November 22

Read: II Corinthians 3:1-3

Ye are… the epistle of Christ… written.., with the Spirit of the living God… in… the heart (II Corinthians 3:3).

Life In The Spirit

What does this chapter teach us about the Spirit-filled life? John Wesley found in verse 17 one of the thirty texts on which he chiefly relied as Biblical evidence for the teaching of entire sanctification. From this text and from this chapter he preached a message entitled “On the Holy Spirit.” There is profound truth here but it does not lie on the surface. We shall have to dig for it.

The first stratum of earth that needs to be removed is the concealing language of the Authorized Version, translated three hundred fifty years ago. The word Spirit occurs seven times in these eighteen verses. In the King James Version only four of them are capitalized; in the more recent translation of the Revised Standard Version all seven have a capital S. From verse 3 onward Paul is glorying in the work of the Holy Spirit.

The second concealing stratum is the most incidental approach to this truth. In II Corinthians the Apostle had the unpleasant task of defending his own ministry. His original purpose in this chapter was to contrast the New Testament way of salvation with the Old Testament requirements of religion. But at verse 3 his mind was caught up with the wonder of “the Spirit of the living God.” Paul had a habit of thus “going off at a word.” MaClaren writes: “This characteristic gives at first sight an appearance of confusion to his writings. But it is not confusion, it is richness.” Without this particular detour in the Apostle’s thought we would have missed these insights into the work of the Holy Spirit.

Perhaps the force of this Bible teaching is greater just because God’s messenger came at it incidentally. Paul took for granted that it was familiar truth to the Early Church. He sought only to remind his Corinthian converts that a Christian is what he is because of the Spirit of God in his life.