NOTES for Co2 3:6
These words of the apostle are very widely known. The apostle compares the Old and New covenants, and the letter in this case acts as a symbol of the written old law. Why does the apostle affirm that written law is a deadly thing? And what if the law is right and just? In fact, Old Testament legislation contains good, necessary, and right laws. But once written, a law becomes a kind of objective reality, separated both from the one who fulfills it and, most importantly, from the lawgiver. The point is not that no written law can exhaust all the many-sidedness of real life, although that is obvious. Rather, it is an impersonal thing governing the life of those whom God has endowed with the image and likeness of His personhood, and therefore it is a humiliation of this image and likeness. It is no accident that in the time before the New Testament, the idea of the Wisdom of God appears in Israel: this is the personification of the law, making up its living meaning, its spirit. The words about Wisdom in the Bible turn out to be prophecies about Christ, because they reflect the will of God to become directly the Lord of His Kingdom.
By contrast, the Spirit of the eternally New Covenant gives its participants the possibility of being not under the authority of stone tablets, but under the authority of the Lawgiver personally. This does not at all mean that, say, different moral demands are placed on them than on the participants of the Sinai Covenant. "I came not to destroy the law, but to fulfill it," says the Lord Himself. But these demands do not make up the essence of human life. Their fulfillment becomes a function, a manifestation of personal relationships with the Lawgiver. After the words about the killing power of the letter and the life-giving power of the Spirit, the apostle speaks in detail about the glory of the Old and New covenants. Alas, our sad history has greatly distorted the understanding of this word, and therefore it needs explanation. The matter is not at all what slogans imply. We remember those red banners in the streets with the inscription "Glory to the CPSU", may it not be mentioned at night. We remember the glory of kings and earthly rulers. Our Christian brothers in ancient Rome very precisely called this pompa diaboli. The biblical meaning of the word "glory", Greek doxa, Latin gloria, is most brightly manifested in the vision of Isaiah: "and the glory of the Lord filled the temple." This is the form of such a presence of God when a person recognizes and blesses this presence. And precisely for this reason the fullness of such glory in the New Covenant turns out to be qualitatively greater than in the letters of the Old law.