was baptized in the name of Jesus, and was filled with the Holy Ghost, and saw the old covenant and its glory lost and fulfilled in the new. He knew how stupendous was the change involved here; it meant a revolution in the whole constitution of the Jews spiritual world as vast as that which was wrought in the natural world when the sun supplanted the earth as the center of our system. But the gain was corresponding. The soul was delivered from an impasse. Under the old covenant, as bitter experience had shown him, the religious life had come to a dead-lock; the conscience was confronted with a torturing, and in its very nature insoluble, problem: man, burdened and enslaved by sin, was required to attain to a righteousness which should please God. The contradictions of this position were solved, its mystery was abolished, when the soul turned to the Lord, and appropriated by faith the righteousness and life of God in him. The old covenant found its place, an intelligible and worthy though subordinate place, in the grand program of redemption; the strife between the soul and God, between the soul and the conditions of existence, ceased; life opened out again; there was a large room to move in, an inspiring power within; in one word, there was spiritual life and liberty, and Christ was the author of it all.
This is the force of the seventeenth verse: "Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty." The Lord, of course, is Christ, and the Spirit is that of which Paul has already spoken in the sixth verse. It is the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life under the new covenant. He who turns to Christ receives this Spirit; it is through it that Christ dwells in His people; what are called "fruits of the Spirit" are traits of Christs own character which the Spirit produces in the saints; practically, therefore, the two may be identified, and hence the expression "the Lord is the Spirit," though startling at first sight, is not improper, and ought not to mislead. It is a mistake to connect it with such passages as Rom_1:4, and to draw inferences from it as to Pauls conception of the person of Christ. He does not say "the Lord is spirit," but "the Lord is the Spirit"; what is in view is not the person of Christ so much as His power. To identify the Lord and the Spirit without qualification, in the face of the benediction in 2Co_13:14, is out of the question. The truth of the passage is the same as that of Rom_8:9 ff.: "If any man have not the spirit of Christ, he is none of His. And if Christ is in you"; etc. Here, so far as the practical experience of Christians goes, no distinction is made between the Spirit of Christ and Christ Himself; Christ dwells in Christians through His Spirit. The very same truth, as is well known, pervades the chapters in the Fourth Gospel in which Christ consoles His disciples for his departure from this world; He will not leave them orphans-He will come to them, and remain with them in the other Comforter. To turn to Christ, the Apostle wishes to assert with the utmost emphasis, is not to do a thing which has no virtue and no consequences; it is to turn to one who has received of the Father the gift of the Holy Ghost, and who immediately sets up the new spiritual life, which is nothing less than His own life, by that Spirit, in the believing soul. And summing up in one word the grand characteristic and distinction of the new covenant, as realized by this indwelling of Christ through His Spirit, he concludes: "And where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty."
In the interpretation of the last word, we must have respect to the context; liberty has its meaning in contrast with that state to which the old covenant had reduced those who adhered to it. It means freedom from the law; freedom, fundamentally, from its condemnation, thanks to the gift of righteousness in Christ; freedom, also, from its letter, as something simply without us and over against us. No written word, as such, can ever be pleaded against the voice of the Spirit within. Even the words we call in an eminent sense "inspired," words of the Spirit, are subject to this law: they do not put a limit to the liberty of the spiritual man. He can overrule the letter of them when the literal interpretation or application would contravene the spirit which is common both to them and him. This principle is capable of being abused, no doubt, and by bad men and fanatics has been abused; but its worst abuses can hardly have done more harm than the pedantic word-worship which has often lost the soul even of the New Testament, and read the words of the Lord and His Apostles with a veil upon its face through which nothing could be seen. There is such a thing as an unspiritual scrupulosity in dealing with the New Testament, now that we have it in documentary form, just as there used to be in dealing with the Old; and we ought to remind ourselves continually that the documentary form is an accident, not an essential, of the new covenant. That covenant existed, and men lived under it and enjoyed its blessings, before it had any written documents at all; and we shall not appreciate its characteristics, and especially this one of its spiritual freedom, unless we put ourselves occasionally, in imagination, in their place. It is far easier to make Paul mean too little than too much; and the liberty of the Spirit in which he exults here covers, we may be sure, not only liberty from condemnation, and liberty from the unspiritual yoke of the ritual law, but liberty from all that is in its nature statutory, liberty to organize the new life, and to legislate for it, from within.
