04 What’s New About the New Covenant (2 Corinthians 3:1-6)

When trying harder still leaves you discouraged, what does God offer instead? In this episode, Krisan turns to 2 Corinthians 3:1–6 to explore Paul’s defense of his ministry and his astonishing claim to be a “minister of a new covenant.” Along the way, she shows how this new covenant does not simply give us better instructions or more spiritual effort—it gives us new hearts, written on by the Spirit of the living God.

In this week’s episode, we explore:

• Why “try harder Christianity” leaves so many believers frustrated, and how Paul addresses that struggle in 2 Corinthians 3
• Paul’s question about “letters of recommendation” and how the Corinthian believers themselves function as his living letter
• What it means for the Corinthians to be a “letter from Christ,” written not with ink but by the Spirit on human hearts
• The contrast between tablets of stone and hearts of flesh, and how that echoes key Old Testament promises in Deuteronomy 30, Ezekiel 36, and Jeremiah 31
• What Paul means by the “new covenant,” and how it fulfills God’s long-standing promise to forgive sin and transform the heart
• The true meaning of “the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life” and why it’s not about breaking the “letter” but keeping the “spirit” of the rules
• A careful look at Victorious Christian Life / Keswick teaching and why it misreads this passage and misunderstands the role of the Holy Spirit
• How Paul can say he is “not sufficient” in himself, yet boldly claim that God has made him sufficient as an apostle—and why that matters for how we read his letters today

After listening, you’ll come away with a clearer grasp of what is truly new about the new covenant: not a fresh technique for spiritual success, but God’s promise to forgive, to give His Spirit, and to change His people from the inside out. You’ll be invited to lay down the burden of self-improvement as your primary hope, and instead rest in the God who not only points you toward life, but is actively making you into the kind of person who loves Him and walks in His ways.

Series: 2 Corinthians: When Church Hurts

Start Strong: A New Believer’s Guide to Christianity is available now wherever books are sold.

Transcript

Krisan Marotta 0:01

Welcome to the Wednesday in the Word podcast. I'm Krissan Morata, and this is my podcast about what the Bible means and how we know. Today is the fourth talk in my series on 2 Corinthians, and we will be studying 2 Corinthians chapter 3, verses 1 through 6. Thanks so much for listening. Have you ever felt like no matter how hard you try to be a better Christian, you still fall short? Maybe you thought, you know, if I could just be more disciplined, more devoted, more whatever, then I'd finally get it right, life would go well. That thinking is very common, but as we'll see in today's passage, it's also part of the problem. Trying harder isn't the answer. Paul's going to remind us that the new covenant is new because it solves exactly that problem. But before we jump into that, let's review where we are in the letter. Paul opened his letter by highlighting the shared concern between him and the Corinthians. As an apostle, Paul reminded them that he endured intense sufferings, beatings, threats, attempts on his life, all because he preached the gospel. But he didn't view these trials as meaningless. Instead, he saw them as serving a purpose in two important ways. First, that's what was required to bring the good news of the gospel to people like the Corinthians. Just as people rejected Jesus for telling them the truth, they now reject Paul for representing Jesus, and his suffering was just part of the cost of bringing the gospel to the world. Second, in the midst of those trials, God comforted Paul, and the encouragement Paul received didn't just benefit him alone, it was something he could pass on to the Corinthians. So both his suffering and his comfort ended up strengthening their faith, and he reminded them they had a role to play too. By praying for Paul, they could pray for his ministry and then give thanks when God answered their prayers and rescued him. But as we saw last week, not everyone in Corinth shared Paul's concern. Some had rejected him altogether, refusing to believe he was a true apostle. Almost immediately in this letter, Paul begins to defend his ministry. When he changed his travel plans, that raised a doubt among some in Corinth. They accused him of being unreliable because he said he would visit and then he didn't, and could they really trust someone who didn't follow through on his word? Paul explains why he changed his travel plans. After a painful visit that strained their relationship, he chose not to return in person right away. He suspected another visit, so soon after that sorrowful one would only add to their grief, so he decided to spare them and write a letter instead. His delay wasn't careless, it was compassionate. He assures them his conscience is clear, he has acted toward them only with integrity and sincerity and genuine concern for their well being. Now Paul is walking this fine line. On the one hand, he's describing the huge impact of the gospel that he preaches, but he also wants to make clear that he's not bragging about himself. His job is to preach the gospel, and understanding the gospel is a matter of life and death. Therefore, his ministry is incredibly important. But it's not important because Paul himself is a big deal, it's important because his message is a big deal. He says he's not adequate to produce such a big result. It is God working through his ministry that brings that result about, and he's going to talk more about that in the section we're looking at today. So we have this balancing act between Paul, the person, and the message he teaches, which creates these life or death results. Now we go on in chapter three, and let's start with the first three verses. This is Second Corinthians three, one through three. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You ourselves are our letter of recommendation written on our hearts to be known and read by all, and you showed that you are a letter from Christ, delivered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. Let me remind you again that Paul frequently refers to himself in the plural. He says we and he means I Paul. And this is another one of those sections. When he says, Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? I think he means am I Paul beginning to commend myself again? Or do I need a letter of recommendation from you, Corinthians? Paul has been talking about himself up to this point. He's been talking about his ministry. He has been defending his integrity as a minister of the gospel. And now he speaks directly to the fact that he's been talking about himself. And I don't think there's anything in the context to suggest that he has switched topics to something else. Now we have this phrase, are we beginning to commend ourselves again? I used to think Paul was saying something like, Am I bragging? Am I blowing my own horn? But I was always puzzled by the way he included the word again. He could mean something like, Was I just bragging in what I wrote in chapter one and now I'm doing it again here in chapter three? Or was I bragging when I last visited you and now I'm doing it again in this letter? And that is possible, but I don't think that fits the flow of thought as well as another option. And the more I puzzled over why he would say again, the more it began to make sense that Paul is making a slightly different point now. I would see the emphasis in this phrase on the words beginning and again. So I would think of it as, are we beginning again to recommend ourselves? And I think what he's getting at is this idea that do I need to go back to square one? Must I go back to the beginning again as if I didn't know you and you didn't know me, so I have to introduce myself to you all over again? Do I have to start at the beginning and make a case for why you should listen to me? I think that understanding fits more with the flow of thought and how he's been defending himself, and he's saying something like, Do I really need to do this? Do I really have to go back and explain to you who I am and why you should listen to me as if we'd never met before? Because that fits with what he says about this letter of recommendation. You get a letter of recommendation from someone who knows you well in order to give that letter to someone you are meeting for the first time. If he were coming to Corinth for the very first time and they'd never heard of him, it would be helpful to have someone that they know or trust write a letter of recommendation and say, hey, this Paul, he's a good guy, you should listen to him. And I think that's what this question is getting at. Do I need to talk to you and explain myself again as if you don't know me? As if I need to recommend myself and reintroduce myself to you, as if I need somebody to write a letter saying, This is Paul, you should listen to him. And obviously he's implying, no, I shouldn't have to be defending myself this way. I shouldn't need to be defending my ministry to you. We're not strangers. You know me, you know my ministry. I shouldn't need to introduce myself again, and besides, you Corinthians are my letter of recommendation. Now he uses this metaphor of comparing the Corinthians to his letter of recommendation, and he's going to take off with that metaphor through the rest of the chapter. It's very interesting how he explores this metaphor and expands it. Basically, he's saying, Do you want to know whether I'm worthy to be listened to? Well, just look at what I've done among you. Look at your own lives, and you should be able to answer that question. But remember, he's trying to walk this fine line, and this metaphor brings him perilously close to the very bragging that he's trying to avoid. So he immediately starts qualifying in the next verse. What am I saying? What kind of letter of recommendation are you? So let's look at three three. I'll back up to three two to put it in a little context. You yourselves are a letter of recommendation written on our hearts to be known and read by all, and you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. So first he says, You are a letter of Christ delivered by us. Paul wants to make it clear, you Corinthians are my letter of recommendation. Look at how your lives have changed. Look at how you have grown since I first came and taught you. You can see that I taught you the true gospel because your lives are changing. So look at your lives, look at your hearts, look at what's been going on, and you'll see you are my letter of recommendation. Your very lives testify to the fact that I taught you the true gospel. But he qualifies, I didn't write that letter. You Corinthians are a letter of Christ. Paul is just the one who delivered the letter. He's the servant of Christ, he's the one who introduced them to Christ and taught them about Christ, but it is Christ, not Paul, who is doing this work among them. Next, Paul says they are a letter written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God. So if you're a metaphorical letter, what kind of letter are you? How has your letter been written? How would I recognize it? Are we looking for words written in ink? No. We are looking for the dynamic, life-changing work of the Holy Spirit. If the Corinthians look at themselves, they will see the Spirit of God has been at work, fostering faith and understanding and maturity. Now, of course, we know the Corinthians are a mixed bag. Paul is speaking somewhat ideally here. Some of them show spiritual maturity and some of them don't. But anyone who takes an honest look at the church in Corinth will recognize that the Spirit of God is at work in that group of people, and the Spirit is at work there because Paul ministered there. Last, Paul says they are a letter written