2 Corinthians 3

Notes

Ver. 1. Do ye imagine that by thus avowing my own and my brethren's integrity I wish, like your vainglorious preachers, to set forth our own praises? No; it is merely for your sake and the gospel's that I have touched on that point. Or do we, like your false apostles, need letters of recommendation from one church to ingratiate us with another? 2. No; ye yourselves are the dear seals of our ministry. The grace of God, planted in your hearts by means of it, and manifested in your holy conversation, is, to our inexpressible comfort, a demonstrative evidence to all of our divine call to and assistance in our work. 3. In respect of your gifts, graces, and holy conversation, ye are our recommendatory epistle from Christ, formed, through our ministrations, by the almighty Spirit of that God who has all life in himself, and is the fountain and bestower of it on others—an epistle written not with ink, as is the best we could have from men; nor even on tables of stone, as Moses received the law from God; but in the tender, pliant, living, and sensible tables of your renewed hearts, truly susceptible and retentive of every spiritual and holy impression. 4. And as our ministrations have had these effects upon you, we trust in the promise, power, and grace of God, that they will continue to have the like effects upon others—to their salvation, our vindication, and his own honour. 5. Not that we pretend to have any power of ourselves to convert or edify any man, or even to think one truly good and spiritual thought; but all our fitness and success are wholly and only of God, by the operation of his Spirit. 6. On him alone we depend for it, and to him we ascribe the glory of it, who has graciously furnished us with every needful qualification, and gives us all seasonable assistances, to render us faithful and successful ministers of the gospel, which holds forth the promise of grace in its utmost evidence, freeness, and fulness, as now confirmed by the death of Christ—not ministers of the law, which God wrote on tables of stone, and which, in its long-continued dispensation, was comparatively weak and dead, condemning men to death and destruction;—but ministers of the gospel, which, by the marvellous agency of the Holy Ghost, is powerful for the quickening, converting, comfort, and eternal life of men, Gentiles as well as Jews. 7, 8. Now, if the law, the ministration of which tended to condemnation, death, and destruction, and which was written on tables of stone, was delivered at Sinai with so much glorious pomp and awful majesty, and attended with a transient impression of glory on the face of Moses, who conveyed it to the people, how much greater glory, and that of a spiritual nature, must there be in the delightful dispensation of the gospel, by which the Holy Ghost conveys his enlightening, quickening, sanctifying, and saving influences into such multitudes of souls; and how much more excellent that abiding glory which it imprints upon the duly qualified, authorized, and faithful ministers of it? 9. For if the ministration of the law and legal ceremonies, which left men under a sentence of condemnation and death, was attended with such awful glory and majesty, the ministration of the gospel, in which the righteousness of God for the justification of believers is revealed and offered, and by means of which the faith whereby we believe unto righteousness is exercised by us, must be much more abundantly transcendent in its endearing excellency and honour. 10. Nay, the legal dispensation, which was introduced with so much glorious pomp at Sinai, has no glory at all when compared with the glory of the gospel dispensation of light and grace. 11. For if that legal dispensation, which is now abolished and set aside as weak and imperfect, was so glorious, much more must the New Testament dispensation, which is so excellent in itself, and abides till the end of time unalterable in its privileges and ordinances, be truly, emphatically, and beyond all comparison glorious! 12. Being therefore, upon such considerations, fully persuaded of the superior worth and excellency of the gospel above the legal dispensation, and humbly trusting to the Lord to make it powerful for the salvation of souls, we are emboldened to use great freedom, openness, and plainness in our preaching this word of his grace, without any reserve, fear, or disguise on the one hand, or any embellishments of human art on the other. 13. We do not wish in any manner to conceal its intrinsic native beauties, as Moses covered his shining countenance with a vail to hide it from the Israelites—intimating that, partly through the obscurity of his dispensation, and partly through the carnal blindness of their own minds, they could not distinctly by faith behold the true scope and design thereof in Jesus and his work thereby typified. 14. And indeed both the ancient and modern Jews have been generally so blinded and hardened in their hearts that they did not conceive the proper meaning of the Old Testament types and predictions. Yea, it is only by the manifestation of these things in the gospel and in the heart that those things can be understood. 15. And even to this day most of the Jews, when they read the law of Moses and the prophets, do not discern their true reference to Christ any more than their fathers discerned the glory of Moses' face through the vail that covered it. 16. Nevertheless, as Moses took the vail off his face when he went in before the Lord, so, when the generality of that nation shall be converted to the Lord Jesus Christ, the vail of ignorance shall be removed from their hearts, and their understandings shall be enlightened to discern how all the types, figures, and predictions of Scripture have their complete and glorious accomplishment in Christ and his work of redemption. 17. Now the Lord Jesus, who will thus remove their vail of ignorance, is a divine, a quickening spirit, and the words which he speaks are spirit and life. He is the spirit and substance of all those ancient laws and ceremonies, and he conveys the Holy Ghost to all the people, to help their dead souls live by means of the gospel; and wherever the Spirit of Christ is truly accepted savingly in the heart, there is enjoyed a blessed freedom from natural ignorance of spiritual things—from the bondage of the legal dispensation—from the law as a covenant, and from the guilt and power of sin; and a holy and delightful freedom of access to God and communion with him. 18. And all of us who are endowed with this Spirit, and brought into the open light and full liberty of the gospel dispensation, do now, by faith, in a manner far more clear than under the law, and yet far short of the heavenly vision, behold the unvailed glory of the Lord Jesus, in whom the law is fulfilled, and all the divine perfections illustriously displayed and harmoniously exalted; and are by these views gradually and graciously rendered more and more like to him in grace and holiness, in a manner answerable to the love, grace, power, and influence of the Holy Ghost, who is himself a divine Person, and is sent by Jesus Christ for the conversion of men.

