Second Corinthians 3:1-3 The Life of Christ Seen Through: Letters of Christ

Well, good morning. We're in 2 Corinthians and we're going to start chapter 3 today, which is the wonderful message that we have from Paul about we are letters of Christ and it's just such an incredible thought, incredible scriptures here. But I wanted to go back first, so I've titled today's message Christ's life as seen through letters plural of Christ and so you know the before I even start the takeaway for this message hopefully is that you're going to realize that if you know the Lord Jesus Christ is your Savior you are a letter of him you're a message of our Savior to those who are being saved and to those who don't know the Savior. So whether they know the Lord Jesus or they don't, you're a message to them.

And so right off the bat, before I even get into the message, you're gonna think, well, Roger's gonna make me feel really uncomfortable here. I'm gonna have to watch my P's and Q's. I'm gonna have to polish up my letter and make sure it's nice and shiny. But you know what I'm gonna tell you in advance here is that You know, being a letter of Christ is not to be a struggle. It's to be a rest and a rest in Him that you live your life for Him moment by moment, day by day. So hopefully, as we go through these verses, you'll see that. Okay, so let's get into it here. Okay, so I have an outline which I have from our brother Hal Malloy here. And so actually he has it kind of stated here.

You know, verse 14 in chapter 2 is kind of the beginning of this wonderful section where he declares the life of Christ's ministry through believers. And what we learned two weeks ago about being triumphal in Christ, I'm going to cover a little bit of that today. And then we're going to look at, specifically today, we're going to look at being manifested through epistles or letters of Christ. That's the first three verses.

And then next week we're going to pick up and look at the sufficiency. It's not ours, but Christ. And then actually Mike's going to take over at that point and probably finish out the rest of the chapter. Maybe not. We'll see. It's such a beautiful chapter. We'll see how that works out. Okay, so let's go back, kind of backtracking a bit here from what Mike covered.

So actually in verse 14 actually starts it and it talks about this idea of being an aroma or fragrance. We are a fragrance of Christ. And you know it kind of fits in well. We're not only, we're going to say we're a letter of Christ, we're also a fragrance of Christ.

And all these metaphors that are used about the believer and who he is in Christ are to tell us that God is working within every believer for a purpose. And the effect we have upon other believers and other people will be according to His will and according to His purposes. But there's some neat things to see here. And so, as we went through previously, it kind of comes down, you know, the message impacts those who are saved and impacts those who are not saved.

And then the bottom line is, who is adequate for these things? Who's adequate to do that? And if you think about it, no one is adequate because it has to come from the Lord Jesus. It has to come through him, through the believer. So that's, but Paul's gonna talk about some aspects of his adequacy and also our adequacy that we are, and we'll see that in a second. That's in verse 17 here. So let's just look at the last part of who is adequate. So adequate is this idea of instead of a person by competency or worthy, who is adequate or worthy, It's, and the Amplified Bible has who is qualified and fit and sufficient for doing these things.

These things are the fragrance or aroma. And Mike did a good job on that. The picture is that in the Roman times, when the generals would come back, there was this aroma that would go up. They would burn incense, and it would be to glorify the wonderful conquests they had.

Well, the same thing, I was thinking about, imagine if the Lord Jesus, we're all saying, if he walked in today, this is, you know, he's in heaven. But say he walked in and sat down. You know, that's kind of the picture that we're gonna see. His presence is to be with us. And I'll show you that later in a bit.

But it just kind of occurred, if he sat down in a pew here, what would be, would I continue speaking the way I'm speaking now? Would I change my voice? Would I try to be more holy? And the Lord doesn't want us to do that. Anyway, okay, I'm getting a little off the track here.

Okay, so doing these things in Christ is to be lived out in the believer's life. So next verse 17 is going to show us things. It says, we are not like the many. And the definite article is, we are not like the many peddling the word of God. So Paul's going to point out here in this verse, he's going to point out that apparently in Corinth there were those who didn't they presented God's Word, but they had ulterior motives, if you will. And he's saying, my ministry is not like that. We are not, and this is a state that continually exists, and we are not like the many. Paul was not like the many. And he's going to contrast the many, it's kind of hard to see it in this verse, the many with the we. The many is the masses, or actually it's going to be a word that we use in the vernacular here in a second, and we Paul and need true servant.