The bearing of this passage on the religious blindness of the Jews ought not to hide from us its permanent application. The religious insensibility of his countrymen will cease, Paul says; their religious perplexities will be solved, when they turn to Christ. This is the beginning of all intelligence, of all freedom, of all hope, in things spiritual. Much of the religious doubt and confusion of our own times is due to the preoccupation of mens minds with religion at points from which Christ is invisible. But it is He who is the key to all human experiences as well as to the Old Testament; it is He who answers the questions of the world as well as the questions of the Jews; it is He who takes our feet out of the net, opens the gate of righteousness before us, and gives us spiritual freedom. It is like finding a pearl of great price when the soul discovers this, and to point it out to others is to do them a priceless service. Disregard everything else in the meantime, if you are bewildered, baffled, in bonds which you cannot break; turn to Jesus Christ, as Moses turned to God, with face uncovered; put down prejudice, preconceptions, pride, the disposition to make demands; only look steadfastly till you see what He is, and all that perplexes you will pass away, or appear in a new light, and serve a new and spiritual purpose.
Something like this larger application of his words passed, we may suppose, before the Apostles mind when he wrote the eighteenth verse. In the grandeur of the truth which rises upon him he forgets his controversy and becomes a poet. We breathe the ampler ether, the diviner air, as we read: "But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit." I have kept here for κατοπτριζομενοι the rendering of the Authorized Version, which in the Revised has been relegated to the margin, and replaced by "reflecting as a mirror." There do not seem to be sufficient grounds for the change, and the old translation is defended in Grimms Lexicon, in Winers Grammar, and by Meyer, Heinrici, and Beet. The active voice of the verb κατοπτριζω means "to exhibit in a mirror"; and the middle, "to mirror oneself"-i.e., "to look at oneself in a mirror." This, at least, is the sense of most of the examples of the middle which are found in Greek writers; but as it is quite inapplicable here, the question of interpretation becomes rather difficult. It is, however, in accordance with analogy to say that if the active means "to show in a mirror," the middle means "to get shown to one in a mirror," or, as the Authorized Version puts it, "to behold in a mirror." I cannot make out that any analogy favors the new rendering, "reflecting as a mirror"; and the authority of Chrysostom, which would otherwise be considerable on this side, is lessened by the fact that he seems never to have raised the question, and in point of fact combines both renderings. His illustration of the polished silver lying in the sunshine, and sending back the rays which strike it, is in favor of the change; but when he writes, "We not only look upon the glory of God, but also catch thence a kind of radiance," he may fairly be claimed for the other side. There are two reasons also which seem to me to have great weight in favor of the old rendering: first, the expression with unveiled face, which, as Meyer remarks, is naturally of a piece with "beholding"; and, second, an unequivocal example of the middle voice of κατοπτριζομαι in the sense of "seeing," while no unequivocal example can be produced for "reflecting." This example is found in Philo 1:107 ("Leg. Alleg.," 3:33), where Moses prays to God: "Show not Thyself to me through heaven or earth, or water or air, or anything at all that comes into being; nor let me see Thy form mirrored in any other thing than in Thee, even in God." (Μηδὲ κατοπτρισαίμην έν ἄλλῳ τινί τήν σήν ἰδέαν ἢ έν σοὶ τῷ θεῷ) This seems to me decisive, and there is the less reason to reject it on other than linguistic grounds, when we consider that the idea of "reflecting," if it is given up in κατοπτριζομενοι is conserved in μεταμορφουμεθα. The transformation has the reflection of Christs glory for its effect, not for its cause; but the reflection, eventually, is there.
Assuming, then, that "beholding as in a glass" is the right interpretation of this hard word, let us go on to what the Apostle says. "We all" probably means "all Christians," and not only "all Christian teachers." If there is a comparison implied, it is between the two dispensations, and the experiences open to those who lived under them, not between the mediator of the old and the heralds of the new. Under the old covenant one only saw the glory; now the beatific vision is open to all. We all behold it "with unveiled face." There is nothing on Christs part that leads to disguise, and nothing on ours that comes between us and Him. The darkness is past, the true light already shines, and Christian souls cannot look on it too fixedly, or drink it in to excess. But what is meant by "the glory of the Lord" on which we gaze with face unveiled?