not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of human hearts. Now, this introduces a new and interesting concept that he's going to explore in the next few verses. Why tablets of stone? Well, this is an allusion to the Ten Commandments that were written on tablets of stone. This is Exodus 2412. The Lord said to Moses, Come up to me on the mountain and wait there that I may give you the tablets of stone with the law and the commandment which I have written for their instruction. And then later this is Exodus thirty one eighteen, and he, that is God, he gave to Moses, when he had finished speaking with him on Mount Sinai, two tablets of the testimony, tablets of stone written with the finger of God. Paul is contrasting his gospel with the law. We're not talking about words written on stone tablets like the law, we're talking about the Spirit of God writing on human hearts. But what contrast does Paul have in mind? This is a new idea. Up until this point he hasn't mentioned the law, but he does now, and this contrast between the law and the gospel is going to continue over the next several verses. He brings in the ministry of Moses, who was the prophet who received the law from God and gave it to the people, and he contrasts Moses' ministry with his own ministry. But before we talk about that, let me remind you what his overall purpose is in this section. What has he been doing up to this point? He is defending his ministry to the Corinthians. He says that God used him to bring Christ to the world. Some people accept Paul's gospel and find life, others reject it and find death. He has said that he himself is not adequate to have such a big effect on the world. He says that he speaks with total sincerity. He's not a peddler of the gospel. And he said there should be no need for him to defend himself this way because the Corinthians should be able to look at Paul's work among them and see the value of his ministry. And they should see that Paul's ministry has brought the work of Christ through the Holy Spirit to them and among them. His topic all along has been his own ministry and how the Corinthians should view it, and that continues even when we get into this stuff about the law. In this section, Paul boldly compares his own ministry to Moses and he says basically, mine is better. And that's pretty bold for a guy who's been saying, I'm not adequate to speak these things, but hey, Moses was inferior to me. He's walking this balancing act. He wants them to understand that yes, he is just a man, he's somewhat of a loser, he is not adequate to produce the results that he's been describing, yet at the same time, God is using him to produce these results, and you better not ignore that. So let's go on with four through six. Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Now once again, let me remind you that throughout this section, Paul has been using we to mean me, and that is very important in this section. I'll explain why in a minute. Paul has just said that he needs no letter of recommendation to the Corinthians. They can see that his ministry is genuine because of the work of Christ through the Spirit in their hearts. When he says such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God, he means I have great confidence that my ministry is what I say it is. He has just expressed great confidence in the value of his ministry and the power of what God is doing through him. This confidence comes because he sees his ministry as God working through Christ in the gospel that he proclaims. His confidence is not in himself, his confidence is in God working through Christ, and that's what he wants to make clear. My confidence is through Christ toward God. My confidence is in God, not in me. It's not that I'm hot stuff, my confidence is in God. And he says that directly in five and six. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything is coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us sufficient to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. Now this is one of those classic examples of how Paul has to walk the line he has been trying to walk throughout this letter. On the one hand, he is acknowledging I am not adequate to accomplish the things that I am saying I have accomplished among you. I am just a weak man. But God has made me adequate as a minister of the gospel and an apostle of Jesus Christ. I couldn't bring about the things that have been happening among you, but God has made me adequate to do so through Christ and His Spirit. And so I have fulfilled my ministry as an apostle because God made me adequate to proclaim his gospel with sincerity and truth and understanding as befits an apostle of Jesus. And we'll get into this again in a little bit. He doesn't call his message the gospel, he calls it the new covenant, and we're going to talk about why he does that in a minute. And notice again that he has this contrast between the law and the spirit. The letter kills, but the spirit gives life. And we're going to talk more about that. But before we get to all that, I should mention that these verses over the years have been the center of a theological debate, at least in American Christianity. There's an entire theology built on this passage that we're looking at here in 2 Corinthians. And this theology is highly debated. It's a debate that keeps circling around. It pops up under one name, gets debated, gets squelched, and then it pops up again with a different name. And there are several names. It's been called Kesit theology. It is sometimes called Victorious Christian Living. It's been called Higher Life Theology. It's been called New Covenant Theology, and I think a few more, but I'm going to call it Victorious Christian Living or VCL for short, because that's the name I heard it as first way back when. It may go by another name now, but I first heard of it as Victorious Christian Living, so that's what I'm going to call it. The central idea behind VCL, Victorious Christian Living, is