So it's this word called hoi polloi. And I know actually, someone was pointing out, actually in the East Coast that's used more, I haven't heard it too much here in Colorado, but the hoi polloi is the masses, and Zodiacity thinks it's the Judaizers. Others think it's other groups of believers, but it's obvious that Paul thought it was the Corinthian believers.

And they were peddling or hucksterizing the Word of God for purposes. And we see that even in our world today, unfortunately. We see people that take God's Word and they use it for their own benefit, to enrich themselves and not to glorify God. And Paul's saying that's not what his ministry is about. So Merriman says here, Paul's accusing many of the Corinthians of hucksterizing the Word of God. And that's really just such an awful thing to think about, that people would do that, but people, you know, the sin nature is the sin nature, and it can do pretty awful things. Okay, so let's continue on here. So Paul now is going to tell us how he speaks. So he contrasts the many, the hoi polloi, with we.

We speak in Christ. Present tense, continuous action. So he's saying we are continually speaking in Christ. in our living union, or you could say it three ways. Scripture has a multitude of words that talk about the same idea. You could say it's in our living union with Christ. You could say it's in our fellowship with Christ. You could say it as we walk by the Spirit. That's all equivalent terms.

We're in fellowship with our Savior, and He's the one that's living His life through us. So there are three characteristics, and it's probably hard to see, there are three characteristics of a worthy speech for our Savior in Paul's ministry and in our ministry too. The first one here is in the sight of God, as though God were physically present and it speaks to our responsibility. And this is where I got the idea of the Lord Jesus walking in and sitting down. I mean, that's the way we're to act and be.

I was thinking, we have five grandkids. I find sometimes I get carried away, I get really involved with the grandkids, and I start telling them stuff, and I'm thinking, what if Mike heard what I'm telling these grandkids? Or what if Courtney heard what I'm telling them? Or Bob, what would they think about that? Well, Roger, you know, well, it's interesting, isn't it? Sometimes we're a little bit lax and not as careful as we should be, and the grandkids can do that to you. Okay.

So that's the first point, and the sight of God is the first point. The second point is from sincerity, or out from sincerity as a source, is to be Christ, is to be the source of His life. And the third aspect of this speech is out from God as a source, from his word.

So those are the three aspects of Paul's ministry that were not like the Hucksters, that were in contrast. This is in contrast to those who would peddle God's word. This inside of God, out of sincerity, and out from God. So that's where Paul shows that his ministry was different than these Corinthian believers that were corrupting God's Word.

So now actually I found this in preparing for this I found a little summary that Ron Merriman did back quite a few years ago and he describes he takes some of these verses and he puts it into bullet statements about so these are characteristics of a true ministry. His competency is not out from himself but from God.

2. Competency in ministry apparently comes from the rightly handling of God's word. Competency has nothing to do with human ability. It must come from God. A true minister does not corrupt the word of God. by spurious or foreign mixtures to make it palatable.

And here's another area where we see kind of a, in today's world, people are trying to make, let's have a seeker-friendly gospel. Let's compromise God's word or compromise what we believe in order to get people in the door. To get them in the door so they'll, you know, we'll have more nickels and noses, as Hal used to say. And we're not to do that. He does not traffic in the word of God or use it for personal gain, what a huckster does. He speaks out from sincerity or purity that God is at the true source. And then lastly, he always speaks if it's God we're present physically.

Okay, so that kind of ends chapter seven, chapter seven, chapter two. Okay, so now we're gonna get into chapter three. Chapter three starts with these three verses. Are we beginning to commend ourselves again, or do we need some letters of commendation to you or from you? You are a letter written in our hearts, known and read by all men, being manifest that you are a letter of Christ, cared for by us, written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of the human heart. Just incredible verses.

