Full Transcript

Welcome to Share the Word. We know that the new covenant of God’s grace is far greater than the glory of the old covenant of the law. The apostle Paul has always strived for the Corinthians to understand that he is not promoting himself. Paul wants them to focus on themselves to validate his role as an apostle of Jesus. Let’s listen in. Second Corinthians chapter 3, from glory to glory.

Tomorrow, from when we record this episode, is Election Day 2024 in the U.S., and personally, I cannot wait for this election to be over. Someone once urged me to run for political office. I could never imagine doing that. For one reason, I could not deal with all the lies and smears and half-truths you have to endure to make it through a campaign. In these last days of this highly charged election, if you listen to all the noise, we apparently have Adolf Hitler running against—well, maybe I shouldn’t even say who the other side is comparing her to. Someone has said, I’m not sure who, If everybody lies to you, the danger is not that you believe the lies so much as that you won’t believe anything is true anymore.

This has been one of Satan’s most effective strategies forever: to flood the world with lies. The one Jesus said was a liar and the father of lies. He’s flooded the world with lies, so many lies that he’s convinced many people there is no such thing as truth anymore. So why worry about it? The question of who exactly Paul’s lying opponents were that came to Corinth, deliberately trying to discredit him, is not a completely settled one. I think most assume they’re similar, if not the same guys, who had followed him to Galatia several years earlier, a group often referred to as the Judaizers.

If you haven’t heard our podcast through Galatians, these were Jewish missionaries of sort who tried to persuade the new Christians there was a gospel that Paul was preaching, and it was just inadequate. The gospel of justification through faith in Jesus, that was not enough. To truly be right with God, even Gentiles had to essentially become Jews and keep Jewish customs and commandments from the Old Testament. The Judaizers said that, yeah, Jesus was from God, his death on the cross was necessary, but that was not enough. Keeping the law of Moses was the other part necessary to be saved. Paul’s detractors who came to Corinth may well have been Judaizers, but also realize the New Testament was as complex as our world today with many, many competing religions and philosophies.

I’ve read about different groups of Jewish mystics who traveled and proselytized in the first century and who taught that Jesus was more than us, but less than God. Much like the New Age teachers today who teach that God has sent many representatives, special representatives, they call them usually divine masters, into the world over the centuries to show men a higher way. Jesus was one, Moses was another, Buddha was another, and so on. The religion of those who came to Corinth, those false apostles, apparently was some kind of synthesis of Judaism and Greek mystery religions. Perhaps the men who arrived there claimed to be in that category, claimed to be sent by God with new truth. Paul, though, refers to them as false apostles, sarcastically later as super apostles.

He clearly saw them, what they taught, as spiritually dangerous, way off base. We don’t know for certain who they were, but that they were in some way connected to Judaism does seem most likely, considering where Paul goes in this passage. Except to satisfy our curiosity, it doesn’t much matter exactly who they were or the specific tenets of their teaching, but their existence and the fact this letter revolves so much around their influence on this young church, that’s an important reminder to us that Satan has, since the beginning of the Christian era, continuing even to our day, been doing his best to confuse people about the real identity of Jesus and the content of the gospel message, to throw out so many lies that many just assume there is no knowable truth on these matters.

Clearly, one of his schemes, to use Paul’s word, is to confuse people with so many lies on those two foundational essential truths: who is Jesus, and what exactly is the gospel. In my neck of the woods, there are still missionaries of false religions sent out to do exactly that. Jehovah’s Witnesses, for example, have been at my door many times over the years, pushing their Watchtower magazines and offering to do home Bible studies with us. And a couple days ago, I was on my way to the airport in New Jersey and I stopped for gas at a Wawa, and two clean-cut, well-dressed young men were offering everybody coming in and out, and all those pumping gas, a copy of the Book of Mormon, inviting them to their Sunday meetings. Both Jehovah’s Witnesses and Mormons deny the unique deity of Jesus and that salvation is only by faith in what he accomplished for us on the cross.

