Pastor Eze has been preaching for nearly forty years, and he is one of the most careful Bible teachers I know. So I was surprised when he told me, over a plate of rice at a ministers’ retreat, about the Sunday he used a verse of Scripture as a weapon.
He was in his late twenties, newly placed in charge of a growing church, and full of fire. That morning he had preached on a promise from the prophets and applied it boldly to the congregation’s businesses and careers. The sermon was received with great enthusiasm. After the service, as people were greeting him at the door, a young woman waited until the crowd had thinned. She was a law student, quiet and respectful. She held her Bible open and said, “Pastor, thank you for the message. I read the whole chapter during the sermon, and I am struggling to see how the verse connects with what you said. It seems to be speaking about something else. Could you help me understand?”
He told me he felt the heat rise in his neck. People were still standing nearby. Without thinking very much, he smiled at her and said, “My sister, the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” Then he laid a hand on her shoulder and added, “Don’t be too much in your head.”
She nodded, lowered her eyes and went home.
“I felt that I had won,” Pastor Eze said, and he put his spoon down. “It took me fifteen years to realise what I had actually done.”
That sentence from Paul is one of the most quoted lines in the New Testament, and also one of the most misused. It is often used, as Pastor Eze used it, to end a conversation whenever someone asks what a passage actually says. Careful reading is called “the letter.” An idea that cannot be shown from the text is called “the Spirit.” But Paul’s words have a setting, and the best way to understand them is to read the chapter in which he wrote them.
A sentence with a setting
Paul’s relationship with the church in Corinth was complicated. He had founded it, but after he left, other teachers arrived who questioned his authority. They carried letters of recommendation and compared themselves favourably with him. Some in Corinth said of Paul, “his letters, say they, are weighty and powerful; but his bodily presence is weak, and his speech contemptible” (2 Corinthians 10:10). So in this letter Paul has to explain the nature of his ministry. Chapter 3 begins like this:
Do we begin again to commend ourselves? or need we, as some others , epistles of commendation to you, or letters of commendation from you? Ye are our epistle written in our hearts, known and read of all men: Forasmuch as ye are manifestly declared to be the epistle of Christ ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart. And such trust have we through Christ to God-ward: Not that we are sufficient of ourselves to think any thing as of ourselves; but our sufficiency is of God; Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
Notice how Paul answers the demand for letters of commendation. Instead of producing a document, he points to the Corinthians themselves. “Ye are our epistle.” Their changed lives were the evidence that God had been at work through his ministry. And this letter was written in a very particular way: “not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in fleshy tables of the heart.”
Those words, tables of stone, tell us immediately what Paul is thinking about. He is thinking about Sinai, where God gave Moses “two tables of testimony, tables of stone, written with the finger of God” (Exodus 31:18). Paul is setting two covenants side by side: the old covenant written on stone and the new covenant written on human hearts by the Spirit.
Then comes the famous sentence. God “hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.” The word translated testament is the Greek diathēkē, which also means covenant. Paul is a minister of the new covenant. And the contrast between “the letter” and “the spirit” belongs inside that comparison of covenants. The letter is the old covenant code, engraved on stone and standing over the people from the outside. The spirit is the Holy Spirit, writing God’s life into the heart.
So before we go any further, we can already see that this verse has nothing to do with whether careful Bible reading is spiritual. Paul is comparing two covenants and what each one does to the people who live under it.
Stone tablets and tables of the heart
Paul did not invent this contrast. He was drawing on a promise God made through Jeremiah, centuries earlier, to a people who had broken the covenant of Sinai again and again:
Behold, the days come, saith the LORD , that I will make a new covenant with the house of Israel, and with the house of Judah: Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers in the day that I took them by the hand to bring them out of the land of Egypt; which my covenant they brake, although I was an husband unto them, saith the LORD : But this shall be the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel; After those days, saith the LORD , I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts; and will be their God, and they shall be my people.
“Not according to the covenant that I made with their fathers.” The old covenant was holy and good, but Israel broke it, because the law was outside them and their hearts were unchanged. In the new covenant God promises something different: “I will put my law in their inward parts, and write it in their hearts.” Ezekiel prophesied the same thing: “and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you an heart of flesh” (Ezekiel 36:26).
Do you see how carefully Paul has chosen his words? Stone tablets, stony hearts. Fleshy tables of the heart, a heart of flesh. When Paul says the Corinthians are a letter written “in fleshy tables of the heart,” he is announcing that Jeremiah and Ezekiel’s promise has come true. The Spirit is now writing on hearts what the law could only write on stone.
