Letters Written On Our Heart

You hand someone a resume and you say, here is who I am. You walk into a job interview and you bring three references. You hang a diploma on your wall, and that piece of paper tells the world you are qualified. We measure a man by his papers. We have always measured a man by his papers.

The first century was no different. There was a practice in the early churches of carrying letters of commendation. A church would send a man on his way with a written endorsement, and that letter said, this brother is one of us, receive him. There was nothing wrong with the practice itself. We still do something like it today.

But in Corinth, the practice had been weaponized. False teachers had rolled into town waving papers from somebody, somewhere, and they were using those papers to discredit Paul. Where is your letter, they asked. Show us your credentials. Prove you are who you say you are.

Paul had no paper to show them. What he had was a church. A changed people. Lives that the Spirit of God had rewritten in the city of Corinth itself. And in this text he says that this, and nothing less than this, is the only credential a true minister of Christ ever needs.

The Living Letter

There was a first century practice of showing letters of commendation in order to prove one's legitimacy. It seems to have been that letters were sent for teachers and others in the New Testament. There is nothing wrong with the practice. In fact we still do it to this day. When a believer moves from one church to another we grant letters and receive letters. These are written endorsements.

This becomes a problem when the practice is weaponized, and that is what the false teachers were doing. They demanded credentials Paul could not produce. It was almost like the Nazis. Show me your papers. And when those papers are not there, it is taken as proof that the man's ministry is not authorized.

Do we not see the same today?

Maybe not on a personal level, but on a church level. Among some of the extreme landmark guys who demand that there be papers proving the genealogy of churches going back one, two, three generations or more. And if those cannot be produced, the accusation is that it is not a true church. We have the records of the origins of some New Testament churches, but we do not have them all, so we need to be careful with the extreme positions that sometimes spring up. Such positions can cause doubts in churches and baptisms.

When it comes to church succession, the old saying is in some of those more extreme churches, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, and has papers proving it came from a duck, then it must be a duck. But in ordinary life, we do not treat nature with the level of suspicion that some brethren seem to treat churches.

Some of the brethren are asking for papers before they will allow men to preach, pray, sing in their meetings, or even have any fellowship or friendship with other brothers. That is unnecessary unless there is reasonable cause for doubt. We should not begin with suspicion. We should begin with charity and sound judgment.

The only time this question normally needs to be pressed is when we are receiving someone's baptism. In that case, it is proper to ask where the baptism came from. And if there is a legitimate concern, we may ask whether that church was scripturally organized. But we do not need to demand a full church genealogy going all the way back to Jerusalem before recognizing a church as a church.

Reasonable inquiry is one thing. Endless suspicion is another. The weaponizing of papers was wrong in New Testament times and it is wrong now.

Paul's answer to the demands of the false teachers, the show me your letters crowd, was not to produce letters but to show them something better.

Paul's authenticity was not bound to a piece of paper. It was evident from the scars he carried and from the impact he had on the Corinthian church itself. The false teachers needed a paper, a letter of commendation, in order to gain acceptance. Paul's letter was far superior.

He flips it on them. They demanded papers. Paul's letter was the Corinthians themselves, written on his heart.

His letter was not written in ink. It could not be carried in a piece of luggage to be shown. It was written in the heart. And Paul's letter of commendation was not private correspondence, hidden in hearts and readable by only a few. It was known and read by all men. All who witnessed the transformed lives of the Corinthians had read it. It was continually being manifested to all.

Think about the logic behind it all. It is really surprising that this had even come up in Corinth at all. If Paul was not authorized, where did that leave the Corinthian church? The Corinthian believers? Many of them had been saved under Paul. He had started the church there. And now they were going to question him? We think some of the things we go through in our modern times are wild. They had some doozies too.

As I studied this, I could not help but think of the situation here at Sovereign Grace Baptist Church. The excluded members stole our building, but they realized they need something more. So now they are demanding the papers, the deed, the church records, the bank account, the Facebook page. Why? They need to legitimize their devilish activity. The only way they can do that in any way is through papers. They cannot do it through the heart.

We have what Paul had. Letters written on the heart. Evidence of the new birth and changed lives through the preaching of the Word. People do not understand. There is a difference between the church and the building. There is a difference between papers and the church. We have nothing to hide. They do.

The credential of a true minister is not the noise he makes but the lives that change under his ministry. For the congregation, you are the visible argument for your pastor's ministry. The watching world reads you. They are watching us, even in this time of trial.

They also keep posting about the building. Earlier this month they bragged about holding some kind of celebration there for the church's thirtieth anniversary. It is indeed the thirtieth anniversary of the church this year. It is flattering, in a way, that excluded members want to celebrate the anniversary of the very church they were excluded from. To do so in our church building, without permission, is criminal. To do so under our name is devilish.

Whether it is papers or buildings, to use them to weaponize a ministry or to legitimize a work is wrong. It was wrong in Corinth. It is wrong here.

The Spirit's Pen

Paul presses one layer deeper. If lives are the letter, who actually does the writing? Who is the hero here?

There are three contrasts packed into one verse. Not with ink, but with the Spirit. Not on tablets of stone, but on hearts of flesh. The author is Christ. The apostles only minister the letter. John MacArthur puts it this way:

MacArthur, John F., Jr. 2 Corinthians. Moody Publishers, 2003, pp. 81–82.

Paul brings up tablets of stone to contrast the hearts of flesh, perhaps because the false teachers were preaching legalism. It was a great miracle that God wrote the commandments on stone on Mount Sinai back yonder in the Old Testament. Nothing can compare with the greater miracle of the new birth, when a person comes to know Christ as Saviour.

