2 Corinthians 3:6

6. Able Same word as sufficient, 2 Corinthians 3:5.

The new testament Rather, of a new covenant. To the popular reader the phrase the new testament suggests the idea of a book. But the meaning is, that whereas under Moses there was what is now an old covenant or compact between God and the Jewish people, so now, in the place of that, is substituted a new covenant or compact, by which God, in consideration of Christ’s mediation, engages to pardon and save all who place obedient faith in Christ. Note on Luke 22:20. Thus has God made us, the apostles and preachers in the Christian Church, efficient ministers of a new covenant.

Not of the letter Prescribing a complex ritual, as recorded in the Pentateuch, to be obeyed with a mechanical precision.

But of the Spirit Which Spirit, accepted by our faith, breathes into our hearts, and creates in us a spirit of love, emancipated from rituals, and running into the path of a free and joyous obedience. This letter, however once effective to salvation, now pertinaciously adhered to, as by these Judaists, killeth. That circumcision prescribed by this letter, which they claim as necessary for our future Christianity, cramps its true free life, and killeth it. And claimed as necessary to the salvation of the soul, it crowds out Christ, and killeth the soul. It is emancipation from their letter into the freedom of the spirit that alone giveth life.

This superiority of the new over the old covenant, St. Paul now (2 Corinthians 3:7-18) illustrates with rich Old Testament imagery, and with much power, against the factious advocates of the old.