On the Spirit and the Letter

Now, since, as he says in another passage, “the law was added because of transgression,” meaning the law which is written externally to man, he therefore designates it both as “the ministration of death,” and “the ministration of condemnation;” but the other, that is, the law of the New Testament, he calls “the ministration of the Spirit” and “the ministration of righteousness,” because through the Spirit we work righteousness, and are delivered from the condemnation due to transgression.

The one, therefore, vanishes away, the other abides; for the terrifying schoolmaster will be dispensed with, when love has succeeded to fear. Now “where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty.” But that this ministration is vouchsafed to us, not on account of our deserving, but from His mercy, the apostle thus declares: “Seeing then that we have this ministry, as we have received mercy, let us faint not; but let us renounce the hidden things of dishonesty, not walking in craftiness, nor adulterating the word of God with deceit.” By this “craftiness” and “deceitfulness” he would have us understand the hypocrisy with which the arrogant would fain be supposed to be righteous.

Whence in the psalm, which the apostle cites in testimony of this grace of God, it is said, “Blessed is the man to whom the Lord will not impute sin, and in whose mouth is no guile.” This is the confession of lowly saints, who do not boast to be what they are not. Then, in a passage which follows not long after, the apostle writes thus: “For we preach not ourselves, but Christ Jesus the Lord; and ourselves your servants for Jesus' sake. For God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, has shined in our hearts, to give the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ.” This is the knowledge of His glory, whereby we know that He is the light which illumines our darkness.

And I beg you to observe how he inculcates this very point: “We have,” says he, “this treasure in earthen vessels, that the excellency of the power may be of God, and not of us.” When further on he commends in glowing terms this same grace, in the Lord Jesus Christ, until he comes to that vestment of the righteousness of faith, “clothed with which we cannot be found naked,” and while longing for which “we groan, being burdened” with mortality, “earnestly desiring to be clothed upon with our house which is from Heaven,” “that mortality might be swallowed up of life;” — observe what he says: “Now He that has wrought us for the self-same thing is God, who also has given unto us the earnest of the Spirit;” and after a little he thus briefly draws the conclusion of the matter: “That we might be made the righteousness of God in Him.” This is not the righteousness whereby God is Himself righteous, but that whereby we are made righteous by Him.