They’re false teachers, and some may well be sincere in what they believe, but what they believe is unscriptural and will lead people away from the truth. Make no mistake about that. These are modern examples, little different than Paul’s opponents in the first century, who followed him from place to place, seeing if they could turn young, naive believers away from faith in Christ to man-made religions and philosophies. By the way, this is one reason God has given us the New Testament Scripture, its written revelation from Him, to enable us to discern truth from error, to recognize false teachers, to turn away from them. So keep on listening and learning God’s Word. Now listen again to the opening verses of chapter 3.

Are we beginning, Paul says, to commend ourselves again, or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you? 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. Let me explain that. Often, when Christian missionaries and teachers went from one place to another at that time, they would carry with them letters of recommendation, like credentials that other Christians would recognize. Paul used that practice himself when he sent Timothy or Titus or someone else in his place to a certain church with a message for them.

He would send along with him some credentials, a letter from him, something saying these were my representatives. I think those men who arrived at Corinth, the false apostles, likely had forged letters of recommendation from someone in Jerusalem, perhaps claiming they came as representatives of James or Peter and the original Christian church there. Imagine they show up in a place like Corinth sometime after Paul and his team have left with these fake credentials. How would the Corinthians know the difference? The church members apparently accepted them, lodged them, fed them, maybe even paid them during their time there. That would explain Paul’s comment at the end of chapter 2 where he says, We’re not like those who peddle the word of God, but as from sincerity, as from God, in the sight of God, we speak for Christ.

Those false apostles who infiltrated that church set about discrediting Paul, saying things like, Hey, when he arrived here, did he have any credentials? Did he have any letters of recommendation? Planting doubts and progressing to attacking his character and finally to the content of his message. To undermine Paul’s teaching and try to persuade the young believers of something else, they first needed to discredit the messenger. Can you even imagine how frustrating this was to Paul to learn that something just like what had previously happened in Galatia was now happening again in Greece? Paul’s teachers, impostors, trailing him, doing their best to undermine him and what he had taught the members of that church.

Paul’s opening line in his chapter is constructed in the Greek language like this: I don’t really need to credential myself again to you, do I? You yourselves are my credentials. You yourselves are my letters of recommendation. What God had done in their lives, he meant through his ministry. Remember 1 Corinthians when he wrote, Don’t be deceived. Neither the sexually immoral or idolaters or adulterers or effeminate and so on and so on and so on will not inherit the kingdom of God.

And such were some of you. But you have now been washed, sanctified, and justified in the name of the Lord Jesus. Paul’s reminding them that he had been sent by Christ as a true apostle, carrying the life-changing message of the gospel to Corinth. He and his team were in their city for 18 months, living among them, sharing the good news and foundational truths of Christianity with them. Their lives were changed when they heard the truth of the gospel and believed it, and that was his credentials. By the way, this brings up something important.

The best credentials anyone has to be a minister of Christ are not their credentials from a seminary or college, their degrees, their titles. The best credentials are their fruit. Does God work through them? Do people respond to them, their life, their teaching? Do they win souls? Does the kingdom advance because of their obvious calling and gifting and sincere ministry?

Some of the most effective pastors and missionaries and Christian leaders I’ve known throughout my life were not seminary graduates, but the results of their life and work showed that God had credentialed them. I’m not disparaging education, that’s for sure. Anyone who wants to lead and teach others should be very well versed and rooted in God’s Word. But Paul is saying the lives God changed through his ministry were the real proof and legitimacy of his ministry in Christ. Those who showed up in Corinth with their fake credentials and their fancy oratory and their airs of superiority, the super apostles in their own minds, Paul says Christ has not called them, and they were in fact just confusing tools of the enemy. The Corinthian Christians shouldn’t have needed to be reminded of this, as Paul has to do here.

But people easily forget. People can easily get confused by smooth-talking deceivers, just like Satan deceived Eve in the Garden of Eden. And that’s apparently what had happened to most at this church when these pseudo-apostles wormed their way in. Paul was reminding them that God had used him to bring the faith to them. He had shown them who Christ was, not these guys who had come later and contradicted his message. He felt very sure in saying these things to them.

That’s why he goes on, And such confidence we have through Christ toward God. Not that we ourselves are sufficient in ourselves to consider anything as coming from ourselves. Our sufficiency is from God, who has also made us sufficient as ministers of the new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. His confidence about being a legitimate apostle was not in himself, he says. It was in the fact that Christ had personally called him to this work, which he terms a minister of the new covenant. And Christ had been using him effectively as a tool to change lives.