that we believers must choose to plug into the power of the Holy Spirit. And if we choose to plug into the power of the Holy Spirit, then we can experience victory and power over sin in that particular moment. The central question in this debate is, can we have victory over sin in our lives today, right now? And if so, how? And the VCL folks would say yes. Yes, we can have victory over any sin in any given moment. And they teach strategies and techniques and disciplines for ensuring that you have victory over sin. Now, one of the key passages that they cite to support their theology is the passage we just read here in 2 Corinthians. They argue that Paul is teaching victorious Christian living or higher life theology, Kesik theology, here in the opening verses of 2 Corinthians chapter 3. So they would argue, Paul is saying we are not adequate in ourselves to keep ourselves from sinning. That's why we need to let go of our own resources and stop trying to avoid sin by ourselves. Instead, we need to avail ourselves of the power of the Spirit, and if we do that, God has agreed to make us powerful and successful over sin in our ministry and life. And that's the new covenant. Now I will tell you right up front, I believe the VCL folks are wrong in their understanding of their theology, and I believe they're wrong in their understanding of 2 Corinthians. And since this is a podcast that talks about what the Bible means and how we know, I want to stop and take the time to argue how do I know that? What makes me say so strongly that they are wrong? So I'm going to attempt to show you why they are wrong from the context. Now this debate comes over the little pronoun we. Is Paul talking about himself and his ministry? As I have argued, or is Paul talking about all believers? And the VCL folks would say, look, he says we, he means we, he means all believers. We Christians have confidence in Christ toward God. We Christians are not adequate in ourselves, but God has made all of us Christians as adequate ministers of the new covenant. And what is that new covenant? It is this new arrangement that God has made that if we let go and stop trying to do things by ourselves and instead avail ourselves of the power of the Holy Spirit, then we will have victory over sin in our lives today. If you've studied church history, you know that John Wesley had a big impact on American Christianity. Wesley came to reject the reformed view of election. He thought God gave everyone the power to freely choose salvation. And he thought that while we were trapped in original sin, God has now freed us from that, and we are now free to decide on our own, without any more influence from God, whether we will follow God or not. And he applied this same view to sanctification. He thought we were free to choose how far we will progress in our sanctification. He taught that God has done everything he needed to do to save us. Now it's up to us. We must first choose to believe, and second, we must believe. Must choose to be sanctified. And if we choose properly, if we avail ourselves of the Holy Spirit, we can reach sanctification or a state of perfection or at least victory over sin in this life. Now Wesley had a lot of influence, and one of the things he influenced was the Keswick movement, which started in the early 1800s. Keswick, I think I'm pronouncing it right. It's spelled Keswick, but I believe it's pronounced Keswick, I may be wrong. Anyway, it's a little town in England, and they started what they called the Convention for the Promotion of Practical Holiness. Over the course of a weeklong conference, they taught Christians how to surrender to God and be sanctified. They believed that we have this power of the Holy Spirit inside us, but we need to be taught how to use it. They thought when God gave us his spirit, he has now given us everything necessary to avoid sin. We just need to learn how to reach out and appropriate it. Now the Kesak movement was very influential in early American Christianity. This idea that the Christian life is all about learning how to avail yourself of the power of the Spirit became very widespread. And as I said, the essential teaching of this theology is that the power over sin is in my hand. God has done his part. God has given me everything he's ever going to give me, and the rest is up to me. I have all the tools I need. The only question is will I use them or not? And they support their theology through 2 Corinthians 3. They argue Paul is talking about all believers here, and he means to teach us that we need to learn to use the power of the Holy Spirit. So I ask you, does that theology fit the context of this letter? If you start reading 2 Corinthians in chapter 1 and read up to this point, do you think at this point Paul has decided to say, and here's how you can have power over sin in your life? You need to appropriate the power of the Holy Spirit. Now you've probably heard the phrase context is king if you've taken any kind of Bible study class. It's a phrase we use in teaching how to study the Bible to mean context trumps all other arguments. When we talk about interpreting the Bible in context, this is exactly the kind of issue we're talking about. When you come to a chapter and pull out a few verses, or even plot the whole chapter, without placing it in the context of the entire letter and its historical context, then you open the door to these kinds of interpretive problems. So I would say, looking at the context and the flow of thought up to this point, Paul has been defending his ministry. The issue in this letter from the very opening verses has been, how should you Corinthians think about me, Paul? Some of you Corinthians are ready to reject me, Paul, and charge me with lacking integrity, so let me tell you how you should think about me, Paul, and my ministry instead. It seems highly unlikely to me that in the midst of that discussion he would stop and say, Oh, by the way, you need to appropriate the power of the