The Spirit is the Lord

2 Corinthians 3:1-18

¹ Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, as some do, letters of recommendation to you or from you?

² You are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by all,

³ shown to be a letter of Christ administered by us, written not in ink but by the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets that are hearts of flesh.

⁴ Such confidence we have through Christ toward God.

⁵ Not that of ourselves we are qualified to take credit for anything as coming from us; rather, our qualification comes from God,

⁶ who has indeed qualified us as ministers of a new covenant, not of letter but of spirit; for the letter brings death, but the Spirit gives life.

⁷ Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, was so glorious that the Israelites could not look intently at the face of Moses because of its glory that was going to fade,

⁸ how much more will the ministry of the Spirit be glorious?

⁹ For if the ministry of condemnation was glorious, the ministry of righteousness will abound much more in glory.

¹⁰ Indeed, what was endowed with glory has come to have no glory in this respect because of the glory that surpasses it.

¹¹ For if what was going to fade was glorious, how much more will what endures be glorious.

¹² Therefore, since we have such hope, we act very boldly

¹³ and not like Moses, who put a veil over his face so that the Israelites could not look intently at the cessation of what was fading.

¹⁴ Rather, their thoughts were rendered dull, for to this present day the same veil remains unlifted when they read the old covenant, because through Christ it is taken away.

¹⁵ To this day, in fact, whenever Moses is read, a veil lies over their hearts,

¹⁶ but whenever a person turns to the Lord the veil is removed.

¹⁷ Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

¹⁸ All of us, gazing with unveiled face on the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from glory to glory, as from the Lord who is the Spirit.

Isolating snippets

v	Person	phrase
3	Jesus	"a letter of Christ"
3	Holy Spirit	πνεύματι θεοῦ ζῶντος "written ... by the Spirit of the living God."
4	Jesus	διὰ τοῦ Χριστοῦ πρὸς τὸν θεόν "through Christ toward God."
6	impersonal spirit	οὐ γράμματος ἀλλὰ πνεύματος "a new covenant not of letter[s] but of spirit"
6	ambiguous breath meaning human spirit divine spirit	τὸ δὲ πνεῦμα ζῳοποιεῖ. "the Spirit gives life"
8	Holy Spirit? spiritual realities?	ἡ διακονία τοῦ πνεύματος "ministry of the Spirit"
16	Jesus? God? The Holy Spirit?	πρὸς κύριον "to the Lord"
17	[?]	ὁ δὲ κύριος τὸ πνεῦμα ἐστιν "The Lord is the Spirit" "The Spirit is the Lord"
17	Spirit of Jesus? Holy Spirit?	τὸ πνεῦμα κυρίου "The Spirit of the Lord"
18	glory of Jesus? glory of the Lord God?	τὴν δόξαν κυρίου "the glory of the Lord"

Msgr. Ronald Knox

Verse 17 must be read in its context. It makes no kind of difference whether we translate "The Lord is the Spirit" or "The Spirit is the Lord"; all St. Paul is doing is to assert the identity of "the Lord" mentioned in verse 16 with "the spirit" mentioned in verse 6. Jesus Christ is (not the Holy Spirit, but) himself the life-giving spirit which underlies the death-bringing letter of the law; he is, as we have seen, that fulfillment to which, under its veil, the Law obscurely pointed. And he--or, if you prefer it, the Spirit which proceeds from him--is a principle of liberty, emancipates us from the Old Law. It is given to us (verse 18) who can see Christ with no veil between, to reflect his glory as Moses did--but, unlike Moses, to reflect it with our own faces unveiled. The word "all" suggests that this applies to all Christians, but no doubt, in view of the context, St. Paul has the ministers of the Gospel chiefly in mind. St. Chrysostom is surely right in saying that we reflect Christ as in a mirror, do not merely see him as in a mirror, though the sense of the Greek verb is doubtful. When St. Paul tells us that we borrow the same likeness (i.e., that of Christ) "from glory into glory," he probably means that the glory which is in Christ gives rise to a corresponding glory in us; but his use of this turn of phrase is always baffling (cf. Rom. 1:17).