September 17, 2019

The Triune God at Work - 2 Corinthians 3:4-11



Theme: The Most Glorious Triune God
1. The Son gives life over death
2. The Holy Spirit gives true meaning to words
3. The Father gives competence under His covenant

2 Corinthians 3:4-11 Such is the confidence we have through Christ before God. 5 Not that we are competent by ourselves to claim that anything comes from us; rather, our competence is from God. 6 He also made us competent as ministers of a new covenant (not of letter, but of Spirit). For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

7 If the ministry that brought death (which was engraved in letters on stone) came with glory, so that the Israelites could not look directly at the face of Moses because of the glory of his face (though it was fading), 8 how will the ministry of the Spirit not be much more glorious? 9 For if the ministry that brought condemnation has glory, the ministry that brought righteousness has even more glory. 10 In fact, in this case, what was glorious is no longer very glorious, because of the greater glory of that which surpasses it. 11 Indeed, if what is fading away was glorious, how much more glorious is that which is permanent!  

It's common thing in athletics that when your team is losing you keep your mouth shut. I've been in plenty of different athletic contests before and there's no shortage of individuals who want to get the last say on something even if they can't win the contest. There's a variety of reasons why people do this. Sometimes people do it because of an insecurity in their attitude. Sometimes they do it to try to deflect from their inability to beat the competition. Sometimes people do it just because they have no self-awareness of what it looks like.

It's not just sports where this happens either. It could take place in just about any area of life. The lesson is: if you're not superior at something, and you're in the presence of someone who is, it's probably a good idea to listen. I wouldn't go around telling a race car driver what to look for on the track. I wouldn't go to a movie premiere and criticize the special effects department about deficiencies in one area or another. I wouldn't go to operating room and whisper over the shoulder of the surgeon. It’s not my place to do so. Each of those realms is beyond my qualification.

It’s OK to recognize when we're not the experts or when someone else who knows better. But human nature doesn't want to expose things that we don't know and it doesn't like to admit when others know better than we do. And so sometimes even we end up playing the fool.

In our text for today the Apostle Paul is defending his ministry, his call from God to proclaim the word of God to the Corinthians. He had to do this because certain individuals came into their congregation and started boasting about how great they were as minsters. They appealed to the Corinthians to listen to their messages because of how well they could speak, or how influential they seemed, rather than focusing on the actual content of their words.

Paul had to remind the Corinthians that the glory of a message is about God, not man. And Paul's message to them was that although there's a lot of personal glory in an earthly ministry when people are listening, that glory pales in comparison to the glory of what God has done for us.

So, when Paul talks about the competency that he had, it wasn’t about looking at what he did but instead about trusting in what God had done. That's where our competency comes from as Christians. That's where our courage to witness of Christ comes from and that's where our sufficiency in our faith comes from. What we see here in this section is an example of how our Triune God works on our behalf and through it we witness His unmatched glory.

The Son gives life over death. The Holy Spirit gives true meaning to our words. The Father gives competence under His covenant.

The name of Christ is mentioned at the very beginning of our text and His fingerprints are throughout the rest of the section. The main message is that God gives life to those who believe in His Son – the one who is the only way, truth, and life. To believe in Jesus is to have the victory of life over death.

Look also at all the various synonyms that Paul uses to express the same thing. He mentions the new covenant vs. the old covenant. That's a connection that goes all the way back to the Old Testament. He mentions a ministry of condemnation vs. a ministry of righteousness that again is a product of what Christ has done for us. He mentions the glory that is fading away with the glory that is much greater. He mentions the ministry of men vs. the ministry of the Holy Spirit. All of these contrasts get to the same effect, and that is the blessing of what we have been given through Christ.

We could summarize all these thoughts and condense them into two terms: law and gospel. When we use the terms law and gospel in our ministry, we understand them to be encapsulating all of these thoughts that Paul expresses. On the one hand is what we have because of our sins and the state that we're in because of our situation. On the other hand, is what Christ has accomplished for us what only He could give. The difference between law and gospel is the difference between death and life. That's the result of each of those images that Paul uses. And Jesus is the one who makes all the difference.

Of course, that doesn't mean that the other two members of the Trinity, the Father and the Holy Spirit aren't also integral in our faith life – and in our spiritual competency. Paul teaches us that the Holy Spirit is the one who gives meaning to our words. Again, this section is about ministry. The ministry is always a difficult thing to understand and explain because God gives us the responsibility of speaking on His behalf. That thought alone doesn't make a lot of sense in our minds. If the eternal, almighty God has everything in heaven and earth at His fingertips, why would He use sinful, mistake prone, fallible humans to proclaim the Word of Salvation?