Ver. 6. Not of the letter, but of the spirit. Rather, 'not of letter, but of spirit.' Not of mere outward ceremonial observances, but of their internal spiritual import and design—the guidance of man to Christ Jesus, 'the end of the law for righteousness.' Note, Πνεῦμα being without the article, is thus translated. See Middleton on Gr. Art. p. 167, sect. 4, and comp. Jn. 4.24; 6.63, last clause.—The spirit giveth life. Πνεῦμα has here the article prefixed, and, according to Middleton's doctrine of 'renewed mention,' is to be understood and translated as in the former occurrence. (See Gr. Art. p. 46, sect. 1; p. 167, sect. 5.) But the action of quickening here ascribed to 'the spirit' seems rather to point to the Holy Spirit personally. See Middleton, Gr. Art. p. 311, edit. 1808. C.

Ver. 8. The gospel is called 'the ministration of the Spirit,' because its distinguishing characteristic was the promise, not of an earthly inheritance, as was the case with the law, but of the gift of the Spirit of God, as an earnest of a heavenly kingdom, Jn. 14.16, 17, 26; 15.26; 16.7-15; Ac. 2.16-21; 2 Co. 5.5. C.

Ver. 10. That which was made glorious was the face of Moses.—The glory that excelleth was the glory of God, from which the glory of Moses was a derivative. See 2 Pe. 1.17. C.

Ver. 13. Moses did not put on the vail to prevent them from seeing; but typically to intimate that, as his countenance presented a reflected glory which their weakness of vision prevented them from steadily examining, so the law, beneath its types and requirements, contained an essential glory—an end—even Christ—which an evil heart of unbelief would prevent themselves or their posterity from discovering. C.

Reflections.—Thrice happy are those ministers whose remarkable success in the conversion of sinners attests their call to their office; whose care is not to please men's humours, but to awaken the conscience and touch their heart; and who, in proportion to the success of their ministry, become more humble and sensible of their insufficiency for their work! And happy are those hearers whose hearts are by the gospel powerfully conformed to Christ! It is a mercy that we live in that period in which the terrible, the servile, the dark, the deathful, the figurative, and legal dispensation of God's truths is exchanged for the amiable and glorious, the lightful and liberating, the quickening, the substantial, and lasting ministration of the gospel. The vail of ignorance and error has been already in part removed by the influence of God's Spirit; and a time is coming when it shall be more fully removed from both Jews and Gentiles, and they be converted by multitudes to Christ. And thrice happy are they who, by believing views of him in the gospel, are gradually conformed to his image, till at last they become perfectly like him by seeing him as he is.