2 Corinthians 3:14-18

2 Corinthians 3.14-18
Theme: Life in the Spirit

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Summary of Chapter 3
Let me summarize what Paul is saying here before we unpack the key theme of Israel’s hardening and how it relates to Christian maturity. Paul began chapter 3 on the heals of the question “Who is sufficient for this?” (2.16b) by defending his credentials. His qualifications as an Apostle were being discredited by certain men in the church who were slandering Paul and in order to usurp his leadership in the church. The specific issue he began addressing and which led us into this theological aside was the issue of Paul’s credentials and lack of letters of commendation. But rather than provide them with his résumé, Paul points to the Corinthians as his letter of commendation. It is a letter written by the Spirit of God on their hearts rather than a letter written in ink on paper because the letter kills.

From there he transitions from the temporal matter of his accusers (which must have brought him much affliction and anguish) to a more important eternal matter of the superiority of the Gospel over the Law which he calls the ministry or deaconry of death; I believe that this is related to the accusations against Paul because the slander came from a spirit of legalism which is really the flesh, not the Spirit of grace. We saw last week that the Law came in glory, but it was a fading glory. The Gospel on the other hand comes in glory; but it is an eternally compounding glory.

Let me offer this illustration to show the difference between the Law and the Gospel: The Law and the gospel are like two brothers who find a lush fruit tree full of juicy fruit. The elder brother decides to get a wheel barrel and load up on the fruit and take them home. For a time the fruit nourishes his body, but eventually the fruit rots because it is dead. That’s the Law. The younger brother on the other hand, decides to uproot the entire tree and plant it in his back yard so that it will produce fruit and nourish him forever. That’s the gospel.

What About Isreal?
Paul’s depiction of the contrasts between the Law and the gospel begs the question: “if the Law is the ministry of death, then what about Israel to whom the Law was committed (the very Law which now brings us to Christ, whom they have rejected)?”

Paul deals with that in verse 13ff arguing that Israel has been hardened. I believe that he is writing all of this, not for the sake of a writing a theological treatise, but so that in verse 18 Paul he can make a very exciting and important application that has therapeutic, theological and eternal relevance for every believer (both Jew and Gentile) who struggles with sin and yearns for holiness.

The Role of the Spirit
All of this crouched in terms of the Spirit. Which seems odd considering, Paul could make the same argument basing it upon the finished work of Christ, but He chooses to make his argument based on the way that finished work is mediated to us through the Spirit. Remember he’s writing to the Corinthians who tend to be hyper-Charismatics and yet, he’s using some of the most charismatic language in the Bible.

Verse 17 is one of the strongest and clearest assertions of the divine personhood of the Holy Spirit anywhere in scripture because Paul here calls him Jehovah when he says “the Lord is the Spirit.” Whenever Paul uses the word Lord, he always has an Old Testament usage for it, which is Jehovah. And he only uses that title for Christ: for instance he says, “Grace to you and peace from God our Father and the Lord Jesus Christ” (1:2); and the Father in 6:17:
“I will be a Father to you,
And you shall be My sons and daughters,
Says the LORD Almighty.”

And now he uses it for the Holy Spirit implying a three-oneness between these three persons. Remember God is one and beside him there is no other God. But this is not a sermon on the biblical doctrine of the trinity.

I think we sometimes tend to diminish the role of the Holy Spirit in the our lives because we don’t like the implications of His role. But Paul’s purpose here (in the context of contrasting legalism and grace) may be first to restore the supremacy and majesty of the person of the Holy Spirit in the life of the hyper-charismatic Corinthians who have sensationalized the Holy Spirit into little more than a whoopee cushion. And second, Paul wants to restore the Holy Spirit to his rightful place of on going power in the life of the otherwise passionless and powerless Christians who have reduced the Holy Spirit to an abstract theological theory.
Israel’s Hard Mind
So what about the Jews? Paul says (v. 14) that not only have they willingly veiled their faces to the fading glory of the Law, but their minds have been hardened to the surpassing glory of the gospel. I decided to spend some time on two key words in verse 14. What does Paul mean by mind and hardening?

First, what Paul is saying here about Israel is nothing new or obscure, he has said in other places- sometimes more explicitly. For instance, in Galatians he compares the two mothers: Hagar and Sarah. Hagar is the Law and Sarah is the promise. According to Galatians 4:28, Israel is the child of the flesh, the offspring of Hagar, but Christians are “children of the promise”, “born according to the Spirit” and “Children not of the bondwoman, but of the free” (Gal 4:28, 29, 31).

Paul also deals with Israel’s hardening in Romans 11:7-10, where he says,
God has given them a spirit of stupor,
Eyes that they should not see
And ears that they should not hear,
To this very day.”
….Let their eyes be darkened, so that they do not see…

Do not interpret this as saying is that God has taken Israel from a special position in His plan of salvation to a special position outside His plan of salvation: from elect to reprobate. What Paul is describing here is merely recognizing that Israel’s national hardening and rejection of the Messiah is consistent with the hardening of all of humanity and humanity’s rejection of Jehovah. Israel’s hardening is no different to that of all humanity: “God gave them [that is, all of humanity] over to a debased mind” (Rom 1:28).

