“Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God. Not that we are sufficient in ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, but our sufficiency is from God, who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit. For the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life. Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory. Indeed, in this case, what once had glory has come to have no glory at all, because of the glory that surpasses it. For if what was being brought to an end came with glory, much more will what is permanent have glory.”
II Corinthians 3:4-11, ESV
Here Paul refers to a “ministry of death, carved in letters on stone” (v.7). These “letters” or writings “carved ... on stone” obviously refer to the archetypal Ten Commandments, which summarize and represent all 613 laws of the Old Covenant. So Paul is saying the Old Covenant Law is a “ministry,” but a ministry producing death, since this ministry administers the Law, which condemns and kills. Yet the prophets, priests and elders doing works for the purposes of the Old Covenant are indeed our good and loving God’s ministers. Likewise, the New Covenant is a ministry, but for the purposes of God’s Spirit, and the elders that works for the purposes of the New Covenant are God’s ministers as well. God requires works of service to be performed as a ministry. But, in the Old Covenant, those works are a “ministry of death,” and God’s written Law “kills.” The Old Covenant ministry results in or produces death. So that ministry bears an attribute of “death,” even as a principal characteristic. Nevertheless, the ministry of God’s Law, and the works of service performed for it, possessed an attribute of “glory.” And that “glory,” in the context of this Scripture, does not refer to the good or high opinion of men, but to the good opinion of God Himself. Nevertheless, Paul informs us that this good opinion from God, for His Old Covenant Law, is “being brought to an end.” This “glory” of God’s Law, ministering to His people, was once pleasing to God. God favoured His Law and had a good opinion of it, because all God’s intentions and purposes for His laws were genuinely loving, good and just.. So the Law had “glory.” The just and equitable ways of love taught by God’s Law are certainly better than any laws man can invent. Yet man’s ignorance, lying, cheating and disobedience caused His Law to kill many, as God served the justice that His Law demanded against the wicked.
Remember how Moses’ face shone after He spoke with God (Ex. 34:29-35). That glowing was the presence of God Himself. God, who is a Spirit, entered Moses, then manifested His presence by making Moses’ face glow with light, as God revealed and taught His Law to and through the spirit and body of Moses. Nevertheless, that Old Covenant Law condemned all human souls, even Moses himself. But now, through a New Covenant relationship with Jesus, our God, dwells in us too, in the elect, so we can gain an even closer, more direct access to the same God who spoke through Moses. And this New Covenant access to God, justified and made possible through the sacrifice of Jesus on the cross, not only reveals and teaches our spirits a deeper understanding of that Law, but also trains us, the elect, to rightly and wisely apply that deeper understanding of that Law, to sanctify our lives.
Thus, how much greater is this New Covenant kind of “glory”? Now we can potentially receive a greater “glory” or good opinion of God than Moses did, even while we live in flesh on this earth. And soon we will receive God’s good opinion in full, after the judgment day has completed the work of Jesus Christ’s ministry upon our spirits. The light of God that we can be granted, to radiate into this dark world, is potentially much greater than anything Moses received. For we can personally speak with God at any time, without climbing a mountain. Yet God does not grant us the outward sign of a shining face of flesh, like He gave to Moses. The reason God seems to have given Moses a glowing face was to cause the others to respect the words that He had commanded Moses to speak. And, since those words from God were “laws” which all had to obey through their minds and bodies of flesh, God caused the physical face of Moses to shine. Yet, in our New Covenant relationship with our God, our spirits now shine with God’s light, out into the world through our mouths and hands, for the sake of other spirits. We are granted glowing spirits in our hearts, which is a far greater gift.