By the new covenant, he meant what he had been sharing with them that God has done for us through Christ to make a relationship with Him possible, a relationship not based on conformity to rules and customs like the old covenant of law which came through Moses, but a new way of relating to God based on grace and through faith in Jesus. This contrast, which he expands on later in his chapter, is what makes me pretty certain the false apostles were Judaizers or some kind of Jewish mystics. When he says, Realize the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life, and then refers to the new covenant, that’s a pretty big clue that those false teachers were trying to impress on the Corinthians, who were Jews, that they needed to return to living under the restrictions of the old covenant, under the laws of Moses.

And if they were Gentiles, they needed to get their lives reoriented to start living under the Old Testament laws and customs. Paul knew going back to the old covenant, trying to live there was a huge mistake. Remember, he once called himself, before he met Christ, a Pharisee of the Pharisees, meaning a law keeper of all law keepers. He knew the burden of trying to keep the 600-some laws in the Old Testament. He knew that that was not where spiritual life is found, that trying to live like that kills your inner peace, your joy, because you can’t do it. You can never do it well enough.

You’re always feeling condemned by your failures. That’s why he tells the Corinthians in verse 6, the letter kills, but the Spirit, meaning the Holy Spirit, gives life. Under the new covenant, when we receive Christ but our trust in Him to save us, we’re given the Holy Spirit. The Holy Spirit regenerates us spiritually and also helps us live a life pleasing to God. He helps us want to rather than fear not to. Think about that.

I hope you understand the difference. It’s the difference between a schoolmaster who’s always cracking your knuckles for the smallest infraction of the rules and a supportive, encouraging, empowering teacher who is on your side, helping you unlock your potential. What Paul writes next in verses 7 and following might make no sense to you unless you’re familiar with the account in the Old Testament book of Exodus he’s quoting from or alluding to. It’s chapters 33 and 34. There’s a fascinating to try and imagine description there of Moses asking God for reassurance before leading the rebellious people of Israel any further into the wilderness. God has brought them out of Egypt.

The Exodus, as we call it, has already happened. The golden calf incident has already happened, and Moses is tasked with getting these difficult people to the promised land of Canaan. He tells God, I don’t want to even attempt this unless you’re going to be with me every step of the way. And God promises him, I’ll do what you’ve asked, for you have found favor in my sight. And Moses said, Then please let me see your glory. Whoa.

Moses said, If you’re really with me, if you will show me the way to lead these people, I need to see your glory. Up until then, he had heard the voice of God in the tabernacle, but he wanted more reassurance. This is when Israel was camped at Mount Sinai, where God would give him the Ten Commandments and all the laws, what Paul’s been calling the old covenant that would govern the nation of Israel. Amazingly, God said, Okay. And on Mount Sinai, he showed Moses a cleft in the rock, it says, like a crack large enough that Moses could get in. This is pretty wild.

Listen. And God said, I will cause all my goodness to pass in front of you, and I will proclaim the name Yahweh before you. But you cannot see my face, for no one can see my face and live. The Lord said, When my glory passes by, and you are in the cleft of the rock, I will cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will take my hand away, and you will see my back, but my face will not be seen. Can you even picture that?

For Moses to gain the reassurance he needed to lead the nation of Israel forward, he asked and was granted to see the glory of God. What do you think he actually saw? What do you think of when you hear the word glory? For me, that’s not even a word I use with regard to anything else but God. For me, it’s His burning holiness and impeccable righteousness that can only be represented by absolute light, super radiant light. First John chapter 1, verse 5 says, God is light, and in Him there is no darkness at all.

Remember how we’re told in the Gospel of Luke chapter 9, I think we did a podcast on this, Jesus took three of His closest disciples also up another mountain, and there He was transfigured into His glorified self, His heavenly persona. They said that He was radiating very bright light. He was gleaming with brightness. Revelation says, In the city that stands in the center of the new heavens and new earth, there will be no need for lights, not even the sun, because God’s glory will be bright enough to light everything there. Moses, as a sinful mortal man, could not look upon God’s unfiltered glory and live. So God covered him until His glory passed by, but then allowed him to kind of peek at it at the tail end of it.