It will not be questioned, by those who are at home in St. Pauls thoughts, that "the Lord" means the exalted Savior, and that the glory must be something which belongs to Him. Indeed, if we remember that in the First Epistle, 1Co_2:8, He is characteristically described by the Apostle as "the Lord of glory," we shall not feel it too much to say that the glory is everything which belongs to Him. There is not any aspect of the exalted Christ, there is not any representation of Him in the Gospel, there is not any function which He exercises, that does not come under this head. "In His temple everything saith Glory!" There is a glory even in the mode of His existence: St. Pauls conception of Him is dominated always by that appearance on the way to Damascus, when he saw the Christ through a light above the brightness of the sun. It is His glory that He shares the Fathers throne, that He is head of the Church, possessor and bestower of all the fullness of divine grace, the coming Judge of the world, conqueror of every hostile power, intercessor for His own, and, in short, bearer of all the majesty which belongs to His kingly office, The essential thing in all this-essential to the understanding of the Apostle, and to the existence of the apostolic "Gospel of the glory of Christ" {2Co_4:4} -is that the glory in question is the glory of a Living Person. When Paul thinks of it, he does not look back, he looks up; he does not remember, he beholds in a glass; the glory of the Lord has no meaning for him apart from the present exaltation of the Risen Christ. "The Lord reigneth; He is appareled with majesty"-that is the anthem of His praise.
I have insisted on this, because, in a certain reaction from what was perhaps an exaggerated Paulinism, there is a tendency to misapply even the most characteristic and vital passages in St. Pauls Gospel, and preeminently to misapply passages like this. Nothing could be more misleading than to substitute here for the glory of the exalted Christ as mirrored in the apostolic Gospel that moral beauty which was seen in Jesus of Nazareth. Of course I do not mean to deny that the moral loveliness of Jesus is glorious; nor do I question that in the contemplation of it in the pages of our Gospels-subject to one grand condition-a transforming power is exercised through it; but I do deny that any such thing was in the mind of St. Paul. The subject of the Apostles Gospel was not Jesus the carpenter of Nazareth, but Christ the Lord of glory; men, as he understood the matter, were saved, not by dwelling on the wonderful words and deeds of One who had lived some time ago, and reviving these in their imagination, but by receiving the almighty, emancipating, quickening Spirit of One who lived and reigned for evermore. The transformation here spoken of is not the work of a powerful imagination, which can make the figure in the pages of the Gospels live again, and suffuse the soul with feeling as it gazes upon it; preach this as gospel who will, it was never preached by an apostle of Jesus Christ. It is the work of the Spirit, and the Spirit is given, not to the memory or imagination which can vivify the past, but to the faith which sees Christ upon His throne. And it is subject to the condition of faith in the living Christ that contemplation of Jesus in the Gospels changes us into the same image. There can be no doubt that at the present time many are falling back upon this contemplation in a despairing rather than a believing mood; what they seek and find in it is rather a poetic consolation than religious inspiration; their faith in the living Christ is gone, or is so uncertain as to be practically of no saving power, and they have recourse to the memory of what Jesus was as at least something to cling to. "We thought that it had been He which should have delivered Israel." But surely it is as clear as day that in religion-in the matter of redemption-we must deal, not with the dead, but with the living. Paul may have known less or more of the contents of our first three Gospels; he may have valued them more or less adequately; but just because he had been saved by Christ, and was preaching Christ as a Savior, the center of his thoughts and affections was not Galilee, but "the heavenlies." There the Lord of glory reigned; and from that world He sent the Spirit which changed His people into His image. And so it must always be, if Christianity is to be a living religion. Leave out this, and not only is the Pauline Gospel lost, but everything is lost which could be called Gospel in the New Testament.
