2 Corinthians 3:4-6

‘And such confidence have we through Christ to God-ward. Not that we are sufficient of ourselves, to account anything as from ourselves; but our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant. Not of the letter, but of the spirit, for the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.'

And this is the confidence that he has, a confidence that he has through Christ as he looks towards God. His confidence is not in himself, or in his own resources, but in the fact that what has come, has come through Christ and what He has deserved. Thus as he looks towards God he has no doubts of what will result, for it is all of Christ.

So it is not that he looks to his own sufficiency. He and his fellow-workers do not look on themselves as sufficient (adequate). They have no high opinion of themselves. They make no claims of superiority for themselves. They do not look to their own resources. They are not boasters like others. Their sufficiency is from God, and it is He Who, having called them, has made them sufficient with His own sufficiency, as ministers of the new covenant.

In the background of this idea of sufficiency and adequacy may lie the question in Joel 2:11 (LXX), ‘who is sufficient (adequate) in it (the day of the Lord)?' The answer is no one. In LXX it is God alone Who is ‘the Sufficient One', for this is regularly the translation for El Shaddai (Ruth 1:20; Job 21:15; Job 31:2; Job 40:2). Thus they recognise that any sufficiency that they have must come from Him.

And this new covenant (binding relationship with God) is not written in letters, it is totally of the Spirit, as He writes the covenant within their very beings. For the covenant given in letters was one that they were unable to fulfil. At first they received it with joy and gladly subscribed to it. But later, even as they read it, it condemned them and destroyed them. It withered their hearts. They had failed to live up to its demands. But in contrast the Spirit gives life. He makes them as those who love God and desire to keep His law (Romans 8:4). It renews their hearts. And He gives them life and makes them aware of that new life that they possess (Romans 6:4), because they have been accepted by God in Christ, and have received His very life within them (Galatians 2:20; Ephesians 3:17). It continually renews their hearts.

‘For the letter kills, but the spirit gives life.' For a similar idea compare Romans 2:29; Romans 7:6. There was nothing wrong with the words of the old covenant itself. It was holy, and righteous and good (Romans 7:12). The wrong was in man's heart and in his attitude towards it, and the description ‘the letter' emphasises that wrong use. Man was taken up too much with the detail and failed to see behind it the graciousness of God and the need for a change of heart wrought by God. He refused to respond to God through it, thus bringing on himself the sentence of death. He relied on outward circumcision, and failed to recognise that he must be ‘inwardly circumcised' (Romans 2:29). Thus the detail killed him. But the Spirit first gives life, revivifying the spirit, and as a result He brings about that response, so that man responds in the newness of the spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter which inhibits response (Romans 7:6). The same fragrance is wafted to all, but to one it brings life, while to the other it brings death (2 Corinthians 2:14).