What is a better recommendation? A person? Or a piece of paper with some words on it? Paul said the people themselves were the proof.
“Are we beginning to commend ourselves again? Or do we need, like some people, letters of recommendation to you or from you? You yourselves are our letter, written on our hearts, known and read by everyone. You show that you are a letter from Christ, the result of our ministry, written not with ink but with the Spirit of the living God, not on tablets of stone but on tablets of human hearts.”
What are our credentials? Who can we point to and say that this is the fruit of our work and ministry? It’s not in numbers. But the kind of people we have influenced. People pursuing Jesus is the fruit of our ministry.
Not a piece of paper.
Paul claims he is not competent in himself, but competence comes from God. Paul and his people are competent as ministers of the new covenant.
“Such confidence we have through Christ before God. Not that we are competent in ourselves to claim anything for ourselves, but our competence comes from God. He has made us competent as ministers of a new covenant—not of the letter but of the Spirit; for the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life.”
It’s a new day in the kingdom of God. It’s a new covenant. Paul is a minister of that.
The old covenant was a letter that brought death. The new covenant is of the Spirit and gives life.
Two letters are being compared.
1) The letter of recommendation that is words on a paper, or the letter of recommendation that is the people of Corinth
2) The letter of the old covenant that brings death, or the Spirit that gives life.
It’s a new day. The new is here. The old is gone. No more days of black and white and words on paper, but now it is people who are the life and the Spirit who is the life.