"Living Letters" 2 Corinthians 3:1-4 Message #17

Did you know that writing letters of recommendation can be hazardous to your bank account because if you tell the truth about some people and their bad work habits you could get sued.  So, with that in mind, Robert Thornton, a professor at Lehigh University, has a collection of "virtually litigation-proof" phrases called the Lexicon of Intentionally Ambiguous Recommendations, or LIAR for short.

Here are some examples:

1.   To describe an inept person you could word it like this: "I enthusiastically recommend this candidate with no qualifications whatsoever.

2.   For the chronically absent worker:  "A man like him is hard to find."

3.   For an employee with no ambition:  "You would indeed be fortunate to get this person to work for you."

4.   For a dishonest employee:  "He's an unbelievable worker."

5.   To describe an unproductive candidate: "I can assure you that no one would be better for the job."

6.   For an ex-employee you would never wish upon anyone you could write: "I would urge you to waste no time in making this candidate an offer of employment."

7.   For the former employee whom you just cannot honestly recommend:  "All in all, I cannot say enough good things about this candidate or recommend him too highly."

8.   And finally for the worker who doesn’t like to cooperate with others, one might write: “He works independently and never thinks twice about assisting fellow employees.”

I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that many of us have been asked to write letters of recommendation—even for people we really felt didn’t feel confident in recommending.  But did you know that the Bible tells us that we as believers in Christ are His letters of recommendation to everyone with whom we rub shoulders with.

That’s right—if you are a believer in the Lord Jesus Christ—that is you are trusting Him alone for your salvation from the wrath of God for your sins—then you are a living letter who God wants to use to introduce and recommend His Son the Lord Jesus Christ through.  We who have been made spiritually alive through the Gospel of Jesus Christ are the “living letters” of Christ whom God is transforming to the character of Christ so as to use to introduce and recommend Christ to those in our circle of influence.

That is the point the Apostle Paul is making in our Bible passage for this morning—2 Corinthians 3:1-4.  Let’s read it.

God loves to use metaphors, illustrations, and stories to communicate spiritual truths.  And that is what the Spirit of God is doing here in likening believers to letters.  In the last chapter, He likened us to the aroma of perfume which attracts people to Christ.  That is what perfume or cologne does—it attracts people with its scent.  It makes people sit up and take notice.

But interestingly enough, in the ancient world, the world in which Paul is writing, perfume was in the form of a thick ointment and the only way to get it out of its container, usually made of pottery, was to break the container.

And the point Paul is making is that the aroma of Christ in us and the power of Christ in us is oftentimes best experienced by others when we are broken and spilled out by the tough circumstances of our lives. 

And it is in these kinds of situations that the people around us—seeing that our responses as believers are different than their responses as unbelievers to similar situations—begin to ask us about the hope that is within us.

But, if our responses to difficult people and difficult situations are the same as the world’s responses and if unbelievers see us demanding our rights, fighting for the world’s goods, arguing over who is in the right, clawing to obtain, manipulating the facts, and giving ourselves, our energies, our time, and our resources to obtain what the world says is so important—why would they ever have reason to ask us about the hope that is within us?  

And so in the end of chapter 2, Paul tells us that we believers are like perfume or cologne in the world which is spreading the aroma of Christ wherever we go so that people notice something different and attractive about us—something that they do not have—namely a relationship and a friendship with God through our Lord Jesus Christ.

And here in chapter 3, the Holy Spirit of God communicates through the Apostle Paul that we who are believers are also like letters, in which we, like a letter, communicate—and in this case communicate the excellencies of Christ and of specifically of knowing Christ in a personal living relationship.

And here is how the chapter breaks down.

In verses 1-2, Paul makes the point that the believers whom he ministered to in Corinth were the authentication of his ministry.

If you wanted to see what kind of pastor he was—he says look at the people I have ministered to—they are my “letters of recommendation”, if you will.

But then Paul takes this thought and amplifies it in verse 3 to say that this is true of us in relation to Christ as well.

We who are in a relationship with Christ are His letters of recommendation to a world that does not know Him or really anything about Him.

So, Paul uses the metaphor of living letters to describe us and he makes the point that just as someone can see what Paul was like by “reading” or “studying” the people he ministered to and taught—people can see what Christ is like by “reading and watching and studying” us who believe.

In verse 3, Paul also makes the very important point that what is written or imprinted or engraved upon us as Christ’s living letters is Christ’s character—so that we are a letter not only from Christ but “of Christ”.

That is, as we live out our Faith in Christ, we are in effect, communicating Who Christ is and What Christ is like to the people we have contact with.

Paul also makes the point that this imprinting of Christ’s character and likeness in our lives in part and really to a very large degree is the result of his and Timothy’s ministry in their lives.

The NASV says in verse 3:  “you are a letter of Christ cared for by us . . . “

The English words “cared for” are translating the Greek word diakoneo which means to serve or to minister to.  It’s the word we get “deacon” from which means a servant.

I think the NIV renders it best when it records Paul as saying, “You show that you are a letter from Christ, ‘the result of our ministry’. . .”

In other words, the believers in Corinth did not come to Christ for salvation and then grow in Christ to spiritual maturity and Christlikeness so as to manifest Christ in and through their lives apart from the ministry of others in their lives.

This is an important truth for believers to grasp. 

Christlikeness—that is becoming more and more like Jesus in our character, our thinking, our actions, our reactions, and in every area of our lives demands that we be involved with and living life with other believers.

We all know that to achieve maximum spiritual growth as believers we need to be in the Word of God, under the preaching and teaching of the Word of God and involved in such spiritual disciplines as prayer, Scripture memorization, ect.

But did you also know that you and I will not grow very deep in Christ without each other and apart from each other’s ministry in our lives?

