2 Corinthians 3:11

In 2 Corinthians 3 Paul begins by answering people who wanted letters of commendation from him. The Corinthian believers themselves are his letter, he says, written with the Spirit of the living God on human hearts (2 Corinthians 3:1–3). Then he gives God the credit for all he does: “our sufficiency is of God” (2 Corinthians 3:5). Verse 6 carries that straight on. “Who also hath made us able ministers” uses the verb hikanóō, from hikanos, “sufficient” or “competent”, and it means to make someone sufficient, to qualify them for a task. God is the one who did it, and the “ministers” he qualified are servants.

This mattered at Corinth. Paul’s authority was being questioned by critics, and earlier in the letter he had set his ministry apart from those who peddle God’s word for profit. His answer rests on God’s calling. Some of those critics may well have pressed the law of Moses and Jewish custom on the church, which would explain why Paul turns at once to compare the two covenants. The same truth holds for every servant of Christ. Whatever usefulness we have in his work comes from God’s enabling, and that keeps us humble and dependent on his Spirit.

“The new testament” is the new covenant. The Greek diathḗkē means a disposition, a covenant or a will, and the KJV’s “testament” reflects that last sense. Here it is the covenant God promised through Jeremiah, when he said he would write his law on the hearts of his people (Jeremiah 31:31–34). Ezekiel speaks of a new heart and of God putting his own Spirit within his people (Ezekiel 36:26–27), and the letter to the Hebrews quotes Jeremiah’s promise and calls Christ the mediator of a better covenant (Hebrews 8:6–13).

Paul describes this covenant as “not of the letter, but of the spirit”, and he gives the reason in one of the best-known lines he ever wrote: “for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” The letter, grámma, is a writing, and here it means the written code of the law of Moses, given on tablets of stone. The spirit is the Holy Spirit. The word pneûma means breath or wind and, from there, a spirit, and in this chapter it is the Spirit of the living God who writes on hearts.

The two verbs are plain and strong. The verb apokteínō means to kill, and zōopoiéō means to make alive, to quicken. The law kills because it exposes sin and condemns the sinner, demanding a perfect obedience it gives no power to perform: “by the law is the knowledge of sin” (Romans 3:20). The Spirit gives life because he regenerates, writes God’s law on the heart and enables believers to walk in righteousness, “that the righteousness of the law might be fulfilled in us, who walk not after the flesh, but after the Spirit” (Romans 8:2–4). Paul says the same in other letters. We “serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter” (Romans 7:6), and those who are led by the Spirit are free of the law’s rule over them (Galatians 5:18). Jesus said it first: “It is the spirit that quickeneth” (John 6:63).

Verse 7 takes us back to Sinai, where God gave the law (Exodus 19–34). The Ten Commandments were “written and engraven in stones”, inscribed on the tablets by the finger of God (Exodus 31:18), which marks the law as God’s own word. When Moses came down from the mountain after forty days with the LORD, the skin of his face shone, the people were afraid to come near him, and he put a veil over his face when he had finished speaking with them (Exodus 34:29–35).

Paul calls that covenant “the ministration of death”. Diakonía means service or ministry, the work of a servant, and here it is the service God carried out through the law. Thánatos is death, and here it is the spiritual death the law brings on sinners by revealing their sin and condemning them. All the same, Paul says plainly that this ministry “was glorious”. Its glory showed on Moses’ face, so bright that the children of Israel “could not stedfastly behold” it. The law came from God, and Paul gives it its due.

Then comes the decisive clause: “which glory was to be done away.” The verb katargéō means to make idle or inactive, to render inoperative, to abolish. The glory on Moses’ face was passing, and Paul takes it as a picture of the covenant it belonged to: real, given by God, and meant for a time. Its work was to show sin and prepare the way for something greater, and in the next verse Paul names it.

Verse 8 asks a question with an obvious answer: “How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?” If the ministry that brought death had glory, the ministry of the life-giving Spirit must have more. “Rather” translates mâllon, “more” or “in a greater degree”. The same word diakonía stands behind “ministration” here, so Paul is comparing two services God carries out, one through the law on stone and one through his Spirit. The ministry of the Spirit is the new covenant, in which the Holy Spirit writes God’s law on hearts and empowers believers. The risen Christ poured out the Spirit (Acts 2:33), the Comforter he had promised to send (John 14:26), who testifies of him (John 15:26).