Now, Moses’ face did not begin to shine until he came down from Mount Sinai the second time, with the second set of stone tablets. And that second set of stone tablets represented the New Covenant, as discussed above. The God-ordained breaking of the first tablets of stone represented the day God was going to end the Old Covenant relationship with His people, since that relationship, with all its sanctification worked by the flesh, would inevitably fail to sanctify them. So a new ways of writing His Law, even upon their hearts, and a New Covenant relationship was necessary. And the new stone tablets signified this. As Moses spoke with God the second time on Mount Sinai, he received the Ten Commandments representing all of God’s Law, but now written in a way serving as a sign of God’s New Covenant method that would write His laws on our hearts through faith. Yet the above verses call the ministry of Moses a “ministry of death,” because he served God in a way that caused death, while fulfilling the purposes of the written Old Covenant Law that was represented by the Ten Commandments “carved in letters on stone.” So Moses’ shining face signified the New Covenant. But the way the Old Covenant Law was first written did not cause Moses’ face to shine, since the way God first gave the church His Law required His people to obey it through their flesh, and that method brought condemnation to all. Only the way the same Law was to be fulfilled, by God’s own hands writing it upon our hearts, by personally teaching each of us His ways, will shine His holiness.
The above quote states that the Decalogue, representing all God’s Old Covenant Law, worked a ministry causing and bearing the attributes of death and condemnation, because that written Law “kills.” And the word translated as “ministry” is from the Greek word διακονία, which refers to a “service ... in the interest of a larger public” (BDAG3), such as the kinds of services done by the deacons and deaconesses in the apostolic church. And the primary works of service done by these “ministers” (deacons and deaconesses) were physical tasks, such as feeding, clothing and housing the needy, especially abandoned women and children, the sick, the disabled, immigrants and the homeless. Yet the Old Covenant priests and elders, who ministered the purposes and works of the Law, were to do these same works. So why would Paul here call the “ministry,” “help” or “service” of the archetypal Ten Commandments, and therefore the ministry of God’s entire Old Covenant Law, “a ministry of death” and “of condemnation”? Here it is perfectly clear that Paul was stating that the works of God’s written laws performed works resulting in death and condemnation for the people of God’s church. And this is indeed true, although not in the way the enemies of God might think. That is, the real reason God’s Old Covenant Law brought death, with much of God’s angry condemnation, was not the fault of God’s just Law, but due to the inevitable failure of God’s people to rightly and honestly interpret and apply His Law through their minds and strength of their flesh. His church of Israel continuously broke God’s Law, throughout history, even as their flesh was attempting to obey His Law. In fact, God’s Law still condemns them. God’s wrath and death still falls upon Jews and Gentiles who think they are able to please God through the obedience of their flesh to His written Law. It results in their death because God’s good, just Law is spiritual. His Law tells our spirits how to love God and how to love each other, but simply cannot work His abundant life through the flesh.
Therefore, Paul contrasts this “ministry of death” with a “ministry of the Spirit.” Because Paul spoke of the Law performing the action of killing, the genitive, “of death,” must be a genitive of product, referring to a “ministry which produces death.” Then the genitive, “of the spirit,” would be a genitive of production, referring to a “ministry produced by [God’s] Spirit.” And these genitives of product and production would continue to be used throughout this text, since Paul is here speaking of the effects, results and products produced by the actions performed for the purposes of the two different covenants. So the “ministry” produced by God’s Holy Spirit is “not produced by the written work [which is the Old Covenant Law] but [is] produced by the Spirit [of God], for the written work kills, yet [God’s] Spirit makes [the dead] alive” (οὐ γράμματος ἀλλὰ πνεύματος, τὸ γὰρ γράμμα ἀποκτέννει, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ, v. 6, where genitives are interpreted as genitives of production because, in this phrase, they are the entities which perform the actions of killing and making the dead alive, and produce the results or effects of the two kinds of ministries). While the Law kills the flesh, the elect human spirit, whose entire “ sufficiency is from God” (v.5), makes our flesh truly alive, in a way that truly pleases God, in a way that brings us God’s good opinion (glory). Our spirits, taught and trained by the Holy Spirit of Jesus, give life to our spirits, souls and even flesh. Jesus saves us from death, from past futile lives ruled by Satan for his deluded kingdom of the world order. Jesus grants us lives that are separated unto God, sanctified, lived for God’s purposes and ruled by God, lives that are part of God’s eternal kingdom of heaven. God “has made us competent to be ministers for the purposes of a New Covenant,” where our ministries are “not produced by the written work but produced by [His] Spirit.” And the reason for this is because “the written work kills, but [God’s] Spirit quickens.” (See v.6: ὃς καὶ ἱκάνωσεν ἡμᾶς διακόνους καινῆς διαθήκης (genitive of purpose), οὐ γράμματος ἀλλὰ πνεύματος (genitives of production), τὸ γὰρ γράμμα ἀποκτέννει, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ.)
