2 Corinthians 3:16

The chapter opens with the Corinthians themselves as Paul’s letter of commendation, “the epistle of Christ”, written by the Spirit of the living God on the heart (2 Corinthians 3:1–3). From there Paul sets two ministries side by side (2 Corinthians 3:6–11): “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” The ministry of the law, which he calls the ministration of death and of condemnation, still came with glory, “so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away”. The ministration of the Spirit, which brings righteousness and life, has a glory that far exceeds it and remains. All of this rests on the account of Moses coming down from Sinai with the skin of his face shining (Exodus 34:29–35), and Paul builds the rest of 2 Corinthians 3 on that scene.

“Seeing then” draws a conclusion from that comparison, and “such hope” is the hope this lasting ministry gives. The word, elpís, means hope or expectation, looking forward with confidence, and it can also name what is hoped for and the ground of hoping. What makes this hope so sure is what it rests on: Christ’s finished work, the Spirit who lives in his people, the righteousness and life of the new covenant, and the change into the Lord’s image that verse 18 describes.

Because of that hope, Paul says, “we use great plainness of speech”. The verb chráomai means to furnish what is needed, and so to employ something or to deal with people in a given way. Here it names the settled manner of Paul and his fellow ministers. The noun parrhēsía means outspokenness: frankness, plain and open speech, speaking in public, and by implication assurance. Among the Greeks it named the free and fearless speech prized in public life and in philosophy, and Paul claims it for the ministers of the new covenant. The adjective polýs, “great”, means much, so the boldness is abundant. God has revealed himself clearly in Christ, and so the gospel is preached openly and in plain words. That plainness is set against Moses’ covered face in the very next verse.

Scripture speaks of this boldness in other places too. Paul asks the Ephesians to pray that he may open his mouth boldly to make known the mystery of the gospel (Ephesians 6:19–20). Hebrews says, “Let us therefore come boldly unto the throne of grace” (Hebrews 4:16), and John speaks of “boldness in the day of judgment” (1 John 4:17). The confidence that opens the preacher’s mouth is the same confidence that brings God’s people near to him.

Paul’s open speech is “not as Moses, which put a vail over his face”. After Moses received the second tables of the law, his face shone with the glory of God’s presence, and the people were afraid to come near him (Exodus 34). When he had finished speaking with them, he covered his face (Exodus 34:33). The word for vail, kályma, means simply a covering, and it is the word Paul uses for the vail in each of verses 13 to 16. A covered face could speak of reverence, modesty or concealment, and Paul draws a further meaning from this one.

He gives the vail’s purpose: “that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished.” The verb atenízō means to look intently, to fix the eyes on something, and it is used of ordinary looks as well. The glory on Moses’ face was fading, and the vail kept the people from gazing steadily until it was gone. The verb behind “abolished”, katargéō, means to make idle or inactive, to render inoperative, invalidate or abolish. What passes away here is the fading glory and the ministry it belonged to, the old covenant as the way of righteousness and access to God. Its purpose was fulfilled in the new covenant that took its place.

The word “end”, télos, can mean a finish and also a goal, and both fit here. The law had a purpose to reach, and the vail hid from Israel that the covenant they lived under was provisional and pointed beyond itself to the Messiah. Had they seen its end, they might have looked past it to the one who was coming. Paul writes elsewhere, “For Christ is the end of the law for righteousness to every one that believeth” (Romans 10:4). Hebrews says that in speaking of a new covenant God “hath made the first old”, and that what waxes old “is ready to vanish away” (Hebrews 8:13). Paul calls the law “our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ”, and adds, “after that faith is come, we are no longer under a schoolmaster” (Galatians 3:24–25).

Verse 14 opens with “But”, allá, a strong turn, and the trouble now lies with Israel itself: “their minds were blinded.” The verb pōróō means to petrify, to harden, to make dull or callous. The KJV’s “blinded” gives the result, a mind grown hard and insensible to what God was showing. Paul now moves the vail from Moses’ face to the minds of those who read the old covenant, and he says it remains “until this day”, in his own generation as much as in Moses’.

The vail lies “in the reading of the old testament”. The law and the prophets were read aloud in the synagogue, a central part of Jewish worship. “Old testament” here means the old covenant, palaiá diathḗkē, the covenant God made with Israel at Sinai, together with the law and the prophets that set it down, and these are the writings being read. Verse 15 says the same thing in other words, “when Moses is read”, meaning the Torah, the five books traditionally held to be from Moses, read in synagogues and in homes. The verb anaginṓskō is the ordinary word “to read”, built from “know again”, as one recognises written letters. The verb itself names reading, and Paul’s point is that many who heard the law read regularly still had the vail over their understanding.

In verse 15 the vail lies “upon their heart”. The heart, kardía, stands in Scripture for the inner self, thought, feeling, will and understanding together, so a vail there covers the place where a person knows and chooses. Paul describes the understanding of fallen people as “darkened, being alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that is in them, because of the blindness of their heart” (Ephesians 4:18). Spiritual truth comes to such a heart as God gives it light.

Scripture speaks of this hardening elsewhere. John writes of those who saw Jesus’ signs, “He hath blinded their eyes, and hardened their heart; that they should not see with their eyes, nor understand with their heart, and be converted, and I should heal them” (John 12:40). Paul says in Romans that the elect obtained what Israel sought, “and the rest were blinded” (Romans 11:7–10).