Paul uses the word letter the same way elsewhere. In Romans he says that true circumcision “is that of the heart, in the spirit, and not in the letter” (Romans 2:29). And he says that believers now “serve in newness of spirit, and not in the oldness of the letter” (Romans 7:6). In each case “the letter” means the written code of the old covenant, operating as an external demand. “The spirit” means the new life of the Holy Spirit within.
Why does the letter kill? Because a holy law, written outside a sinful heart, can only condemn. Paul explains it in Romans: “And the commandment, which was ordained to life, I found to be unto death” (Romans 7:10). The commandment was good. It promised life to those who kept it. But no one kept it, and so the same commandment that described life pronounced death. The letter kills because it tells the truth about righteousness to people who are not righteous, and it has no power within itself to make them so.
A ministry of death that was glorious
Paul then does something surprising. Having called the old covenant a ministry of death, he insists it was glorious:
But if the ministration of death, written and engraven in stones, was glorious, so that the children of Israel could not stedfastly behold the face of Moses for the glory of his countenance; which glory was to be done away: How shall not the ministration of the spirit be rather glorious? For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory. For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth. For if that which is done away was glorious, much more that which remaineth is glorious.
Read those verses carefully, because they guard us against two opposite errors. Paul calls the old covenant “the ministration of death” and “the ministration of condemnation.” Those are strong words. But in the same breath he says three times that it was glorious. The law was not an evil mistake. When Moses came down from the mountain, his face shone so brightly that Israel could not look at him. God’s glory had been present at Sinai.
But there is a greater glory. “For if the ministration of condemnation be glory, much more doth the ministration of righteousness exceed in glory.” Paul compares the two ministries in pairs:
- The old was a ministry of death; the new is a ministry of the Spirit, who gives life.
- The old was a ministry of condemnation; the new is a ministry of righteousness.
- The old was being done away; the new remains.
Paul uses an illustration we can all understand: “For even that which was made glorious had no glory in this respect, by reason of the glory that excelleth.” Think of a torch in the dark. At night, its beam seems bright and precious. But carry it outside at noon in the dry season, and you can hardly tell whether it is switched on. The torch is still shining. Its light has simply been outshone.
That is how Paul speaks of the law. Its glory was real. But the glory of the new covenant so far exceeds it that, by comparison, the old has “no glory in this respect.” And notice the words “done away” and “remaineth.” The old covenant was a temporary arrangement leading toward Christ. The new covenant is permanent.
None of this is an attack on written words. Paul is, after all, writing this explanation in a letter, with ink, on a page, for the church to read carefully. He expected the Corinthians to follow his argument line by line. His contrast concerns two covenant ministries and their effects.
The shining face and the veil
Paul’s next illustration comes from a story in Exodus. When Moses came down from Sinai the second time, carrying the new tablets, his face was shining from his time in God’s presence, and the people were afraid to come near him. Then Exodus tells us what he did:
And till Moses had done speaking with them, he put a vail on his face. But when Moses went in before the LORD to speak with him, he took the vail off, until he came out. And he came out, and spake unto the children of Israel that which he was commanded. And the children of Israel saw the face of Moses, that the skin of Moses’ face shone: and Moses put the vail upon his face again, until he went in to speak with him.
Moses wore a veil when he spoke with the people, and took it off when he went in to speak with the Lord. Exodus does not explain fully why he kept wearing it. Paul, writing by the Spirit, gives us an interpretation. Moses veiled his face “that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished” (2 Corinthians 3:13). The glory on his face was fading, just as the covenant he carried would one day give way to something greater. The veil hid the fading.
Then Paul makes a bold application. The veil, he says, is still there. “For until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament.” When the Scriptures of Moses are read without Christ, a veil lies over the reader’s heart, and the true goal of the law is hidden.
We must hear this with the same tenderness Paul felt. Paul loved his own people. He wrote elsewhere, “That I have great heaviness and continual sorrow in my heart. For I could wish that myself were accursed from Christ for my brethren, my kinsmen according to the flesh” (Romans 9:2-3). Paul had read Moses with a veil himself for years. He had been “taught according to the perfect manner of the law of the fathers” (Acts 22:3), and he had still missed Christ until the risen Lord met him on the Damascus road. He knew from the inside what it was to read Scripture diligently and not see.
PunchlineAnd that is a warning for every reader, including Christians. It is possible to read the Bible with a veil, sincerely and diligently, and to miss the One it is about.
When anyone turns to the Lord
Now Paul brings the whole argument to its centre:
Seeing then that we have such hope, we use great plainness of speech: And not as Moses, which put a vail over his face, that the children of Israel could not stedfastly look to the end of that which is abolished: But their minds were blinded: for until this day remaineth the same vail untaken away in the reading of the old testament; which vail is done away in Christ. But even unto this day, when Moses is read, the vail is upon their heart. Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away. Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is , there is liberty. But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.