God no longer chooses nations; there is no such thing as a Christian nation (although God does seem to favour certain nations over others). But when we convert, both Jews and non-Jews (a remnant of elect people from every nation, tribe and tongue), then we become one new nation- the true heirs of Abraham, children of the promise, the people of God.

Hardening
So their minds- the Jews- (like the minds of all unbelievers) have been hardened. I think we can often read this phrase in scripture and not pause to consider what it implies. This is not just something that Paul teaches either, Isaiah 6:10 says,
“Make the heart of this people dull,
And their ears heavy,
And shut their eyes;
Lest they see with their eyes,
And hear with their ears,
And understand with their heart,
And return and be healed.”

And Jesus referred to that passage in Isaiah to explain why he preaches using parables, so that “hearing they may not hear and seeing they may not see” (Matt 13:15).
What stands out in Paul’s statement about the hardening of Israel is that he chooses a word that is very unique to Paul and would have been packed with many philosophical implications for the Corinthian Greeks who were well versed in Greek philosophy. Rather than saying that their hearts were hardened because the heart is the seat of the intellect in Jewish physiology. He says their minds are hardened. But he does not choose the more common Greek word psyche, which would have pretty much meant the same thing as heart; instead he uses the more technical Greek word nous which is translated ‘mind’.

Nous is used a couple times by Paul and only once outside of Paul’s letters in Luke 24:45 where it says that Jesus opened the understanding of his disciples on the road to Emmaus so that they could understand what the scriptures said about him. In other words, even though they had spent 3 ½ years with Jesus and saw the miracles and heard the parables and received the interpretations and experienced the fellowship with the incarnation of God, they still did not understand what the scriptures said about them. Their minds were hardened until Jesus opened their understanding.

Plato taught regarding Nous: according to him, the human mind and its perception of reality is like a man trapped inside of a cave and only able to perceive reality by looking at the shadows cast on the cave walls from outside the cave. Doesn’t this sound like someone who is dead in trespasses and sin? It is the condition of Israel, and I believe, Paul is implying it is the condition of his antagonists.

Plato’s diagnosis is correct; unfortunately, his remedy is simply a band-aid and not a cure. He says the man in the cave finds freedom when he looses himself from his bonds in his own strength and in his own reasoning ability he exits the cave to see that the thing he perceived as the material world was only shadows and echoes of the true reality that exists in the spiritual world. That sounds an awful lot like the Law and legalism to me. Plato knew the human soul was in bondage but he failed to solve the problem of human depravity (like all of the religions of man) because he believed human reason and ethics and right philosophy would lead us to salvation.

Hardening of the mind does not mean that people with hardened minds are idiots. Romans says that, although their understanding (Nous) has been given over to debasement, they were still capable of perceiving from their baser senses, the reality and existence of God so that no one will stand before God and judgment day and say God is unjust because He concealed Himself from me.

But, just seeing the design of creation is not enough to lead us to Christ. What we need is for our spiritual reasoning faculties and perceptions to be opened (for the chains to be removed for us and led out of the cave); and not through any effort of the will, but by a miraculous intervention of the God, the Holy Spirit.

Paul mixes metaphors in verse 16 when he says that the veil is removed. The verb to remove is actually a nautical term. It’s a picture of an ancient ship that is anchored and the rudders have been tied by a cable to keep them from moving back and forth. But when the sales are set and the anchor pulled up, the chords that bind the anchor are cut and the captain takes the wheel in order to steer the ship to it’s destination. That is what happens when the Holy Spirit blows on a soul and gives new birth to the lost sinner who is anchored to sin.

Conclusion:
All of this has a wonderful application. No one is born into the Kingdom of God. No one can claim letters of commendation to gain access to God’s favour. The Christian life is not about rules. We don’t tell people, “if you want to be a Christian, here’s a list of do’s and don’t’s…. and if you’re as good as me, you can get in.” Christianity is not about pietism, its about piety. Pietism is proud and self-made. Piety is humble and Spirit dependant and empowered.

So the point of this whole argument is found in verse 18; not only is the spirit (who is Jehovah) central to our gaining access to salvation, but he is also central to keeping us in. He removes the veil and when that veil is removed we see the Spirit of God working in our lives and steering us like a captain at sea to our final port which is Christ-likeness.

Unlike Moses whose glory was faded, we are being transformed from one degree of glory to an even greater. The glory that is at work in us is being intensified and compounded and rather than it being done in our own flesh which is bondage; it is being done by the Spirit who initiated the whole process and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom: freedom from veiled faces; freedom from the ministry of death. Let’s not use that freedom to bring others into bondage by robbing them of the joy of their salvation by creating man-centred rules like men in Corinth did.

Because when we make rules about how Christians ought to behave (rules that are not found in scripture); the only reason we do that is because we are able to live by those rules. But the hypocrisy is that the only reason we are able to live by those rules is because the Holy Spirit has enabled us to. But when we make it into a rule for others we are really denying the work of the Spirit in our own lives and taking credit for our own piety and enforcing pietism on others- veiling their faces.