I want to read the third chapter of the second letter to the Corinthians. Second Corinthians, chapter 3, please.
Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? Or need we, as do some, epistles of commendation to you or from you?
Ye are our epistle, written in our hearts, known and read of all men;
being made manifest that ye are an epistle of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh.
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 killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.
But if the ministration of death, written, and engraven on stones, came with glory, so that the children of Israel could not look stedfastly upon the face of Moses for the glory of his face; which glory was passing away:
how shall not rather the ministration of the Spirit be with glory?
For if the ministration of condemnation hath glory, much rather doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
For verily that which hath been made glorious hath not been made glorious in this respect, by reason of the glory that surpasseth.
For if that which passeth away was with glory, much more that which remaineth is in glory.
Having therefore such a hope, we use great boldness of speech,
and are not as Moses, who put a veil upon his face, that the children of Israel should not look stedfastly on the end of that which was passing away:
but their minds were hardened: for until this very day at the reading of the old covenant the same veil remaineth unlifted; which veil is done away in Christ.
But unto this day, whensoever Moses is read, a veil lieth upon their heart.
But whensoever it shall turn to the Lord, the veil is taken away.
Now the Lord is the Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.
But we all, with unveiled face beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord, are transformed into the same image from glory to glory, even as from the Lord the Spirit.
We do not make a great deal of the ecclesiastical calendar—the special times and seasons of the year—because it is a part of our religion. But sometimes it is good, as well, to dwell upon the great epochs which lie at the very foundation of our faith, such as the Resurrection, the Ascension, and the coming of the Spirit.
The latter is, in many minds, the Day of Pentecost: the coming of the Spirit. And I think, dear friends—I am sure—that we, the Lord’s people, are always in need of those reminders and fuller instruction as to what that really means.
For it was indeed a great, great thing which happened. The whole of the dispensation up to the time of the coming of the Holy Spirit had been under one set of conditions. From that day, the whole dispensation changed, and entirely new conditions came in.
I say again, we need to know the greatness of the change, and the changes, which have come with the coming of the Holy Spirit.
The chapter which we have just read is a portion of a much larger argument, or setting forth of truth, which ought not to be confined or restricted to the verses in this chapter. This chapter embodies something momentous and tremendous: that very change of dispensation from Moses to Christ, and from Moses to Christ ministered in the power of the Holy Spirit.
The preference is marked by the prevailing word throughout the chapter: glory. Glory. The word occurs ten times in eighteen verses—verse 7, verse 8, verse 9, verse 10, verse 11, and three times in verse 18—really indicating what this is about.
Then, alongside it, there is the word, or the name, Spirit. You find that this is a governing and ruling matter: the Spirit and glory.
The argument of the apostle is just this: that there was a glory which faded, which went out, in the old dispensation; and that dispensation resulted in something which was anything but glory. But by the coming of the Spirit, a dispensation of glory came in—a glory that never was before: a new glory, a fuller glory, and a glory with a new meaning.
To analyse and open up the chapter, we may put over it the statement: the plane here is glory. Let that be said.
The medium of glory is the Spirit. He is clearly set forth as the Spirit of glory, the medium of the glory.
The instrument of the glory is the Word of God: the Word of God becoming alive by the Spirit and producing glory, as we shall see.
The sum of the glory is Christ. “When it shall turn to the Lord,” the veil is done away. Glory breaks out.
Or, if we pursue this a little further into chapter 4:
Seeing it is God, that said, Light shall shine out of darkness, Who shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.
The sum of our glory is Christ. The place of the glory is the heart of the believer: “hath shined in our hearts”; “written… in tables that are hearts of flesh.” The place of the glory is the heart of the believer.
The effect of the glory in the heart is transformation. We are being transformed, as we behold, into the same image, from glory to glory.
The power of the glory is liberty. “Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.”
That is the panorama in great outline. I am not going to take up all that and comment upon it. It is simply a statement that, with the coming of the Holy Spirit, the way of glory has been opened up and the glory has come in.
But you notice, through this chapter and the parts Paul is writing, there are these fundamental contrasts—fundamental contrasts which are of such tremendous importance.
Dear friends, I do not feel that I can put sufficient emphasis and stress upon this matter. It goes far deeper and more into the present situation than most of us realize. My difficulty is to make it clear—make it clear.
Here we are in the presence of something of tremendous importance to Christians. Because, after all—and this I am sure you will agree with—the real meaning, where we Christians are concerned, is that our Christianity shall be glorious, and that we should be glorious Christians in the right sense.
Well, you agree with that? But how? It is by not only recognizing but coming into the good of these fundamental contrasts which are presented to us in the chapter.
There is this contrast, at the heart of all the others: the contrast between the law given by Moses and the revelation given in Jesus Christ; the contrast between tables of stone and hearts of flesh; and so on.
But right at the centre of these contrasts there is this one: “The letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life.”
Now let us be very clear as to what that means. That is not a contrast between the Word of God and the Holy Spirit. It cannot be so said.