“Nevertheless when it shall turn to the Lord, the vail shall be taken away.” The answer to the veil is not a cleverer reading technique, and it is certainly not abandoning the Scriptures. It is turning to the Lord. When a heart turns to Christ, the veil is lifted, and the same Scriptures that seemed obscure begin to shine with His glory.
“Now the Lord is that Spirit: and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” Paul identifies the Lord to whom we turn with the Spirit who gives life. The Spirit is the One who removes the veil, opens our understanding and makes Christ known. And where He is, there is freedom: freedom from condemnation, freedom from the fear that kept Israel at a distance, and freedom to come near.
Then the last verse, one of the most beautiful in the New Testament. “But we all, with open face beholding as in a glass the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, even as by the Spirit of the Lord.”
Contrast this with Moses. Moses alone saw God’s glory, and then he covered his face. Now “we all,” every believer, behold the glory of the Lord “with open face,” unveiled. Moses’ glory faded. Ours grows, “from glory to glory.” And the glory we behold transforms us. We become like the One we look at. This is the life the Spirit gives. The letter could only describe righteousness and condemn its absence. The Spirit forms Christ’s likeness in us as we behold Him.
The letter kills because a holy law written on stone can only condemn a sinful heart. The Spirit gives life because He turns us to Christ, lifts the veil and changes us into His image.
What Paul did not mean
NuggetNow we can see clearly how far the common misuse of this verse has wandered from Paul’s meaning.
Paul never suggests that careful attention to Scripture is unspiritual. He was himself one of the most careful readers of Scripture who ever lived. His letters are full of detailed arguments from the Old Testament, sometimes resting on a single word. Near the end of his life, sitting in a Roman prison, he asked Timothy to bring him “the books, but especially the parchments” (2 Timothy 4:13). A man who thought study was opposed to the Spirit would not have spent his last days asking for his scrolls.
In the very next chapter of this letter, Paul says that he and his companions had refused to be “handling the word of God deceitfully” (2 Corinthians 4:2). Handling the word honestly means letting it say what it says, even when that is inconvenient. Using “the letter killeth” to avoid an honest question is a way of handling the word deceitfully, however spiritual it sounds.
Luke gives us a picture of what God thinks of careful readers:
These were more noble than those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.
The Bereans heard the apostle Paul himself preach, and they did not simply accept what he said. They “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so.” And Luke calls them “more noble.” Checking a preacher’s message against the Bible is nobility, not rebellion. If the apostle Paul welcomed it, no preacher today should resent it.
That is why the young law student at Pastor Eze’s church was doing exactly what the Spirit approves. She had read the whole chapter. She had noticed a gap between the text and the sermon. She had asked respectfully. Her question came from love for God’s word.
There is an opposite danger, and we should name it too. Study can become dry when it is pursued mainly to win arguments, display learning or feel superior to other believers. Paul warned the same church that “Knowledge puffeth up, but charity edifieth” (1 Corinthians 8:1). A person can know every Greek word in 2 Corinthians 3 and still read with a veil over his heart, because he has never turned to the Lord the chapter describes. Study without prayer, humility and love can harden instead of soften. The remedy is attention offered to God, with the heart turned toward Christ.
Words that are spirit and life
Jesus Himself joined the Spirit and the word together in a way that settles the matter:
It is the spirit that quickeneth; the flesh profiteth nothing: the words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life. But there are some of you that believe not. For Jesus knew from the beginning who they were that believed not, and who should betray him. And he said, Therefore said I unto you, that no man can come unto me, except it were given unto him of my Father. From that time many of his disciples went back, and walked no more with him. Then said Jesus unto the twelve, Will ye also go away? Then Simon Peter answered him, Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.
“The words that I speak unto you, they are spirit, and they are life.” Far from setting the Spirit against His words, Jesus said His words are spirit and life. The Spirit gives life through the word, never apart from it or against it. And when many disciples turned away because the teaching was hard, Peter did not say, “Lord, we prefer a spiritual feeling to Your difficult sayings.” He said, “Lord, to whom shall we go? thou hast the words of eternal life.”
The Holy Spirit is the author of Scripture. He is not going to lead anyone away from what He wrote. Jesus said, “Howbeit when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth” (John 16:13). The Spirit’s work is to open our understanding of the word, as the risen Christ did for His disciples: “Then opened he their understanding, that they might understand the scriptures” (Luke 24:45). The psalmist’s prayer is still the right one: “Open thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things out of thy law” (Psalm 119:18).
Of course, reading faithfully does not mean treating every expression the same way. Jesus used parables and images. The Psalms are poetry. The prophets used vivid pictures. Revelation is full of symbols. Recognising a metaphor as a metaphor is itself an act of careful reading. Paying attention to the kind of writing in front of us is part of honouring what the Spirit inspired.