Okay, so now let's get into that. So first of all, if you notice in looking at Macaulay, who I usually do for studying, he kind of had, there's some obvious metaphors that we have in here. It's a metaphor of a letter that we see. So a letter typically has a writer who writes the letter. It has a message that's in the letter. It's written on stationery, right? and it uses ink to write the letter. Well, if you think about it, this is kind of old school, right? Who today, well actually, raise your hand if you wrote a letter during Christmas time with pen and ink. Wow, nobody wrote. Okay, Bob did. Okay.

Well, I had a lady in my work situation. She was a great lady. She was in the military, and she was just a stickler. Boy, she knew her P's and Q's. Her penmanship was outstanding. Every time I think about a letter, I think of her. She used to have these arguments with other coworkers about, you sending me a stinky old email, We send emails in the office. I come from an era when computers came, there were no computers in my office space. Computers came in, one computer per office space, then a computer in every desk. So it transitioned through my working career. And she was up in arms about sending emails between coworkers from your desk to my desk. She said, you can't write me a note? She said, where'd you go to school at?

Anyway, I think about that letter. Paul uses that wonderful analogy of a letter, a metaphor of a letter. So here it is, what Paul intends. The writer is Paul. The message will be Christ. The stationary will be amazingly the human heart. and the ink will be the Holy Spirit. Just an amazing picture here.

Okay, so let's get into that. So it starts, are we beginning to commend ourselves again? And what we find here is the word commend is the idea to present oneself worthy and actually In that time period, and actually it holds over today a little bit, the Jewish, if you went from one synagogue to another synagogue in the Jewish culture, you would have, many times you would have a letter that said, I'm so and so, I'm here from this synagogue. When Christianity came in, people would have letters between churches, and actually a church that I attended with some people, the Brethren Church, they had letters that you would bring, I came from this Brethren Church, and I'm a member in good standing, and here's my credentials, and you should accept me, okay? Well, Scripture, that's not exactly what Scripture says should be happening. Okay, and we'll see that. So just more thoughts on being letters of commendation.

The good news is the Lord is the one who commends us, presents us worthy. And we see that in one of many verses in 2 Corinthians 10, 18. For not that he that commends himself is approved, but whom the Lord commends. It's the Lord who's commending us.

The results of his ministry through us is a proof of his ministry. And we're going to see that in the next verse. Paul Noui, representing the Lord, needs such a letter to minister. We share in the authority of Christ since we are identified with him. So our commendation is a fact that we are in him. And in Paul's case, he was saying, and we're going to see here, it's my people who came to the Lord in Corinth that validate my ministry. He's talking about these Corinthians now. He says, You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read by all men. So now Paul will answer this question from verse 1 and he's going to use it with these metaphors.

Letters and stationary ink and writers and message. It's you Corinthians And it's this neat verb in the Greek, eimi, it's a state in which something continuously exists. So he's saying that you Corinthians, in Corinth there, who know the Lord Jesus, you continually exist in this state as being a letter. You are a letter. And our letter identifies the subject, the Corinthian believers. You continually exist as a letter.

So here's the case where he's pointing out, and maybe they had never heard this before, imagine that you're in Corinth and Paul writes you this letter and he says, you're a message, you're a letter, and that's something you probably never realized. And this is in contrast to the some that need a physical letter to hand in to say, I'm a good guy.

Continuing on with that, having been written in our hearts, and it's been, you didn't do the writing, it was done for you on your behalf. It was written in the past and remains written to the present time in our hearts. You are a letter which is permanently engraved in our hearts. So that's a Weiss translation of that.

Being known, and here's a cool thing. Being known and being read by all men. So as we're gonna see with other parts of this, men are reading us, men are knowing us. And this is something that happens whether we like it or not. They're gonna read us and know us, and it happens in just normal life. When you meet somebody for the first time, you come away with an opinion probably within a minute or so. You make an opinion about that person, whether good or bad.

