2 Corinthians 3:9Meaning & Commentary from the Church Fathers

Then he returns again to the same point, saying, “For if the ministry of condemnation had glory” (v. 9). Explaining more clearly the meaning of the words, “the letter kills,” the Apostle says what we have already said above.

The Law only reveals sin. It does not produce it. “Much more does the ministry of justification abound in glory.”

Those tablets only revealed sinners and punished them. But this ministry of righteousness not only does not punish sinners. It also makes them righteous, because Baptism grants this justification.

“What was made glorious has not even been made glorious in this respect, because of the glory that surpasses it” (v. 10).

Again he presents the same thought in another form. Explaining his words, "the letter kills," he calls the law the ministry of condemnation, as the punisher of sins, not as their cause.

But he calls the Gospel the ministry of justification, because it not only frees from punishment, but also makes sinners righteous. Therefore the Gospel will possess far greater glory.

For if the ministry of condemnation, understand, was in glory, how much more will the ministry of righteousness flourish in glory, that is, the ministry of grace? The interrogative form is also in the Syriac: "how much more?"

Paul says this because the gift of God's righteousness through the faith of Christ is fuller than in the old law. For salvation has greater praise than death.

However justly a judge may condemn someone, still greater honor belongs to the judge in a judgment of acquittal, so that the accused may be corrected.

The law condemned those who sinned, while grace receives them and justifies them by faith, because it brings them to divine baptism and grants remission of sins.

Therefore, if the one who ministered to the first became a partaker of glory, much more will the ministers of the latter be filled with greater glory.

By contrast, the Christian revelation itself glorifies its preachers (2 Cor 3:6) as “ministers of the new covenant.” They are ministers “not of the letter that kills,” that is, of the Old Testament Law, which threatened punishment to transgressors, as Chrysostom says.

They are ministers of “the Spirit that gives life,” that is, of grace, which through the mystery of Baptism gives life to those dead in sins, as Chrysostom says.

It glorifies them more than Moses, who covered before the people the radiance received on his face with a veil (2 Cor 3:7-11).

“For,” says the Apostle, “if the ministry of letters that bring death” was glorious. They bring death because they not only threatened death to violators of the Law, but also could not turn them away from it.

The Old Testament order was a ministry of condemnation, because the Law only exposed sin and condemned the sinner as a sinner, in the sinner’s own knowledge. There it left him and led him no further.

The sinner could not fail to recognize the righteousness of the condemnation. He would have desired to be delivered from it and no longer fall under it, but he could not, because the Law gave no strength for this.

Thus the Law always held those under the Law beneath condemnation, giving them no way out of it.

By contrast, the covenant of grace also begins with a full condemnation of those called to it. Yet it says, “Repent, and let every one of you be baptized... for the remission of sins, and you shall receive the gift of the Holy Spirit” (Acts 2:38).