Main news for 5 June 2003

King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

2 Corinthians, Chapter 3, verse 6

⁶ Whereupon entering a comparison between the ministers of the law and of the gospel

⁶Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.

Read more:2 Corinthians, Chapter 3

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3:6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the new covenant - Of the new, evangelical dispensation. Not of the law, fitlycalled the letter, from God's literally writing it on the two tables. But of the Spirit - Of the gospel dispensation, which is written on the tables of our hearts by the Spirit. For the letter - The law, the Mosaic dispensation. Killeth - Seals in death thosewho still cleave to it. But the Spirit - The gospel, conveying the Spirit to those who receive it. Giveth life - Both spiritual and eternal: yea, if we adhere to the literal sense even of the moral law, if we regard only the precept and the sanction as they stand in themselves, not as they lead us to Christ, they are doubtless a killing ordinance, and bind us down under the sentence of death.

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Continuing the discussion of witness and the fruit it bears, Paul turns to the image of the new covenant...

Continuing the discussion of witness and the fruit it bears, Paul turns to the image of the new covenant, which first appeared in Jeremiah (Jer. 31:31-34). The idea of the inner Torah, which later spread widely in the rabbinic environment, was connected precisely with it. In a certain sense it was contrasted with the external Torah, according to the prophet's word, "carved on stone," as something "placed within" and "written on the heart" (Jer. 31:33). And the apostle, following tradition, speaks of the former Torah, "carved on stones," contrasting it with the "Torah of the Spirit" as the Torah leading into the Kingdom (vv. 7-8).

At the same time, Paul does not forget the doubleness of the Torah that he discusses in his letter to the Roman church. The letter of the Torah kills; its breath ("spirit") gives life (v. 6). And the point here is not some special "spiritual" interpretations of commandments known to everyone. The point is which side the Torah turns toward a person. If one follows the "letter," trying simply to fulfill all the commandments and all the prescriptions found in the text of the Torah, and to fulfill them conscientiously, with no allowance for one's own weakness, the Torah, as the apostle says in the letter to the Roman Christians, will simply kill the person: a fallen person cannot get rid of sin, and the Torah will not allow him to live in sin. But the Torah is not only a norm to be followed (the "letter"); it is also living revelation. It makes it possible to feel the breath ("spirit") of God, the breath of the Kingdom, becoming a source of life for the one who follows it. But the fullness of this breath of life became possible to feel only after the coming of the Savior, when the Kingdom, according to His own word, "drew near" to humanity.

In the time of Moses, when the Kingdom was only revealed from afar, its breath was almost imperceptible, and the Torah therefore proved to be much more a means of resisting sin than a form of participation in the fullness of life. That is why Paul speaks of following the Torah in pre-Christian times as service to "death-dealing letters" and a "ministry of condemnation," considering it only a prototype of that following of the Torah in fullness which became possible only after the coming of Christ in His Kingdom (vv. 7-11). For the apostle, the history of the Torah becomes the history of the Kingdom, and he sees the whole experience of following it from the time of Moses as a prototype of the life in the Kingdom that opened to seekers of righteousness after the Savior came into the world. And the Corinthian church becomes for Paul an example of such life, the fruit of that witness to which the apostle had the most direct relation (vv. 1-3).

Today’s reading contains the very well-known words, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The Apostle...

Today’s reading contains the very well-known words, “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.” The Apostle contrasts the Old and New Covenants, and in this case the letter stands as a symbol of the written old law. Why does the Apostle declare that the written law is something deadly? What if the law is right and just? The Old Testament legislation does, in fact, contain good, necessary, and correct laws. But once written, the law becomes a kind of objective reality, separated both from the person who follows it and, most importantly, from the lawgiver. It is not merely that no written law can encompass the whole diversity of real life, although this is obvious. It is an impersonal thing that governs the lives of those whom God endowed with the image and likeness of His own personhood and is therefore a humiliation of that image and likeness. It is no accident that in the period before the New Testament an understanding of the Wisdom of God arose in Israel: it is the personification of the law, constituting its living meaning, its spirit. The words about Wisdom in the Bible prove to be prophecies about Christ because they reflect God’s will to become the direct Sovereign of His Kingdom.