And so we have a wonderful privilege of being a letter for our Savior. and it's being read and known by men. And it's all men, none excluded. I was thinking about the fact that just like the fragrance, so fragrance was a metaphor, and the aroma was a metaphor, this is another metaphor about being a letter, and it's being perceived by all men. And sometimes you'll say, well, I didn't come across as I'd like. You know, that happens sometimes. Maybe you have an argument or maybe there's some discussion. I didn't come across as I would like to have come across.

But this message is going out from every believer. Okay, so verse 3, being manifest that you are a letter of Christ. So Paul's going to add some details here about being a letter of Christ. Being manifest is this kind of a cool word, phaneroo, present passive participle. And the idea here is to be manifest, to become, to be made, to be known, openly shown. And actually one illustration is that you take the lid off, you have like a lid of something and you remove the lid so it can be seen, openly shown. To be manifest is to be revealed, to be known for one's true character, and that's to be Christ's character. And this Partisip gives additional information of who we are. It's a passive voice. You're acted upon. You're not doing it. Christ is manifesting His glory through you and you're not trying to imitate Him.

And this is where imitation can kind of get you in trouble. I look in Scripture and I see the Lord Jesus did this and He reacted that way. Well, I'm gonna copy that. I'm gonna copy His words and what He did. We're not to be that. We're to know the Savior, we're to know His word, to understand His word, and to live our life in faith and trust in Him, not imitating Him, letting Him live His life.

So continue on that, being manifest that. You are, again, a me. These are permanent things, the state in which something continuously exists, a permanent condition. So we're permanently a letter. You don't stop being a letter. Why stop being a letter? No, we can't do that. Present, moment by moment, the action is through you and it's a reality. A letter of Christ. Epistle, that's a Greek word, epistle, a message. So let me just stop for a second here.

I have a dear brother that has gone to be with the Lord just recently, and if anyone in my life was a letter, and I was thinking about being a letter for Christ, and this gentleman was at our work, and some people know him, his name is, I'm gonna forget it here in a moment, Kevin Walensky.

He's a paraplegic and the Lord took him home about a week ago. And he's a little over 50 years old. He had an accident when he was in college. He played baseball and became a paraplegic at that point. He's a believer. But his testimony throughout his life, I knew him for over 20 years. He's the kind of guy, he was a paraplegic.

He had a little chair. I think Brian remembers him from work. Maybe Cheryl does. He'd be zooming around the halls in his chair. always great attitude. He'd ask you if you need, he'd go out for lunch sometimes, he'd say, you need something? I'll pick it up for you, I'll get it for you. Need a ride? He drove. He's a paraplegic, a specially equipped vehicle, he drove.

He was a software guy, he typed on the computer. He'd type with his, like this, he would type this. That's how he'd type on the computer. Amazing guy, loved the Lord, great testimony, just incredible. And the Lord took him home. It's just, you know, I say, wow. Lord, anyway, I was thinking people are testimonies in different ways. He was a testimony because even with being, even his disability, he lived his life for Christ to the fullest and he was a great testimony in doing that.

And we individually, whether we're, whatever we do, whether we speak, whether we serve, whatever we do for Christ is to be to him and let him be shown forth. And so you are a letter of Christ, a letter whose message, spoken or unspoken, is read by others. The content of the message is Christ and his glory. You are those who are openly shown to be a letter exhibiting Christ.

So now the last part is really kind of cool here. Cared for by us, so Paul is saying here, so we care for our Corinthian believers, written not on ink, but with the Spirit of the living God. The letter of Christ will be a letter written by the Spirit of God, the Holy Spirit, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of the hearts. The letter of Christ will be written on the human hearts of believers.

So at this point, we have some more pictures here. We have some more metaphors. We have these tablets, tablets of stone, tablets of the human heart. And I found in studying for this, people kind of went off different directions. Because it's a metaphor, you sometimes can have different opinions. So our brother Hal had this approach, which I liked, and I'm going to use it. I'm gonna get a chance to look at it again next week. Maybe I'll have some additional things to share about that. So written not with ink, but with the spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone, but on tablets of the human heart. So the difference between, okay, so Hal has this question. Why the distinction between ink and tablet, stone and man's heart?