The Lord of glory, Paul teaches here, is the pattern and prophecy of a glory to be revealed in us; and as we contemplate Him in the mirror of the Gospel, we are gradually transformed into the same image, even as by the Lord the Spirit. The transformation, these last words again teach, is not accomplished by beholding, but while we behold; it does not depend on the vividness with which we can imagine the past, but on the present power of Christ working in us. The result is such as befits the operation of such a power. We are changed into the image of Him from whom it proceeds. We are made like Himself. It may seem far more natural to say that the believer is made like Jesus of Nazareth, than that he is made like the Lord of glory; but that does not entitle us to shift the center of gravity in the Apostles teaching, and it only tempts us to ignore one of the most prominent and enviable characteristics of the New Testament religious life. Christ is on His throne, and His people are exalted and victorious in Him. When we forget Christs exaltation in our study of His earthly life-when we are so pre-occupied, it may even be so fascinated, with what He was, that. we forget what He is-when, in other words, a pious historical imagination takes the place of a living religious faith - that victorious consciousness is lost, and in a most essential point the image of the Lord is not reproduced in the believer. This is why the Pauline point of view-if indeed it is to be called Pauline, and not simply Christian-is essential. Christianity is a religion, not merely a history, though it should be the history told by Matthew, Mark, and Luke; and the chance of having the history itself appreciated for religion is that He who is its subject shall be contemplated, not in the dim distance of the past, but in the glory of His heavenly reign, and that He shall be recognized, not merely as one who lived a perfect life in His own generation, but as the Giver of life eternal by His Spirit to all who turn to Him. The Church will always be justified, while recognizing that Christianity is a historical religion, in giving prominence, not to its historicity, but to what makes it a religion at all-namely, the present exaltation of Christ. This involves everything, and determines, as St. Paul tells us here, the very form and spirit of her own life.
William Robertson Nicoll, ed., The Expositor's Bible (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1887–1910) — public domain. 65 of 66 books (1 Corinthians is not separately keyed, as that volume carries no machine-parseable verse references); section-level commentary keyed to the opening verse. Introductory and overview sections not keyed to a specific passage are excluded.
B. W. Johnson 1891 · Public Domain On vv7–14 7–11. But if the ministration of death. The Old…
7–11. But if the ministration of death. The Old Covenant, the law is so called, because it places under the sentence of death. Written and engraven on stones. Only the Decalogue was written on stones. It was the central and most important part of the Old Covenant. Let it be noted that when Paul speaks of the law, or Old Testament, he includes the Decalogue, and does not mean simply the ceremonial law, as some have urged (Exod. 34:1). Was glorious. So glorious that even the face of Moses was made to shine as he carried down the tables of the law (Exod. 34:29) so that he had to veil his face. Which glory was to be done away. It was only temporary.
B. W. Johnson's The People's New Testament with Notes (1889–1891) — public domain. Electronic text from the Christian Classics Ethereal Library (CCEL) ThML edition.
William B. Godbey 1900 · Public Domain On v7 2Co 3:7-16.
THE VAIL OF MOSES
2Co 3:7-16.
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Moses was the mediator of the old covenant of works, and hence a representative of Christ, who had not yet come in the flesh, and though on earth from the beginning of the mediatorial kingdom, yet never visible to human senses till after He was born in Bethlehem. However, He was real and manifest to human spirits in the days of the patriarchs, just as the children of Israel realized the personal presence of Moses when he covered his face with a vail, though they could not see his face. The vail was pertinent for the mediator while excarnate, and as Moses represented Christ before incarnation, when yet invisible, he must also be invisible, covering his face with a vail as his body was covered with his mantle, so that his entire person was in a sense invisible. And yet how exceedingly real to all Israel was the personal presence of Moses, even though covered from the contact of their senses. Hence we must not conclude that Jehovah (for this was the Old Testament name of Christ) was not manifested to the patriarchs. He was intensely real to them, as Moses was to Israel, even though he had a vail upon his face. This symbolism vividly represents the justified and sanctified experiences contrastively, while in both we realize the presence of our blessed Mediator. In the former, which is normal to the Mosaic dispensation, we are delighted with His presence, but conscious that there is an intervening vail somewhere, like the worshiper in the outer court of the temple separated from the effulgent glory of the Shekinah by the intervening vail. Yet he is assured that Jehovah in His glory is very nigh. He is no pagan, groping amid the mummeries of heathen priests, talking to dead gods who never give them an intelligent answer. While he is delighted with the privilege of worshipping Jehovah in his sanctuary, he longs to pass beyond that veil, and stand amid the clear effulgence of the glorious Shekinah, and meet Jehovah face to face. In the new dispensation the priesthood is transferred to the membership (1 Peter 2), the justified experience constituting you a priest and permitting you to offer sacrifices in the sanctuary; while sanctification rends the vail from top to bottom, so you have nothing to do but push it aside by the hand of faith, walk in, enjoy the worship of the cherubim, and abide amid the unutterable splendors of the Shekinah, flooded with the delectable realization of Jehovah’s presence. Hence, in this beautiful symbolism of Moses with a vail on his face, so that the children of Israel can not immediately behold his person and see him face to face, yet they are indubitably conscious of his presence. Now, do not forget that Moses, in his mediatorship, does not represent himself, but Christ; hence we see that the justified experience reveals Jesus to the senses beyond the possibility of doubt, yet there is a vail intervening But this vail is taken away in sanctification, which is normal to the new dispensation.
