‘Are we beginning again to commend ourselves? or do we need, as do some, letters of commendation to you or from you? You are our letter, written in our hearts, known and read of all men, it being revealed openly that you are a letter of Christ, ministered by us, written not with ink, but with the Spirit of the living God; not in tables of stone, but in tables that are hearts of flesh.'
‘Are we beginning again to commend ourselves?' What he has just been describing of their being triumphantly led by God in victory must not be misunderstood. We have not said it, he stresses, in order that we may commend ourselves. For the truth is that he and his fellow-workers do not need to commend themselves. The Corinthian Christians are themselves the proof of their commendation.
So having glorified God for leading him and his fellow-workers continually in triumph Paul now stresses that the Corinthians have even greater reasons for recognising that they are true servants of Christ and that he is God's true Apostle. Others would come with letters of recommendation, (see Acts 9:2; Acts 22:5; Acts 18:27; Romans 16:1) but he and his fellow-workers do not need letters of recommendation. They do not even need to commend themselves. The Corinthians themselves are his letters of recommendation, openly revealed to all men. For they owed their very rebirth to him and his ministry, and he wants them to know that they are written in the very hearts, both of him and his fellow-ministers.
‘Written on our hearts.' They are not just converts, they are beloved brothers and sisters. We need not press the illustration It was to get over a point. It soon changes so that it becomes ‘their hearts'.
‘Ministered by us.' They should remember through whom this wonderful work, now in their hearts, was ministered.
Paul needed no letters of recommendation because he only went to virgin territory, to places of new opportunity or to churches that he himself had founded. In the first case a letter of recommendation would have been useless, in the second it should have been unnecessary.
Note the stress on ‘all men'. Unlike his opponents Paul's triumph is not localised. All the world knows of it for they see it in those who have come to Christ under his ministry (compare ‘in every place' - 2 Corinthians 2:14).
Indeed all who see the Corinthian Christians recognise that they are a letter of Christ (a letter that reveals Christ, or that is from Christ and written by Him), written with something far superior to ink. They are written with the Spirit of ‘the living God', the life-giving God, the powerfully active God, and the writing paper is not stone tablets, but their human, beating hearts. So their very lives, Paul says, declare his credentials.
The contrast is with Moses' message, written in tablets of stone (Exodus 31:18). Moses' message was an outward one, even if it was written with the finger of God, the writing of the old covenant. It did not of itself change hearts. It spoke of deliverance, but it also laid down requirements without giving the power to fulfil them. But the message they have received was written on the inward heart by the Spirit of the living God, it was living and vital, life-changing and personally applied, and by it they had entered into God's new covenant (2 Corinthians 3:6) sealed by the blood of Jesus (1 Corinthians 11:25).
In mind were the words of God in Jeremiah 31:33, ‘I will make a new covenant --- this is the covenant that I will make with the house of Israel after those days, says the Lord, I will put My law in their inward parts and I will write it in their heart, and I will be their God, and they will be My people --- for they will all know Me from the least of them to the greatest.' And this combined with Ezekiel 36:27, ‘A new heart also will I give you, and a new Spirit will I put within you, and I will take away the stony heart out of your flesh, and I will give you a heart of flesh.' In both cases there is the stress on ‘new'. This would not be just a continuation of the old but would have a different basis. It would work within and not from without, an inward transforming rather than a bringing to commitment, although the very transformation would result in full commitment. So, says Paul, all that was promised in God's word was fulfilled in them through his ministry. What needed he of a better witness?
Paul is not degrading the old covenant. The old covenant was written with ‘the finger of God', emphasising its importance and God's personal concern. And it came in glory (2 Corinthians 3:7). But the new was more effective because it was written by ‘the Spirit of the living God', God's personal dynamic, life-giving action in the heart, and came with even greater glory. Although here we should note how Luke can use the term ‘the finger of God' to express the work of the Spirit (compare Luke 11:20 with Matthew 12:28). So the point is more on where the action was carried out, in the first case on tablets of stone, in the second case directly in the heart, than on Who by.
There could be no clearer distinction than here of those who are offered a means of life, but of whom many turn it down, and those who by the working of God's sovereign power are brought to respond and be saved. The one are offered the writing of God on the tablets of stone, the other receive the work of the Spirit in their hearts establishing His word there and transforming them.