So what he sees here is that what's being presented here is objective truth and subjective truth. Sounds a little bit daunting to start with. So what's subjective truth? Actually, you probably already know before I tell you. Objective truth is gonna be God's word. There's no other standard that we have, a believer has, than his word. So the definition is, it's God's word, it's in ink, right? We have the scrolls, they were in early ink or whatever, and then the stone tablets, that was a picture in the Old Testament times, which is factual, concrete, real, impartial, unbiased, unaffected by emotion, A person can read about God's objective truth and know of it, but it may not be written on their hearts.

And this is so true. Many times you'll talk with people, you'll want them to ingest God's word and say, I got it, and I understand what you're saying, brother. I understand what you're saying, and act upon it. But that doesn't happen sometimes. Just reading it and say, I've read it. I've heard people say, well, I've read the New Testament. Why do I need to read it again? I read it one time. That's enough. Well, they missed the whole point that they have. They missed the point it's talking about a person, and he wants a relationship with you.

The subjective truth is the glory of Christ. That's who he is. So what about subjective truth? What's that? It's the objective truth of God, in ink and on tablets, of the glory of Christ, which you behold and believe. So the point is that when you read God's Word and take in God's Word, at that point you have to do something about it.

You can accept it, believe it, walk by it, live by it, trust it. Initially you have to trust Him for salvation, right? You have to believe that Christ died for our sins, He was buried and was raised on the third day. You have to believe that and trust that and truly believe that. Once you've done that, so you've made that objective truth subjective by doing that.

And it continues on through your whole Christian life. Upon believing, the Holy Spirit writes, the glory of Christ in your hearts, it dwells there permanently, it's full knowledge and complete knowledge. And that, I have a reference here to John, that's a beautiful passage where the Lord Jesus is talking about, he says, I'm gonna go away, I'm gonna send you another, like myself, a comforter, the Holy Spirit, who'll be with you forever, and he will guide you into all the truth, he won't speak on his own initiative, He'll speak of me, he'll glorify me. He said he shall glorify me for he shall take of mine and shall disclose it to you.

So that's making that objective truth subjective, making it personal, appropriating it. There are other words that are used for that. So that's what subjective truth is about. The Holy Spirit will manifest the glory of Christ through you as epistles of Christ. And I like the last statement. My brother, I'm not sure he was the originator of this, but I've always liked it.

You may be the only epistle or letter that someone may read about Christ and His glory. Some people will never open the Bible. They'll never, they'll say, no, don't show me that. They'll just look at you. They want to see you. And your life may determine whether they go on with the Lord. Like I said, it sounds like I'm putting the guilt trip on you, but it's not my intent. My intent is that you trust in Him and rely upon Him. Okay, I have one final chart for final thoughts. Only one chart this week. If you were here last week, I had seven charts of final thoughts. Only one chart this week. Okay, here it is. And this is from Constable.

So he kind of gets a summary of what happened in Paul's ministry at Corinth. He says, the Corinthians, too, were such letters, letters of Christ that God had written. God's method of communicating the gospel to others is through the supernatural change that he writes on the lives of believers by the Holy Spirit. In this instance, the transformation of the Corinthian lives was strong proof of the genuineness of Paul's apostleship. For Paul to offer others letters written on paper would have been insulting and superfluous. What God has said about Paul's blessing in his ministry with the fruit and Corinth spoke more eloquently than any letter that he could have carried on his person. All right, so we're gonna continue on next week, looking at these letters of Christ and more aspects of that. And there's actually a lot more to be thought about in pictures here, the tablets of stone and tablets of the human heart.

So tune in next week. All right, so let's close. We thank you, Father. We thank you for our time today. We thank you for the blessings we have in our Savior. We thank you for His word, your word, and we thank you that we can know and understand it and that you will guide us into all the truth. We ask it in his name, amen.