Holy Spirit too, if you want to have victory over sin in your life, and that's what the new covenant is all about. I think in context, he's talking about himself. That's what he's been talking about before this section. That's what he continues to talk about after this section. I think the we is I, Paul, or we beginning to commend ourselves again, is am I Paul beginning to commend myself? Do I need a letter of recommendation from you? And he's explaining why he, Paul, does not need a letter of recommendation from the Corinthians. Even though he is not adequate in himself for the high calling of being an apostle, God has made him adequate. And the Corinthians should be able to see that by looking at the impact of his ministry. So my good for nothing opinion is that the Keswick theology folks, the VCL folks, have made two mistakes in reading this passage. First, is Paul is describing his own adequacy as an apostle, not the adequacy of all believers. God did not make you and me adequate to be an apostle in the way he made Paul adequate to be an apostle. He has a kind of adequacy you and I will never have. Now we do have another kind of adequacy from God, but that's not what's been talked about in this context. And second, I think we can look at other scriptures and see that the Spirit is at work in all believers, not just those who choose to plug into his power. And we're going to get more into that as we go through the chapter. But if you really want to get into the topic of how does the Holy Spirit work and what does he do, I have an entire podcast season on the Holy Spirit. It's called Who is the Holy Spirit, which I will link to in the show notes. The discussion about the Spirit working our lives here is not qualified. The language does not suggest that if and only if you plug into the Spirit's power you will have success. It is rather talking about the sanctifying work that the Spirit does in every single child of God. I don't think the Spirit is a power source that some Christians plug into and others fail to notice. I don't think that's what Paul's getting at here, and I don't think any passage of the Bible teaches that. Now, some proponents of BCL would say that if Paul is talking about himself in this passage, then this passage is irrelevant to us today, and why should we even bother reading it? Because it only applies to Paul and a few believers in Corinth who are long gone. And I would counter it is absolutely relevant to us today, but it's relevant in a different way. Paul is our main source of information in the New Testament, and it is very relevant what he says about himself and why we should believe him. So the adequacy of Paul as an apostle is incredibly relevant to me today as to whether or not I should listen to him, but it's a different kind of relevancy. I'm quite convinced that if you read these verses in context, it's fairly easy to see that Paul is defending himself and he's saying, I'm not adequate to be an apostle, nonetheless, God has made me adequate. You should listen to my gospel because I know what I'm talking about. The gospel is true and powerful, and God has chosen me to be one of those people who takes the message to the world, so you should be listening to it. And I think that point will become more obvious as we go through the rest of the chapter, but we will get into a lot of that in the next podcast. Now, let's move on. Before we look at the next bit, we need to get some background. Paul gives a series of contrasts in the next section, and we need to make sure we know what he contrasts with what. First, Paul says that he's a minister of a new covenant. Well, that implies there was an old covenant. Just the phrase new implies there was an old one, and now we've got a better one, and we want to know what contrast he's making there. Second, he contrasts writing on the heart with writing on tablets of stone. And he seems to be talking about the law, so we want to understand what that contrast is about. And then finally, he says the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. And again, I think he's talking about the law. And that's a pretty strong statement. The letter kills and the spirit gives life. So we want to make sure we know what he's trying to say. What is going on with these contrasts? What idea is he trying to get across? And it's important to understand what contrast he's making. Because he's clearly going to go on to say there is some sort of superiority about his ministry in some way. And we want to ask, what is that superiority? Well, in order to answer that question, we need to go back to some key passages from the Old Testament. And those of you who've been listening to this podcast for a long time have heard me talk about this stuff before, and you probably know which passages I'm going to before I even ask you to turn there. But especially in this passage, I think these are critical background passages to understand why Paul uses the language about New Covenant stone tablets and the law as he does. So we will look at three passages in the Old Testament. The first is Deuteronomy chapter 30, verses 4 through 6. Moses has laid out before Israel the blessing and the curse. He has told them that if they are faithful to God's law, God will bless them and they will prosper in the land they are about to enter. But if they blow off God's law, they will be cursed and find themselves exiled to all the nations. And in fact, Moses predicted they will not keep the law in the promised land, and one day they will be exiled, but someday after that God will bring about a restoration. And that's what he's talking about here in Deuteronomy 30, verses 4 through 6. If your outcast are in the uttermost parts of heaven, from there the Lord God will gather you, and from there he will take you. And the Lord your God will bring you into the land that your fathers possessed, that you may possess it, and he will make you more prosperous and numerous than your fathers, and the Lord your God will