Now look at the great contrast between the ministry of the Old Covenant’s written Law and the New Covenant’s God-given “ministry produced by the Spirit” (v.8), which Paul also calls the “ministry producing [subjective] righteousness” (v.9). Our God-given ministry, which fulfills the purposes of the New Covenant—because God Himself, through Jesus’ Holy Spirit, is now making our spirits sufficiently knowledgeable, wise and strong enough to fulfill those purposes—receives much more “glory,” much more of God’s good opinion. We translate the first phrase as “ministry of the Spirit,” capitalizing the word “Spirit,” since this phrase refers to a ministry produced by God’s Holy Spirit. So we translate the genitive in the phrase, ἡ διακονία τοῦ πνεύματος, as a genitive of production.
And we believe that this refers to the Holy Spirit of God, since the context previously referred to “the Spirit of the living God” (II Cor. 3:3, ESV). So we assume the phrase, in verse seven, refers to this same Spirit. And, in verse six, Paul spoke about God’s Spirit enabling the apostles to become: διακόνους καινῆς διαθήκης, οὐ γράμματος ἀλλὰ πνεύματος, τὸ γὰρ γράμμα ἀποκτέννει, τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ (“ministers of the New Covenant, not of written works, but of the Spirit, for the writing kills but the Spirit causes one to become alive”). The noun modified by the first genitive here is διακόνους, referring to the apostles who served God’s intended purposes for the New Covenant, God’s promises in His New Covenant. The apostles ministered by proclaiming the teachings of New Covenant and by doing the works that fulfilled God’s New Covenant promises, which are acts of their own (subjective) righteousness. Then we see a phrase with two more genitives, οὐ γράμματος ἀλλὰ πνεύματος, where these genitives modify the same verbal noun. So these two genitives refer to the actions performed by these ministers, by the apostles. These genitives indicate what produced the actions of the apostles’ ministries. The actions of their ministries were “not produced by the written work [which is God’s Law] but [were] produced by the Spirit,” that is, by the Holy Spirit of our God. Thus, we can also translate the above quote, with more meaningful genitives, in the following way:
“We have such confident trust towards God through Christ because we are not competently sufficient from ourselves, [not] to consider anything as originating from ourselves, but our competent sufficiency [is] originating from God—who even made us able to be competent ministers for the purposes of the New Covenant, [purposes or works which are] not produced by the written work but produced by [His] Spirit. For the written work kills but [God’s] Spirit makes the dead alive. So, if the ministry which produces death, in writings having been irrevocably etched [note the perfect tense] in stones, occurred within [God’s] good opinion—so that the heirs of Israel [were] not able to gaze into the face of Moses because [God’s] good opinion, [which] is being nullified, [shone] from his face—how will the ministry produced by the Spirit not be more within [God’s] good opinion? For, if the ministry producing condemnation [has] [God’s] good opinion, the ministry producing [subjective] righteousness excels much more in [God’s] good opinion. For if what is being nullified [came] through [God’s] good opinion, what is remaining [is] much more within [God’s] good opinion” (II Corinthians 3:4-11, ALT).
Many do not seem to grasp these concepts, perhaps because some somehow think God does not have the time or power to personally teach, train and sanctify each individual elect spirit. Some seem to reason that it is not possible for God to do all this within billions of His elect. And they might also think that, if God actually did all this, He would soon become exhausted. They may reason that He could not possibly do this strenuous work for thousands of years without resting. But these souls are anthropomorphizing God, placing the limitations of a human being, in a body of flesh, upon God. But we realize that Jesus Christ’s Holy Spirit is the true God, whose infinite power created the heavens and the earth, and whose power now maintains all in real time, even from its beginning to its end, all at the same time. There is no lack of power in Christ’s Holy Spirit, no tiredness that can cause Jesus to loose attention and forget about us. The power of Jesus and His Spirit is not lacking any of the power of our Creator. For God is one. So there is no difference between the power and ability of the Holy Spirit, Jesus and the heavenly Father. All three are the one and only Creator of all.