Naturally we see why we have a hard time understanding the ministry of the Holy Spirit. In the text Paul uses the contrast between the letter and the spirit. In Paul's words the “letter” is a negative concept. It's not where we want to be as Christians. It's not what we want to be proclaiming. We want to have full assurance and we want our hearers to know that when we speak on God's behalf the Holy Spirit is working through us. But how can we give that assurance when we have to use letters -words themselves - to transmit the gospel to others? It seems impossible for us not to fail through the letter.

What is meant by the “letter” is when we use words apart from their intended meaning. You see in whatever context you’re in, you can hone in on the letters or the words themselves without paying attention to the broader context or the meaning of those words. For example, take this phrase:

“I saw a man on a hill with a telescope.” – We see the words clearly – but what is their meaning.

In this phrase, there could be up to five different meanings:
·       There’s a man on a hill, and I’m watching him with my telescope.
·       There’s a man on a hill, who I’m seeing, and he has a telescope.
·       There’s a man, and he’s on a hill that also has a telescope on it.
·       I’m on a hill, and I saw a man using a telescope.
·       There’s a man on a hill, and I’m sawing him with a telescope.

Each of those meanings could technically be derived from those words. But I’m sure you know which ones are most likely. Usually through the context it's easy to determine what the clear words mean but people can always strip the words of their context. People can take the letter literally and they can miss the meaning. This is what Paul was condemning in this section. He was specifically speaking of people of the Jewish nation who took the Old Testament laws by the letter in their literal meaning but stripped them of their context and their purpose. That's why Paul says the letter kills but the Spirit gives life. When you do this with the word of God, and you make commands that God doesn't make, it leads a person down the wrong path. It leads them further away from life in Christ, the life that only the Holy Spirit can give, and it leads them to trust in themselves which is going to result in spiritual or eternal death.

God has given us His word and He's also given us the meaning of those words through the work of the Holy Spirit. When it comes to our ministries, it's the Holy Spirit who's going to bless the efforts on giving meaning to the words that we speak. Let us be careful not to get in His way by presenting the words outside of their context even if the letters themselves could technically work.

Finally, we come to God the Father in our text. The Father builds upon the accomplishments of Jesus and the ongoing work of the Holy Spirit and blesses us with competence under is new covenant. The Old covenant in the Old Testament served a purpose but it was not to bring life. God ushered in a better covenant - a newer covenant through the gospel of Jesus in order to give us life.

The word “competency” means that we are sufficient and able to do what is necessary. We began by asking how sinful human beings could transmit the message of salvation from a perfect God. This is the answer to that question. We can do that because God makes us competent. God makes us sufficient. The purpose of this text, again, is not to overemphasize Paul’s authority or how important humans are in the ministry but to show us how the Triune God does allows us to effectively use His word.

This competency comes from the blessing of the New Covenant. And it leads to the highest form of glory. Here's where Paul uses an object lesson from the Old Testament for people who were relying on the old covenant to be saved. He uses a story about Moses; when Moses received the law on the mountain and his face shone brightly because he was in the presence of God. As amazing as that glory was to show how important Moses was, it pales in comparison to the glory that God receives as our Lord and Savior – the glory of the New Covenant.

Trying to boast in our efforts and in the glory of our own works as Christians or in our own ministries is like trying to brag to God when He's in control of everything. It's embarrassing and it's foolish to do so. God’s taken care of everything – that’s the whole point of the gospel. Why should we try to one up Him? What good does it do to brag about ourselves when He’s already conquered death and hell?  Oftentimes, just like athletic contests it's a product of our own lack of self-awareness and our own insecurities because of our sins. This is not how God wants us to feel as Christians. This is not how He wants us to look like to the rest of the world. He wants us to trust and to know that He has made us competent. In place of the rightfully earned condemnation that we deserved because of our sins, He gives us life through Jesus. In place of our own futility and struggles to understand His word and transmit it to others, He blesses us with wisdom and understanding from the very Author of the Bible - the Holy Spirit. And in place of the old letter that kills, He has given us a new covenant that forgives and renews.

These are the blessings of our most glorious Triune God, and it's why we are privileged to stand for His word and to minister in His name. Amen

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