The vail has its end all the same. Verse 14 closes, “which vail is done away in Christ”, with the same verb, katargéō, that verse 13 used for the passing glory. In union with Christ the covering loses its power, and the Old Testament opens to its reader as the account of God’s plan leading to his Son, its prophecies, types and shadows made plain.

“Nevertheless” brings hope into the hardness of verse 15. In “when it shall turn to the Lord”, the “it” is the heart of the verse before, and then “the vail shall be taken away”. The verb epistréphō means to turn, to turn around, to return, or to turn to someone, and Scripture uses it of turning to God in repentance. It carries the Old Testament’s call to return to God, and here it means turning in faith to Jesus as the Messiah. The word kýrios, “Lord”, comes from a root meaning supremacy and names one who rules, a master. The Greek Old Testament often uses it for God, and Paul usually means Jesus by it, as he does here.

The promise reaches each person who reads the law, for whenever anyone’s heart turns to Christ, that heart is unveiled. It also holds out hope for Israel as a people. Paul writes “that blindness in part is happened to Israel, until the fulness of the Gentiles be come in”, and goes on, “And so all Israel shall be saved” (Romans 11:25–27).

The taking away is God’s work. Isaiah foresees the LORD destroying “the face of the covering cast over all people, and the vail that is spread over all nations” (Isaiah 25:7). Christ sent Paul to the Gentiles “to open their eyes, and to turn them from darkness to light” (Acts 26:18). Paul prays that the eyes of believers’ understanding may be enlightened (Ephesians 1:17–18), and Jesus promised the Spirit, who would guide his people into all truth and show them what is his (John 16:7–15). A few verses on, Paul says it plainly: “For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath 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).

Verse 17 explains how turning to the Lord lifts the vail: “Now the Lord is that Spirit.” The Lord to whom the heart turns is present and at work through the Holy Spirit. The word pneûma means breath or wind and, by extension, a spirit, and here it is the Holy Spirit, who ministers the new covenant, lives in believers and brings Christ’s own presence to them. Under the old covenant Moses met God’s glory and the people saw it through him, behind a vail. In the new, the Lord comes near to every believer by his Spirit, directly and openly.

Verse 18 gathers the whole chapter into one sentence. “But we all” opens with dé, a connective that here marks the contrast with the vail of verse 15. The pronoun hēmeîs, “we”, is emphatic, and pâs, “all”, takes in every believer. At Sinai Moses alone went into God’s presence, and now all of God’s people look on his glory.

“With open face” answers Moses’ covered face directly. The phrase joins anakalýptō, “to unveil”, with prósōpon, the face or countenance, the front of a person turned toward view, and it describes a face with the vail taken off. Believers see the Lord’s glory openly, by faith, through the Spirit.

“Beholding as in a glass” is one word, katoptrízomai, from katoptron, a mirror. Its form describes a person actively engaged, looking in a mirror, and it is widely understood here as beholding the Lord’s glory as a mirror reflects it. Mirrors in Paul’s day were polished bronze or silver and gave a dimmer image than glass mirrors do. The mirror is most likely the gospel, which shows the glory of Christ.

“The glory of the Lord” uses dóxa, the word behind all three uses of “glory” in this verse. It is the splendour, dignity and worth of God, his presence made manifest, like the Hebrew kavod of the Old Testament. The Lord whose glory we behold is Christ, “the image of the invisible God” (Colossians 1:15), “the brightness of his glory, and the express image of his person” (Hebrews 1:3).

“Are changed” is metamorphóō, the word behind the English “metamorphosis”, a change of form that reaches a person’s very nature. It is the same word used when Jesus “was transfigured before them: and his face did shine as the sun” (Matthew 17:2), and when Paul writes, “be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind” (Romans 12:2). The verb is passive. We are changed, and God is the one who changes us.

“Into the same image” joins autós, “the same”, with eikṓn, an image that faithfully shows its original. Believers are changed into the image of the Lord they behold, the likeness of Christ. In this God renews in us the image he made us in, for the new man “is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him” (Colossians 3:10).

“Even as by the Spirit of the Lord” names who does all this. The preposition apó, “by”, marks the source, and the source is the Spirit, pneûma, the Spirit of verse 17. Growth in holiness is the Spirit’s own work in us.

Everything in these verses centres on Christ. The vail is done away in him, the heart turns to him, his Spirit sets us free, and his glory changes us. He is the Word made flesh, whose glory his disciples beheld (John 1:14), and of the Father John writes, “the only begotten Son, which is in the bosom of the Father, he hath declared him” (John 1:18). He is “the true Light” (John 1:9) and “the light of the world” (John 8:12), and in him “dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily” (Colossians 2:9). The face Moses covered shone with a reflected and passing glory. The face of Jesus Christ shows the glory of God himself, and that glory remains.

These verses give us a hope sure enough to be spoken plainly, and a God who means to be known. The Scriptures he gave Israel were pointing to his Son all along, and when a heart turns to the Lord the vail over them is lifted, so that the law and the prophets speak of Christ. Where someone still finds the gospel dark, the trouble is a vail on the heart, and the Lord takes it away whenever that heart turns to him. That is why Paul both prays for open eyes and preaches with great plainness of speech.

For all who have turned, the Spirit of the Lord gives liberty and is at work in each of us. Our growth into Christ’s likeness is his doing from first to last, moving from glory to glory until we see Christ as he is. The glory on Moses’ face faded, and the glory we behold in the face of Jesus Christ only grows brighter.