Wow! This is a really good chapter! I hope you don't mind if I post my notes!:
2 Corinthians 3:
1 Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others, epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you?
2 Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men:
(That's an interesting metaphor! Of course Paul doesn't mean the people he's writing to are
real epistles
really written on his heart. That would be silly.)
3 Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the 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 fleshy tables of the heart.
(Wow! Way to drive home the metaphor Paul! He's saying that they are the living embodiment of his epistles. Beautiful language. Of course, I don't think Paul wants us to do away with his
physical epistles. That would just be off the wall, right? Also, looks like Paul's been reading the Old Testament again):
Proverbs 7:
1 My son, keep my words, and lay up my commandments with thee.
2 Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye.
3 Bind them upon thy fingers, write them upon the table of thine heart.
(It's the same metaphor, but this time speaking about the Law and not epistles. It means to grow a love for and be a living embodiment of the Law of Yahweh. Now, what else did Paul say here...):
2 Corinthians 3:
4 And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward:
5 Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God;
6 Who also hath made us able ministers of the Renewed Covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
(Whoa! So this is a metaphor for the two Covenants! The "spirit" is the Renewed, and the "letter" is the Old. If he literally meant "the letter killeth" then I wish he would have warned us not to read his epistles!)
7 But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away:
8 How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious?
9 For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.
(Ministration of "death" and "condemnation" is the Old Covenant, and "spirit" and "righteousness" the Renewed. We know he doesn't mean the Ten Commandments specifically, because those say nothing about death or condemnation. These are all metaphors for each Covenant as a whole, and not the particulars.)
10 For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.
11 For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
(So the Old Covenant, or contract is done away with. And what
remaineth of it, like the Ten Commandments, is transferred to the Renewed Covenant under updated conditions. A similar thing happened between the Abrahamic Covenant and the Mosaic Covenant. We must remember, this is not the first time Yahweh has
renewed His Covenant.)
12 Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech:
13 And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished:
14 But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the Old Covenant; which vail is done away in Christ.
(Did you catch that?)
15 But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart.
16 Nevertheless when it shall turn to Yahweh, the vail shall be taken away.
(Paul's talking about them reading the Old Testament incorrectly. He's not saying we need to throw it away, but that we need to read it correctly. Those who don't have a love for Yahweh don't understand it. And Paul would know, because he read the Old Testament
frequently, even quoting it throughout his letters. So let us read it with the vail taken away by Christ!)
17 Now Yahweh is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of Yahweh is, there is liberty.
18 But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of Yahweh, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of Yahweh.
(That is, without the vail over our face, we behold the glory of Yahweh by reading the Old and New Testament, and by respecting both the Old and Renewed Covenants. Amen!)
I know I can't remove the vail from the face of someone Yahweh doesn't want to remove it from, but I hope my notes were helpful!