“The letter”—there is the Word of God. But it is not taken in contrast to the Holy Spirit as necessarily bringing death while the Spirit brings life. I want you to be very clear in your mind about that.
You see, when you use that phrase, “The letter killeth,” do not think for a moment that it means that the Word of God brings death. You have got to get it in its setting and understand what it is the apostle is saying here.
It is between legalism in relation to the letter, or the Word of God, and life which comes by the Holy Spirit acting upon the Word of God.
This is what the apostle is saying here, as he has said much more fully in other parts of his writings. He is thinking here of a state in persons. They are in a state in which the Word only comes to them as a legal statement of, “Thou shalt,” and, “Thou shalt not.”
It is something imposed upon them. It becomes a heavy and dead weight upon them. It is just a matter of a precept: “Now, you must do this, and you must do that, and you must do the other thing; and you may not do these things.”
It may be the Word of God, but because of a state in those concerned, it becomes simply legalistic, and therefore it becomes bondage.
It is the same Word—it is all the Word of God—but it is the effect that it has upon us. And that depends entirely upon our state.
In his first letter to the Corinthians, the apostle had a lot to say at the beginning which bears, I think, very much upon this matter. You remember how, in that part which is marked by chapter 2, he is speaking about the wisdom of this world.
The wisdom of this world. Now, he is talking to Christians—talking to Christians. The wisdom of this world, and the utter inability to understand the things of the Spirit of God by reason of natural wisdom.
Yes, you may have all the wisdom of the philosophers, all the wisdom of the great Greek world and empire, and yet you are utterly incapacitated where the things of the Spirit of God are concerned.
It is no use—no use—approaching the things of God, the Word of God, with the most complete intellectual outfit naturally. Whether you are born with it or whether you are trained to it, you may bring the fullest, ripest scholarship, the best education, and the finest brain to the Word of God, and there is no life. It does not produce life.
If you handle the Word of God in that way, it does not communicate life to anybody. It may be very wonderful, of course. It may be very interesting or fascinating; but ask the question: Has it produced life? Has it resulted in this transformation into the same image? No. No.
And I am going further. We may have the most thoroughgoing knowledge of the Bible, so that we are able to analyse every book of the Bible and have it there in our head clearly, and tell anybody at any moment what is in this book or in that chapter. We may have the whole thing, and yet it may still be in the natural mind and neither change us nor the people to whom we give it.
And worse than that, it may incapacitate us for understanding spiritual things. We may be altogether in another realm from what is real spiritual understanding.
It is necessary, dear friends, for you to recognize this: that it is not a matter of Bible knowledge, though that is so important. It is not a matter of brain, intellect, or scholarship. It is not at all a matter of our attainments in that realm, however valuable such things may be in their place.
But it is a matter of God having shined into our hearts to give knowledge—another kind of knowledge by His shining. An altogether different knowledge comes by the inshining.
Now, I take it that this natural knowledge, this natural wisdom which the apostle speaks of in his first letter, corresponds to the tables of stone. After all, tables of stone are cold, dead things. Hearts of flesh are warm, living things.
And that is the difference between a natural apprehending, grasping, and handling of the Word of God—however great may be the natural ability in that realm—and the Spirit revealing God’s Christ in His Word in our hearts. They are two different worlds.
I am not talking now about the unsaved on the one hand and the saved on the other. I am discriminating, as this chapter does, between the people of God. Israel were the people of God, but you see there was this objective attitude to things. They were not spiritual people—spiritual men and women.
And when we say “not spiritual,” we mean they had not got the Holy Spirit indwelling and working. After all, everything was outward.
And so they came to the law as something written on tables of stone and said, “Now, it says, ‘Thou shalt,’ ‘Thou shalt not,’ and ‘Thou shalt not.’” It was all there like that: cold commandment, since there was no corresponding light in their hearts, no Spirit indwelling. And so it was dead, and it killed.
I know how hopeless it is to try and explain this. But you see, even the commandments written on the tables of stone—how do they affect you, dear friend? How do they affect you?
Now you can take any one of those commands: “Thou shalt not steal.” How do you feel about that? As a Christian, do you feel that that is a terrible rebuke to you, a terrible warning, a terrible commandment—that if you do that in any way whatsoever, in the ten thousand ways in which you can do it, you are condemned? How do you read it? What does that say to you?
Does it just say, “Thou shalt not steal,” imposing something upon you? Or has the Spirit of God in you taken up that, with all the rest, and said, “Look here: Christ, rather than draw to Himself even what belonged to Him—to say nothing of what belonged to other people and did not belong to Him—rather than Himself, was always thinking how He could give rather than get.”
You see, stealing embodies a principle. It means that you are for yourself. You have got to help yourself, willy-nilly, anyhow. You are going to get that because you want it. It is a spirit; it is a principle.
Lawfully or unlawfully—stealing is unlawful—but when you lift it into the realm of the spiritual, you see something infinitely more than, “Thou shalt not go out and take something from somebody which does not belong to you.” Behind it, behind it, there is the nature of God.
Behind every command there is the disposition of God, the nature of God. If we have every commandment dealt with in this way, we see behind it a disposition of God, a nature of God, which is mediated to us in Christ by the Holy Spirit.