circumcise your heart and the heart of your offspring, so that you will love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul that you may live. So why did this exile come about in the first place? Because they did not love the Lord their God. What's the solution? One day God is going to circumcise their hearts, he's going to cut away the rebellion and the evil that caused his people to turn away from him, and the result will be that they are going to love God sincerely and they will live. They will not be cursed anymore because God has changed their hearts by removing the hardness and rebellion from it. Now remember, Moses is telling them this before they've even entered the promised land, and he's implying the law that I gave you, the law that he's giving Israel, is not going to be enough because they aren't going to be able to keep it and they will be exiled. Now let's be careful here in what sense is the law not good enough? The law is good and promises great blessings, but what good is a law of blessing if your heart is hard and rebellious? God can promise you life all day long, but if you have a heart that turns away from God, you're not going to get life. It's only when the rebellion in your heart is cured that you will find life. Knowing the law without being the kind of person who can obey it is like being handed a treasure map, but having a broken compass. The map is accurate, it's wonderful, it promises great reward. If you could follow it, it shows you exactly where to go, but your compass is broken, and you will always wander off in the wrong direction. The problem isn't the map, the problem is your internal guide can't follow it. In the same way, the law is good and points to life, but a rebellious heart cannot follow where it leads. Until the heart is fixed, the law alone will not get you there. Now we find a similar theme in the prophet Ezekiel. Ezekiel is writing after the exile that Moses predicted has come upon Israel. Babylon conquered the nation of Israel and took them into captivity, and Ezekiel is writing from Babylon where the nation is now living in exile. And in chapter thirty six, verses twenty two through twenty eight he says this. Therefore say to the house of Israel, Thus says the Lord God, it is not for your sake, O house of Israel, that I am about to act, but for the sake of my holy name which you have profaned among the nations to which you came, and I will vindicate the holiness of my great name, which has been profaned among the nations, and which you have profaned among them, and the nations will know that I am the Lord, declares the Lord God. When through you I vindicate my holiness before their eyes, I will take you from the nations, and gather you from all the countries, and bring you into your own land. I will sprinkle clean water on you, and you shall be clean from all your uncleanness, and from all your idols I will cleanse you, and I will give you a new heart, and a new spirit I will put within you, and I will remove the heart of stone from your flesh and give you a heart of flesh, and I will put my spirit within you, and cause you to walk in my statutes, and be careful to obey my rules. You shall dwell in the land that I give to your fathers, and you shall be my people, and I will be your God. Notice how similar that is to what Moses promised. They are in captivity, which Moses predicted would happen. They will be regathered in their land, which Moses predicted. They will be given a new heart, which Moses also predicted, and the purpose of this new heart is so that they may be obedient to God. Now Ezekiel is predicting and teaching the same thing that Moses did. The law can't bless you unless God removes the rebellion from your heart. You can't find life unless you stop being a rebel. Well, how do you stop being a rebel? God has to put a new heart within you through the work of his spirit. And notice Ezekiel describes this new heart as saying, I will put my spirit within you. The Spirit of God is pictured as the agent that brings all this about. Okay, finally, Jeremiah 31. This is the famous New Covenant passage. Jeremiah the prophet is also writing at the time of the Babylonian captivity, when the exile that Moses had predicted has come upon Israel. And in 31, verses 31 through 34, he says, Behold, the days are coming, declares the Lord, when I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel and the house of Judah, not like the covenant that I made with their fathers on the day when I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt, my covenant that they broke, though I was their husband, declares the Lord. For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord. I will put my law within them, and I will write it on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people, and no longer shall each one teach his neighbor and each his brother, saying, Know the Lord, for they shall all know me, from the least of them to the greatest, declares the Lord, for I will forgive their iniquity, and I will remember their sin no more. Now again we see these same themes in Jeremiah that we saw in Moses and Ezekiel. God is going to make a new covenant with Israel. Why? Because they broke the last one. God did these amazing miracles to take them by the hand and lead them out of Egypt, but they still rejected him. The old covenant, as beautiful and worthy and good as it was, was not enough to lead them to life because they had hard hearts. The promise of life was there, but they turned away from it. Therefore, God is going to make a new and better covenant with Israel. And what is this new covenant? This time God is committing himself to writing his law on their hearts. Similar to what Moses said, God will circumcise their heart. Similar to what Ezekiel said, God would remove their heart of stone and give them a heart of flesh. In each case, the result is the same. Faithfulness to God will no longer be an external demand that they were unable to meet. Faithfulness to God will