We learned in 1 Corinthians 15, remember this, that in the future believers are going to be given sin-free, immortal, spiritual bodies able to see and interact with God in all His essential glory, face to face, nothing between, nothing filtered. A contemporary Christian songwriter has tried to capture what that moment might be like when we are for the first time able to see the Lord in His glory. The refrain of his song goes, Surrounded by Your glory. What will my heart feel? Will I dance for you, Jesus, or in awe of you be still? Will I stand in your presence, or to my knees will I fall?

Will I sing hallelujah? Will I be able to speak at all? I can only imagine. I can only imagine. Pretty sure I’ll be on my knees and speechless, at least at first and probably for a long time. But he will welcome the redeemed, we’re told, and we will know him there face to face.

That will be amazing. I’m sorry for kind of wandering off track a little, but when Paul starts speaking about God’s glory here in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, this is where my mind goes. But where his mind went when he wanted those early Christians to understand was the inferior glory of the old covenant, based on the laws given to Israel, had faded away. It was the past, and that the new covenant initiated by Christ, which is far better, had now arrived and was for God’s people now and eternally. That’s his point in referring back to Moses and his interaction with God on Mount Sinai. When he met God and was given the laws engraved on stone, and he was in the presence of God, his face glowed, Exodus says, with reflected glory.

When he came down from the mountain to the camp of Israel, his face was still glowing, was radiating with God’s reflected glory. In fact, he covered it with a veil until the glory wore off, until it faded away. Paul saw in that an illustration of the temporariness, the inferiority of the old covenant. The law of Moses could only show us God’s perfect standards, but it could not change anyone’s heart. It was a temporary thing until Jesus came and established a much better covenant, one that changes us from slaves to the law into children of God, one that changes us from living under fear of failure and judgment to children living in our heavenly Father’s love and acceptance. There’s a lot more involved in 2 Corinthians chapter 3, but I don’t want to pass over verses 15 to 18 where Paul writes, Even to this day, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over people’s hearts.

But whenever a person turns to the Lord, that veil is removed. Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom. We all, with unveiled faces, are looking as in a mirror at the glory of the Lord and are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory. Staying on that veil imagery for a moment, I think he is referring to people who still were trying to live under the old covenant and the laws of Moses, as many religious people and Jews are to this day. But Paul says they have a veil over their hearts. They fail to realize the old covenant was temporary.

It could show us our sin. It could show us we cannot live up to a holy God’s perfections. But that’s the best it can do. Only when we recognize we need more, we need a Savior, we need Jesus, and turn to the Lord, as he says, is that veil removed. And then the burden of trying to please God in our own efforts is lifted off us, and the experience of freedom, knowing we are accepted and forgiven, comes on us. The Holy Spirit arrives to aid us.

This is the far better reality of living under the new covenant. Then he says, with unveiled faces, we Christians can look at the glory of the Lord and be ourselves transformed into his image, from glory to glory. He means, as believers, as we look at Christ and his perfections, the Holy Spirit within us will keep transforming us from one level of reflecting God’s glory in our lives to one a little higher, becoming a little brighter, becoming a little more Christ-like, year by year, year by year, till one day we see Christ, and the process is completed, and we ourselves are then fully glorified. As he writes elsewhere, I am sure of this, that he who started a good work in you will carry it on to completion until the day of Jesus Christ. A good question to ask ourselves in conclusion today is, are we more like Christ than we used to be?

Are we reflecting more of his glory than we were ten years ago, or five years ago, or even two years ago? The longer we follow Christ, the more we should be transforming into his image, Paul is saying, moving from glory to glory until the day we see him face to face. This has been Paul for Share the Word. Thanks for listening. Thanks, Paul. As the Apostle Paul compares the glory of God that’s revealed in the two covenants, he argues that the new covenant offers a permanent solution to the problem of sin, validating the fact that the new covenant is more glorious.

The old covenant simply prepared people for the new covenant. The new invites us to a face-to-face relationship with God. He explained that as people focus on God, we become more like him as we reflect his glory. So shine brightly, brothers and sisters, and be the beacon on the hill, attracting all to His kingdom. From all of us at Share the Word, our blessings and prayers go out to all of you.