But really, a Holy Spirit-governed life does not want to be getting all the time, even to the point of taking things it has no right to have. It is right round the other way—right round the other way.
A really Holy Spirit-governed child of God does not need to come under an awful weight of condemnation when it is said, “Thou shalt not steal,” or, “Thou shalt not do any of the other things.” The Spirit has gone inside and dealt with that quite well, quite thoroughly, and changed the disposition, changed the desire.
But you see, something has got to be done inwardly. Otherwise, the letter killeth, brings death. But the same letter, taken up by the Holy Spirit and illuminated, brings life. It brings light.
The Word comes to life and makes us, says the apostle, written in our hearts—written not on tables of stone, but in hearts of flesh.
Along one line there is no glory at all—no glory. Along this other line there is glory.
I am going to close this point, but I want you to grasp one thing—just to carry away with you this one thing.
There is a tremendous difference. Indeed, there is all the difference of two worlds, even amongst Christians. There are those, on the one side, who have the Word of God, believe it to be the Word of God, and would lay down their lives for it as the inspired Word of God; and yet, and yet, it is just a book of bonds and laws and regulations.
On the other hand, there are those to whom this Book has come alive by the Holy Spirit, and in whom the Holy Spirit has shown far more than just written letter.
If you get into the one realm, you get a dozen more—score, a hundred—different interpretations of the same passage of Scripture, and you are all at variance. One says it means this, and another says it means that. And that is because it is all approached by the natural mind. It is still the Word of God, but still the Word is not enough.
The only way to get over that, the only way to come to oneness of mind, oneness of heart, oneness of understanding, and to move livingly with the Lord, is for the Spirit Himself, Who knows what the meaning is, dwelling in our hearts to tell us that.
Not to go beyond the Scripture—not what we are talking about, something extra to the Scripture—but that bearing witness in our hearts that this is God’s mind about that.
And so I say to you: the Holy Spirit has come. He has come to take up the Word of God and pass it from becoming just a book of commandments into the realm where it becomes the Book of Life.
And we really live by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. This Book is made life to us by the Holy Spirit, in that true sense of life.
We may be fascinated when we study certain subjects and things like that. That is not what I am talking about. It may be tremendously interesting, but that is not what I mean. Life is something which changes us—that is the point. It transforms.
Now, the test, then, whether we have the Word of God in a legal realm or an intellectual realm, or whether we have it in the Spirit, is the effect that it has in our lives: the transforming effect.
Or, to gather it all up again into this word: glory. Glory. And if you know what I am trying to talk about, you know how great a thing that is.
Have you really, dear friends, come to know so truly, so really, the Holy Spirit as indwelling Teacher and Illuminator, that you have passed out of the merely intellectual realm where the Word of God is concerned into the realm where the heavens are open and the Word of God lives for you?
That is a dispensational matter, and it makes a very great deal of difference in which world we live. I am trying to say to you that the greatest treasure that a Christian can have is a Holy Spirit-illuminated Word of God. It makes a tremendous amount of difference.
It does not mean that we know everything that is here all at once. We go on in this realm of vast, vast fullnesses, and we shall never exhaust it. But it is life. It is light. We are not just studying a dead matter; it is alive to us. Is it like that with you?
Well, you see, it is the question of whether you have really grasped the significance of the Day of Pentecost. The dispensation changed then from the one to the other.
Are you living in the old realm of tables of stone—presentations of divine commandments? Or are you living in this dispensation in which God has shined into your heart to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, through the Scriptures, by the Word of God?
Not something extra to it, but there, and yet something more than the letter. There is the blessed, powerful witness of the Spirit through the meaning—the meaning there.
You may have that. That is our birthright in this dispensation. Oh, for more Holy Spirit-indwelt and taught children of God—poor children of God, who really know what is theirs by right in this dispensation: the Holy Spirit within.
Not just believing in the truth, the doctrine, the statement that it is so, but being in the good of it—knowing it to be true: “The Holy Spirit is in me, and the Holy Spirit is teaching me, and the Holy Spirit is showing me what God means by His Word.”
As the Holy Spirit teaches and instructs and illuminates, I see God meant more than ever I realized He meant when He said that, and that, and that. You see, it is a living relationship by the Holy Spirit.
And when it is like that, it is glory. The burden goes; the strain goes; the onus goes off. It is life. It is really life. Indeed, it is glory.
Now, it is a fact: you can pass from one realm into the other, even as a Christian. Pass from that realm where, though you believe in the Lord, and you have the Lord, and you know you are saved, yet there is a dome over you—a great dome over your head where the Word of God is concerned.
You grope and try to find your way about in it: “What does it all mean?” And then you can have that dome removed, and the Spirit shine right into your spirit, and the whole thing becomes illuminated. It is the same Word, but it is two different dispensations.
Well, I have stated the fact, and I know it needs defence. But if you do not know what I am talking about, you go and have some dealings with the Lord on this matter. It must be like that, for the ministration of the Spirit is glory in relation to the Word of God.