NOTES for Co2 3:1-18
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.