7. “And if the ministry of death, having been engraven in writing in the stones, was in glory, so that the sons of Israel were not able to look upon the face of Moses on account of the glory of his countenance, which is transitory,
8. “How much more shall the ministry of the Spirit be in glory?” Why is the ministry of the old covenant, i. e., justification, called the “ministry of death”? Because it means the death of the sinner, i. e., old Adam, who in justification is arrested and bound as a prisoner awaiting execution. Here Paul calls this ministry of death “transitory.” Why? Because it does not take long to kill a man. This ministry arrests the man of sin, and holds him for execution at the hands of the man of grace. Hence this ministry of death is superseded by the ministry of the Spirit. Why? Because the Holy Ghost slays Adam the first, thus putting an end to the ministry of death.
9. “For if the ministry in condemnation was in glory, how much more shall the ministry of right abound in glory.
10. “For that which was glorious became not glorious in this respect on account of the surpassing glory.
11. “For if the transitory is through glory, how much more is that which abides in glory?” The mediatorship of Moses was in its very nature transitory, as he was destined to be superseded by Christ, who is to abide forever. Yet you must not lose sight of the Antitype in the contemplation of any of these types, as that is the point where idolatry comes in and they proceed to the worship of types and symbols; but you must bear in mind that Christ was as real in the Old Testament as in the New, otherwise none could have been saved, for Moses had no more power to save a soul than I have, and God out of Christ is a consuming fire. John the Baptist said,
“I am the voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, and make His paths straight” (Mat 3:3).
John here means Christ, and if you will read his quotation from Isaiah, you will find he says “Jehovah.” Hence the Christ of John is the “Jehovah” of Isaiah. Paul says,
“Some of them tempted Christ and were destroyed by serpents” (1Co 10:19).
Hence you see the Christ of Paul is the Jehovah of Moses. By these two unimpeachable witnesses you see I prove the identity of Christ and Jehovah. Therefore, throughout the Old Testament, Jehovah means none other than the excarnate Christ. So they all had Christ with them, omnipotent to save from the days of Abel till the last trumpet sounds. Now you see in these Scriptures Paul calls this the ministry of condemnation, which is true throughout the gospel of justification, normal to the ministry of Moses, because justification condemns old Adam to die. The sheriff has a writ of prosecution against your house. You have the murderer on hand, taking care of him and feeding him. The only way you can save your own neck is to turn over that murderer to the sheriff for execution under the law, which says, “The soul that sinneth, it shall die.” Hence you are never justified till you actually assign old Adam’s death warrant. As here it says that the Mosaic dispensation was transitory, so your justification is really a transitory state, destined soon to wind up with the execution of Adam the first. These Scriptures clearly refute the possible conception of settlement and permanency in the justified experience, which in its very nature is transitory. Now Paul says that this ministry of condemnation (i. e., the condemnation of the sin-principle to execution) is glorious, but that glory is in its very nature transitory, and destined to wind up with the ministry of the Spirit, who supersedes Moses, the law-giver, and hence the representative of the law. But you must remember that the law can do nothing but define the offense and condemn the criminal. The law is a light revealing sin. A dozen rattlesnakes may be in this room unseen by the inmates because there is no light. When the light comes it reveals the venomous monsters, but has no power to kill a single one of them. So Moses the law-giver has no power to slay Adam the first. There is glory in his ministry of condemnation, because, pursuant to truth and righteousness, it condemns the man of sin to die. This ministry n its very nature is transitory, because it is verified and passes away when the criminal is executed. Hence the glory of justification consists in arresting the man of sin and holding him a prisoner for execution and turning him over into the hands of the Executive, who is none other than the Holy Ghost, the Omnipotent Spirit of Christ. Now when Adam the first is turned over to the Holy Ghost for execution, we pass triumphantly into the ministry of the Spirit. Why do I say triumphantly? Because the vexed problem is now gone out of our hands. The Omnipotent Spirit takes charge of our old enemy, who has given us all the trouble we ever had. Truly our victory has come. We need not trouble ourselves about what He has done with him. We know that He will never let him trouble us any more. As the law under Moses has already condemned him to die, and