God has not merely written His truth on stone. He has written it upon redeemed hearts. This does not mean that God's moral standard changed. The same holy God who gave His law at Sinai still requires righteousness. We call them antinomians. They believe that being under the new covenant means believers are released from any obligation to obey God's law. But the new covenant does not make obedience unnecessary. It makes obedience possible. The law written on stone stood outside of man, exposing his sin, revealing his inability, and condemning him before the holy demands of God. In the new covenant, God writes His law within His people. By the indwelling Holy Spirit, He gives them the desire and the power to walk in obedience. And where they still fall short, the righteousness of Christ, graciously credited to them, covers every failure.

This was not a new idea in Paul's theology. The Old Testament prophets had already promised that God would do this very work.

Through Jeremiah, the Lord said:

Ezekiel spoke in similar terms:

The new covenant is not merely law declared to man from the outside. It is grace at work within man, changing the heart and enabling the obedience God requires.

So the minister is the messenger. The Spirit of God is the writer. Christ is the Author. And the writer of Hebrews calls us to fix our eyes on that Author:

The Judaizers had it wrong. The legalists were goofing up Christianity because they had their lists of dos and don'ts. Their eyes were set on the lists. The writer of Hebrews says no, you have it wrong. Put your eyes on Jesus. Finish the race.

If you are in Christ, your obedience does not flow from a chiseled stone in your chest. The Spirit Himself has done the writing. The law you used to hate, you now love. The sin you used to chase, you now grieve over. The God you used to ignore, you now seek. That is not your achievement. That is His writing. Check the handwriting on your own heart this morning. If it is His, the evidence will be all over your life. That does not mean you will be sinlessly perfect. Some preach that. The Bible does not. The evidence will be there nonetheless.

The Sufficient Minister

Paul has shown us the letter and the pen. Now he tells us where the minister's confidence comes from.

To make it through the trials, tribulations, criticisms, heartaches, persecutions, and everything else that comes with ministry, Paul had to have confidence. Not pride. Not arrogance. His confidence was in Christ, through God, by the power of the Spirit.

This was consistent in his ministry. To the Romans:

Earlier to the Corinthians:

To the church at Ephesus:

The false apostles were self-confident and arrogant in their own cleverness. Their work was centered around themselves. Paul's ministry was through the power of Christ to please God.

In and of himself he is not sufficient, but God has made him sufficient. He has made us sufficient ministers of what? To take the tablets of the old covenant and bind them on new covenant believers in some legalistic fashion?

No.

Ministers after men's making? No. There are too many men in pulpits all across this country who were put there by mommies and granddaddies and the list goes on and on. They were not put there by God.

Our sufficiency is from God, who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant, not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.

There was no life under Moses. In Jesus there is. Read it again.

Paul is contrasting the law as a covenant administration that exposed sin and condemned, with the Spirit who applies Christ's work and brings life. The law written on stone could only demand. The Spirit working through the gospel actually delivers.

Do not misunderstand. This does not mean that God lowered or altered His moral standard. The same holy God who gave His law at Sinai still requires righteousness from His people. Some wrongly suppose that life under the new covenant frees believers from the duty of obedience. But the new covenant does not set obedience aside. It supplies the grace and the power by which obedience becomes possible.

Think of it this way. A man hands you a perfect set of blueprints for a house. He has not built the house. He has only described it. The law was the blueprint. It told you exactly what you were supposed to be and then condemned you when you were not. The Spirit, under the new covenant, does not just describe the house. He builds it in you.

For ministers: stop measuring your sufficiency by your own gifts, your own intellect, your own platform. God has never used a man whose confidence rested there. For every believer: when you serve, when you witness, when you teach your children, when you lead a meeting, when you sit with a hurting friend, your sufficiency is borrowed. Lean on the One who supplies it.

A Heart of Stone or a Heart of Flesh

The passage takes us through three frames. Lives are the letter. The Spirit is the pen. God is the sufficiency. Paul's defense of his ministry turns into one of the clearest pictures in the New Testament of how the new covenant actually works on a human being. A real Christian is not someone who has read the rules and tried harder. A real Christian is someone God has rewritten from the inside.

The old covenant was carved in stone, and stone could only accuse. Every commandment on Sinai was true, and every commandment condemned the people standing at the foot of the mountain. The law was never the problem. We were. No amount of ink, no amount of effort, no amount of religious paperwork can change a heart of stone into a heart of flesh.

But here is the new covenant. Christ came, kept the law we broke, died under the curse the law pronounced, and rose to send His Spirit into His people. Jesus conquered death, hell, and the grave. The Spirit does what the chisel never could. He takes the stone out. He puts flesh in. He writes the love of God on the inside of a sinner.

If you are outside of Christ this morning, hear this carefully. You do not need to clean up your heart of stone. You need a new one. Only the Spirit of the living God, through the gospel of Jesus Christ, can give you one. Come to Him today.

If you are in Christ, look at what He has already done in you. The heart that once loved sin now grieves it. The heart that once ignored God now seeks Him. That is not your achievement. That is His writing.

This week, remember whose handwriting is on your heart. When you sit with your unbelieving neighbor, you are not the author of his change. The Spirit is. Speak the gospel and trust the Pen. When you parent your children, you are not chiseling stone tablets. You are praying that the Spirit would write on hearts of flesh. Teach the Word, model repentance, and trust the Author. When someone watches your life this week, let them read a clear letter. Be the kind of evidence Paul could point to and say, there. That is what Christ is doing.