So we can read prayerfully and attentively at the same time. Ask the Spirit to open your understanding. Read the whole passage. Consider its setting and its form. Compare it with the wider witness of Scripture, and look for how it leads to Christ. These activities belong together. Love often pays close attention.
Reading with an unveiled face
What does all this mean for the way you read your Bible this week?
It means you come to Scripture as a new covenant believer. You are not standing at the foot of Sinai, afraid to come near. You are not reading the commandments as a code that will condemn you if you fall short, because Christ has borne that condemnation for you. You come with an unveiled face, as someone in whom the Spirit lives.
When a passage exposes sin, receive the truth it tells. Do not explain it away. Then turn to the provision of Christ, rather than treating self-condemnation as though it had the power to change you. When a passage announces your righteousness in Christ, receive that gift gladly, without making it an excuse to ignore His instruction. The same Spirit who gives life also writes God’s law on your heart, and the fruit is a changed life.
It also means you can ask honest questions of the text, and of those who teach you. If someone claims a spiritual meaning for a passage, it is right to ask how that meaning relates to the passage itself. Ask humbly, ready to learn. And apply the same standard to your own teaching. A humble question and a faithful explanation both serve the life of the church.
And it means you keep turning to the Lord. The veil is not lifted by intelligence, and it is not lifted by ignoring the text. It is lifted when the heart turns to Christ. Every time you open your Bible, turn to Him again. Ask Him to show you His glory in the page in front of you. And expect to be changed, from glory to glory, by His Spirit.
PunchlinePastor Eze told me the rest of the story before we left the table that evening.
Many years after that Sunday, he was preparing a series on 2 Corinthians. For the first time in his life, he sat down and read chapter 3 from beginning to end, slowly, several times. When he reached the end, he said, he felt sick. He had quoted verse 6 hundreds of times, and he had never once read the verses around it. He had used a sentence about the new covenant to silence a young woman who was simply doing what the Bereans did.
It took him months to find her. She was by then a lawyer in Abuja with children of her own. He called her, introduced himself, and asked whether she remembered him. There was a pause on the line. “Yes, Pastor,” she said. “I remember.”
She told him that after that Sunday she had stopped asking questions in church. For several years she had stopped studying her Bible carefully, because she had come to believe that serious reading was unspiritual and that her mind was an obstacle to God. A friend at university had eventually invited her to a Bible study where they read whole books together, and her love for Scripture had slowly come back.
Pastor Eze apologised. He told her she had been right, and that he had been wrong to use Paul’s words that way. She laughed, he said, and then she cried a little, and then she said, “Thank you. I have waited a long time to hear that.”
These days, whenever he begins a Bible study, Pastor Eze says the same thing before anyone opens their mouth. “Let us read the whole chapter. Ask any question you like. And let us turn to the Lord together, so that the veil may be taken away.”
The letter kills. The Spirit gives life. Read the sentence in its chapter, and let it bring you to the Lord who writes on human hearts. Then keep your Bible open, and keep your face unveiled.
Teaching Companion
For Reflection
- How have you heard “the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life” used? How does reading 2 Corinthians 3 in full change your understanding of it?
- Why does Paul call the old covenant both a “ministration of death” and “glorious”? What does that teach you about how to speak of the law?
- In what ways might you have read Scripture “with a veil,” diligently but without seeing Christ?
- Are you more drawn to dry study without prayer, or to spiritual impressions without careful reading? What would a better balance look like for you?
- How would you respond if someone in your church asked an honest question about the meaning of a passage you had taught?
This Week
Read 2 Corinthians 3 in full every day this week, if possible in one sitting each time. On a sheet of paper, draw two columns. In one, list every word or phrase Paul connects with the old covenant (stone, letter, death, condemnation, veil). In the other, list everything he connects with the new (Spirit, heart, life, righteousness, liberty, glory). Before each reading, pray Psalm 119:18 aloud. At the end of the week, write down one way this chapter has changed how you read the rest of your Bible.
A Prayer
Lord, my sufficiency is from You. Thank You for making me part of the new covenant, written by Your Spirit on my heart. Forgive me for the times I have read Your word with a veil, and for any time I have used Your words to silence honest questions. Turn my heart to You afresh, and take the veil away. Open my eyes to behold wondrous things in Your word. Let me read carefully and prayerfully, with an open face, and change me from glory to glory into the image of Jesus by Your Spirit. Amen.
Truth received brings freedom. Truth believed establishes the heart.
Scripture quotations are from the King James Version. · Illustrations using first names only are composites unless stated otherwise.