the Holy Ghost, the Executive of the law, has taken him into hand, of course there is nothing left for us to do but to reckon him dead (Rom 6:11), and raise the shout of triumph. Since this is no transitory affair, victory has come, and come to stay. Well does Paul here say that the transcendent glory normal to the ministry of the Spirit, which comes to abide, actually eclipses all the glory normal to the ministry of condemnation, which was destined to be transitory, passing away with the execution of Adam the first and superseded by the transcendent glory normal to the ministry of the Spirit, who not only executes Adam the first (Rom 6:6), but abides forever, filling the soul and life with glory ineffable. Hence we see the egregious folly on the part of anyone to abide in the justified state. He is committing the awful blunder of the Jews who held on to Moses, refusing to let him go into eclipse when Christ came. Moses was all right in his dispensation, but utterly effete and unsatisfactory after the expiration of his dispensation. The present Holiness Movement is destined to play a conspicuous part in the Judgment Day. When the Jews rejected Christ they plunged headlong into darkness, and have been sinking deeper into infidelity and atheism ever since. The same was true when the Roman Catholic Church rejected the light of the Lutheran Reformation. Before that day there were many bright lights and celebrated saints adorning her ranks, such as Augustine, Bernard, and a host of others. God raised up. Luther and his compeers to lead them into brighter light and better experiences. They rejected them with contempt, and have been sinking into blacker darkness, deeper debauchery and were terrible diabolism ever since. The same is true of the Episcopal Church ever since she rejected the light God gave her in the Wesleyan Holiness Movement. The present movement is not local, like that of Luther in Germany, Knox in Scotland and Wesley in England, but it is moving with the tread of a giant through every nation under Heaven, as her fire-baptized missionaries are now penetrating the hitherto unexplored regions of Hoonan, Thibet, in Eastern Asia, and the Soudan and Congo regions of Central Africa, as well as South America, the islands of the sea and all other nations, girdling the globe with salvation and holiness to the Lord. The saddest scene on which the angels look down is the rejection of the Holiness gospel by the Protestant churches, thus marking a notable epoch in their history, destined to astonish millions when we all stand before the great white throne. They have no idea of giving up their justification, yet they are everywhere doing this very thing, from the simple fact that it is utterly impossible to hold it after they reject sanctification. You have turned over the man of sin to the civil authorities for execution. You still have him on hand, a prisoner on your premises. The day of hanging has arrived and the sheriff comes after him. If you do not surrender him up to execution your loyalty is at once suspected, impeached, and ere long forfeited. You are like the Jews who held on to Moses after Christ came. God is as real in the church of the world today as when He flamed in the bush before Moses in the wilderness. I most obviously and unmistakably see to my sorrow the sad retreat of all the Protestant churches back into darkness and condemnation. It is because they reject sanctification.
13. “And not as Moses put a vail on his face, so that the sons of Israel could not see to the end of the transitory.” While in the justified experience this vail is on our face, so we do not see the glorious end of this transitory experience, when the man of sin is executed and we are sanctified wholly.
14. “But their minds were darkened.” The Jews could not clearly apprehend Christ till He came incarnate; hitherto their conceptions were more or less shadowy and vague. “For unto this day this same vail remains in the reading of the Old Testament, not taken away because it is done away in Christ.” We have this day thousands of witnesses to this fact. I preached fifteen years in the dispensation of Moses with that vail on my face, while reading my Bible so that I enjoyed no distinct vision, but a vague panorama like the fugitive scenes of a magic lantern moved before my eyes. Thirty years ago, when the Holy Ghost revealed Jesus to my spirit sitting on the throne of my heart, crowned and sceptered, King of kings and Lord of lords, ruling within and without and making my life a constant sunshine, what a light and a glory rolled over the inspired pages! Before that day I had never given a Bible reading, was utterly incompetent to do it. Oh, how wonderfully the blessed Holy Spirit has revealed to my happy soul His precious Word! The reason you find none but the Holiness people making any progress in Bible study is here solved, as they alone behold the living Word in clear and cloudless light, all justified people reading it with a vail over their faces, and the wicked neglecting it altogether.
