In saying this, Paul was undoubtedly recalling the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who maintained that the new, messianic covenant would become possible only when the Torah was not merely engraved on stone but written in every person's heart. By the “letter of Christ,” the apostle means first and foremost...
In saying this, Paul was undoubtedly recalling the words of the prophet Jeremiah, who maintained that the new, messianic covenant would become possible only when the Torah was not merely engraved on stone but written in every person's heart. By the “letter of Christ,” the apostle means first and foremost precisely this inner Torah. In Gospel times, people spoke often and at length about the inner Torah; in the mind of a believing Jew of that age, the path of the inner Torah was inseparable from ideas about righteousness. The ideal of righteousness—an unattainable ideal—was a person who had become a living Torah: someone whose life was determined by the inner Torah alone, and by nothing else.
This ideal was unattainable because a fallen human being, whose nature had been corrupted in the Fall, could not become a living Torah. To do so, one would have had to become sinless and completely overcome the consequences of the Fall within oneself. The letter of the Torah showed a person a path that fallen humanity could not walk. A person could only die on that path, escaping the power of sin at the moment of death; to remain alive and become a living Torah was impossible for fallen humanity. The Torah engraved on stone bore witness against the human person, and service to it was a ministry of condemnation. The more someone strove toward the ideal—to have the inner Torah govern their whole life, to become a living Torah—the more convinced they became that the goal was unattainable. The closer the goal appeared, the more insurmountable became the barrier of sin separating the traveller from it. In the end, the goal stood very near—and yet remained absolutely beyond reach.
Only the breath of God, the breath of the Kingdom that entered the world through Christ, could radically change this situation. Christ's coming made possible what had previously been impossible: the living Torah ceased to be the righteous person's unattainable ideal and became a very real goal of their journey. More than that, there was no other way to enter the Kingdom. In the Kingdom, by definition, there could be no place for any sin. Therefore, not only the One who brought the Kingdom into the world had to be free from sin, but everyone who wished to become its inhabitant as well. This is why the first Christians looked upon Christ as the living Torah while striving, with His help, toward the same goal themselves. In this sense, every Christian truly was a “letter of Christ”: only the One who is Himself the living Torah can make a living Torah of someone who trusts Him and follows Him. Thus the “letter of Christ,” written in the hearts of the faithful, becomes for them a pass into the Kingdom and a path to salvation.