As previously mentioned, since God created space-time (the first day and all else), God is not subject to the limits of space-time. Rather, God works all of the limitations of space-time, and all is relative to God. All conforms to His consistent and immutable will. And God created all earthly time, from the moment of its beginning to the moment of its end, in one moment of heavenly time. Therefore, God can experience a second of earthly time, and study every detail occurring in that second, in a far more thorough way than we could, even if we studied that second for a thousand years. For God has unlimited time to study each second, which He Himself created and predestined for His own wise and loving purposes. And God needs no time to study each second, since He already knows all the reasons why He created all the entities producing all the events of that second on earth. But God subjected our flesh to the flow of time, so our flesh can only experience a second as a second, and our flesh can only see what its senses perceive during that second. Then our spirits meet with our minds of flesh in our souls, and our spirits can only receive data and information from our extremely limited thoughts and perceptions of our flesh, formed during its experiences in the physical world. So our spirits never obtain anything of real value from our flesh. Yet God also allows His Spirit to speak to our spirits. And God uses all that we obtain through our flesh to teach our spirits about the eternal “laws” and principles of His eternal, spiritual kingdom of heaven. Thus, we need our flesh, as the training instruments given to us by God. But, much more than our flesh, we need Jesus, our God.
We cannot consciously know if the equivalent of a thousand earthly years have passed in God’s eternal, heavenly, spiritual reality, while we experience a second of the earthly time that God caused us to experience. And we cannot know if the equivalent of a second of time in heaven has passed while mankind has experienced a thousand years of time on earth. And, in fact, since time in heaven seems to non-linear—where a thousand years of God’s spiritual time is as an earthly day while, at the same time, a day of God’s spiritual time is as a thousand years of earthly time—there is no point in speculating about this subject. All we need to know is that God surely can personally minister to each and every one of us, and spend an infinite amount of time with each of us, no matter how many billions of us might exist. For the limitations of material space-time and flesh, in which God has temporarily put our spirits, is not limiting God in any way whatsoever. And this lack of space-time limitations upon the one and only God also means that He can relate to all His creations in as many different Persons as He chooses, and relate to each of us through all these Persons at the same time, no matter how many different places the billions of elect souls on earth may occupy at any one time. And, throughout history, God has chosen to personally relate to all His elect children as three distinct Persons, where the entirety of the one God is all three all three Persons at the same time, where each Person of God is existing in countless different places, within and beside billions of souls, at the very same time. Because God is not even slightly bound by any of the limitations of either the earthly or heavenly space-times He created, each Person of God, whom we experience at any one time, is the whole God. God is a Spirit existing outside of any space-time continuum, yet also enters His created space-time continua at any times, places or ways He chooses. So, when Christ’s Holy Spirit speaks to our spirits, He grants each of our spirits all of His attention at that time. It is irrational and foolish to think that God is not able to personally teach and train each individual elect spirit for salvation, since such a thought is based on a very faulty and errant anthropomorphized perception of our God.
In fact, God needs to be everywhere, needs to be ubiquitous and omnipresent, in order to maintain this creation, all four dimensions—all its height, width and depth, as well as all its past, present and future. For, if God withdrew His power for even one nanosecond, literally all would instantly cease to exist. Consequently, when the Word of God speaks about the “ministry” of God’s Spirit, that “ministry” should never be artificially limited by preachers and theologians. They cannot reason that it would be impossible for God to personally minister to each individual elect spirit, then conclude that the God of the Bible must actually be like the pagan god that Plato described, a passive god who simply emits truths or rational principles into creation, but takes no active and personal role in any of the living entities within His creation. Rather, the Bible is talking about a very personal God, and the very personal inward works of the whole of the Creator God within each one of His elect children, for each one’s own ultimate good, works that will make each subjectively righteous in a complete and even a perfect way. And, since this very personal and inward work of service is worked by God, who is an utterly holy Spirit, this work cannot possibly fail to achieve God’s purposes. In the end, God will make every elect spirit become righteously loving in a fully completed and perfect way.
