Who also hath made us able ministers of the new testament; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life.
Also - accordingly.
Able - rather, as the Greek is the same as 2 Corinthians 3:5, 'sufficient as ministers" (Ephesians 3:7; Colossians 1:23).
The new testament - `the new covenant' as contrasted with the Old (1 Corinthians 11:25; Galatians 4:24). He reverts here to the contrast between the law on "tables of stone," and that 'written by the Spirit on fleshy tables of the heart' (2 Corinthians 3:3). Not of the letter - not of the mere literal precept, in which the old law, as then understood, consisted.
But of the spirit - i:e., the spiritual holiness which lay under the old law, and which the new covenant brings to light (Matthew 5:17-48), with new motives added, and a new power of obedience imparted-namely, the Holy Spirit (cf. Romans 7:6 with Romans 2:27; Romans 2:29). Even in writing the letter of the New Testament, Paul and the other sacred writers were ministers not of the letter, but of the spirit. No piety of spirit could exempt a man from the letter of each legal ordinance under the Old Testament; for God had appointed this as the way for a devout Jew to express his mind toward God. Christianity, on the other hand, makes the spirit of outward observances everything, and the letter a secondary consideration (John 4:24). Still, the moral law of the ten commandments, being written by the finger of God, is as obligatory as ever; but more in the Gospel spirit of "love" than in the letter of a servile obedience, and with a deeper spirituality (Romans 13:9). No literal precepts comprehend the wide range of holiness which LOVE, the work of the Holy Spirit, under the Gospel, suggests to the believer's heart instinctively from the Word understood in its full spirituality.
Letter (the law as an outward ordinance) killeth - by bringing home the knowledge of guilt and its punishment, death (Romans 4:15; Romans 7:9; Galatians 3:10; Galatians 3:21). The purer the law, the less is man, without the Spirit, able to keep it: so it is "the ministration of death" (2 Corinthians 3:7).
Spirit giveth life. The spirit of the Gospel, brought home to the heart by the Holy Spirit, gives new spiritual life (Romans 6:4; Romans 6:11). This 'spirit of life' is for us in Christ Jesus (Romans 8:2; Romans 8:10), who dwells in the believer as a "quickening spirit" (1 Corinthians 15:45). The spiritualism of rationalists admits no 'stereotyped revelation;' only what man's own inner lights, conscience and reason, approve of; thus making the conscience judge of the written Word, whereas the written Word is judge of the conscience (Acts 17:11; 1 Peter 4:11). True spirituality rests on the whole written Word, applied to the soul by the Holy Spirit, as the only infallible interpreter of its far-reaching spirituality. The letter is nothing without the spirit, in a subject essentially spiritual: the spirit is nothing without the letter, in a record substantially historical.