be embedded within them in their hearts, so that they follow God from the heart, no more captivity, no more curse. They will be God's people because they love, obey, and follow Him. Now notice that Jeremiah gives the foundation for this new covenant. God can bless them in this way because He's going to forgive them and overlook their sins. So He's going to forgive them and He's going to change them. And this is what we find in the New Testament. The New Testament authors refer back to passages like these to bring out the idea of forgiveness and transformation. God forgives us because of the death of Jesus on the cross, and God gives us his spirit to change us from the inside out so that we no longer turn away from him in rebellion, but we actually seek him and find life. Now I think these passages give us the background to Paul's discussion of the law in 2 Corinthians. Paul uses this language of God writing on the hearts of the Corinthians. And of course, that brings to mind the language of Jeremiah, where God will write the law in their hearts. It brings to mind Ezekiel, where God will put his spirit within them, remove their heart of stone, and give them a heart of flesh. And God must do this because the law, as good as it is, cannot bring blessing by itself. We can only find the blessing if God, through his spirit, removes our rebellion against God. Now, this is another reason I think the VCL, Victorious Christian Living Theology, misses the boat. And that's because if they are right, if I have the Spirit, but I have to choose to appropriate him, and if I fail to choose, I get nothing. What's new about the new covenant? The whole problem with the old covenant was we couldn't keep the law. We had the treasure map, but we had a broken compass, so we never followed the map. Well, now you're telling me I have a better treasure map. I have a better compass that's fixed, but it doesn't work unless I choose to make it work. Well, if under the new covenant we still have to choose to appropriate the power of the Spirit, how is that any different? How is that new and improved? What guarantee is there that I will ever choose the right thing? If my compass was so broken that I couldn't follow the map, and my compass is still broken under the new covenant, why would I choose to access the new, better compass? I need my broken internal compass fixed. Well, that metaphor got a little out of hand, but hopefully you get the point. Now maybe it's easier to follow the spirit than it is to follow the law, but fundamentally I have the same problem. I am a sinner and I will fail. But I would say the new covenant is truly new and better. It's not just that now the spirit helps me, but only when I cooperate. It's that God reached in and gave me a heart transplant. Through his spirit, he is making me the kind of person who now loves God and wants to follow him. I am no longer a person with a broken compass. I am no longer a person who hates and rejects God. I am now a person who loves God and seeks him, and that is truly good news, because God has made me new and the promises of life will be mine. Now that is a new improved covenant. And that's what Paul is claiming for his ministry. His ministry is the proclamation that because of Christ, God will forgive us and change our hearts through his spirit, and Paul is a minister, a teacher, and preacher of that new covenant. I think Paul intends to echo the language of Jeremiah. The promise of a changed heart that is found in the Old Testament is brought about through Christ through the gospel that Paul proclaims. Now let's talk about this distinction between the letter and the spirit. Paul says, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life. We have an American expression that uses the words letter and spirit, and I don't want you to get confused by it. We might say something like, Well, I may not have been following the letter of the law, but I was following the spirit of the law. And when we say that, we mean technically I broke the law, but I broke it to accomplish the very purpose the law was given. For instance, maybe the law was intended to keep me safe, and in this particular situation, breaking the law was the safest thing to do. That's not what Paul means here. That's not the distinction between letter and spirit that he's making. Rather, Paul means the same kind of contrast that we saw in Jeremiah. The letter consists of external commands. And words and instructions. The letter is written on stone. This is the Old Testament law. That's the letter. The Spirit is the Holy Spirit, the Spirit of God working internally, writing the law in our hearts. In Jeremiah, the distinction between the Old Covenant, the laws which you broke, versus the new covenant, where God is writing the law in your hearts. That's the same kind of distinction Paul's making here between letter and spirit. There is the letter, the law with all its external demands, and then there is the Spirit of God working internally in us. The letter, the external requirements of the law kills us because it cannot change us. Only the Spirit of God transforming our hearts can make us the sort of people who turn to God and so find life. And that's why he says the letter kills, but the spirit gives light. The law kills, in a sense, because it cannot produce in us what is required to find life, but the spirit of God working inside us can produce that very thing. So I think Paul is making very clear and bold claims about himself. As a man, Paul himself is not adequate to teach such a powerful, true, and life-changing message. But God has made him adequate. He tells the Corinthians this because some of them are rejecting him. But this message is relevant to us as well because we need to know who we're listening to. If I meet a new person and he tells me, hey, I'm the best lawyer in town, well, maybe he is, maybe he isn't. But at least I know who I'm dealing with. I know what he claims to be, and then I can decide do I believe him or