Lone wolf Christianity is not Biblical Christianity!

Biblical Christianity is best experienced, applied, and demonstrated in community with other believers.

In fact, to truly get to know God we must get to know each other in relationships that go deeper than the weather.

By yourself, you see God and you experience God from a very limited and restricted perspective—“yours”.

But when you are relating to and interacting with other believers in a community of believers and living life with these believers you are able to see and experience God in a multiplicity of ways that all contribute to your understanding of God and your becoming like Him in Christ Jesus that is not possible all by yourself.

God is too multi-faceted and multi-dimensional for any one of us to truly see and experience all by ourselves.  We, as finite creatures, simply do not have the capacity to take all of God in—not all by ourselves.

But, when you take a group of believers who are all seeing and experiencing God through the various circumstances of their lives and these believers are living out this expression of God that they are experiencing—it helps all of us see and experience God in ways we never could all by ourselves.

So, if we want to be the kinds of living letters that really do introduce and recommend Jesus to our circle of family and friends it requires that Christ be imprinting Himself upon our lives as we faithfully give ourselves to not only the faithful teaching of the Word of God but also the fellowship of believers.

Paul, then goes on to say that we as believers in Christ are living letters of Christ “. . . written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”

Notice that Paul likens the Holy Spirit of God to the ink that is used in writing real letters.

He says, that Christ’s character is being inscribed into and upon our hearts by God using the Holy Spirit just like we would use ink.

In other words, as we interact with God through His Word and as we interact with each other as a community of believers who are living out His Word—the Holy Spirit is being applied to our lives so as to create within us the very character of Christ so that we are becoming Christlike.

Now in Paul’s day, when a letter was written using ink, the ink was absorbed into either the papyrus or the leather upon which it was written.

It was absorbed because the material that the letter was written on was soft and porous and thus able to absorb the ink.

And because the ink was absorbed it was permanent.  It could not be erased or removed.

Oh, it could be smudged or smeared or maybe even scraped so as to diminish its clarity—but it could not ever be removed.

And that is one reason why Paul likens the Holy Spirit to ink. 

You see, once you were brought to Christ and became a believer in Christ, God used the Holy Spirit to inscribe upon you His Name and Christ’s character—which will continue throughout your life.

Now, you may have those times in your life where you have smudged the ink so to speak—or where you have smeared it—or even scraped it by pursuing sin—but the fact is—just like the ink on the old letters in Paul’s day—the Holy Spirit cannot be removed.

He is the permanent divine ink if you will that your new heart has and is absorbing so as to be confirmed as belonging to Christ.

Of course, if through our sin and our rebellion we smear or smudge the impression of and the inscription of Christ upon our hearts and lives—it will tarnish and diminish our testimony for the Lord which will end up costing us both earthly and heavenly joy.

But, the inscription is never destroyed nor removed because the ink of the Spirit of God is permanent.

Which, is why Paul exclaims in verse 4, that “such confidence we have through Christ toward God.”

If you are a believer in Jesus Christ—that is you are trusting Jesus Christ alone for your salvation from the wrath of God for your sin and you therefore have a relationship with God through Jesus Christ—

You can be completely confident that God is working in your life to imprint the very character of Christ upon your new heart—having removed your old spiritually dead and callous heart.

Paul tells us that the character of Jesus can only be inscribed by the Holy Spirit of God upon hearts of flesh.

At the end of verse 3, Paul says that the character of Christ is not written on tablets of stone but on kardia sarkinos—which is Greek for “hearts of flesh”.

You see, before salvation our hearts were like stone when it came to spiritual things.

Before God initiated His work in our lives, our hearts were spiritually dead, unresponsive to God, hostile to God, as hard as rocks, and totally separated from God.

That is what the Bible teaches. 

But then, at just the right time and in just the right circumstances God gave you, if you are a believer in Christ, a new heart—a heart of flesh so to speak so that you would desire Christ and be able to respond to Christ in a positive way.

This is how God describes the process in Ezekiel 11:19-20.

And I will give them a new heart and put a new spirit within them. I will take away their stony, stubborn heart and give them a tender, responsive heart, so they will obey my decrees and regulations. Then they will truly be my people, and I will be their God.

Ezekiel 36:26-17 renders it this way:

And I will give you a new heart, and I will put a new spirit in you. I will take out your stony, stubborn heart and give you a tender, responsive heart.  And I will put my Spirit in you . . .

Jeremiah 31:33-34 puts it this way:

“. . . I will put my instructions deep within them, and I will write them on their hearts. I will be their God, and they will be my people. . . . And I will forgive their wickedness, and I will never again remember their sins.”

You see, this is what happened when you were saved.  God gave you a new heart so as to be able to see Him, desire Him, and respond to Him.

And it is upon this new heart that He is at work right now inscribing the character of Jesus so as to conform you to His image.

And this inscription is so permanent that on that day when you depart this earth—Whom you belong too and Whose image is inscribed upon your heart will be perfectly and abundantly clear so as to be the proof that you are indeed His own.

Such confidence we, who have come to Christ as our Lord and our Savior, have.  (v. 4)

We are God’s Living Letters who are being written by God Himself using the Holy Spirit to imprint upon our believing hearts the very character of Christ which is becoming ours in ever increasing degrees.

And like any letter—we have been signed, sealed, and delivered to someone to communicate a message—in our case—the message of the Gospel of Jesus Christ.

But, as with any letter—if it is to be read by anyone it needs to get out of the envelope—right?!

So, whereas, we are all living letters of introduction and recommendation for Christ—we need to get out of the envelopes of our Christian homes, our Christian family members, our Christian friends, our church, and our Christian circles so as to be read by people who have yet to have Jesus introduced and recommended to them by us.

Let’s Pray!