The Brooding Activity of the Holy Spirit and the Two Letters

Spiritual Or Mental?

Who also made us sufficient as ministers of a new covenant; not of the letter, but of the spirit: for the letter killeth, but the spirit giveth life. (2 Cor. 3.6)

The word "letter" here points to the law. By comparing the law with the Holy Spirit we find that the law can do nothing to man but kill him because it does not possess the power of giving life as does the Spirit. "It is the spirit," says Jesus, "that giveth life" (John 6.63). Nothing except the Holy Spirit can give life. Even the life of God is in the Holy Spirit. Moreover, our physical world was restored at the beginning through the brooding activity of the Holy Spirit (Gen. 1.2b mg.). And the birth of the Lord Jesus, He being God incarnated, came about by the overshadowing power of the Most High. According to the revelation of the Bible, whatever possesses life or gives life is in, or by virtue of, the Holy Spirit. But since the law is established in letter and not in the Holy Spirit, it causes man to die.

Yet not only in the Old Covenant is there the "letter" (that is, the law) which kills; even the New Covenant has its "letter." What the Old Covenant stresses is the law, yet the law—as the Scripture tells us—is of God, being holy and righteous and good (Rom. 7.12). But because the Holy Spirit is lacking in it, the law becomes the letter which kills, just as do the many other "letters" in the world. Yet we discover a similar possibility in the New Covenant. For although many truths, commandments, exhortations and teachings in the gospel of the New Covenant are of God and can regulate human conduct and influence men’s moral behavior, nevertheless, if they are divorced from the power of the Holy Spirit they too will be transformed into the letter that kills.