not. And one of the pieces of information that I have to evaluate is his claim that he's an expert. He knows what he's talking about. Well, that's the kind of claim Paul is making. He's saying, I, Paul, know what I'm talking about, because God is the one who made me adequate. He's the one who taught me the gospel. I, Paul, didn't make this up. God told me and taught me, and that's why you should listen to me. So for us today, it's very important to know what Paul claims about himself. We can't treat him as just another Bible teacher, just another ancient philosopher, because Paul claims I'm not just another Bible teacher. I'm an apostle of the Lord Jesus Christ by the will of God. And that's why we read Paul's letters and try to figure out what he thought. But we can't help noticing that, you know, he's a little dismissive of the law here. He says the letter kills, and later in the chapter, he's going to call the ministry of Moses a ministry of death, which is another kind of strong statement. But let me just point out what we saw in those three passages from the Old Testament. Some Christians get the idea that the entire problem of the law was that it demanded imperfect obedience. Being under the law means you have to perfectly keep every commandment, every day, all the time, without fail. You can try and you can strive, but somewhere along the line you're gonna mess up, you're going to sin, and now the law's got you. You're condemned because one strike and you're out. Well, that is certainly a big problem we face, but that's not the problem with the law that we saw in these Old Testament passages we just looked at. They describe a different problem. Read through Exodus and you'll notice that we don't see the nation of Israel trying desperately to follow God, but just tripping up now and then. We don't see the nation believing in God, trying hard to follow him and doing a good job for a while, but oops, they made a mistake. That's not the picture. We don't see them asking, have mercy on us because we're trying so hard. What we see is they refuse to follow God, they reject him, they don't trust him, they don't believe he's going to keep his promises, they want this world to pay off in a way that makes sense to them, and they want to kill Moses and go back to Egypt. Now, lest you think I'm being too hard on them, I think any one of us in that position would have done the same thing. And that's why Moses says, God needs to circumcise your hearts so that you will love God. You need to be made completely new. You need a heart transplant. That's the problem all those passages are talking about. It is true that we cannot keep the law perfectly and so we are condemned by it. The problem is worse than that. The problem is bigger than that. We can't keep it in any meaningful sense. The problem with the law is that it is an external appeal. It tries to get us to change from the outside, and that doesn't work. It's only when God changes us from the inside that the law can really do us any good. So that's what I understand the problem of the law to be, and that's what we're going to find as we look at what Paul says about the law. And solving that problem is what makes the new covenant new and improved. There's nothing wrong with the law, the problem is us. All the law could do is appeal to people who have no interest in following God. But the Spirit doesn't have that problem. The Spirit can change us from the inside out. And that brings me to my last point, and that is why the gospel is such good news. The story of humanity is that we have turned away from God, each and every one of us, and we have chosen death. The gospel is the story of how God is doing for his people what we cannot do for ourselves. Paul proclaims this message about Jesus who is transforming the hearts of his people, and that process has begun because Paul is saying, Hey, look at yourselves. You can see this process at work, the Spirit is among you. The Spirit that I have proclaimed in my gospel, the Christ that I have proclaimed to you is at work among you. He's turning hearts from death to life, and that's what makes the gospel such good news. I don't know about you, but left to myself, I know for a fact that I would fail miserably. But the gospel tells me that God promises to give me a new heart and write his law on it. And what makes it good news is this is not another story of try harder. It's not just a promise of oh you can be forgiven and escape hell. It's a promise that you can be forgiven and you can be changed so that you may become what you are not now. And to me, that is why the gospel is such good news, and that's the point Paul is driving at here. Now let me leave you with this thought. If trying harder could fix our hearts, we wouldn't need the gospel. We wouldn't even need a new covenant because we could just try harder. But the good news, the truly good news, is that God doesn't just hand us a better set of instructions, he gives us a new heart. He doesn't just point the way, he changes who we are and sets us on the right path. Thank you for listening to the Wednesday in the Word podcast, the podcast that explains not only what a passage means, but also shows you how to figure it out. The blog version of this podcast is on Wednesdaytheword.com slash 2 Corinthians 4. You can hear all previous episodes in this season of the podcast and find many more on my website, Wednesdayintheword.com. No charge, no spam, and no ads. Just free resources to help you grow in your understanding of scripture and learn to study it for yourself. If you've been blessed by this podcast, please follow, rate, and review it on your favorite podcast platform. But most importantly, tell a friend what you learned and where you learned it. Our theme music is graciously provided by my friend and favorite musician Reggie Coates. You can hear Reggie's music on heartfeltmusic.org. Thank you for joining me today. I'm Krissan Morata, and I'll see you next week at Wednesday in the Word.