Now, what about this “ministry of death, carved in letters on stone,” the “ministry of condemnation,” serving death and condemnation to the people? Even this had the “glory” or “good opinion” of God. The Law—the ways and behaviours of God—testified about the very attributes of God through those words carved on stone. And it was this witness or testimony which gave it glory. In fact, this Law, carved on stone, “came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory.” The people, when they saw the face of Moses shining, did not see the glory of Moses, but saw the glory of God, since God’s attributes are revealed in His Law, in the Decalogue. So why did God say this Decalogue, which His own hand carved on permanent stone, was not “permanent,” but only the ministry of His Holy Spirit was “permanent”? God said this because the Old Covenant Law served only death and condemnation to His people of His eternal church. And our loving God does not forever serve death. But God will forever serve life to His people, even for all eternity in heaven.
God gave the Old Covenant Law only to the people of the one and only church that He created upon this earth, to the κυριακοί, to the souls belonging to Him, to His property, to the priesthood whom He sent to shine His light into the world. Yet these souls were never able to fulfill the demands of His Law through their flesh. They continuously failed to make themselves truly righteous and loving. As hard as they tried, they could never teach and train themselves to conduct their lives in a way which said and did everything through pure, just and God-like love. And this reliance upon themselves, this faith in their own minds and bodies of flesh, was actually their biggest mistake and downfall. Their greatest error was that they were not humble like Moses, nor humble like their patriarch, Abraham. For Moses and Abraham did not trust in themselves, only in God. Yet other souls obviously trusted only in themselves, not in God. In fact, as soon as they saw that Moses had been gone for a long time, they forced Aaron to make them a golden calf, so they could govern their own lives in their own way. None of them wept for Moses. None prayed for God to save Moses, or to personally guide them into a life of truth in the promised land. Instead, they all trusted in their own ability to make themselves into what they wanted to be. Some trusted in their own interpretations of God’s Law. Others trusted themselves to find an even better way to live, rejecting all God’s words and ways. But very few realized that they were actually very weak and foolish, that they needed to trust in Yahweh, the one God, with all their hearts, while refusing to ever lean on their own understanding (Prov. 3:5).
God saw that this generation of His church was not like Abraham. God looked into their hearts and saw that all trusted in themselves for all things of life, and not in Him. The church of Israel remained lost, confused and oppressed by fake gods, by the humans and demons they trusted, esteemed and faithfully served as their teachers regarding all matters of life and faith, as rulers of their destinies. Since those fake gods gave them many false and empty promises, all of which appealed solely to the desires of their flesh, they foolishly trusted and followed those “saviours,” hoping to gain all they so falsely promised. And those lying gods never loved the people. The only things those self-serving “saviours” wanted from the people was their money, possessions and slavish service. Those human gods and demons deceived the people, so they could gain more power and wealth for themselves.
Therefore, once those self-serving “saviours” used up the strength and resources of the people, they casually tossed aside their dead bodies, ignoring the cries of surviving loved ones and helpless little children left behind. Of course, our just God was very patient with His church, even though they did all these foolish and self-destructive sins. God often overlooked and excused their selfish, sinful ignorance. Yet, times came when God was finally forced to grant them death and condemnation as a just reward for all their sins of faithfulness to their human gods and demons. For God had to prove to them that they needed to trust in Him far more than they trusted in themselves, or in all their fake human gods and demonic idols. So God gave them the Old Covenant Law, but not to create faith in their spirits, not to teach and train their spirits to trust only in Him. Rather, God gave the written Old Covenant Law so His people could prove to themselves that they had no ability to become righteous and loving through their own power or will, nor through the power or will of their false gods. And, to this day, the Old Covenant church of Israel remains under that “ministry of death,” under the Old Covenant Law, because they still do not place all their faith in their living God. And many fake New Covenant churches have now risen up to become much worse than those Jewish Old Covenant churches, since these fake Gentile churches not only reject faith in God, but also reject most of the Old Covenant Law as well, having replaced God’s Law with hybrid forms of pagan Roman law.
