2 Corinthians 3:6

Able ministers of the new testament. — Better, perhaps, as keeping up the stress on the word that had been used in 2 Corinthians 2:16, in the English as in the Greek, sufficient ministers. The noun is used as carrying out the thought implied in the “ministered by us” in 2 Corinthians 3:3. In the “new covenant” — new, as implying freshness of life and energy — we have a direct reference, both to our Lord’s words, as cited in 1 Corinthians 11:25, and given in the Gospel narrative of the Last Supper (see Notes on Matthew 26:28), and to Jeremiah 31:31. The Greek omits the article before all three words, “of a new covenant, one not of a written letter, but of spirit.” The idea of “spirit” comes from Ezekiel 11:19; Ezekiel 36:26.

For the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. — The word “letter” (gramma) stands, not for what we call the literal meaning of Scripture, as contrasted with one which is allegorical or spiritual, but for the whole written code or law of Judaism. St. Paul does not contrast the literal meaning of that code with the so-called mystical exposition of it (a view which has often led to wild and fantastic interpretations), but speaks of the written code as such. So the plural “the writings, the Scriptures” (grammata), are used of the sacred Books of Israel (John 5:47; 2 Timothy 3:15), and the scribes (grammateis) were those who interpreted the writings. The contrast between the “letter” in this sense and the “spirit” is a familiar thought with St. Paul (Romans 2:27; Romans 7:6). Of this written code St. Paul says that it “killeth.” The statement seems startlingly bold, and he does not here stop to explain its meaning. What he means is, however, stated with sufficient fulness in the three Epistles written about this time (1 Corinthians 15:56; Galatians 3:10; Galatians 3:21; Romans 7:9; Romans 8:2, the references being given in the chronological order of the Epistles). The work of the Law, from St. Paul’s view, is to make men conscious of sin. No outward command, even though it come from God, and is “holy, and just, and good” (Romans 7:12), can, as such, do more than that. What was wanting was the life-giving power of the Spirit. The word here (as in Romans 2:27; Romans 7:6) appears to hover between the sense of “spirit” as representing any manifestation of the Divine Life that gives life — in which sense the words of Christ are “spirit and life” (John 6:63), and Christ Himself is a “quickening spirit” (1 Corinthians 15:45, and 2 Corinthians 3:17 of this chapter) — and the more distinctly personal sense in which St. Paul speaks of “the Spirit,” the Holy Spirit, and to which we commonly limit our use of the name of “the Holy Ghost” in His relation to the Father and Son. Of that Spirit St. Paul says that “it quickens:” it can rouse into life not only the slumbering conscience, as the Law had done, but the higher spiritual element in man — can give it strength to will, the healthy energy of new affections, new prayers, new impulses. If we cannot suppose St. Paul to have been acquainted with our Lord’s teaching, as recorded in John 6:63 (where see Note), the coincidence of thought is, at any rate, singularly striking.