The glory is dóxa: splendour, honour, renown and majesty, and when it is used of God, his own majesty. Paul uses it of both covenants, and the word comes again and again from verse 7 to verse 11.

Verse 9 makes the comparison again with two new names. The old covenant is “the ministration of condemnation”. Katákrisis is the act of passing an adverse sentence, a verdict of guilty. The law pronounced that verdict on everyone under it, because “all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God” (Romans 3:21–26). The new covenant is “the ministration of righteousness”. Dikaiosýnē is righteousness, and in the gospel it is the right standing with God that he gives as a gift to those who believe in Jesus. God “justifieth the ungodly”, and the believer’s “faith is counted for righteousness” (Romans 4:5). It rests on what Christ did: “For he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin; that we might be made the righteousness of God in him” (2 Corinthians 5:21).

So the ministry of righteousness does “much more” exceed in glory. The verb perisseúō means to superabound, to overflow, to have more than enough. Condemnation had its glory. Righteousness overflows with glory, because it brings a guilty sinner into right standing with God. The law had its place in this too. It was the schoolmaster that brought us to Christ, so that we might be justified by faith (Galatians 3:21–25), and Christ “is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4).

Verse 10 goes further still: “For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.” “Made glorious” is doxázō, the verb formed from dóxa, meaning to give glory or to glorify. God gave the old covenant real glory. “In this respect”, at this one point of comparison, set beside the new, that glory counts as none. A candle is lost in the light of the sun, and the stars fade from sight when the sun rises.

“Excelleth” is hyperbállō, from words meaning “beyond” and “to throw”, so it means to throw beyond the mark, to surpass. The glory of the new covenant surpasses the old so far that the old is eclipsed. Christ is “the mediator of a better covenant, which was established upon better promises” (Hebrews 8:6–13).

Verse 11 completes the argument: “For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.” “That which is done away” is to katargoumenon, from the same verb katargéō that Paul used of the passing glory in verse 7. It is the old covenant, whose work as the way of relating to God has been brought to an end now that Christ has come. It ended by being fulfilled, the way scaffolding comes down once the building stands complete.

“That which remaineth” is to menon, from ménō, to stay, to abide, to continue. The new covenant endures. Behind “much more” here stands pollō mallon, “by much more”, the same comparative that gave us “rather” in verse 8. Christ’s sacrifice, offered once for all, fulfils the sacrifices of the old covenant and opens a true way of atonement and access to God (Hebrews 9:11–14). Paul argues along the same lines about the law and the promise in Galatians 3 and about the law and the Spirit in Romans 8.

Every part of this comparison leads to Jesus. Moses reflected a glory that passed. Christ is “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3). The Word was made flesh, “and we beheld his glory” (John 1:14), and in him “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). God has shined in our hearts “to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ” (2 Corinthians 4:6), and that face outshines the face of Moses. Through his life, death and resurrection Jesus brought in the new covenant, and in him all the promises of God are yea and Amen (2 Corinthians 1:20).

The rest of the chapter shows where this leads. Moses veiled his face, and Paul goes on to say that we all, with unveiled face, behold the glory of the Lord and are changed into the same image from glory to glory by the Spirit of the Lord (2 Corinthians 3:12–18). The ministry Paul received is the ministry of reconciliation (2 Corinthians 5:18), and Jesus, “the author and finisher of our faith” (Hebrews 12:2), stands at its centre from first to last.

The glory of the new covenant is the glory every believer now lives under. The law that stood over us with its verdict has been answered in Christ, and the Spirit who gives life writes God’s will on our hearts. Our standing with God rests on the righteousness he gives, and our service, however small it looks, belongs to a ministry that outlasts everything that fades. Whoever serves Christ can take Paul’s words in verse 6 as true of themselves, because God himself is the one who makes his servants able.

These verses show us a God who gives life where his law could only condemn, who keeps his promises in his Son, and who shares his glory with people who once stood guilty before him. That glory remains.