“And you show that you are a letter from Christ delivered by us, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.” 2 Corinthians 3:3 ESV
Reflection: thinking back, what has been the most significant or important letter you have ever received?
The art of letter writing has almost disappeared. To sit down with just a pen and paper, having to think carefully about what you want to say, then write it using your own handwriting. No backspace. No auto spell or grammar suggestions. Just you, the pen and the paper. And for those who remember, it was a very special moment when after waiting for a letter in the mail, you finally received one. To open the envelope and then pull the letter out. The whole process of letter writing, sending and receiving the letters via post was both time consuming and required effort. But it was so meaningful, and very romantic when writing with someone you were in love with.
Today we have mostly replaced this art of letter writing with texting and some simple minded emojis. Even an email is too much work for many. And, as we all have seen, even the word choices in our very simple texts are being proposed by the texting software. Soon we can tell AI to send a nice text message to someone, and we don’t have to even do anything. It is scary how quickly we are willing to give up such beautiful capability of letter writing that have been used by humans for thousands of years, to hand it over to machines. But did you realize that God is not giving up His letter writing?
In our focus verse today, Paul uses letter writing metaphorically in several dimensions. First, he is referring to when God gave the Law, the Ten Commandments, to the Israelites while they were in the desert. The Law was inscribed, written on physical stone tablets, as a love letter from God to His people. To be their God and guide them through this world. But they revolted there and then. And instead of worshipping God, they made their own god, a golden calf, and worshipped it.
Paul continues the metaphor with the second letter from God; but this one is written on “human hearts” and “with the Spirit of the living God”. You might recall God’s promise of a new covenant, “For this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, declares the Lord: I will put my laws into their minds, and write them on their hearts, and I will be their God, and they shall be my people.” Hebrews 8:10 ESV. He is of course referring to the new covenant Jesus establish in his blood, which we who have received Christ are the recipient of.
Finally, Paul says that the Corinthian church, the body of believers there “are a letter from Christ delivered by us”. To expand this thought a bit, he wrote in the previous verse “You yourselves are our letter of recommendation, written on our hearts, to be known and read by all.” 2 Corinthians 3:2 ESV. There is a deep meaning here, that, the visible transformation done by Christ in the believers was in fact the letter by God, the proof of God’s handy work. That others could see the outward change in the people, by their love for one another, and the fruit of the Spirit. What a testimony of what Paul and his team had achieved there, in Corinth!!
And it makes us think about the impact we are having on those who God has entrusted to us to minister to, as the fragrance of Christ. Are they becoming more and more like Christ, as a letter from God?