NOTES for Co2 3:6
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.
