Almost every Christian agrees on how a person is saved: by grace, through faith in Jesus Christ, not by works. The disagreement starts with the next question. What is grace for after you are saved?
For many believers, the answer slowly drifts back toward behavior. Grace got you in, but now it is up to you to stay in. Every failure feels like falling out of favor with God. That feeling has a name: condemnation.
Paul speaks directly to that drift in 2 Corinthians 3, where he calls the Law of Moses something that startles most readers: “the ministry of death.”
The Law Makes Sin Worse, Not Better
Before turning to 2 Corinthians, it helps to see what Paul says about the law in Romans. “Now the law came in to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more” (Romans 5:20). “But now the righteousness of God has been manifested apart from the law, although the Law and the Prophets bear witness to it” (Romans 3:21).
Then comes a surprising line: “For while we were living in the flesh, our sinful passions, aroused by the law, were at work in our members to bear fruit for death” (Romans 7:5). The law does not calm our sinful passions. It arouses them.
Israel proved it at Sinai. God spoke the commandments, beginning with “You shall have no other gods before me” (Exodus 20:3). By the time Moses came down the mountain with the tablets, the people had already made a golden calf. Moses “threw the tablets out of his hands and broke them at the foot of the mountain” (Exodus 32:19), a fitting picture of what every one of us does with the law.
The problem is not the law itself. The law comes from God. The problem is us. As Paul says, “God has done what the law, weakened by the flesh, could not do” (Romans 8:3).
What Is the Law, Exactly?
In 2 Corinthians 3, Paul describes the law as “the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone” (2 Corinthians 3:7). What was carved on stone? The Ten Commandments.
That detail matters. Many teachers divide the Law of Moses into three parts: ceremonial, civil and moral. The sacrifices and civil statutes are gone, they say, but the moral law is still binding. Yet everything in the Law of Moses flows from the Ten Commandments, and nothing civil or ceremonial was carved in letters on stone. The part Paul calls the ministry of death is the moral heart of the law itself. The law is a composite whole.
Two Ministries
“Now if the ministry of death, carved in letters on stone, came with such glory that the Israelites could not gaze at Moses’ face because of its glory, which was being brought to an end, will not the ministry of the Spirit have even more glory? For if there was glory in the ministry of condemnation, the ministry of righteousness must far exceed it in glory” (2 Corinthians 3:7-9).
Paul sets two ministries side by side:
- The law is the ministry of death and the ministry of condemnation.
- The new covenant in Jesus is the ministry of the Spirit and the ministry of righteousness.
Why would God give a ministry of death? Because it does exactly what it was designed to do. “The law was our guardian until Christ came, in order that we might be justified by faith” (Galatians 3:24). The law is meant to show you that you are incapable, so you will look to the One who is capable. While the law makes you feel like you are not good enough, Jesus makes you good enough, because He is good enough.
Why We Keep Drifting Back
If the law cannot make us righteous, why do believers keep returning to it? Because the flesh wants something to do. The law offers the flesh a solution: do these things, and you will be right with God.
Paul watched the Galatians do exactly that: “I am astonished that you are so quickly deserting him who called you in the grace of Christ and are turning to a different gospel” (Galatians 1:6). “Having begun by the Spirit, are you now being perfected by the flesh?” (Galatians 3:3).
Today the law rarely shows up by name. It shows up as legalism, a derivative of the law that keeps the Ten Commandments at the center and then adds rule after rule: don’t smoke, don’t drink, read your Bible every day or else. Paul says what happens when that is preached: “Yes, to this day whenever Moses is read a veil lies over their hearts” (2 Corinthians 3:15). The veil comes back. You are hidden from the goodness of God and the power of the gospel.
Turning to the Lord Removes the Veil
The good news is in the very next verse: “But when one turns to the Lord, the veil is removed” (2 Corinthians 3:16). You cannot look into the finished work of Jesus and miss the glory of God.
“Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom” (2 Corinthians 3:17). Legalism tries to turn that freedom into a new demand. But “for freedom Christ has set us free” (Galatians 5:1). It is freedom from sin, from condemnation, from everything that held you.
The Ministry of Reconciliation
Paul names one more ministry later in the letter: “All this is from God, who through Christ reconciled us to himself and gave us the ministry of reconciliation” (2 Corinthians 5:18).
Think of reconciling a budget. The church’s job is to help people reconcile what they owe the law against what Jesus has already paid. When the accounts are settled, the result is clear: no one can live righteously by the law, and every bit of righteousness we need has been provided at the cross. Preaching should never leave people feeling less than, except to point them to the One who is greater: “God is greater than our heart” (1 John 3:20).
Beholding as in a Mirror
The chapter ends here: “And we all, with unveiled face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are being transformed into the same image from one degree of glory to another. For this comes from the Lord who is the Spirit” (2 Corinthians 3:18).
The Greek word for “beholding,” katoptrizō, carries the idea of looking into a mirror, and some translations say exactly that. It recalls the bronze basin in the tabernacle, made “from the mirrors of the ministering women” (Exodus 38:8). Under the old covenant, you looked and saw your uncleanness. Under the new, you behold the glory of the Lord, Jesus Himself, and what looks back is what He has made you. “If anyone is in Christ, he is a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
That is how transformation happens. Not by staring at the law and trying harder, but by beholding Jesus. Your beholding impacts your becoming.
We are not made righteous by the law. We are made righteous by the finished work of Jesus Christ.