The Creator God, who designed all existence, whose power is all the energy which defines spacetime and all its “laws” or forces of nature, etched the Decalogue on permanent stone tablets with His own hand, then commanded those stones to be placed in an ark or chest. And these ten “laws” clearly resemble the “laws of nature,” since God’s spiritual or moral laws are not rules to follow, as much as principles by which wise elect spirits and God Himself possess an “abundant life,” overflowing with the joys of just, pure and God-like love. And, just as disobeying the laws of gravity, by stepping off the edge of a cliff, will cause injury or death, disobeying God’s spiritual Law will cause a spirit to suffer injury or an eternal “death” of separation from God’s presence. Once human spirits understand that God’s Law is not telling our flesh what to do, but telling our spirits about the way in which our spirits can live safe, healthy, abundant, loving lives, our view of both God and His Law changes. If our elect spirits begin to see that the negative prohibitions of God’s Law are actually positive ways of living according to the love God which gave our elect spirits the potential ability to apply in our lives, ways that our spirits can express through our flesh, and if our spirits see that God Himself will teach and train our spirits to know and apply these positive ways in our lives, we will then seek God for this to be done for our spirits. And we will also place all our trust in God alone, for our spirits will know that only God can do these works. Then we will look upon His law that prohibited us from murdering, or from even mentally dehumanizing another soul, and realize how we need to learn the wisdom of the heart that enables us to overcome evil with the kind of loving good which enhances life for all, the kind of good that nullifies the works of the devil and prevents unjust deaths on earth.
The wise words of God on stone, which He then rationally, and in a completely harmonious manner, expounded upon through many more words granted to the prophets and apostles, were not written by man. These were not like the words that other religions falsely claim to be the words of God, or a god. No, these were actually the wisest foundational words ever written in all history, and they have always proved to be the wisest throughout history. But, like any words, they were mere words. So all these words were subject to faulty interpretations and applications. Still, those words stand as eternal truths, just like the laws of nature. The method of writing them on stone and paper, for the flesh to read, is now altered to a method whereby God writes them in the minds of our spirits. Yet principles of that Law cannot change. So God forever preserved the words of the Ten Commandments, which represent the whole of His Law, in an ark or chest, so His people will never forget His Law. And God then called that chest the “Ark of the Covenant,” since its principal purpose was to hold the written Law on those stone tablets, the Ten Commandments, representing all the conditions of His covenant with Israel. However, this Decalogue, and the Old Covenant it represented, was surely a “ministry of death” and “condemnation.” Since the laws, which were all the conditions of that conditional Old Covenant, were left for the people to obey through their own minds and bodies of flesh, the people inevitably failed to obey them, sinned, then reaped the wage of sin. And the wage of sin is death. But God is not the god of sin and death. God is the God of life through a just kind of love. Thus, God’s Word declared that this Old Covenant, together with all its laws or conditions, “was being brought to an end” (vv. 7,11). Neither the Decalogue, permanently written on stone, nor the temporary covenant it represented, signified any kind of eternal or “permanent” conditional relationship between God and His church, since it was worked through the mind and body of flesh. This was not that which “is remaining” (τὸ μένον). For, from the very beginning, even before God created Adam and Eve, God intended to grant His elect a New Covenant relationship, one in which He Himself would cause all the eternal principles of His Law to be far more effectively worked by their spirits in their lives, even through the management of their own minds and bodies of flesh. Only this unconditional and eternal New Covenant, worked by God's truly holy Spirit, a covenant which is entirely the workmanship of the Spirit who is the one and only Creator God, is “permanent,” that which “is remaining” even now.
The New Covenant’s “ministry of the Spirit” is all that remains for us, not a duty to obey the Old Covenant Law. For it always was impossible for either the weak mind of the flesh or the infantile mind of the human spirit to make ourselves truly righteous enough to receive the good opinion of God. Every honest soul will admit this in shame. And, since we find it impossible to gain the good opini