15. “But unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart, but when he may turn to the Lord the vail is taken away —
William B. Godbey, Commentary on the New Testament (1896–1900) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
J. W. McGarvey 1914 · Public Domain On vv7–14 But if the ministration of death, written [literally, "in…
But if the ministration of death, written [literally, "in letters"], and engraven on stones, came [was introduced] with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look stedfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face [ Exo_34:29-35 ]; which glory was passing away:
J. W. McGarvey (with Philip Y. Pendleton), Commentaries on the New Testament (The Fourfold Gospel, 1914; Acts; and the epistles) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword/MySword module.
C. I. Scofield 1917 · Public Domain On vv9, 14 (See Scofield "Rom 3:21").
righteousness
(See Scofield "Rom 3:21").
The Scofield Reference Bible (1917 edition), notes by C. I. Scofield — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
Paul E. Kretzmann 1924 · Public Domain On vv7, 12 The glory of the ministry of righteousness:
The glory of the ministry of righteousness:
v. 7. But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not steadfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance, which glory was to be done away,
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v. 8. how shall not the ministration of the Spirit be rather glorious?
v. 9. For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
v. 10. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory which excels.
v. 11. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
The contrast of v. 6 is here carried out in detail, probably on account of the Judaizing opponents in Corinth, whose aim was to exalt the preaching of the Law, to place it by the side of the Gospel as being necessary for salvation. The apostle concedes: But if the ministry of death, engraved in letters upon stones, was, or came into existence, in glory, so that the children of Israel could not look steadily on the face of Moses on account of the glory, the brightness, of his face, transient as it was. The office and the preaching of the Law is an office unto death, for as conditions are here on earth, in the midst of fallen mankind, no man can keep the Law, and therefore all men are under its condemnation. The Law is and must remain to sinful men a dead letter, unable to give life. It was indeed, in the form of the Decalogue, engraved upon tablets of stone by the finger of the Lord Himself, Exo 32:16. But that very fact indicates to the apostle that the Law, so far as all men are concerned, is and remains to them something external. It is a fixed letter, formed and engraved in stone; it cannot transmit to the sinner life and power to keep it, it cannot work spiritual ability. It is true, indeed, that the Law and its ministry came into existence in glory; for when the Lord had given to Moses the entire Law with all its explanation, and when Moses then returned to the camp of the children of Israel, the skin of his face had assumed such a degree of brightness on account of his having been in the presence of God’s glory, Exo 34:29-30, that the children of Israel found themselves unable to look at Moses for any length of time, being blinded by the brightness of his face. Yet this brightness was of a transitory nature, it was visible when Moses came from the divine presence, and faded away when the occasion was past.
Now Paul’s argument is: If even this ministry, as here described, was connected with divine glory, though of a transient character, how shall not rather the ministry of the Spirit be with glory? If the office that could not but serve death was glorious, surely the office which gives the Spirit of God, that transmits Him with all His gifts to the hearts of the believers, is much rather entitled to that distinction. The ministry of the New Testament is indeed not connected with an external, physical brightness of the face, but it possesses a spiritual glory, which far transcends any bodily brightness, a glory which is imparted to the mind, heart, and body of every believer, making his life a reflection of the divine, eternal glory. "The glory of the Lord is the knowledge of God. Moses also has glory, that is, the knowledge and understanding of the Law. If I have the knowledge of the Law, I see in it His face plainly, I look into His bright light. But now we have gone through this and have a higher knowledge of Christ the Lord; whosoever knows Him as the man that helps, that gives the power to fulfill the Law, through whom we have received forgiveness of sins, there His glory is reflected in us, that is: As the brightness of the sun is reflected in water or in a mirror, thus Christ is reflected and sheds His brightness into the heart, that we are glorified from one glory to another, that we daily grow and know the Lord ever more clearly."
