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King James Version (en)

King James Version (en)

2 Corinthians, Chapter 3, verses 2-3

¹ Lest their false teachers should charge him with vain glory, he showeth the faith and graces of the Corinthians to be a sufficient commendation of his ministry

²Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:

³Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.

Read more:2 Corinthians, Chapter 3

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3:2 Ye are our recommendatory letter - More convincing than bare words could be. Written on our hearts - Deeply engraven there, and plainly legible to all around us.

3:3 Manifestly declared to be the letter of Christ - Which he has formed and published to the world. Ministered by us - Whom he has used herein as his instruments, therefore ye are our letter also. Written not in tables of stone - Like the ten commandments.But in the tender, living tables of their hearts - God having taken away the hearts of stone and given them hearts of flesh.

NOTES

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.

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).

In Paul's words on the epistle or the message (the Greek corresponding word admits both translations) of the Christ, written in the heart, it is not difficult to notice the allusion to the prophetic books and, in particular, on the book of Jeremy, who speaking about the new messianic union-covenant, mentions that the conditions of this new union will not be any more on tables of stone...

In Paul's words on the epistle or the message (the Greek corresponding word admits both translations) of the Christ, written in the heart, it is not difficult to notice the allusion to the prophetic books and, in particular, on the book of Jeremy, who speaking about the new messianic union-covenant, mentions that the conditions of this new union will not be any more on tables of stone, as it was the case with the text of the Decalogue (and the Decalogue was in fact the text containing the conditions of this union that the people concluded with God on Sinai), but written in the heart of each, becoming an integral part and the basis of the life of man in the messianic Kingdom. It is in particular these words of Jeremy that served as the basis for the representation appeared at the period before captivity in the Judaism of the internal Torah, which was seen not as a certain new text, but as the spiritual core, which is formed gradually in the heart of the man, who longs to follow the Torah and to observe the commandments, becoming the spiritual foundation of all his life.

As seen, in the image of the epistle of Christ, written in the heart, it is not difficult to find the link with the words of Jeremy about the Torah written on "tables of the heart", quite as with the image of the internal Torah, which should have been familiar to Paul who received a traditional rabbinic education. But as seen, the apostle reinterpreted these traditional representations in the context of what says Jesus about the Torah, which He came, according to His own words, not to destroy, but to lead to fullness.

Obviously, the Savior does not speak in this case about the text of the Torah, of which He had not at all in plan either to modify, or to complete (although He gave His comments to some of the commandments), but about the internal Torah which He alone could manifest in all fullness. Indeed, in order to observe the Torah totally, become a perfect righteous, or as said in that period a "living Torah", it was necessary to be completely free from the power of sin. It goes without saying that, except the Christ Himself, nobody could manifest anything similar to the world. It is not surprising that the first generation of Christians look at their Master, as at the only example in the world of the "living Torah".

It is not also surprising that the possibility of the internal Torah, as the foundations of the spiritual life, is conceivable for the Christian only as the life in the Kingdom, connected for them to the personality of the resuscitated Savior. To obtain the internal Torah in unity with Christ, the entrance into the Kingdom, where each becomes a "living Torah" - such sees the apostle the purpose of the life of the Christian.

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