SPECIAL DAYS: Father's Day

LESSON: 2 Corinthians 3:2-18, NRSVA

SERMON TITLE: The Letter and the Spirit

INTRODUCTION:

1. Trying to teach the meaning of confession, a Sunday school teacher wanted to make sure the class had understood her point.
1. She asked, Can anyone tell me what you must do before you obtain forgiveness of sin?
2. There was some silence, broken by a small voice piping up from the back of the room, You gotta sin!
3. You do sin.
2. You gotta do more that sin.
1. It is more than sin it is a life worth living that we are seeking to achieve.
2. We cannot create a life free from sin, but a life that is full of confidence and hope.
3. We cannot create a life free from sin, but a life that is productive and acceptable to the one whom we call God.
3. We have a choice to live a life that is based on the Letter of the law or the Spirit who gives life.
1. To help us understand the meanings of these two words we look to what Paul wrote in 2 Corinthians.
2. In this way we can see the practical application that may help us decide how we live and the basis for this life of ours.

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MAIN BODY:

1. Let us examine 2 Corinthians 3:2-18, NRSVA, and see what can be found.
1. ²You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all;
1. ³and you show that you are a letter of Christ,
2. prepared by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God,
3. not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.
1. Tablets of stone = ten commandments
2. Human hearts = the mind, the intellect, the spirit
4. ⁴Such is the confidence that we have through Christ toward God.
2. ⁵Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us;
1. our competence is from God,
2. ⁶who has made us competent to be ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit;
2. Consider well the import of Paul's conclusion "for the letter kills."
1. In Romans 7:8-11, Paul makes the killing nature of the law abundantly clear

88But sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, produced in me all kinds of covetousness. Apart from the law sin lies dead. ⁹I was once alive apart from the law, but when the commandment came, sin revived ¹⁰and I died, and the very commandment that promised life proved to be death to me. ¹¹For sin, seizing an opportunity in the commandment, deceived me and through it killed me.

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2. Concentration on the "law" leads to legalism
1. There is no "life" to be found in legalism.
1. This is because the emphasis on law leads to a preoccupation with rules.
2. This concentration leads to these ends:
1. How do you understand the law or laws?
2. How do you apply the law or laws?
3. How do you fulfill the law or laws?
3. The application of law creates for the individual only the penalty for the violation of the law or laws.
4. Take is the case of a group of high school students who went on a trip to Germany.
1. The high school in question had a zero-sum tolerance written into their AODA (Policy relating to the use or abuse of alcohol or other forbidden substances) policy.
2. Several students, while in Germany, had a glass of beer or wine
1. This is a different culture with different rules.
2. The drinking of alcoholic beverages is not forbidden to those under age as it is here in this country.
3. When it became known that they had broken the no drinking rule the students were automatically expelled.
4. There was no alternative.
5. It is one strike and you're out.
6. These were some of the best students in the school.
5. Now it must be admitted that they should not have broken the rule.
6. It must also be admitted that the parents of the students ought to have know more about the cultural differences so that they could have advised them, or given them written permission to have a glass of wine or beer.
1. They would have met the letter of the law.
2. It would have provided a way of escape from the penalty of the law.
2. Because they broke the zero-sum tolerance rule
1. They were expelled.
2. they were in a sense killed.

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3. As the writer of Hebrews contends in Hebrews 7:18-19, NRSVA
   

1818There is, on the one hand, the abrogation of an earlier commandment because it was weak and ineffectual ¹⁹(for the law made nothing perfect); there is, on the other hand, the introduction of a better hope, through which we approach God.

1. The law could make nothing perfect.
2. The law could accomplish no more than the condemnation of the guilty.
3. This is the sense in which the letter kills.
3. In contrast to the killing of the letter of the law, the Apostle proclaims, "but the Spirit gives life."
1. The writer provides another analogy to reinforce his thought and enlarge our understanding.
2. It is the comparison of the ministry of death and the ministry of glory.
1. ⁷Now if the ministry of death,
1. chiseled in letters on stone tablets,
1. Again the Commandments
2. came in glory so that the people of Israel could not gaze at Moses' face
1. because of the glory of his face,
2. a glory now set aside,
1. Reference to Moses in Exodus who had spent 40 days in the presence of God and reflected the glory of God.
2. ⁸how much more will the ministry of the Spirit come in glory?
1. ⁹For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation,
2. much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory!
3. ¹⁰Indeed, what once had glory has lost its glory because of the greater glory;
4. ¹¹for if what was set aside came through glory,
5. much more has the permanent come in glory!
3. ¹²Since, then, we have such a hope, we act with great boldness,
4. ¹³not like Moses, who put a veil over his face to keep the people of Israel from gazing at the end of the glory that was being set aside.
5. ¹⁴But their minds were hardened.
1. Indeed, to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there,
2. since only in Christ is it set aside.
6. ¹⁵Indeed, to this very day whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their minds;
7. ¹⁶but when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed.
8. ¹⁷Now the Lord is the Spirit, and
1. where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.
2. The following passages of scripture help to expand and clarify this vital thought.

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Galatians 3:23-26, (NRSVA)

²³Now before faith came, we were imprisoned and guarded under the law until faith would be revealed. ²⁴Therefore the law was our disciplinarian until Christ came, so that we might be justified by faith. ²⁵But now that faith has come, we are no longer subject to a disciplinarian, ²⁶for in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith.

James 2:9-12, NRSV

⁹But if you show partiality, you commit sin and are convicted by the law as transgressors. ¹⁰For whoever keeps the whole law but fails in one point has become accountable for all of it. ¹¹For the one who said, "You shall not commit adultery," also said, "You shall not murder." Now if you do not commit adultery but if you murder, you have become a transgressor of the law. ¹²So speak and so act as those who are to be judged by the law of liberty.