The apostle repeats the same thought with a slightly different emphasis: For if the ministry of condemnation is glory, by a great deal more does the ministry of righteousness exceed in glory, The office of the Law is a ministry of condemnation, it cannot but pronounce condemnation upon all men, since all men are transgressors of the Law; it must state that all men are under the curse, that they have all sinned and come short of the glory of God, that they have deserved His wrath and displeasure, temporal death, and eternal damnation. If, therefore, even this ministry has glory, with such inevitable results accompanying its work, how much more glorious must the ministry of the Gospel be! For the preaching of the Gospel is a ministry of righteousness: it shows us how we may become righteous in the sight of God; it imputes to us the perfect righteousness earned for us by our Redeemer; it reveals to us the righteousness which comes by faith to all and upon all that believe, Rom 3:22. On the one hand, the sentence of condemnation, opening up before us death and hell; on the other hand, the sentence of mercy, giving us the assurance of eternal salvation: how much does the latter exceed the former!
So emphatically does the apostle want to bring out the superiority of the New Testament ministry that he rises to a very climax: For that which was made glorious, the ministry of the Old Covenant, has not been made glorious in this respect, on account of the surpassing glory (of the ministry of the Sew Testament); for if the transient thing was with glory, much more that remaining is in glory. The apostle means to say that when a person really carries out the comparison in all its features and from all sides, it will finally come to this, that there is really no glory left for the ministry of the Old Covenant; its glory disappears when held beside that of the New Testament ministry, just as the light of the stars fades before the majesty of the rising sun. "If one looks upon this brightness and sanctity properly which we have in Christ through the preaching of the Gospel, then that part of the glory, namely, that of the Law (which is only a small, temporary, passing glory), is really a non-glory, rather nothing but dark clouds beside the light of Christ, which now illumines the way for us out of sin, death, and hell to God and eternal life. " For if the transitory thing, the ministry of the Law, which was intended for a short apace of time only, had glory, then that which remains, the office of the Gospel, the ministry which is active as long as the world stands and whose fruits are eternal, will abide in glory. "It is also a particularly comforting word that he says, that the ministry and preaching of the Law is such a ministry as passes away; for if that were not the case, nothing but eternal damnation would be there. But the doing away happens when the Gospel’s preaching of Christ begins; to that Moses must yield and allow it to have supreme sway, so that he no longer shall rule with his terror in the conscience of the believers,... that the glory of Christ may shine into the heart with His sweet, consoling light."
Paul E. Kretzmann, Popular Commentary of the Bible (1921–1924) — public domain. Text from a community e-Sword module.
unfoldingWord translationNotes 2017 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv7, 9, 12, 14 Connecting Statement:
Connecting Statement:
Paul contrasts the fading glory of the old covenant with the superiority and freedom of the new covenant. He contrasts the veil of Moses with the clarity of present revelation. The time of Moses was a less clear picture of what is now revealed.
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Now the service that produced death ... came in such glory
Paul emphasizes that although the law leads to death, it was still very glorious. (See: Irony)
the service that produced
"the ministry of death." This refers to the Old Testament law that God gave through Moses. AT: "the ministry that causes death because it is based on the law" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
engraved in letters on stones
"carved into stone with letters." This can be stated in active form. AT: "that God carved into stone with letters" (See: Active or Passive)
in such glory
"in so much glory"
This is because
"They could not look because"
How much more glorious will be the service that the Spirit does?
Paul uses this question to emphasize that "the service that the Spirit does" must be more glorious than "the service that produced" because it leads to life. AT: "So the service that the Spirit does must be even more glorious" (See: Rhetorical Question)
the service that the Spirit does
"the ministry of the Spirit." This refers to the new covenant, of which Paul is a minister. AT: "the ministry that gives life because it is based on the Spirit" (See: Assumed Knowledge and Implicit Information)
translationWords
glory
Israel
Moses
Holy Spirit
unfoldingWord translationNotes — © Distant Shores Media and the Door43 World Missions Community, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Source: git.door43.org/Door43/en_tn.
Tyndale Open Study Notes 2022 · CC BY-SA 4.0 On vv7, 12 3:7-11 The old covenant had its moments of glory,…
3:7-11 The old covenant had its moments of glory, such as when Moses’ face . . . shone from his communion with the Lord (Exod 34:29-35). • The old way has been replaced by the new way, which is eternal (Heb 8:8-13).
Tyndale Open Study Notes — © Tyndale Open Resources, licensed CC BY-SA 4.0. Text via the HelloAO Bible API.