Episode Synopsis:
As Paul finds himself facing a serious situation with challenges to his apostolic authority and attacks upon his person and reputation, he defends himself and his apostolic office by pointing to God’s saving work among the once pagan Corinthians. Through Christ and in the power of the Holy Spirit, the believers among the Corinthians now have hearts of flesh through which they have become “letters from Christ.” This is not only proof of the effectiveness of God’s work among them through the labors of the apostle Paul, but as the apostle will go on to spell out this is a sure sign of the superiority and glories of the new covenant–something the old covenant can never match.
Paul draws three important contrasts in chapter 3 of 2 Corinthians. First, he explains the glories of the new covenant which makes it vastly superior to the old which it has superceded. Second, Paul contrasts the flesh and the Spirit, in which the distinction between the law and gospel is made explicit. Third, Paul draws out the superiority of Christ to Moses by illustrating the fading glory of the old covenant. In making these contrasts, Paul explains how properly understanding the course of redemptive history is one of the key features of his apostolic ministry through which hearts of stone are transformed into hearts of flesh. None of the false teachers and opponents of Paul can make such a claim. Their self-aggrandizing efforts to undo the work that God has done in their midst through the labors of Paul is nothing but a dead end and can do nothing to transform the sinful human heart.
At the end of chapter 3, Paul discusses the glory upon Moses’s face as recounted in Exodus 34. While Moses was forced to veil his face because the Israelites were terrified after Moses had been in the presence of YHWH, Paul described how that fading glory actually reveals the shortcomings of the old covenant and that as a result the hearts of the Israelites were hardened. But the work of the Holy Spirit under the new covenant takes away the need for veiling as required after Moses was given the law at Sinai. Under the new covenant, our faces are unveiled as we are transformed unto glory in anticipation of being in God’s presence through the work of the Spirit under the new covenant.
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