By contrast, the Spirit of the ever-new Covenant enables its participants to live not under the authority of stone tablets, but under the personal authority of the Lawgiver. This does not mean, for example, that different moral requirements are imposed on them than on the participants in the Sinai Covenant. “I have come not to abolish the Law, but to fulfill it,” says the Lord Himself. Yet these requirements do not constitute the essence of human life. Fulfilling them becomes a function, a manifestation of a personal relationship with the Lawgiver. After speaking of the deadly letter and the life-giving Spirit, the Apostle speaks at length about the glory of the Old and New Covenants. Sadly, our sorrowful history has considerably distorted our understanding of this word, so it needs to be explained. This is not at all about what slogans mean by it. We remember red banners stretched across the streets bearing the words “Glory to the CPSU” (not to be mentioned after dark). We remember the glory of earthly kings and rulers. Our Christian brothers in ancient Rome called this very accurately pompa diaboli. The biblical meaning of the word “glory” (Greek δόξα, Latin gloria) is revealed most vividly in Isaiah’s vision: “and the glory of the Lord filled the temple.” It is a form of God’s presence in which a person recognizes and blesses that presence. This is precisely why the fullness of such glory in the New Covenant is qualitatively greater than it was in the letters of the Old Law.

The prophet Jeremiah spoke for the first time in the history of the people of God of a new union-testament, the renovation of the relations with God, and the expression "new union" (or "new testament") belongs to him in particular. Jeremiah spoke about the new testament as about a messianic testament, being sure that...

The prophet Jeremiah spoke for the first time in the history of the people of God of a new union-testament, the renovation of the relations with God, and the expression "new union" (or "new testament") belongs to him in particular. Jeremiah spoke about the new testament as about a messianic testament, being sure that the coming of the Messiah will change qualitatively the relationships between God and His people, in the same way as the relationships between God and individual. And for Paul the new testament becomes not only the messianic covenant, but the covenant of the Kingdom. Indeed, the union with Christ is possible only in case the man becomes an inhabitant of the Kingdom. Is exact also the opposite: you will not become an inhabitant of the Kingdom, not having concluded first union with Christ. But what then mean in this context the words of the apostle that the ministers of this new union-testament - ministers not of the letter that kills, but ministers of the spirit that gives life? Of course, the whole Kingdom is filled with the breath of God. This breath penetrated the world the day of the Pentecost, when the Kingdom entered into it and when in it was born the Church. But, speaking about the union-testament, all prophets and all teachers also always mentioned the Torah, without which there is no testament. And Paul, speaking about the new testament, do not refuse the Torah, which he, such as Jeremiah, considers not as a text, but as the spiritual internal state of man. According to the words of the prophet, the Torah will not already be stamped on the stone, but written on the human heart. But this is possible only if the Torah will stop being just a text, which, as any text, can be studied and commented, and will become what in the time of Paul in the rabbinical middle, where the apostle came from, was called the internal Torah. It was about this spiritual internal rod, which defined the spiritual quality of life of man, his relationships with God, with Christ, with the neighbor. Such an approach of the Torah contrasted tremendously with the very wide-spread in that time in certain rabbinical schools literalism, even if it was about a purely Jewish approach. For Paul, who no matter what it is about, always spoke about the Christ and about the Kingdom, the contrast was even more striking: because if man could take with him in the Kingdom the internal Torah, literalism had no place there. It only took away from the Kingdom the one who is fond of it. The letter, which has become the object of worship, spiritually killed those who worshiped it, by closing the worshiper the way to the Kingdom. And the breath of the Kingdom transformed man into "the letter of Christ", making him what in the rabbinical middle in this period was called "the living Torah" - the living realization of this fullness of righteousness, which is possible only in the Kingdom.

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